Scottish saints cults and pilgrimage from the Black Death to the Reformation, c.1349-1560
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Date
22/11/2011Author
Turpie, Thomas James Myles
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Abstract
This thesis is an examination of the most important Scottish saints’ cults and
pilgrimage centres in the period c.1349-1560. Specifically, this project locates the role
of this group within the wider devotional practices of the late medieval kingdom.
Through analysis of liturgical calendars, ecclesiastical dedications, contemporary
literature and naming and pilgrimage patterns, it identifies and explains the distinctive
features of the veneration of national saints in late medieval Scotland in the two
centuries from the first appearance of the Black Death in 1349 to the Reformation in
1560. The key theme of this thesis is the consideration of the manner in which
external factors, such as general Western European social and religious developments,
and distinctly local phenomena such as the intermittent warfare with England and the
varied agendas of interest groups like shrine custodians, the national church and the
crown, impacted upon the saintly landscape of the late medieval kingdom and the
popular piety of its people.
The medieval cult of the saints is a subject of considerable value for historians
because it was a movement in a constant state of flux. It adapted to the socio-religious
context of the societies in which it operated. Although never neglected as an area of
study, the cult of the saints in Scotland has received further attention in recent years
through the influence of the Survey of Dedications to Saints in Medieval Scotland
project carried out at the University of Edinburgh from 2004-7. However, studies on
the role and function of national and local saints, those believed by contemporaries to
have had a Scottish provenance or a hagiographical connection to the medieval
kingdom, have tended to focus on two specific periods. These were the so called ‘age
of the saints’, the period between the fourth and eighth centuries in which the majority
of these men and women were thought to have been active, or the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries from when the main Latin hagiographical sources originate. The
role and function of this group in the later middle ages has been either neglected or
subject to the pervasive influence of a 1968 article by David McRoberts which argued
that church- and crown- sponsored patriotism was the main factor in shaping popular
piety in this period. This thesis will question this premise and provide the first indepth
study of the cults of St Andrew, Columba of Iona/Dunkeld, Kentigern of
Glasgow and Ninian of Whithorn in a late medieval Scottish context, as well as the
lesser known northern saint, Duthac of Tain.
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