54. Examples of Pictish symbols: (a) crescent and V-rod, (b) double disc and Z-rod, (c) Pictish beast, (d) mirror and comb, (e) sword.
The strength of belief
Christianity was the most significant force of change during the early historic period. By the early 10th century everyone in Scotland would have been familiar with Christian beliefs and none could have ignored the impact of its ideology or the might of its messengers. Its clerical leaders were major landowners, effectively secular potentates in all but name. Very often they came from important families and much of their activity was inseparably linked to the secular politics of the time. The point at which the aims and aspirations of the secular and religious élites gelled therefore marks a crucial stage in the development of kingship and the Scottish nation. The Church became a powerful ambassador for the kings with whom it worked to shape and nurture the ideal of a Christian ruler. The extent to which Christianity permeated the rural lay population dictated how effectively such messages might be conveyed. The clerics also brought with them – and may have had a virtual monopoly of – the technology of writing with Roman characters, a tool with the potential to radically affect the means by which society operated.
What we therefore need to examine is the interrelationship between the Church, secular authorities and the rural population – and the role of literacy. But first we must review pagan beliefs.
Pre-Christian beliefs
Pagan Celts believed in a pantheon of gods and a supernatural other-world; trees, hills, water, the sun and animals (wild, domesticated and fabulous) were all sacred to them, supported by an imaginative and colourful mythology (Green 1995). We should envisage an annual round of festivities closely tied to the agricultural cycle and the concept of fertility. Religious beliefs permeated all aspects of life, with evidence for ritual practices found in the home as well as at special places.
Chapter 3 discussed the likely role of druids or priests. Meaningful evidence for cult beliefs in early medieval Scotland is lacking, although there are Aber- (river-mouth) names perhaps associated with goddesses or similar (Nicolaisen 1997). From the islands of the Atlantic zone a picture emerges from archaeological excavations of elaborate earlier Iron Age ritual practices. These include the special treatment of animal and human bones in deposits under and within houses in the Western Isles and Orkney; small ‘shrine’ structures built in and around houses in Orkney and Shetland; and the construction or elaboration of complex subterranean spaces, such as at Mine Howe in Orkney and High Pasture Cave, Skye (Mulville et al 2003; Ritchie 2003; Card and Downes 2003). So the questions are: when did peoples living in Scotland first convert to Christianity, and where do the so-called Pictish symbols fit into the picture?
Pictish symbols
A unique range of at least 50 designs (54) have been found incised, usually in groups of at least two, on undressed stones (more than 200 examples of so-called symbol-incised stones, also known as ‘Class I’), cave walls or rock outcrops, and silver jewellery or miscellaneous objects, such as bone objects and stone pebbles. A lost, probably 8th-century, crescentic metal plaque from Monifieth Laws represents a symbol, the crescent and V-rod with, on its reverse, two other designs (55). It demonstrates that some designs could also exist in their own right and hints at categories of metalwork we have lost, a reminder of the biases in our record. Some of these same designs have also been found carved in relief on more than 60 dressed stones that include Christian iconography (so-called symbol-bearing cross-slabs, or ‘Class II’). We therefore find the majority of these designs on monumental sculpture or high-status objects, while we tend to find the cruder and more informal versions on bone and stone objects (56). They might also have been used in other media: wood, leather, textiles and possibly body decoration (until we find the Scottish equivalent of a bog- or ice-person we cannot confirm this).
The fact that a people who were clearly capable of outstanding naturalistic representation of animals and humans, indeed apparently enjoyed sketching (O’Meadhra 1993), should have opted to design and employ such a standardised form, largely abstract and geometric system needs explanation. Just what do these designs symbolise or represent, and when do they appear? We have to allow that they may not all be the same ‘thing’ and that their meanings could vary across time and space, and according to context. Art historians generally date symbol-incised stones to the 6th and 7th centuries. So far there are no direct scientific dates for the erection of symbol-incised stones, but the use of related Pictish designs in other media and other contexts clearly dates from at least the 6th century. In a couple of instances symbols are found on heavy silver chains of north British origin, thought be 5th or 6th century in date (Clarke et al 2012; 57). They are also found on a leaf-shaped plaque (possibly related to Roman votive plaques) from Norrie’s Law that is thought to have been deposited in the 7th century (48). Two bone phalanges from the Broch of Burrian (Orkney) have produced C-14 dates suggesting that Picts carved symbols on them in the 6th/7th and 7th/8th centuries (Clarke and Heald 2008). The deposit of a stone slab bearing roughly pecked symbols – patently not the work of a skilled mason – marked the construction of a 6th-century house at Pool. Between 1998 and 2002 excavations at Old Scatness have led to the discovery of three symbol-incised objects (Dockrill et al 2010). A small boulder incised with a pig or boar and a pebble incised with a crude arch and another abstract symbol are associated with Structure 5, a multi-cellular structure that was built as late as the 6th century and possibly remained in use until the 9th century. A small slab skilfully carved with a bear may have been built into one of the triangular piers of a wheelhouse (see 45), occupied between the 7th and 10th centuries. The bear adds weight to the art-historical argument that the Northumbrians got the idea for some of the animals appearing in their manuscripts from the Picts and not vice versa (for example, the late 7th-century Echternach Gospels, produced a little before the Lindisfarne Gospels of c. 715–20 and the late 7th/early 8th-century Book of Durrow; Henderson and Henderson 2004).
54. Examples of Pictish symbols: (a) crescent and V-rod, (b) double disc and Z-rod, (c) Pictish beast, (d) mirror and comb, (e) sword.
55. Both sides of the plaque from Monifieth Laws, Angus, about 115mm long, possibly made of base silver.
56. Cannel coal pendant in Inverness Museum from Erchless, by Beauly. A portable symbol-bearing cross-slab?
57. ‘North British’ silver chain from Whitecleugh, South Lanarkshire, one of twelve examples of such chains, two of which have terminals that are decorated with Pictish designs (480 mm/19in long, 1731g/61 oz.). Virtually nothing is known of their final contexts, but they are likely to have been ritually deposited.
58. Symbol-incised slab from Dairy Park at Dunrobin, Highland, which circumstantial evidence only suggests is associated with the burial of a woman.
A key consideration is what constitutes a Pictish symbol as opposed to other form of repeated design that might have been unique to the Picts. Of the 50-plus designs to which the name ‘symbol’ has sometimes been applied, Forsyth (1997b) has observed that only 33 of these ever occur in pairs when used on formal sculptures – what she describes as the ‘fundamental syntax of extant symbol texts’. These ‘core symbols’ are predominantly geometric, abstract designs and do not include many of the individual animals sometimes otherwise described as ‘symbols’, although we have no reason to believe that all these designs were not in circulation at around the same time. If we seek a meaning for these visually appealing, naturalistic animals, it is probably in their religious and symbolic value – the same reason they were depicted elsewhere in the Celtic world. Each animal traditionally possessed specific attributes and associations that their artists may have been trying to evoke and might perhaps have related to a cult belief (note the concentration of bulls at Burghead, p. 51, for instance).
