Dunkeld Christian Culdees

The sun-worship of the early tribes of Scotland was superseded by Christianity in the 5th and 6th centuries. Probably the Roman invaders brought the glad tidings even earlier, but only in isolated cases was it found. As the Northern Celts or Picts had already appropriated the altars and monuments of their predecessors, so they appropriated the festivals and saints of the new religion. The Pictish priesthood or Druids do not appear to have been very ardent objectors to the new faith, and simply retained their pagan customs and deities by giving them new names. Examples of this are found all over the country, and one good example is found in the history of the well-known wishing or healing well five miles from Dunkeld. It is commonly called the Grews Well, a supposed corruption of Sancta Crux or Well of the Holy Cross. Its efficacy was greatest on the first Sunday of May (Old Style), and the date suggests, when considered along with the pilgrimage to it and the rites practised then, that it is obviously a survival of a Pagan or Beltane feast to welcome the advent of summer. Another example is that of the Standing Stone at Staredam, three miles from Birnam. On it is an incised cross, and the Society of Antiquaries report that this is one of the first instances on record in which the symbol of the Christian faith is placed on a stone clearly a member of a pre-historic group.

Early Christian missionaries to the Valley of the Tay were St. Ninian and St. Colm, the latter often confused with St. Columba. St. Ninian was the son of a Pictish Galloway chief, and was sent to Rome as a boy. His missionary travels took place early in the 5th century. A chapel was dedicated to him centuries after in Dunkeld, and a small by-way running off Atholl Street still bears the name St. Ninian’s Lane, but there is no record that he visited Dunkeld. The greatest early Christian missionary was St. Columba, to whom the Dunkeld Cathedral is dedicated, and who became the Patron Saint of Dunkeld.

The foundation of Dunkeld as a recognised ecclesiastical centre dates from a later period than its civic; the latter was probably the cause of the first. Vague and contradictory are the accounts of its early religious settlements, and some of these accounts, long accepted, are now regarded as inaccurate.

In various guides and early accounts of Dunkeld, a Culdee settlement is said to have been founded in 570 A.D. by Conal, the 5th King of the Dalreadic Scots in Argyle, a kinsman of St. Columba, but some attribute it to Bridei, a king of the Picts and a convert of the Saint. Neither of these statements are accepted by later authorities. The historian Holinshed, writing in the 16th century, says that "Kentigern (St. Mungo) went with St. Colme unto the Castell of Calidon (otherwise called Dunkeld), where they remained six months in a Monastery there builded by King Convall, teaching and preaching unto the people of Atholl, Caledon and Angus, that in great numbers came unto them to hear their godlie instruction."

St. Colme is used here for St. Columba. Holinshed’s account is not accepted as accurate in these particulars. Columba and St. Mungo may have met in the valley of the Tay, each bent on missionary enterprise, but they did not travel together. The following particulars as to the establishment of a religious settlement in Dunkeld have been carefully culled from authoritative works such as Skene ‘s Celtic Scotland, Hume Brown’s History, and later works on the Pictish People founded on the oldest Chronicles extant. The earliest writing bearing reference to Dunkeld is the Scalacronica which quotes the Pictish Chronicle and the Chronicles of Loch Leven.

St. Columba, the Apostle to the Highlands, was born in Co. Donegal, Ireland, on the 7th December, 521 AD. He came to Iona in 500 with twelve companions, eager to convert the various Pictish tribes to Christianity. He travelled throughout Scotland and went on a mission to the Pictish Court, near Inverness, establishing monasteries in many districts, all subject to lona. In early written manuscripts of his life, descriptions of these journeys are given, and there is no mention of a visit to Dunkeld, but it is related that he went a "circuit of instruction among the men of Alba" and that he taught the tribes about the mouth of the Tay. He was mentioned, on his death, as the teacher of the "tribes of Toi, a river in Alban." He died in 597. About 600 the Dairiadic Scots founded a Collegiate Church which, in the MS. of St. Adamnan (contained in the British Museum), is called the "Muintir Kailli-an-Find," after St. Fintan, a youthful disciple of St. Columba. The exact site is unknown, but it was in the valley of the upper Tay, near but above Dunkeld.. "Muintir" was the name given to these families of monks, which consisted of twelve members on the model of the Apostolic band. These "muintirs" became later, college centres of education. St. Fintan is said to have fallen ill at the one above Dunkeld, and remained there for a time. In describing this Collegiate Settlement near Dunkeld as the Muintir Kailli-an-Find, the supposition is that the scribe is intending to translate the Latin into the Celtic tongue and that the name means the "Muintir of St. Fintan" among the Callen (Chaillin) or Caledonians, whose capital was Dun-callen, now Dunkeld.

