Christianities in the Early Modern Celtic World

T. O' Hannrachain, R. Armstrong, T. O' Hannrachain, R. Armstrong, Kenneth A. Loparo

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781137306357
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Modern History
• Index: History

Ranging from devotional poetry to confessional history, across the span of competing religious traditions, this volume addresses the lived faith of diverse communities during the turmoil of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Together, they provide a textured understanding of the complexities in religious belief, practice and organization.

Part I

Traditional Religion and Reformation Change

1

The Church in Gaelic Scotland before
the Reformation

Iain G. MacDonald

Historians investigating the state of the medieval Church in Gaelic Scotland have not had their problems to seek. Scholarship has been traditionally weighted towards the early medieval period, where the search for the elusive ‘Celtic’ brand of Christianity dwarfs anything published for the period after 1100. Late medievalists have tended to contrast the Church in the Gaelic Highlands unfavourably with the ecclesiastical organization and religious sophistication of Lowland society, and some have dismissed it as a little more than a superficial and extraneous appendage grafted onto society. In one especially dismissive passage Gordon Donaldson argued:

The facts provide but a slender foundation on which to build the romantic picture of a pious Catholic populace who maintained their faith uncontaminated by the reformation. The truth is that the Highlands never had adequate spiritual ministrations until the nineteenth century, when the Free Kirk took the task in hand.¹

In recent years scholars have challenged the sharp dichotomy between the Highlands and Lowlands and the cultural homogeneity of the Gàidhealtachd itself, but in the ecclesiastical sphere certain distinguishing traits, chiefly around institutional provision and the sexual and religious mores of the clergy and laity, remain uncontested.² This paper seeks to flesh out some of these issues and to examine the performance of the Church within the context of Gaelic society and wider Christendom. In the course of doing so we will discuss whether these features demonstrated the superficiality of Christianity in the Scottish Gàidhealtachd, or pointed to a church which was already heavily integrated with secular society.

Criticism of institutional provision

The most frequently repeated and perhaps most damaging criticism concerns the chequered fortunes of the West-Highland bishops of Argyll and of Sodor (the Isles) and their cathedrals of Lismore and Snizort. They are usually depicted as weak, underdeveloped and ineffective institutions in comparison with other Highland bishoprics.³ Historians commonly make reference to the long episcopal vacancies in Sodor and Argyll during the sixteenth century, and to James V’s complaints to Rome regarding the state of religion in Argyll and the Hebrides. In November 1529 he wrote:

It is now the seventeenth year since the see of the Hebrides became vacant. During that period those born in the more remote isles have not had baptism or other sacrament – not to speak of Christian teaching – and are not likely to have it unless a bishop be appointed.⁴

Three years later James further asserted that ‘very few’ desired to hold the bishopric of Argyll. Not only were its rents small but also its location, ‘adjacent to Ireland and the Isles, at the very back of the realm’ made it ‘hard to preserve ecclesiastical discipline among a lawless folk’.⁵ The situation appears hopeless, but this was really hyperbole propagated by a Stewart government anxious to acquire a favourable response from the papacy. It would be more accurate to say that few Lowlanders wanted the bishopric; there were plenty of ambitious local churchmen, but the Stewart kings were anxious to avoid individuals from Clann Chaimbeul and Clann Domhnaill acquiring an episcopate on their home turf. Royal ecclesiastical policy instead favoured men who would ‘keep the people in obedience to the crown’.⁶ Yet even when a see was sede vacante business would have carried on as usual; vicar generals collated newly beneficed clergy and the cathedral chapter would act as ordinary authority.⁷ The cathedral chapter of Argyll had been in existence since at least the late fourteenth century, and the succession of capitular dignitaries, although incomplete, is generally impressive.⁸ True, the bishops governed from Dunoon rather than Lismore, but this was in response to political and economic trends, and was not the straightforward retreat from Highland inhospitality so often supposed.⁹ The status of the late medieval cathedral clergy of Snizort is far more obscure, but the annexation of Iona Abbey in 1499 transformed the situation, providing the Bishop of Sodor with a new home and the funds to create a fully constituted cathedral chapter. In 1549 there was a flurry of supplications regarding vacancies in the deanery, treasurership, chancellorship and subdeanery of Sodor, all offices which had evidently been in existence for at least a generation.¹⁰ Further annexations to the episcopal mensa of the two sees doubtless helped to finance the commissaries and the new network of rural deans of Christianity, which (re)appear in the early sixteenth century.¹¹ This was clearly a period of unqualified improvement for the organization of the Church in Argyll and Sodor, which makes it all the more ironic that it coincided with the loudest complaints about poverty and the poor quality of episcopal supervision.