In the past there have been many attempts to associate certain designs with earlier Iron Age (even Roman) objects, such as weapons. Certainly, some of the designs incorporate elements of a distinctive art style known as La Tène, associated with the immediately pre-Roman Iron Age culture of the Celts across north-western Europe, and named after its type site in Switzerland. Until very recently the currency of objects in this style was thought to have ceased in the 1st or 2nd centuries, but 7th-century finds, such as those from Dunadd and the Clonmore shrine in Ireland (Bourke 2002), show that it was still current in the mid 1st millennium. The only obviously representational core symbol is the ‘mirror and comb’ that occurs in a fifth to quarter of all cases, often at the base of a series of already paired designs, where it in some way ‘qualifies’ the other symbols with which it occurs (58). The best parallels for the mirror form depicted are examples from throughout Britain, including Balmaclellan in Dumfries and Galloway, thought to be Iron Age in date. At least three forms of the comb exist and an apparently later form appears on symbol-bearing cross-slabs.
There are two other ways in which symbols are qualified – by the addition of a V-shaped ‘rod’ (sometimes Z- or N-shaped) and (in the crescent and double-disc symbols) by the presence of a small penannular notch. There is a consistency in the use of the rod: a V-rod often overlies the crescent and a Z-rod the double disc (the Z-rod sometimes overlies other symbols too). It may be no coincidence that the crescent (see 54a) and double disc (see 54b) are two of the three designs that have a widespread distribution or occur more than 20 times; these are also the symbols singled out for the most elaborate decoration (59). Forsyth suggests we should see the rods as representational in some way. The third most common symbol is the so-called Pictish beast, or ‘swimming elephant’ (see 54c), apparently a dolphin or perhaps the fantastic kelpie or water-horse of later Scottish folklore.
59. Pictish beast, double disc and Z-rod, and other designs on a symbol-bearing cross-slab from Brodie, Moray. The ogham inscription around this slab is so damaged by weathering that few of its 70 or so characters can now be read.
Interpretations of the symbols vary widely in terms of their complexity and credibility, but include totemic symbols of lineage, indicators of rank, clan and profession. The current scholarly consensus, now supported by elaborate statistical analysis, is that they probably represent a written language, and that the symbols are words and most likely to be names (Lee 2010, building on the work of Forsyth 1997b and Samson 1992). In Lee’s model the ‘mirror and comb’, long interpreted as a female signifier despite the importance of long hair and moustaches to early medieval male status, becomes a declaratory statement of some sort that may reflect the religious symbolism attached to mirrors in the Celtic and Roman worlds.
The language thesis helps explain why knowledge of this symbolism is clearly not restricted to a small group of people, and that they can have meaning in a range of different media and contexts. It also allows for the considerable evolution of the designs before they appear over a relatively short period on symbol-incised stones with what the Hendersons describe as a ‘sureness of touch’, as a uniform system without any visible phase of experimentation. This theory can also explain why the symbols were acceptable on Christian monuments, since there is nothing inherently pagan about a language.
Designs on stones, intents in design
If the symbols do represent a language, then the significance of their deployment on such monuments needs consideration, not just in terms of what they said, but also in terms of the value that attaches to this symbolic system as a whole in a period when people saw language as a natural index of social affiliation (Driscoll 1998a). The majority of surviving Pictish designs and symbols are on symbol-incised stones and symbol-bearing cross-slabs (60). Most are confined to the fertile lowlands of the east coast, with symbol-incised stones predominating to the north of the Mounth, and symbol-bearing cross-slabs, which date from the late 7th to late 9th centuries, to the south. Here we will discuss the function of the symbol-incised stones, which include no Christian imagery.
As Forsyth observes, the majority of post-Roman inscribed British sculptures in Scotland, and other early medieval monumental inscriptions in the British Isles and Scandinavia, consist largely or solely of personal names. This is also the case with the Scottish ogham inscriptions (p. 20), which can occur alongside symbol designs, but are not necessarily contemporary (61). It would be perverse in the absence of evidence to the contrary to suggest that this might not also be the case in Pictland (62). There is no incontrovertible evidence that the Pictish examples were designed to be burial markers, or indeed that they were all intended to be erected upright, but we should note that few are in situ and of these the immediate context of only a tiny portion have been explored to modern archaeological standards. Several have come from secondary locations associated in some way with Pictish cairn or long-cist burials, such as Dunrobin, Ackergill, Watenan and Garbeg (Highland). The carved stones could have multiple lives (many uses and meanings) during early historic times (Clarke 2007). North of the Mounth it has been observed that symbol-incised stones have a tendency to cluster close to conspicuous prehistoric ritual sites, notably stone circles and henges, indicating either a cult centre and/or centre of population (Inglis 1987). Sometimes, as at Ardlair and Brandsbutt (Aberdeenshire) and Edderton (Highland), the symbols were inscribed directly onto prehistoric standing stones. The reuse of pagan sites is an established Christian practice but it is impossible to say whether such monuments were created under the influence of Christianity – emulating the Romans in erecting stone monuments with inscriptions, but using the native script – or in reaction to it. The latter accords with a modern desire that Picts’ identity long centred on opposition to things ‘Roman’. Either way, we can suggest that the Picts may have been deliberately trying to associate themselves with monuments of past, earlier religious significance and in doing so they created places to enact their own rituals.
60. Distribution of Pictish early sculpture and associated artwork. This is concentrated in good agricultural land along the coast and river valleys. Note the more limited distribution of symbol-bearing cross-slabs in comparison to symbol-incised stones.
61. There is an ogham inscription besides the symbols on the stone at Brandsbutt.
It is therefore possible that symbol-incised stones are memorials to the dead (although not necessarily placed over the corpses) and/or charters in stone, erected by descendants to legitimise their inheritance of land. Early Welsh and Irish inscribed stones are interpreted in a similar way (Edwards 2001). In their study of Donside, Aberdeenshire, Fraser and Halliday (2011) observe how symbol-incised stones and various forms of early burial are both routinely set closer to watercourses and confluences, landscape features that became the boundaries of parishes, some of which may be earlier, undocumented land boundaries.
62. The symbols on the back of the Dunfallandy cross-slab cluster near the people depicted on it, which suggests they represent attributes of these individuals.
So, what can we say with confidence about the practice of erecting symbol-incised stones? We can infer that these relate in some way to named individuals and are perhaps overt statements of the transfer of inheritance from one generation to another. We can also note that the carving of such designs required enormous technical skills and physical resources that would only have been accessible to the élite. The same applies to the high-quality metalwork on which the designs also appear. However, we do know that the symbols might be carved in more informal contexts on a wider range of objects, but generally without the ‘syntax’ of their use on the stones (though factors of survival and recovery inevitably limit what we know about potential other contexts and their distribution). Where such monuments stood in the landscape, and how this related to the organisation of land, requires further study. But what are the circumstances that led to the formalisation of these permanent and public testimonies?
The growth of the Pictish kingdom and the application of a standardised form of writing apparently occurred at the same time in northern Pictland, under the control of a political and/or religious élite. If a historical context is sought for this, we might look to the reigns of Bridei son of Mailcon (died c. 585) and his immediate descendants, or more likely the late 7th-century activities of Bridei son of Beli. The creation and/or promotion of a means of establishing and/or reinforcing the position and status of key members in society would have been very important. The monuments and their imagery/text reflect the wider religious/political beliefs of the local community, who accepted a social structure in which certain powerful individuals had authority, and under whose influence, if not physical presence, these monuments were erected.
