Chapter 7 - From Greece to Scotland via Rome and England
Pope Gregory's evangelisation of England brought other benefits to the papacy. In 600 the style of Christianity in the British Isles was decidedly out of tune with Roman ways. The powerhouse of the Church was Irish, and the culture was Celtic. North of the Midlands of England lay lands where it was not possible to assert the authority of the papacy. The Celtic priesthood was hereditary. Celtic monks did not employ the Roman tonsure, in which the hair was shaved from the crown of the head, but shaved in front of a line drawn from ear to ear, their prominent foreheads giving them a highbrow look. Even the date of Easter was different.
Augustine's mission on behalf of Gregory proved to be decisive for Christianity in the British Isles. Beginning in Kent, he moved north and was particularly successful in the east of England. In 664 a synod was convened at Whitby in Yorkshire to decide whose authority was to be obeyed - that of the Celtic Church or that of Rome. The argument of Petrine supremacy was used to great effect by St Wilfrid of York. St Peter, not St Columba, had been handed the keys of the kingdom of heaven by Christ, he pointed out. The result was the irresistible expansion of Roman-style Christianity. Those who found the new deal difficult to accept went west to Ireland or north-west to Iona.
Wilfrid left another legacy that was to prove decisive. Earlier in his life, when he conceived his vision of turning the northeast of England from the Columban / Celtic form of Christianity to the Roman, he had gone into a church in Rome that was dedicated to St Andrew in order to pray for success. Feeling grateful to Andrew for his subsequent success and eloquence at the decisive synod at Whitby, he dedicated to the saint his monastery at Hexham, near the spot where the north and south Tyne become one river. Wilfrid, whose chroniclers paint him as a saintly man, was a seminal figure as the influence of the Northumbrians and Angles moved northwards into Scotland.
At this time Scotland was divided into two nations: the kingdom of Dalriada lay in the west, and north of the Forth valley was the kingdom of the Picts - so called by the Romans (who failed to conquer them) because of their taste for colourful tattoos, with which they terrified their enemies as they rushed naked into battle.
To the south lay the Northumbrian kingdom from whose ' nobility Wilfrid of York came. Wilfrid - educated at Lindisfarne M and Canterbury, like many churchmen of integrity before and JB since - fell foul of the ruler of his day, who disliked having a H church leader whose first allegiance lay elsewhere. Despite H being backed by the Pope in his difficulties with the king, H Wilfrid was restored only on the king's death. Wilfrid himself died in 709.
His successor as Bishop of York was Acca, Wilfrid's protégé, who had travelled with him on visits to Rome and also revered Andrew. Acca expanded the importance of the Andrean cult at H Hexham by bringing relics of the apostle there. When he too H was deposed by the Northumbrian king, he lacked his mentor's H clout with the papacy and left (taking, it is thought, the relics with him). His natural ally would have been the king of the Picts, who had placed his kingdom under the protection of St Peter in 710.
Britain in the Mid Seventh Century
We have now reached the point where St Andrew appears in the religious life of Scotland. The simplest, most convenient explanation for the appearance of Andrean relics in Scotland is that they were Acca's relics, sold or given for protection to the sympathetic Picts. When Acca died in 740 his body was taken back to Hexham, where he is commemorated by a fine carved cross, but his Andrean relics remained behind as the foundation of the Andrew legend in Scotland.
Various stories have arisen to explain the growth of the cult of Andrew.
As we have seen, the Picts enjoyed a somewhat wild reputation with the Romans but by the eighth century seem to have become thoroughly Christianised. King Nechtan not only voted for the Roman Church, he requested theological guidance from the Abbot of Jarrow and commissioned a church dedicated to St Peter from Jarrow architects. (The church in question is thought to have been at Restenneth, near Forfar, and part survives in the existing western tower.) Far from being a tattooed terrorist, Nechtan seems to have been genuinely pious. He abdicated in 724 to become a monk. He was succeeded in 731, after a struggle over the succession, by King Angus I (aka Angus MacFergus), who was decidedly less holy and, according to contemporary accounts, a bloody tyrant. However, he continued Nechtan's pro-Rome policy and was a patron of Lindisfarne (Holy Island), which housed the relics of St Cuthbert. The suggestion has been made that he sought to establish a similar sacred centre in his own kingdom and so brought Andrean relics to Fife.