Other traditional criticisms of perceived structural deficiencies of the Church in the sixteenth-century Gàidhealtachd have focused upon the large size of parishes – which made it impossible for distant communities to attend the parish church regularly – and the skeletal number of collegiate churches, friaries and hospitals in comparison with the Lowlands.¹² As Martin MacGregor has argued, however, such an approach discounts the possibility that Gaelic society developed its own means of fulfilling the ideals underlying these institutions without resorting to the institution itself.¹³

As in Ireland, parish formation in Gaelic Scotland originated from a pre-parochial ecclesiastical system modelled upon the political and economic units of secular lordships.¹⁴ There is some evidence that bishops were willing to divide parishes in response to demographic change, but entrenched allegiance to particular churches and their titular saints may have discouraged much reform of this kind.¹⁵ Amalgamations occurred more regularly (especially in the west), probably an indication of the financial pressures which made it hard for late medieval clergy to sustain themselves from the fruits of a single benefice.¹⁶ In the Highlands, however, as in the similarly large upland parishes in England, distant communities could access the sacraments via dependent chapels.¹⁷ The Gàidhealtachd possessed a rich ecclesiastical heritage of chapels, but proving the operation of the majority of them is often impossible. Raitts and Dunachton in Badenoch, Cille Choirill in Lochaber and Branwo in Glen Lyon, however, were all functioning chapels in the later Middles Ages (the latter two officially as dependent chapels).¹⁸ Foundations like these were hugely important for the cura animarum in the large parishes of the mountainous interior, although they were probably not always permanently staffed: ‘Bambrow’ was endowed with a new resident chaplain in 1500 because the parish of Fortingall was too large for the vicar to minister on his own.¹⁹ One may envisage some flexibility in response to changing local conditions: chapels semi-retired after the Black Death possibly enjoying a new lease of life as the population began to recover. However, new chapels founded for divine worship were popping up too – St Catherines near Loch Fyne, St Ninians of Strotholwe in Argyll and St Ninians near Ardstinchar Castle in Carrick are among the chance few to be documented.²⁰ Study of the Gaelic parishes in Atholl and Breadalbane indicates that they were frequently supported by a network of dependent chapels to serve outlying communities,²¹ while the forty-eight parish churches of late medieval Argyll were supplemented by an impressive twenty-six functioning chapels, some of which exceeded parish churches in their size and ostentation.²² Similarly, numerous other chapels in Islay, Argyll and the Lennox were endowed with specific lands for supporting a resident priest.²³ The baptismal fonts, pre-Reformation burials and religious sculpture unearthed at these sites imply that these were important and thriving foundations. They, rather than the parish church itself, served as the typical place of worship for many Scottish Gaels from cradle to grave.²⁴ Private noble chapels were also accessible: John Major’s 1521 history suggests that ordinary parishioners attended divine service even in private manorial chapels, regardless of whether they were officially dependent or not.²⁵