A Bishop missionary among the Britons, Saxons, and Picts was St. Marnoc, who died in 625. He also founded churches. The name Dalmarnock in Little Dunkeld Parish perpetuates his memory there.

It may therefore be conceded that if St. Columba himself did not reside and preach in Dunkeld, one of his disciples settled near, and so from that period the religious foundation of Dunkeld may be said to have begun. St. Columba, from his gentle demeanour, was surnamed the "Dove," and Dunkeld in choosing him for its patron Saint recognises the name in its armorial bearings:- "Sable, a dove argent, holding in its beak an olive branch, the shield surrounded by a ribbon, whereon is written Caledonia; at the bottom, a thistle, the whole encircled by two palm branches, vert."

The Saint was a diligent transcriber, being credited with the writing of three hundred books. Two specimens are still extant, the Book of Darrow and the Psalter known as the Battler," because it was borne to battle as a victory-winning relic. This latter is written in small, round hand, with the initial letters larger than the text, and is preserved in a Cathac or Silver Shrine of 11th century work, in the Museum of the Royal Academy, Dublin.

Canon Myln, in The Lives of the Bishops of Dunkeld, written early in the 16th century, does not allude to this religious establishment of St. Fintan. Writing of the origin of the See of Dunkeld, he says, "from his affection to St. Colme, the guardian of Scotland, Constantine Ill., by the persuasion of St. Adampanus, built and endowed a Convent upon the banks of the Tay, about the year 729 .... In this convent he placed that sort of monks, which are commonly called Kelidees or Colidees, that is, worshippers of God."

Adampanus is probably intended for Adamnan.

It is noticeable that the name "Culdees" is not applied to the Columban monks until the 8th century. Indeed, the name is said to have originated with Hector Boece, an early historian whose history is mainly fabulous. A distinction is even sometimes drawn between Columba’s followers and the Culdees, the latter superseding the former, even as Columba’s Irish-Scot ecclesiastical foundations had supplanted those of St. Ninian, the Pictish missionary. This is a perplexing and obscure period. The inhabitants of North Britain were termed Caledonians or Picts indifferently. The very names of the kings are given variously, and dates are uncertain.

Constantin I., the son of Urguis, reigned from 789 till 820. Neither he nor any successor could therefore have established a Convent or Monastery at Dunkeld in 729, yet there seems to have been one of a kind, about and before that period, of which St. Adamnan, the 9th Abbot of Iona, is sometimes said to have been the first Abbot. This Saint died in 704, so could not have used persuasion in 729. He compiled a biography of Columba, founded on an earlier work, which contains in the midst of much that is incredible, valuable information concerning ancient ecclesiastical affairs.

In this biography, Columba is extolled as more than man. Gates flew open at his approach; the sick were restored to health. "Angelic in appearance, Columba was graceful in speech, holy in work, with talents of the highest order. He never could spend even the space of one hour without study or prayer or writing or some other holy occupation."

St. Adamnan describes how the first settlements were made in lona, and how the monks went for boatloads of branches which they interlaced and made into wattles for the construction of a church or school. The same primitive arrangements would naturally prevail in the early Dunkeld settlement, which was probably a continuation of the "Fintan Muintir" in the neighbourhood. These settlements were entirely different from those of Rome, and the monks were really hermits, or a kind of secular clergy, not necessarily celibate. Adamnan describes the simple dress of the monks, and how they wore shoes of hide, and had separate cells or "bee-hive" dwellings, the whole being surrounded by a "rath" or "cashel," that is, a circular wall of earth or stone. The buildings were all constructed of wattles, twigs plastered with mud.