Sub-Roman Church
Bede recorded a tradition that Ninian introduced Christianity to the southern Picts, although the extent to which there was a ‘Ninianic’ mission in Scotland, largely south of the Antonine Wall, is now questioned. Clancy (2001b) makes the convincing case for the elusive Ninian being a scribal error for Uinniau (St Finnian, d. 579), a Briton who also worked in Ireland, where he was St Columba’s teacher. He appears to have been sent to serve as bishop at – less probably to found – the church at Whithorn. This was a major secular settlement that had developed from a late Roman-period trading place, and where there probably were already Christians. Some of the inhabitants of southern Scotland would have become Christians in late Roman times, in a bottom-up conversion process. The late 5th-century inhabitants of Dumbarton Rock were certainly Christian. This raises the possibility that some Picts converted early too.
Evidence for a sub-Roman Church, organised on the basis of dioceses with bishops, has been suggested in the surviving distribution of eccles- (‘church’) place names, which are taken to imply important early churches related to secular centres (Barrow 1983), although many of these could relate to the influence of the later Northumbrian church (Clancy 2001b; Taylor 1998). Inscribed stones are a more reliable indicator of a Christian presence, although they can be difficult to date precisely. A late 7th/early 8th-century inscribed stone from Peebles refers to a bishop Neitan. We also find long-cist field cemeteries in the coastal tracts on both sides of the Forth, around the Fife coast and the Tay estuary (63). These used to be assumed to be an index of the arrival or presence of Christianity, but we now know that Scottish burials in long cists without grave goods can date from as early as the 2nd century and pre-date Christianity. When inscribed stone, eccles- name, and unaccompanied long-cist burials coincide, we can be more confident that these provide proof of Christian beliefs. At Kirkliston (Edinburgh airport) a long-cist cemetery comprising three clusters of rows of late 6th/early 7th-century graves was centred around the Catstane, a late 6th-century inscription (64). Eglesnamin equates with a large long-cist cemetery at Hallow Hill, on the edge of modern St Andrews. Excavation here did not locate a definite church, but part of a complex cemetery of the 6th–9th century was excavated that included an above-ground structure of some sort (65). Cemeteries at Forteviot and Thornybank (Midlothian) included related structures that we presume had a role in mortuary ceremonies.
With such scant evidence to go on, we can say very little about how willingly individuals and communities took to this new religion and how they sought to reconcile their old and new belief systems. Conversion, a change of belief, need not correlate immediately with Christianisation, a change in ritual practices. Burial practices in the period 460–650 were highly variable and could change for a host of reasons (Maldonado 2013). The majority were extended inhumations, sometimes in wooden coffins, often in long cists. They align W/E, more frequently SW/NE for the early graves, and unless on monastic sites were unenclosed field cemeteries that seem to be located at geographical boundaries, far from the contemporary settlements. In some places without a history of formal burial, the practice of exposure and excarnation continued. In others cremation took place. At Hermisgarth on Sanday (Orkney) a cremation may be contemporary with an inhumation under a low cairn (Ashmore 2003), while elsewhere in Orkney a number of cremations in steatite urns with animal skin coverings date to the 4th to 6th centuries. A short cist at Easterton of Roseisle, Moray, incorporated a symbol-incised stone and possibly contained a cremation. Long after the establishment of Christianity, burial could still take unusual forms. An unparalleled 8th/9th-century burial rite at an iron-working site at Hawkhill in Angus involved depositing three women with iron weaving implements in a pit. An arc of massive timbers framed one side of the pit (Rees 2009).
63. Distribution of eccles- place names, long-cist burials and early inscriptions in south-east Scotland.
64. The cemetery around the Catstane under excavation.
C-14 dating of skeletons from excavations has determined that some long cists under square or circular platforms of earth or stone, or low stone kerbs, date to between the 4th/5th and 8th centuries. The square barrows sometimes share a common side and there are often interruptions in the corners of their surrounding ditches (Plate 14); stone pillars sometimes mark the corners of the cairns. Once thought to be confined to eastern and northern Scotland (but mutually exclusive with the long cist field cemeteries), examples of such burials and their associated enclosures, sometimes very large, are now also recognised in Argyll (see 16), the Western Isles, and Dumfries and Galloway. They clearly only relate to select members of a community, and one that might extend beyond the immediate family group. Most sites are known only from crop marks; there is a square barrow and circular enclosure to the immediate north-east of the Collessie Stone (see 8), for example.
65. Plan of the cemetery excavated at Hallow Hill.
Although some of the Dál Riata may have converted beforehand, Christianity first makes its recognisable mark in western Scotland with the arrival of Columba in 563. Later to be made a saint, he was an important member of the Irish Uí Néill dynasty who chose to lead a mission to Scotland in penance for misdemeanours. Columba based himself on Iona (66), a small but fertile island off the western tip of Mull – land donated by a king who we might envisage already being Christian. Its significance stemmed from Columba’s social status and the enthusiasm and successes of his followers. Iona became a renowned centre of scholarship and artistic excellence, as is evident from its surviving poetry (Clancy and Márkus 1995) and sculpture (Fisher 2001). The Book of Kells is also likely to have been made there, and possibly the Book of Durrow (though this is more often assigned a Northumbrian origin). The monastery’s international contacts were extraordinary: it played a leading role in the conversion of Northumbria; was one of the most important Irish religious centres in Europe; and ultimately gained supremacy over the Pictish Church in the mid 9th century. We can contrast this with Wilfrid of Ripon’s unfavourable, if rhetorical, comparison of Iona with Rome at the time of the Synod of Whitby (664), as reported by Bede: ‘one remote corner of the most remote island … isolated at the uttermost ends of the earth’ (History III, 25).
Christianity came to Ireland in the first half of the 5th century when, at the request of the pope, several bishops appear to have been active under the initial leadership of Palladius. However, Patrick, whose mission probably began in the 460s and who died around 493, tends to receive credit for much of this work (Bourke 1993). The early Irish Church was organised around dioceses (ecclesiastical territories under the care of a bishop), but Patrick encouraged the monastic ideal (of monks living a religious life, bound by vows and in obedience to a rule under the care of an abbot). Monasticism had become the primary factor by the late 6th century, but overall there was not a uniform pattern and we cannot draw a neat distinction between the two types of organisation. We should expect similar diversity in Scotland: ‘The early medieval church throughout Europe had a strong monastic impulse at every level, and this impulse waxed and waned, and took on different levels of standardisation’ (Clancy 2008, page 390).
66. Iona, general view. Note the earthwork vallum.
Adomnán provides a vivid account of life on Iona, which the surviving field remains and evidence from myriad small-scale excavations complement and augment (67a). The physical development of the monastery is scarcely understood, but at its greatest it may have been up to 8 hectares (20 acres) in extent. A rectilinear vallum with rounded corners defined a symbolic and legal boundary. We can still trace much of its ditch, with inner and outer banks on the ground and through geophysics, possibly incorporating an earlier Iron Age feature. There is also the suggestion of a smaller annexe, and the alignment of both may have changed early during the site’s history (RCAHMS 1982; O’Sullivan 1999).