Fife was at the centre of the Pictish kingdom. The number of villages in Fife whose names still begin with the letters Pit- are testimony enough to their origins. Fife is a treasure trove of place-name etymology, bearing the traces of Celtic, Roman and Norse conquests in its names. The one thing that is not preserved is a history of the Picts. Information about them has to be gleaned from the histories of other peoples. Their elegant standing stones show that they embraced Christianity early in history, but no one can translate them. Their language and most of their culture disappeared when they were subsumed into the kingdom of the Scots in the ninth century. This first 'union of the crowns' came about through the external threat posed by marauding Norsemen. For the Picts it proved to be as devastating as any piece of ethnic cleansing. All that remain are the silent stones, which cannot tell the secret of St Andrew's bones.
However, there are plausible reasons for making a connection between the Hexham relics and east Fife. There had been a Christian presence in east Fife since the Columban era. A friend of Columba, St Kenny or Cainnech (in Irish Gaelic), who gave his name to Kennoway in central Fife, is said to have had a hermitage at Kilrymont (another Gaelic word, which means 'the summit of the king's hill' and is sometimes spelt as Kinrymont in English). On this site St Andrews now stands.! King Nechtan had already established a bishopric at! Abernethy in north-west Fife, and King Angus followed this with a monastery at Kilrymont. If he was seeking to establish something on the lines of Lindisfarne further up the coast, then Kilrymont would have been a suitable place. In the eighth century there was relative peace in the area, whereas in the ninth century Norse raids made life very hazardous for coastal monasteries, as Lindisfarne and lona found to their cost.
Notwithstanding this, Ursula Hall makes a case that St Andrews was founded by another Angus, King Angus II, who ruled from 820 to 834 (Sir Andrew and Scotland, p. 66). The ninth century was, she argues, a more plausible setting for the establishment of a cult to Andrew. The tomb of St James had been discovered in Compostela, Spain, in 830; the bones of St Mark had arrived in Venice from Egypt in 828; and both had become the focus of patriotism and piety. And it was King Angus II who was involved in the battle of Athelstaneford in Lothian (then part of Northumbria).
The battle took place in the year 828 and gave rise to the legend of the saltire (the Scottish flag composed of a white cross on a royal-blue background). An army of Picts under Angus plus a contingent of Scots was surrounded by the Anglian army under Athelstan. 'Fearing the outcome of the encounter, Angus led prayers for deliverance and was rewarded by seeing a cloud formation of a white saltire (the diagonal cross on which St Andrew had been martyred) against a blue sky. The king vowed that if, with the saint's help, he gained victory, then Andrew would thereafter be the patron saint of Scotland. The Scots did win, and the saltire became the flag of Scotland' (from fundraising literature, Athelstaneford Flag Heritage Appeal Centre).
I prefer to believe it is Angus I who is mentioned in the legends of how St Andrews was founded and not his later namesake. There are many parallels and echoes between the Northumbrian Church and the Pictish one during the Nechtan/ Angus I era, as William Skene points out (Celtic Scotland, Vol. Ill, p. 271 ff.) - expulsion of Columban clergy, parallel churches of Peter and Andrew, chapels in honour of St Michael and St Mary. These coincidences draw us closer to the conclusion that Acca played a key role in the foundation of St Andrews/Kilrymont and that it happened in the decade beginning 730.
Yet most people in Scotland have never heard of Acca. The credit for bringing the relics of Andrew to Scotland belongs to another figure, who is surrounded by even more misty legends. His name is Regulus and he is more of an enigma than the man whose bones he allegedly brought by sea from Greece to Scotland.
