Abstract
When in the ninth century the kingdoms of the Picts and Scots merged, there had already been a bond between them in the common Christian faith which both professed. Naturally, in a land of so many people, each one developed its own church, and there were differences of organisation and traditions between them. But England too in the age of the conversion was a land of many peoples; and yet Bede, writing in the eighth century and treating of the history of at least eight ‘kingdoms’, could still write an ‘Ecclesiastical History of the English People’. For him they were one people in Christ and had one history. So for the Scots, Christianity was to be a unifier, a loyalty that joined Picts and Scots, Celt and Saxon, Briton and in the end Scandinavian, though the last was the most difficult.
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Notes and References
Michael Lynch, Scotland: A New History (London, 1991), pp. 28–36.
Adomnan’s Life of Columba, ed. A. O. and M. O. Anderson (Edinburgh, 1961).
Chronicles of the Picts, Chronicles of the Scots, and other Early Memorials of Scottish History, ed. W. F. Skene (Edinburgh, 1867), pp. 138–40, 183–8, 375–7.
See also Ursula Hall, St Andrew and Scotland (St Andrews, 1994), pp. 60–77.
A. Fliche, La Réforme Grégorienne (Paris, 1924–37; reprinted 1978), II, p. 280.
See examples in The Letters of John of Salisbury, I, ed. W. J. Millor, H. E. Butler and C. N. L. Brooke (Edinburgh, 1955), nos 2, 4, 62, 63, 65, 66, 68, etc.
Ibid., pp. 129–32; see also M. Brett, The English Church under Henry I (Oxford, 1975), pp. 17–18.
A. W. Haddan and W. Stubbs, Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents relating to Great Britain and Ireland, II, part 1 (Oxford, 1873). pp. 202–4.
Ibid., pp. 200–2, and Eadmer’s Historia Novorum in Anglia (Rolls Series, no. 81, 1884), ed. M. Rule, pp. 279–88.
R. Somerville, Scotia Pontificia (Oxford, 1982), nos 34, 40.
R. Somerville, Pope Alexander III and the Council of Tours (Publications of the Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies of the University of California, Los Angeles, no. 12, Berkeley, 1977), p. 29.
R. Somerville, Scotia Pontificia, no. 54; text in full in Registrum Episcopatus Glasguensis (Bannatyne and Maitland Clubs, 1843), I, no. 19.
Ibid., no. 156. See now also A. D. M. Barrell, ‘The background to Cum Universi: Scoto-papal relations, 1159–1192,’ Innes Review, 46 (1995), pp. 116–38.
British Library Harleian Manuscript 433, ed. R. Horrox and P. W. Hammond (Richard III Society, 1979–83). III. pp. 76–98.
D. E. R. Watt, ‘The Provincial Council of the Scottish church, 1215–1472’, in Medieval Scotland, Crown, Lordship and Community, ed. A. Grant and K. J. Stringer (Edinburgh, 1993), pp. 140–55.
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© 1997 Bruce Webster
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Webster, B. (1997). The Identity of Faith. In: Medieval Scotland. British History in Perspective. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-25402-6_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-25402-6_4
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