Indeed, the importance of certain churches was reinforced by their close association with particular clans who acted as founders, patrons or users of the burial ground – ties which may have rendered collegiate churches less relevant in the Gàidhealtachd.²⁶ John Bannerman identified several churches along the western seaboard which functioned as mausoleums for major Gaelic kindreds, where ties were strengthened further by the local nobility’s heavy investment in monumental funerary and religious sculpture.²⁷ This sculpture demonstrated that the West-Highland elite shared the same anxieties about damnation as contemporaries who erected collegiate foundations.²⁸ Indeed, one recent survey has conjectured that the concentration of surviving West-Highland medieval funerary and commemorative sculpture is heavier than anywhere else in Europe.²⁹ Free-standing crosses commissioned ‘in honour of God and the Saints, and for the salvation of their souls and those of other members of their families’ were frequently erected in or around graveyards by individuals whose kindred possessed close ties with that church and saint; some even asked for prayers in their inscriptions.³⁰ They also functioned as outward signs of benefaction: the late fifteenth-century cross of Cailean MacEachairn of Killellan in the graveyard of Kilkerran parish church was probably erected to mark the recent mortification of some of his lands to its altar.³¹ The crosses frequently depicted crucifixion scenes, and it has been suggested that this compensated for the apparent lack of Christian symbolism and exhortations for prayers on many grave-slabs.³² Yet funerary sculpture would also, by its very form, have reminded the living of those buried underneath and their need for prayers. One imagines that they struck a powerful chord at churches frequented by kin members. A few of the more sophisticated surviving examples from the late fifteenth century are also adorned with representations of the Virgin and Michael the Archangel, who were venerated as powerful intercessors at judgement and in purgatory in late medieval society.³³ The image of St Michael holding the scales of justice above the tomb of Alasdair MacLeòid of Dunvegan was a typical representation of the archangel who escorted souls from purgatory to heaven.³⁴ Similarly, the carving of a cadaver at the centre of the MacDubhghaill grave-slab in Ardchattan Priory illustrated that the nobility were attuned to the latest developments in Christian culture.³⁵

Beyond the West Highlands, salvation also occupied the final thoughts of Seumas Grannd (Grant) of Freuchie in 1553. Bequeathing his soul to Almighty God, the Blessed Virgin Mary and the saints, he warned his son and executor to ensure that he was honourably interred, and to act for the welfare of his father’s soul, adding that he would answer before the highest judge on Judgement Day.³⁶ The entombments of successive chiefs of Clann Fhriseil (the Frasers) and Clann Choinnich (the MacKenzies) in Beauly Priory and of the chiefs of Clann Mhic an Tòisich (the Mackintoshes) in the Dominican friary of Inverness were all demonstrative not only of benefaction but also of their expectation that prayers and masses given therein would hasten their delivery from purgatory.³⁷ Incidentally, this may help explain why some of these chiefs were customarily buried outside the clan dùthchas.³⁸ Certainly, in Argyll and the Hebrides it was not unknown for individuals also to be buried in places of considerable sanctity.³⁹ Could it also be a demonstration of political allegiances? This also had parallels in the west, where the alleged burials of some principal Hebridean leaders in Reilig Odhr´ain on Iona may have represented a conscious demonstration of affinity with the Lords of the Isles, who employed St Oran’s chapel as their own mortuary chapel.⁴⁰ The burial location of chiefs across the Gàidhealtachd is an area which warrants further investigation.

Relevant documentary sources specifying prayers for the dead are scarce, but the late medieval chronicle of Fortingall was probably compiled with the intention of saying prayers and obits (yearly masses said for a person’s soul) in local parish churches in Dunkeld and Argyll.⁴¹ Other annalistic compilations (no longer extant) were the original sources for many of the obituaries of the clan elite preserved in the seventeenth-century genealogical histories; the author of the history of Clann Fhriseil utilized the ecclesiastical records of Beauly Priory, which contained ‘the deat [date] of our lords buried and interred within their church and charnels, of which they keept bills of mortality’.⁴² The inclusion of obituaries of individuals of local and national significance was consistent with the late medieval belief that the ‘sins of one segment of the community could bring God’s wrath down upon the whole nation’.⁴³ The MicGriogair compilers of the Fortingall Chronicle continued to record the interments of their clan chiefs in neighbouring Argyll, however, despite their location in Perthshire. Ties of kinship may therefore have continued to exercise a profound influence over prayer and remembrance among the priestly classes in the Gàidhealtachd, even if they themselves lived well beyond the original clan territory.⁴⁴

Another related aspect is the religious role of bardic poetry. Sìm Innes’s investigations of Marian devotion in Classical Gaelic poetry has opened new vistas in this direction, but one which deserves fuller elaboration is whether funeral elegies served not only to celebrate the life of clan chiefs but also to encourage future genera...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Illustrations and Tables
• Acknowledgements
• Contributors
• Abbreviations
• Note on Nomenclature
• Introduction: Religious Acculturation and Affiliation in Early Modern Gaelic Scotland, Gaelic Ireland, Wales and Cornwall
• Part I Traditional Religion and Reformation Change
• Part II Culture and Belief in Celtic Britain and Ireland
• Notes
• Select Bibliography
• Index