When it became necessary, in the twelfth century, to explain how St Andrews became the cornerstone of Christianity in Scotland, the political situation had changed. Scotland had a new dynasty. Pictdom had disappeared. England was unified and stronger, with kings who wanted to bring Scotland under their rule. It therefore became necessary to write the story of the foundation in a way that reflected changed circumstances. In effect that meant several versions came to be written. These offer us more choice in 'How it happens that the memory of St Andrew the apostle should exist more widely in the region of the Picts, now called Scocia, than in other regions; and how it comes that so many abbacies were anciently established there, which now in many cases are by hereditary right possessed by laymen'.
That longwinded title belongs to the older of the two main legends, which is often called the Augustinian legend. In the early twelfth century Augustinian canons were imported into Scotland to 'Romanise' it all over again. Celtic practices had begun to creep back, and most monasteries had fallen into the hands of lay abbots, heads of clans whose ancestors had originally endowed them.
The legend consists of five parts and is in Latin. The first deals with Andrew's mission to the Scythian nations, where he seeks first the 'Pictones', then the Achaeans, before being crucified at Patras 'on the second day before the kalends of December'. His bones remain there until the time of Constantine's sons, when they are transferred to Constantinople until the reign of Emperor Theodosius.
The second part begins with Angus, king of the Picts, waging a cruel war against the southern part of Britain and surrounded by hostile forces on the plain of the Merse. Walking with seven companions, he sees a vision of a cross in the air and hears the voice of Andrew, who says he has come to defend and protect him provided he offers up a tenth of his inheritance to God in honour of St Andrew. With the sign of the cross preceding them into battle, Angus's troops are victorious and he duly returns to Pictdom to make his offering.
The third episode shifts back to Constantinople, where one of the custodians of Andrew's relics is fasting and praying and has a vision telling him to leave his native land and go with a guardian angel to an unknown destination. This turns out to be 'the summit of the king's mount, that is, Rigmund'.
Part four takes us back to the king of the Picts, who is sitting wearily with seven companions prior to arriving with his army at Kartenan when he is overtaken by a vision in which a man who has been blind from birth receives sight and leads the army to a place full of angels.
Part five begins: 'Regulus, therefore, a monk, a pilgrim from the city of Constantinople with the relics of St Andrew which he had brought with him, met the king at a gate which is called Matha. They saluted each other ... and King Angus then gave that place and city to God and St Andrew the apostle that it should be the head and mother of all the churches which are! in the kingdom of the Picts ... Regulus therefore, abbot and! monk, with his dear companions occupied that place ... and held in his hand and power the third part of the whole of Scocia and ordained and distributed it in abbacies. This country! commended itself by situation and amenities to Picts, Scots,! Danes, Norse and others who arrived to ravage the island, and if they needed refuge, it offered them always a safe receptacle.'
The other main legend claims to have been copied from old books of the Picts and is more elaborate but also more fantastic. It is sometimes called the Episcopal legend, since it makes Regulus a bishop and in part one brings him home from Patras, where he fled in 345 from the army of Constantius, which was invading Patras to avenge the death of Andrew and remove his relics. Regulus, prompted by an angel, manages to rescue three fingers of the right hand, a part of an arm, a kneecap and a tooth.
Part two echoes the Augustinian version. King Angus of the Picts is facing the Saxon king, Athelstan, at the mouth of the Tyne and in a dream St Andrew promises victory and that his relics will be brought to Angus's kingdom and venerated in an honoured place. Athelstan is duly defeated and his head cut off. Meanwhile Regulus has a visitation from an angel who warns him to sail towards the north with the relics and, wherever he is shipwrecked, to erect a church in honour of St Andrew. Bishop Regulus voyages among the Greek islands for a year and a half, erecting oratories to St Andrew wherever he lands, but eventually sets sail north and on Michaelmas Eve arrives in the land of the Picts 'at a place once called Muckross ['the headland of the wild boar'] but now Kilrymont'. There he erects a cross to keep away demonic forces.