Within this enclosure we might expect to find the buildings described by Adomnán: the church with an attached chamber; a number of working- or sleeping-huts for the monks; Columba’s sleeping-hut; a hut ‘built in a higher place’ and used by him for writing; a house or houses where guests were accommodated; and a communal building, probably containing a kitchen and refectory. The existence of a smithy is also implied. The original church and library is likely to lie under the later medieval abbey. Adomnán describes the use of oak timbers and wattle for buildings, and excavations have recovered the remains of circular or oval buildings and a probable rectangular building, constructed using either sill beams or vertically set planking.
As in Irish monasteries, activities appear to have been zoned, whether for industrial activities (fine metalworking, leatherworking and woodworking took place at Iona) or to define levels of sanctity. The most important burials – including St Columba’s – took place around the church, but there was also a major cemetery used for royal burial at Reilig Odhráin (St Oran’s Shrine, next to the monastery), where the second-largest collection of early Christian funerary monuments in the British Isles, after Clonmacnois in Ireland, has been found. There may also have been several other chapels.
67. Comparative plans of (a) Iona, (b) Applecross, (c) Kingarth and (d) Lismore (literally ‘great enclosure’). There are no remains of early Christian character at Lismore although field boundaries (as indicated) may perpetuate some of the line of the vallum.
Crosses marked burials and defined areas of sanctity, and were preaching posts. A group of three splendid high crosses, probably spanning the mid to late 8th century, were erected near the central church and ‘St Columba’s Shrine’ (68). A further high cross may have also marked a probable entrance to the monastery by Reilig Odhráin. Their form and style owe much to the cultural and intellectual interaction between Iona, Pictland, Ireland and Northumbria. All but the foundations of ‘St Columba’s Shrine’ are now 20th century, but this stone ‘shrine-chapel’ was probably the earliest building of its kind from the Irish zone, possibly built to house the translated relics of St Columba in a more elaborate way in the mid 8th century (Ó Carragáin 2010).
68. St Martin’s Cross with the replica of St John’s Cross to the left, and modern reconstruction of St Columba’s Shrine to the right, Iona. Slots cut into the ends of the arms of St Martin’s Cross may have held applied decorative metalwork. The Picts may have contributed to the development of sculpture at Iona, but under the supervision of Irish designers skilled in metalwork and manuscripts (Fisher 2001). The reconstruction of the shrine omits the antae, distinctive stone skeumorphs of timber corner posts that originally framed its south wall.
Beyond the monastery, Adomnán describes more than one barn as well as a shed, fields and trackways, where the monks practised a mixed farming economy. Grain was undoubtedly ground at a horizontal water mill (yet to be found), the large millstones from which were already being used as a cross-base in Adomnán’s time. Iona was therefore a largely self-sufficient community, but with access to distant resources (such as building timbers or stone for carving). Although not directly involved in overseas trade, she acquired exotica from the local power centres.
By the time of Adomnán the monastery was at the peak of its power. Its abbot was the head of a monastic confederacy spanning both sides of the North Channel, all subject to the mother house, and had considerable political influence (Veitch 1997; Fraser 2009).
Other Gaelic churches
There were also important non-Columban churches in Scotland, founded by other saints such as Mo Luag (from Bangor, County Down), with his main monastery at Lismore (67d). The role of these other churches tends to be underplayed because so much more is known about the Columban Church. Several monasteries were founded by the great navigator Brendan of Clonfert. Donnán of Eigg made an attempt to evangelise the Pictish north-west (a carved slab from Kildonnan is notable for its Pictish parallels). Mael Ruba (also from Bangor, County Down) followed on his successes in this area and established Applecross (673) in what at that time would still have been Pictish territory (67b). Dedications in Easter Ross and connections with the sculpture of St Vigeans provide further evidence of such a link (69). Further south, Bláán, a 6th-century native, founded Kingarth on Bute (67c); the monastery on the adjacent small island of Inchmarnock related to this.
Archaeology of the Church in the west
Recognition of early Christian sites in general is dependent on: place names; the size and shape of the enclosure; or the presence of early carvings, early burials, early church buildings or a well. The name elements cill-, kil- (from Latin cella, chapel), or annait (church in superior position to others) may belong to the period c. 500–900 and, especially when combined with the name of an early saint, imply an early foundation. This equation becomes more complicated for those saints who had a long popularity or were the subject of later cults. Chapels are scarcely datable from field remains alone, but an early date can be suggested when they are associated with circular enclosures and/or early carvings. In the case of Kildalton (Islay), the spectacular late 8th-century cross hints that there may have been a monastery here, since such crosses are usually only found in monastic contexts (70). Circular enclosures, perhaps reused settlements, may have been used for burial as in Ireland, and may be some of the earliest Christian monuments. The apparent absence of internal structures (as for example at Cill-an-Suidhe, Lismore; 71c) may be due to their timber construction. As elsewhere, the recognition of Christian burials is not always easy due to the lack of dateable grave goods and the unreliability of burial orientation as a guide. Continuity from pagan to Christian sites appears common: a surprising number of sites are associated with wells, which were believed to have healing properties; earlier burials precede some chapels (as at St Ninian’s Point, Bute, which overlies north-south oriented burials); and place names such as Cladh a’Bhile, ‘burial ground of the sacred tree’, recall pagan beliefs and practices. A number of prehistoric sites were also selected for sanctification by the addition of a carved cross.
69. Close similarities between the spiral designs at St Vigeans 7 (left) and Applecross (detail) hint at artistic links despite the distances between them. The scenes on the St Vigeans cross-slab show an interest in criticising bull sacrifice and pagan priesthood, with its distinctive tonsure (Geddes forthcoming).
70. Kildalton Cross, east face. At the top of the shaft sits the Virgin and Child with angels, while around the hollow central boss (defined by animals) are scenes from the Old Testament: Cain murdering Abel; David killing the lion; and the sacrifice of Isaac and Abraham.
In terms of field remains, we can then recognise a range of early Christian sites: large monasteries, lesser religious communities, eremitic sites, caves, chapels, preaching stations and burial grounds. Large enclosures such as at Cladh a’Bhearnaig (see 71b) or Ardnadam (Cowal) may have been small monasteries, in the former case close to the important secular fort of Dunollie. For those preferring more austere lifestyles, there were Ceann a’Mhara (see 71a), Eileach an Naoimh (founded by St Brendan of Clonfert in the Garvellachs; 72, 73) or Sgòr nam Ban-Naomha (74). Caves containing early Christian carvings, such as King’s Cave (Arran) or Scoor (Mull), may have been the retreats of individuals that subsequently became places of pilgrimage.
71. Comparative plans of lesser early Christian sites: (a) Ceann a’Mhara, Tiree, (b) Cladh a’Bhearnaig, Kerrera, (c) Cill-an-Suidhe, Lismore, and (d) Cill Chaitriona, Colonsay.
72. Reconstruction of the monastery of Eileach an Naoimh, Garvellachs.
73. Beehive cell at Eileach an Naoimh.
74. Sgòr nam Ban-Naomha, Canna. A sophisticated water-supply system may imply that some of the buildings were bath-houses.