One can picture Dunkeld in these days. There would be the same pleasant valley and thick woods, and the same majestic river, but all else was different. Wild beasts, now extinct in Scotland, roamed the forests, and were hunted eagerly; the Picts could weave, but the skins of animals were the general coverings of the people. In and near the "Castle of Caledon" would stride painted warriors, fierce, and tattooed strangely; mixing with them, as the Druidic priesthood vanished, were those early Christian teachers, teaching and preaching, yet occupied in manual labour, for they built their own dwellings and found their own food. lona had corn fields and orchards. It is not to be supposed that the Dunkeld settlement would be neglected in this respect, and, indeed, tradition connects monks with the steep braes behind Dunkeld, named of old, the sunny braes.

The first actual church foundation in Dunkeld was in the time of Constantin I., King of the Picts, who built a church of stone there. It may be about the year 810, but again dates conflict.

Wyntoun, Prior of Lochleven in the 14th century, thus writes in his "Orygynale Cronykil" :-

The Kyng off Peychtis, Constantyn,

Be Tay than founded Dwnkelydyne,

A place solempne Cathedrale in

Awcht hundyr wyntyr and fyftene."

The Kingdom of Pictavia was beginning to totter in these days, and the Picts were retreating before the Scots, a tribe who had come from Ireland. They had also trouble with other invaders. In 834, the Picts mustered a large army and occupied the Castle of Caledon, but in 839, owing to the complete destruction of their Royal House in a battle with the Vikings, Kenneth MacAlpine of Galloway became King of the Scots and Picts combined. In 848 or 850, he enlarged and re-built Constantin’s Church at Dunkeld, selecting it as central for the whole kingdom. To it also he removed from lona the relics of St. Columba, deeming the inland church safer from the ravages of the Danes than lona. He constituted Dunkeld an Annoid or Mother Church, over the Columbans in Scotland, and resolved to place the Abbot of the New Monastery of Dunkeld as Bishop over the Church in the southern territories, with a view to one bishop all over the kingdom. Fortrenn was the name of the kingdom of the Southern Picts. The Abbot of Dunkeld, receiving the title of the Bishop cf Fortrenn was thereby recognised as the Head of the Pictish Church; as the Abbot of Dunkeld, he was the guardian of St. Columba’s relics, and so was, by common consent, regarded as head of the Columban Church. In this manner, therefore, Dunkeld held the Primacy and became head of the Christian Church in Scotland for a short period. Abernethy next held the Primacy, which was afterwards removed to St. Andrews. Thus Kenneth MacAlpine’s scheme of the Dunkeld Episcopal Primacy failed, chiefly owing to the displeasure of the Scottish clergy, who were rapidly becoming Romanised and did not wish the supremacy of the Columban faith which was recognised and followed at Dunkeld.

The Dunkeld Monastery had many famous Abbots. There was Adamnan, biographer of St. Columba. His name was remembered in Dunkeld, for "Dunkeld House" or the "Cottage," demolished in 1900, which stood near the Cathedral, originally bore the appellation of St. Adamnan’s Cottage. Then there was St. Moroc to whom a chapel was dedicated near Ballinluig. Ethelred, brother of King Edgar, was another Dunkeld Abbot, and in the Annals of Ulster are notices of several. Tuathal MacArtgu is mentioned as Chief Bishop of Fortrenn and Abbot of Duncaillon, 850-864 A.D. Duncha, still another, was slain at the Battle of Duncrub in Strathearn, in an attempt to dethrone Duff, son of Malcolm II., but the Abbot who has left the chief abiding mark on history, because of his descendants, was Crinan.

Crinan, Lay Abbot of Dunkeld, and son of the Lord of the Isles, married Bethoc, daughter of Malcolm II. Their son was the unhappy Duncan, who figures in Shakespeare’s tragedy of "Macbeth," and whose son afterwards became Malcolm III., or Malcolm Canmohr. Crinan is therefore one of the ancestors of our Royal family. It is remarkable, too, that through his descendants, the religious order of Scotland was changed. Canmohr married the Saxon Princess Margaret, whose influence on the side of the Church of Rome helped to suppress the simpler Culdee faith.