Leaving two companions to guard it, he goes north-west to Forteviot, where he meets the Pictish king's sons. Angus is away on an expedition in Argyll, and his sons pledge a tithe to God and St Andrew for his safe return. Regulus and companions (a mixture of priests, hermits from Tiber Island and virgins from Colossia) then go east to Monikie in Angus, where the Pictish queen, Finchem, is about to give birth to a daughter named Mouren. They cross the Grampians to Kindrochit, near Braemar, where King Angus meets them on triumphant return from Argyll.
The king prostrates himself before the relics and goes back with Regulus to Monikie and Forteviot, where churches are founded, followed by a grand consecration at Kilrymont, where no fewer than seven chapels are founded. Seven times they circle around, Regulus carrying the holy relics above his head, his followers chanting and the king and nobility following behind. Twelve stone crosses are erected and King Angus gives the eastern half of Fife to Regulus (i.e. a line drawn from Largo through Ceres to Naughton, west of the Tay rail bridge) as a 'parochia'. The land between the sea called Sletheuma and the sea called Ishundenema is also mentioned, which has puzzled subsequent generations. Could it be that the firths of Forth and Tay were seen as seas rather than rivers? If so, Fife would then have been the special property of Regulus and his seven churches, one of which, according to the Episcopal legend, was dedicated to Regulus himself. The document itself is attested by one 'Thana', who says he wrote it for King Ferath in Meigle.
The Episcopal legend is not without contemporary echoes. There are still a number of Pictish stones in Meigle and around Angus. Ferath figures in a list of Pictish kings c. 840. The monastery at Kilrymont owned lands at Forteviot and Monikie. Just south of the latter, at Monifieth, there is a church of St Rule, now a Church of Scotland building. The author clearly had access to genuine material and was not drawing local | allusions out of thin air.
But how do we account for the howling inconsistencies and anachronisms? Regulus is a monk in one account and a secular bishop in another. In one story he rescues the relics, and in another he appears at the Great Gate with them. More significant, how can Regulus of the fourth century have met King Angus of the eighth century face to face? Why, if there were genuine relics of St Andrews at Kilrymont, was there no cult 1 or attempt to do anything about this until the eighth century? 1 Should we simply judge these legends as crude fantasies got up by later ecclesiastics at St Andrews to boost the importance of their heritage and influence? Before we brush them aside, it is worth adding a few more facts and seeing if a credible or coherent version can be pieced together.
The first fact is that there was a St Riagail, a friend of St Columba. The church he founded was at Muicinish, an island in the lake formed by the River Shannon called Lough Derg. There is no evidence he ever visited east Fife or Angus, but his saint's day is 16 October and that of Regulus is 17 October, close enough to be confused. The Irish word sounds reasonably similar to the English meaning of the Latin regulus, 'rule'. Muicinish means 'isle of wild boar' and Muckross, the old name for Kilrymont, means 'headland of wild boar'. Too close for coincidence? The trouble is that the sixth-century Riagail does not fit with the eighth-century Angus I (or the ninth-century Angus II, for that matter).
The second fact is that even if St Riagail did not visit Fife, there is still the presence of a Columban settlement from the sixth century. The Episcopal legend 'explains' the falling away of the thriving churches whose foundation it describes as being due to the lack of enthusiasm of subsequent rulers for the cult of St Andrew. However, after the death of Regulus (who was buried at Kilrymont) it was carried on by a group of thirteen Culdee monks who ran Kilrymont in their own eccentric manner, son succeeding father and inheriting the revenues of the monastery.
Put these two facts together and there is a case for claiming that Kilrymont had a Christian presence from the sixth century on. It was Celtic in origin (and maybe even involved the Irish Riagail in some way), but after King Nechtan's crackdown on Columban-style Christianity, it would have had to conform to Roman norms. It was also right in the middle of Pictdom and an ideal spot for Angus to found his 'New Lindisfarne' (with Acca's relics).