The Gaelic Church and wider society
We need to know more about the nature of the relationship between the Church in Scotland and the laity if we are to understand how Christianity affected early historic society. If we look to Ireland, then we see that the monasteries effectively formed separate tribes that coexisted alongside their secular equivalents, their leaders sharing the same interests. Abbacies were often hereditary and it was common for one branch of a ruling family to hold the kingship while another controlled the abbacy. We know that the Ionan abbacy tended to stay with Columba’s kin and that he was closely involved in secular politics. Kings not only visited him, but he perhaps ordained one of them, Aedán mac Gabráin (see chapter 3), and accompanied him the following year to Druim Cett (County Derry), where a meeting had been convened. We find Adomnán playing a similarly high-profile role in 697 when he negotiated acceptance of his Law of the Innocents by the kings of Ireland, Argyll and Pictland at the Synod of Birr, County Offaly (Márkus 1997).
The picture becomes more complicated when we turn to the role of the clergy in relation to the population at large. In Ireland and Wales it is apparent that the distinction between cloistered monks, who lived enclosed lives according to a rule, and secular clergy, who provided pastoral care to the wider community, is blurred and not helped by the terminology we use. The Irish Church was also under pressure from the laity to provide more pastoral care.
Gilbert Márkus (1999) suggests Adomnán had a mental ‘spiritual map’ in which he perceived Iona itself as a place of asceticism (effectively a cloister, cut off from the rest of the world), Argyll as the place where it fulfilled a pastoral role, and Pictland as the place where it undertook missionary activities. Iona sent bishops to where it wanted to establish a missionary church, as when King Oswald of Northumbria asked Iona in 635
to send a bishop by whose teaching and ministry the English people over whom he ruled might receive the blessings of the Christian Faith and the sacraments … Henceforward many Irish arrived day by day in Britain and proclaimed the word of God with great devotion … while those of them who were in priest’s orders ministered the grace of baptism to those who believed. Churches were built … and the people flocked gladly to hear the word of God (Bede, History III, 3).
Having spent time in exile in Argyll, Oswald had presumably learnt there that bishops were necessary for such missionary work. We see something similar when the Columban Church worked in Pictland (see below), but need to remember that in Adomnán’s account we see Columba’s intentions through the lens of a politically astute and active abbot, writing at least a century after the events he describes.
The precise mechanisms by which the Columban Church might have provided pastoral care in Argyll are unknown, but we must presume the establishment of churches expressly for this purpose. The extent to which communities had their own (timber) churches is of course another unknown, and such buildings would generally have been too small to receive large congregations. The sculpted stones and freestanding crosses or open-air altars (leachta) could provide stations from which preaching could take place or prayers might be offered. These were also points at which people might congregate to show respect for individual saints whose relics might be housed in altars (as at St Ninian’s Point, Bute), specially marked graves, ornate stone shrines, or portable reliquaries, like the Pictish 8th-century house-shaped Monymusk reliquary (Plate 15). Relics such as these would have been used publicly in a range of religious rituals; in a time of drought during Adomnán’s time at Iona the relics of Columba were processed to the ‘hill of angels’.
75. A procession of monks on a slab from a composite shrine found at Papil, on Burra, Shetland.
Such clergy presumably came to administer to the laity at times of baptism, Communion and death, and perhaps also to preach. Itinerants, they travelled with the tools of their trade: Bible, psalter or prayer book (probably in a leather satchel; see 69); crozier (Mo Luag’s survives at Lismore); handbell; and perhaps a portable altar (75). Saints’ relics were taken around to enforce the law, to ‘validate’ the collection of tax, or invoke favour from God. These men perhaps travelled between their religious communities and dependent outstations. Such a relationship is possible for the island monastery of Eilean Mór and the Keills cross on the nearby mainland (Fisher 2001). We can only speculate as to whether some of the clerics lived with the populace as tenants of the Church rather than in religious communities. There is no direct evidence for their role in baptism, although sites such as Cill Chaitrìona (Colonsay) have basins, and there are of course the holy wells. The role of the Church in burial is also problematic. In Ireland people were buried around churches from at least the 7th century, but this did not become the norm until the 8th or 9th century, when burial near the bones of saints became a substitute for burial in pagan cemeteries near the bones of ancestors, and this it seems was also the pattern in Scotland (O’Brien 2003; Maldonado 2013). In the absence of excavation, it is impossible to confirm whether burial grounds contained women and children and were therefore lay cemeteries. The Christian reuse of some pagan burial grounds complicates the picture, although earlier burials tend to have different alignments. By contrast, from an early date kings and nobles appear to have acquired the right of burial in or near churches.
Presumably the Church acquired land for its chapels, monasteries, farming and dues by donation and/or in return for prayers. The fate of the monk St Donnán, killed in 617 by Picts on Eigg, demonstrates that its presence was not always welcomed.
We know very little of the role of women in the Church. Place names such as Sgòr nam Ban-Naomha (Crag of the Holy Women) perhaps imply that they did form their own religious communities, as in Ireland.
The Northumbrian church in Pictland
The church in Northumbria that Iona helped to establish (see above) was to have a direct influence on Scotland south of the Mounth when parts of this became Anglian in the 7th century. In 681 a short-lived bishopric for the Picts was established at Abercorn, presumably on a site of earlier significance. At this time Cuthbert (c. 630–87) was active here among the Niduari (of Fife?; Kirby 1973). We might reasonably expect some Anglian influence on Pictish sculpture, and vice versa, to date from this period. Taylor (2000) has used place names, including the dedications to St Columba at Inchmahome and Inchcolm, to identify some of the routes that monks and others appear to have taken between Iona and Lindisfarne in the 7th century, and also to the Atholl area of Pictland (see below and 76).
76. Routes from Iona to Lindisfarne and Atholl.
The non-Columban Church in Pictland
The dominance of sources for the Columban Church (see below), and the fact that for political reasons these often ‘reworked’ the actual role of Columba and his followers in Pictland, skews our appreciation of the role of other saints in the conversion and Christianisation of Pictland, not least native Pictish and British ones. Dedications to saints in place names offer the best insights into an alternative reality, but later gaelicising tendencies mean dedications to Columba can overlie and mask a picture of the workings of local churchmen and lay patronage. Clancy’s 2008 study of north-east Scotland, where Columba played no direct role in conversion, is a case in point. Dedications to local or native saints such as Nechtan, Fin(n)an, Drostan (probably died 719), Uoloch, Talorcan and Garnait appear in the 7th and early 8th centuries. Combined with the evidence of sculptures (symbol-incised stones, symbol-bearing cross-slabs and the under-appreciated clusters of cross-incised stones), we can see that important churches existed at places in Aberdeenshire like Monymusk, Migvie, Tullich (77), and Kinneddar. In general, the future study of cross-marked stones offers much for our understanding of these earliest Christian communities in Pictland (Henderson and Henderson 2004). Sometimes the cult of a saint, such as Ethernan, might have its main centre in southern Scotland (see below), or a saint might have worked in Ireland (Fergus, a bishop who was a signatory at a Council in Rome in 721). There is nothing to suggest that the church in north-east Scotland was ‘Columban’ in character or under Iona’s thumb, nor did contacts with Ireland need to come through Iona. Pictish clergy could have trained elsewhere in Ireland or other non-Columban foundations in the west. This is one of the reasons why dedications to saints who based their work in western Scotland – Mo Luag (from Lismore) and Mael Ruba (Applecross) – might be found in the north-east. Another possibility is that later Gaelic expansion brought these cults with it.