Dunkeld, although inland, was not long exempt from the Danes, who troubled the whole island. In 845, Kenneth MacAlpine defeated them near Clunie Loch, as they were marching on to plunder Dunkeld. In spite of this defeat, repeated attacks were made on the city. In the reign of Constantin III., who succeeded in 904, Dunkeld was plundered. One Danish leader, Regner Lodbrog, King of Denmark, afterwards met with a terrible death, being thrown into a dungeon filled with vipers by order of the King of Northumbria, but so dauntless was he that he composed and sang his celebrated death-song in which he refers to the sacking of Dunkeld. The Danes were finally defeated at Luncarty by Kenneth III., who came to the throne in 970 A.D.

The total destruction of "Duncaillen in Alba" in 1027 is recorded in the Annals of Ulster.

There are several relics of this early Christian period in Dunkeld and neighbourhood. One of four Celtic bronze bells found in Scotland, is preserved in Little Dunkeld Church. lt is more fully described in the chapter on" Little Dunkeld."

In "Early Christian Monuments," published in 1903, by J. Romilly Allen, G.E., F.S.A. (Scot.), there are descriptions of various stones in Dunkeld belonging to this period, and also in Stuart’s "Sculptured Stones of Scotland."

No. 1 is in the Ducal policies, near Dunkeld House, not far from St. Colme’s Well and the King’s Seat. It is a slab of grey sandstone, 3 ft. 6 in. by 1 ft. 9 in., lying flat on the ground. The sculpturing consists of the incised figure of a man on horseback, blowing a horn, with spear in the right hand. A Dunkeld writer, writing in 1842, says that this stone turned up a few years before then in a field, the figure carved on it being hailed then as that of a Roman warrior. If it had lain for ages there, it may indicate the unknown site of Fintan’s Muintir, or Collegiate Settlement.

In Dunkeld Cathedral there are two stones, both badly placed for observation behind the screen.

One is a slab of red sandstone, with an incised inverted Cross on one side, the other is of grey sandstone, sculptured in relief on four faces. Both were used for a time as gate-posts at the entrance to the side of the Cathedral, and marks of this usage still remain.

The grey sandstone is nearly rectangular in shape, 4 ft. 10 in. by 2 ft. 6 in. by 1 ft. 1.4 in. thick. Mr Romilly Allen describes it thus:- Front (Apparently this is now turned to the back and cannot be seen). - The remains of what appears to have been a Cross on one panel containing a figure subject consisting of 2 horsemen riding, a row of 4 men, 3 more prostrate on the ground, one decapitated -a man between 4 beasts, probably intended for Daniel in the Den of Lions....

Back (now the front):- Divided in 3 panels. At the top is a figure subject consisting of 16 or more heads representing a crowd and a circular disc. This might be the Miracle of the Loaves and the Fishes, disc representing loaves. Below, the 12 Apostles. Right side (left) - One panel only remaining at top, man on horseback; below, 3 men. Left side (right):- Defaced; a scroll of foliage.

Dr. Joseph Anderson suggests that the crowd on stone resembles a confused group of chariots and horsemen, so might be the engulfing of Pharaoh’s host in the Red Sea with Israelites on shore and representatives of the 12 tribes of Israel. He says the sculpture, though more rudely executed, resembles this subject engraved on a fragment of the sarcophagus at Arles. Another authority has it that the disc is neither loaves nor chariot wheels, but the stone rolled away from the Sepulchre.

There are two beautiful engravings of this stone in the Papers of the Spalding Club, to be seen in the Reference Library of the Albert Institute, Dundee.

These sculpturings probably belong to the 8th or 9th Centuries and are examples of Pictish art. Those "People of the Woods" were an emotional and imaginative race, as well as warlike, worshipping Nature and loving to depict natural objects, using such as symbols and signs, and mingling birds and beasts with the sign of the Christian faith, when they accepted the new religion.

Dunkeld an Ancient City
Elizabeth Stewart
Dunkeld, 1926

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