At this point we must introduce another candidate for the role of bone-broker. Stand up the real St Rule - or should that be the real St Rieul? Rieul was the first bishop of Senlis in France, born in the fourth century in Greece and active at Aries in Provence, then Senlis, which lies just north of Paris, near the Charles de Gaulle airport. Rieul is supposed to have died under the Diocletian persecutions, but there are a number of circumstantial links between Senlis and Scotland.
First, there was an old church of St Andrew at Senlis. Second, Simon de Senlis married Maud, King William I of England's great-niece. She founded an abbey to St Andrew at Northampton in 1084 and remarried (after Simon's death) David, who became king of Scotland. Third, in a church council in Paris in 557 the Bishop of Glasgow, St Kentigern, was present and signed himself `Bishop of Senlis'. These connections are not highly significant in themselves but worth noting in our list of possibilities.
Third and last candidate for the role of Rule is that the name was invented and given masculine gender to convey the abstract concept of regula, the rule by which a monastic community might live. Or was the word regulus intended to indicate that the man had some kind of regal status and was not a name at all, more a title like `kinglet'? Perhaps the truth lies in combining all these elements, as the author of the Episcopal legend may have done in an imaginative way by drawing on puns on the word regulus, Pictish history and the Gregory of Tours version of Andrew's life. His Augustinian counterpart, in a desire to avoid being too creative, has doggedly put down his five-part story in a way that looks clumsy and contradictory. Yet each of the five parts of his story contains a root which can be traced to other sources. The choice is not simply between a complete fabrication and a true account. It is between a mixture and a blend of legends.
One further possible explanation for the arrival of St Andrew's relics in Scotland must be mentioned. It is the simplest of all. There may have been someone who received relics from Constantinople, perhaps during the rebuilding of the Church of the Holy Apostles in 550. Maybe he decided to use the relics to convert marginal nations and went into Scythia because of the Andrew legend. He could easily have used the great rivers of Europe to travel west - the Dnieper, the Danube, the Rhine. Perhaps he came to Scotland via the Baltic - it is a more plausible journey than reaching it via the Black Sea, the Mediterranean, the Pillars of Hercules and Spain, as the other Regulus must have done. Arriving in east Fife, he then set up a cult to Andrew.
Years later Nechtan and Angus revived this cult and used it to reinforce Roman Christianity, since Andrew was the brother of Peter. The Regulus legend was constructed to bring together the two strands in the same timeframe.
I offer this as only one hypothesis among many. It is no more likely than the Regulus legend. The latter appears to have been badly treated by the Scots. We believe in the spider that taught King Robert the Bruce to `try and try again'. We accept the portrait of Macbeth offered us by Shakespeare and turn not a hair at Mel Gibson's Braveheart warriors daubed in woad-coloured saltires, when we know these accounts have as much credibility as Regulus's virgins from Colossia. Yet we ignore poor Regulus, who has as much right to an honoured place in our history. Apart from the Monifieth kirk and the tower which bears his name in St Andrews (which dates from the era of Macbeth, 1040-57), St Rule is badly served.
He suffers not only from the iconoclastic backlash that occurred at the time of the Reformation and the non-existence of Pictish records but also from a revival of interest in Celtic Christianity. Rule (the non-Irish version) upstages Columba and Ninian by having got to Scotland first with his version of Christianity. Understandably, those proud of the part the Celtic Church once played in Scotland are not likely to yield the title of founder of Scots Christianity to Regulus on such flimsy historical evidence. They cannot be blamed for this, since the motives of those who wrote the Regulus legend were undoubtedly to pre-date the Celtic Church (which they only knew in days of decline), edit out the place of England in Scottish Church history (at a time of Anglo-Scottish tensions) and get back to the roots of the early Church in Greece. Just how successful they were, we shall now see.