77. Aerial photograph of the early church site at Tullich, with its tell-tale circular graveyard.
An expanding and consolidating church is therefore visible in northeast Scotland. South of the Mounth, cults of early British and other native saints are also detectable. There are localised distributions of place names and inscriptions associated with saints Serf (possibly 6th century) in the Forth valley and Strathearn area and Itarnan (d. 669) in the Fife area, and the evidence for their intensive patronage. Excavations at St Ethernan’s Priory on the Isle of May, in the mouth of the Firth of Forth, revealed a cemetery with 5th- or 6th-century origins and evidence for segregation of male and mixed burials. Kilrenny, the nearest landfall, is a name that probably evolved from an 8th-century original meaning ‘church/chapel of Ethernan’, while from nearby Scoonie a symbol-bearing cross-slab has an ogham inscription referring to ‘Ethernarnus’. The patronage of these cults suggests an early symbiotic relationship between the new religion and local élites, and some native saints may have had direct associations with local royalty (Taylor 1996). The distribution of such cults may therefore represent the ‘eroded footprints’ of ancient polities (Driscoll 1998a).
The Columban Church in Pictland
The extent to which the Columban Church had a significant impact on Pictland before the late 7th century has been overplayed. Fraser (2009) suggests the original focus of activity was not in the Verturian heartland around Inverness, as is often assumed, but that Columba and his immediate followers established their monasteries in the province of Atholl, among the ‘tribes of the Tay’ (which is where a poem traditionally composed on Columba’s death in 597 described him working). That Atholl may mean ‘north pass’ or ‘north way’ rather than ‘another Ireland’, as generally assumed, further emphasises its significance in connecting western and eastern Scotland. From here and perhaps working their way along Strathspey, by the mid 7th century the Ionan monks’ main zone of activity also extended to Mar and Cé (essentially, modern Aberdeenshire). Evidence for this earliest strata of Columban activity may lie in some of the simple cross-marked pillars and slabs that are to be found along routes joining the eastern and western Highland, perhaps the inspiration for the Picts’ invention of symbol-incised stones (Fisher 2001). Comparison of the distribution in Argyll of crosses with expanded terminals (found on a quern at Dunadd and various known early Christian foundations) with the distribution of all other types of crosses demonstrates that this particular form was restricted to areas in which early monks from Iona are known to have been active. An example is the 8th-century inscribed cross-slab from Dull (Perthshire and Kinross), discovered in 2003.
Atholl was part of Fortriu by the early 8th century. This was when royal support for Iona and its familia, probably from Bridei son of Beli, led to it gaining special favour and influence in Pictland, and now extending this both sides of the Mounth. Around the secular centre of Atholl at Logierait there is a cluster of Adomnán and Coeti dedications, and a group of cill- place names (Taylor 1996; 1999). Coeti was a bishop of Iona who died in 712, and it seems that his responsibilities extended into Atholl. The archaeological evidence supports the importance of this area, not least around Fortingall. Here a crop mark suggests that a substantial monastic enclosure defined the site of the present church, the source of a collection of early medieval sculpture. The significance of this area is further emphasised by the presence of various cross-incised slabs (such as at Dull) and a highly unusual concentration of three, if not four, handbells (Robertson 1997). Such handbells, a characteristic feature of the Irish Church, were made in iron and bronze, the latter more likely to belong to around 900, while some of the iron examples may be earlier (Bourke 1983).
Verturian royal support for Iona at this time is also the likely context and explanation for the establishment of an exceptionally wealthy monastery at Portmahomack on the Tarbat peninsula (78; see also 3 and 4). It is surely no coincidence that the best parallels for the distinctive sub-rectangular shape of the enclosure around the monastery at Portmahomack are at Iona and Fortingall. Tarbat’s location on the opposite side of the Moray Firth to the Verturian stronghold at Burghead is significant (79); the two promontories are just intervisible – a maritime relationship that Roy’s map of Burghead nicely notes (see 11). Around this time, Culross in Fife possibly supplanted Abercorn, on the southern side of the Forth, as the bishopric for the southernmost Picts.
Establishment of the Pictish Church
The Church, a centralising force, played a crucial role in the late 7th/early 8th century as the kings of Fortriu actively promoted and established the concept of the single Pictish kingdom (Veitch 1997; Fraser 2009). Not just kings, but also local lords, could see value in undermining the local cult centres of their neighbours and drawing their followers to them. If as king or a lord you granted land to the Church, then in certain regards they acted as your local agents and representatives. The local nobles derived additional authority by their association with this fashionable new source of power, which also widened their career opportunities. Its pastoral system was a means of extending and establishing an ideology that was pro-state. The Church was also able to assist in administrative matters (see below). This type of symbiosis between king and Church was a recognised phenomenon throughout north-west Europe in the 8th century. In return, the Church obtained the land (and associated rights) that it needed both to survive and to generate wealth for its own works. Ecclesiastics were in effect ideologically endowed nobility who derived their authority from their access to Christianity.
78. Excavations in progress at the Pictish monastery at Portmahomack.
79. The distribution of early historic sites in and around the Tarbat peninsula, showing the concentration of important ecclesiastical sites in this area.
The relationship of the Church and secular authorities visibly matured in the 8th century. Taylor (1996) suggests that many of the cill- names came into existence at this time around Gaelic monastic centres that were under royal patronage, including Kinrimonth (St Andrews), and were actively promoting Roman usages in accordance with the wishes of King Nechtan. Both the Roman and Columban Churches were part of the Universal Church and it is easy to exaggerate any differences between them, but the fact is that a dispute had arisen. Ostensibly about the date of Easter and styles of tonsure, this was in reality a power struggle. In Northumbria the matter was resolved in favour of the Roman Church at the Synod of Whitby in 664. Back in Argyll, the monks of Iona were deprived of their influence over the Northumbrian Church, and were reluctant to accept this change. Adomnán was persuaded in 688, but the monks of Iona did not follow until 712; meantime Adomnán and his colleagues were able to promote Roman practices in Pictland and elsewhere.
We need to understand the actions of Nechtan, as documented by Bede, in this context. In around 715 he sent messengers to Abbot Ceolfrith of Monkwearmouth (Northumbria) seeking advice on changing the Pictish Church from Columban to Roman observance, and for architects to build a church in the Roman style (in mortared stone and with arches). On receipt of his instructions, Nechtan enforced the Catholic Easter and ‘the reformed nation was glad to be placed under the direction of Peter, the most blessed of the apostles’ (Bede, History V, 21). Since Roman practices were already prevalent in Pictland, this approach to Northumbria involved something more than ecclesiastical concerns (Veitch 1997). In approaching Northumbria for guidance, Nechtan was seeking unity with his southern neighbours at a time of political insecurity. The conscious introduction of a reformed Church throughout his whole kingdom as the Pictish Church was also an effective way of both consolidating and extending royal authority, of finessing the Christianisation process.
Nechtan almost certainly built his Egglespethir, his stone church dedicated to St Peter, at Rosemarkie (Highland), establishing it as the prime bishopric for the northern Picts. Important ‘architectural’ and other very fine sculpture does survive at Rosemarkie. Simultaneously, he probably promoted St Andrews, another coastal site, as the main episcopacy for southern Pictland (Fraser 2009; 80). Nechtan’s reforms were seemingly very effective and extended as far as the Northern Isles. Veitch (1997) suggests that while a Bishop Curetan was responsible for the mission in northern Pictland, Adomnán and his successors fulfilled a similar role in the south. As stones and other objects bearing Pictish designs indicate, Orkney and Shetland were already part of the Pictish orbit in the 6th and 7th century, but the establishment of the Roman Church clearly marks their short-lived absorption into the Pictish kingdom, before the Vikings arrived. It seems that traditions of a St Boniface, associated with building 150 churches in Pictland, in fact refer to Curetan, and that St Boniface on Papa Westray, Orkney, became a bishopric for the Northern Isles (Lamb 1993). Archaeologists have yet to discover a pre-Viking church building in Orkney, although sculptures such as the carved stone altar front from Flotta and Pictish cross-slab found in 2013 at Lady on Sanday start to furnish the ecclesiastical landscape. On Shetland, sculptures from St Ninian’s Isle and Papil, including richly decorated composite shrines (see 75), clearly belonged in stone churches that may have been important places of pilgrimage. Conceivably some of the buildings found on remote promontory or stack sites in northern Scotland, such as Brei Holm, also had an early Christian function.
80. The small Anglo-Saxon church at Escomb, County Durham, from the north-east. King Nechtan’s church at Egglespethir is likely to have been similar: long rectangular nave connected to small square chancel by tall narrow arch; high, small windows; little or no ornament; and set within a circular burial ground.
In 716 Nechtan expelled the ‘familia of Iona’ from Pictland. Historians debate what might be meant by this development, but there is much to commend the idea that it was to do with nativising the Pictish Church by getting rid of the Ionan presence rather than suppressing the involvement of the Columban Church (Fraser 2009; Woolf 2013). We do not know whether this change altered the mechanics of how the king and the Church worked together.
Although the fusion of Pictish symbols and Christian iconography on cross-slabs began in the late 7th century, before Nechtan’s reforms, his southern contacts enriched the existing native accomplishments, both technically and artistically. More architectural characteristics become evident in the sculpture (Henderson and Henderson 2004). Aberlemno 2 (churchyard) is a good example of this, with its pediment, tapering sides and its cut-back face around the cross (81).
81. Front face of the cross-slab at Aberlemno churchyard.
82. The cross-slab at Aberlemno roadside is a splendid testimony to the close relationship between the (hunting) Pictish nobility and the Church.
Pictish cross-slabs form a very diverse body of material. The ‘norms’, insofar as they can be identified, are for a prominent cross (usually the full height of the slab) to be standing proud from the front of the stone. Fantastic animals and occasionally Christian iconography often fill the background. Carved in shallower relief, the back faces normally include more naturalistic images, notably hunting scenes and/or horsemen, and symbols (82). Women rarely feature. Only on the stone from Hilton of Cadboll do we find an image of what is generally assumed to be a woman depicted in the familiar hunting scene (in this instance accompanied by trumpeters; see Plate 11). Uniquely for a symbol-bearing cross-slab, Aberlemno 2 depicts a military scene. The location of the revamped symbols is generally prominent, often at the top of the back face, and sometimes juxtaposed directly with at least one of the figures. We find biblical images and fantastic images on the back face too, just as very occasionally riders and hunting scenes find their way to the front. The Picts were aware of free-standing crosses, but in general their preference was for large decorative surfaces on which a medley of images could be depicted around and on the reverse of the cross. Apparent conventions generally circumscribed the inclusion of naturalistic images within the body of the cross. Many of these images had both secular and religious meaning. Hunting scenes might allude to the Christian soul in pursuit of Christ (the deer) and salvation, as well as reference to kings or local lords.
That most of the Christian stone monuments lie south of the Mounth and north of Fife may reflect where Nechtan and his successors directed their political efforts (83). Furthest away from their Verturian homeland, here they had a greater need to use the Church as a proxy for their own authority. The implication must also be that the rich local aristocracy invested considerably in the Church and gave it their support.
The symbol-bearing cross-slabs vary in their form and function. Smaller examples could have been gravemarkers, both freestanding and inserted into the slots on the top of recumbent monuments (as at Meigle and St Vigeans). Larger examples were public statements about the beliefs of the wider community and the taste and sophistication of their patrons. We might expect to find them in the church or churchyard near the caput of a thanage, but perhaps sited along important routeways, or at the points of entry to an estate. Most of these and the subsequent Christian carvings without Pictish symbols are found at or nearby the sites of later medieval parish churches or burial grounds, suggesting that these were centres of Christian worship and/or burial from the 8th century, if not before).
Apart from in the Atlantic zone with its millennia-old drystone masonry traditions, it is unlikely the Picts built many churches in stone. Indeed, patronage of stone churches is more likely to have been a 9th-century and later development, superseding that of monumental sculptures (Driscoll 1998b). St Ninian’s Isle on Shetland, the only pre-Viking Pictish church structure so far revealed in excavation, is unfortunately very poorly understood (Barrowman 2011). Although no upstanding Pictish churches survive, there are sculptures that are architectural (the archway from Forteviot or lintel from Meigle) or were clearly designed for us in buildings, not least recumbent monuments and composite shrines. Just imagine what our impression of early church architecture would be if we could also factor in the lost fine metalwork, manuscripts and textiles, treasures and relics alluded to in the sculptures (Henderson and Henderson 2004).
83. Distribution of select types of non-symbol-bearing early historic sculpted stones. Cross-slab fragments may have formed part of monuments that did not originally include symbols. A new cross-slab was very recently discovered in Sanday, Orkney.
While we cannot know what we are also missing by way of timber architecture and sculpture, few who encountered the carved stone monuments of this period could have failed to be impressed by their beauty, magnificence and technical accomplishment. During the process of carving, transport and use, they conveyed significant messages about the relationship of the local nobility to the church. The high investment involved in their creation is a reflection of the big ideas that lay behind them (Carver 1998). As the person ‘on the ground’, the itinerant sculptor (perhaps a monk) would have played an important role in communicating to the local population why the stone was being erected and what its symbolism meant. On the one hand these monuments were testimonies to the rights of the Church to the land and confirmation of its jurisdiction, but they also evoked the status and ritual authority of secular patrons who perhaps had a distinctively Pictish proprietorial relationship to the Church, if the Pictish names (symbols) on many of the stones are any guide.
Nowhere in Argyll do we find such blatant evidence for the association of the Church with its secular peers, as the distinctive sculpture of the two areas makes clear. Images of clerics are also featured on Pictish sculpture (see 69, 75) as opposed to that of the Dál Riata. Concentrations of sculptures in general point to the location of the ‘church settlements’, the major, complex church sites that had multiple functions, and might be sited by a royal centre, such as Burghead, Forteviot or Meigle (Woolf 2013). The monastery at Portmahomack is such a church settlement. A series of large and spectacularly fine late 8th-century cross-slabs bound the Tarbat peninsula, and appear to define a monastic estate and some of its subsidiary elements: an episcopal chapel at Nigg, a place to dispense the sacraments at Shandwick, and a presumed chapel at Hilton of Cadboll (Plate 16, 84). By the later 8th and 9th centuries new types of Pictish burial monuments developed (such as recumbent slabs), demonstrating that the Church had firmly established its role with regard to the burial of the nobility, if not other laity (85). The enthusiasm and initiative that kings and nobles took in establishing these religious foundations suggest that the Church also fulfilled a supplementary role to secular administration, not least through its access to the technology of writing.
84. Excavations in 2001 at Hilton of Cadboll led to the discovery of the famous cross-slab’s missing lower portion.
85. Collection of sculpted stones at Meigle, as displayed in 1953. Includes recumbent grave markers, some with slots for uprights or perhaps relics.
The use of writing
We have already examined the probable reasons for the lack of surviving early historic written sources in Pictland (chapter 2), but how prevalent was literacy, and how and when was it used? Direct evidence is limited but the Picts were probably as literate as their peers in Argyll and beyond (Forsyth 1998).
The Church was the engine that promoted literacy: in Ireland Patrick issued his monks and new converts with the rudiments of knowledge, which may have included alphabets. Alphabet stones, known from both Ireland and Scotland (86), may have been teaching aids, but are more likely to have been symbolic statements about access to literacy and the Word of God. The ability to read and write, and/or access to someone who could do this, was the passport to enlightenment. Leading members of the Church, such as Adomnán and Columba, were clearly well-travelled, highly educated, literate people, conversant with current ideology and intellectual trends in northwestern Europe (the impressive library of Iona even contained books on Near Eastern topography). The complex iconography of ecclesiastical art confirms that neither the Columban nor Roman Church were not in any way intellectually handicapped and Ceolfrith’s letter to Nechtan provides our best evidence that the Pictish aristocracy was a match for this. Adomnán took his own notes on wax tablets, which he or his fellow monks could copy onto vellum in the scriptorium. We should note how a known literate community such as Iona opted to produce only a small number of stone inscriptions. Other monasteries too had the capacity to produce ornate, illuminated texts; surviving metalwork and stone-carving of this period imply an active and widespread manuscript tradition, but essential tools like styli and inkwells are rarely found (some places perhaps had ready access to slate instead). The rare survival of a carved Latin text from Portmahomack (see 13) implied that this monastery had the capacity to produce books in an accomplished Insular script; archaeological excavations have revealed a vellum-manufacturing workshop, a highly resource-intensive activity. Foreign models in the form of manuscripts and perhaps textiles must have been widely circulated, to judge from the Northumbrian, Continental and Byzantine influences that are prevalent in the artwork (e.g. 24; see Henderson and Henderson 2004). The discovery at Inchmarnock in 2002 of inscribed slates, likely to be of 8th- and 9th-century date, provides invaluable evidence for literacy and the teaching of writing to children, even on an apparently minor site (see 5, 9).
86. Lochgoilhead: stone with sequences of letters in alphabetical order.
Being literate gave people the ability to accumulate knowledge about the past and the natural world, to store texts through time and to transmit them over greater distances, while social relations could extend beyond face-to-face interactions. In the case of the Church, therefore, writing allowed it the capacity to authorise new religious beliefs while fulfilling and developing its own intellectual and religious needs. It did so through study of the Scriptures and other holy writings, use of texts in its religious observance, compilation and circulation of saints’ Lives, erection of dedications and memorials, and the creation of laws.
King Alfred of Wessex tried to make his subjects more literate so that they could familiarise themselves with the Word of God, but literacy remained virtually a clerical monopoly in Anglo-Saxon England too. Kings and nobles were probably the only lay people who acquired writing and reading skills; Northumbrian kings trained at Iona, and it is likely that, as in Ireland, Pictish and Dál Riata nobles and select others also received schooling at monasteries, as the writing tablets from Inchmarnock suggest. More mundane objects with ogham and Pictish symbols suggest that some of the laity embraced this as a means of writing in their own language (what Forsyth 1998 terms the ‘democratisation’ of literacy), perhaps in advance of conversion to Christianity. In Dal Riata there is growing evidence that writing as a tool was more important among the secular authorities than previously appreciated (Campbell 2010). The finds from Dunadd include colorants used in manuscripts (yellow and red/purple) and a stone disc with a Christian inscription.
The question then is, to what extent did kings need and opt to use writing, particularly in government? Nechtan made good use of it: he sought advice from Bishop Ceolfrith of Northumbria about the Roman Church and sent new Easter cycles ‘throughout all the Provinces of the Picts to be transcribed, learned and observed’ (Bede, History V, 21). Nechtan, and certainly his more learned men, would have understood Latin. We have no proof that he also corresponded with his secular followers, or indeed they with him, but it seems unavoidable given the increasing distances over which he and his successors needed to operate. In addition, we might also anticipate that there was a greater reliance on written ‘rules’ or laws but, whether or not these were ever committed to vellum, it would still have been their verbal oration that gave them the force of law. In Argyll, meantime, a census was also first recorded (chapter 6).
The later Church
Throughout north-western Europe the idea of the reborn Christian Roman Empire became popular after c.750 – as suggested by the series of Pictish and Scottish kings called Constantin (Constantine) – and the developing relationship between the Church and state in Pictland can be seen in the flowering of officially sponsored ecclesiastical art. The finest example of this, the St Andrews Sarcophagus, was probably first erected within a royal chapel or monastic church, where it possibly commemorated Onuist son of Uurguist (died 761) (see 24).
Pictish designs are not found on 8th-century silver metalwork, and during the second half of the 8th to late 9th century they also ceased to be used on sculpture, whether on dressed slabs or later free-standing crosses (a new form of monument found also in Argyll and elsewhere). The content of sculptures also changed: instead of hunting scenes, we find more militaristic images, as on the 9th-century Constantine’s Cross, suggesting a strengthening and formalisation of royal authority through means that included military might. Originally erected at Dupplin, only a few miles away from the royal palace of Forteviot, the cross shows a king on horseback (87), identified from a worn inscription as likely to be Constantin son of Uurgust (c.789–820). Beneath and around him are several ranks of foot-soldiers: men with moustaches and ornamented hems on their tunics, and younger men with neither. A cross of similar form but unknown imagery originally overlooked the palace from Invermay, on the opposite side of the strath. The absence of Pictish symbols can be attributed to many factors, not least the expanded and diversified range of contexts in which sculptural monuments might be deployed. Put simply, there were certain contexts in which the Picts considered these symbols irrelevant or less relevant, particularly, so it seems, when associated with monastic houses, royal establishments, and church furnishings and architecture.
87. Constantine’s Cross from Dupplin: the first two and a half lines of the inscription, in the panel beneath the cross-head on the left, read CU […] NTIN / FILIUSFIRCU / S (Forsyth 1995b).
Constantin son of Uurgust is sometimes credited with the foundation of a major new ecclesiastical foundation at Dunkeld (Perthshire and Kinross), but it was Cinaed mac Ailpín in 849 who saw this to fruition and affirmed its status by bringing to it some of the relics of St Columba (Bannerman 1997). Suffering a string of Viking raids, Iona established a sister house at Kells, County Meath, in 807. Its position and prestige as head of the Columban confederacy of churches on either side of the North Channel only began to waver significantly in the mid 9th century, as marked, if not exacerbated by, the division of Columba’s relics between Dunkeld and Kells in 849, and the fact that from the late 9th century onwards the seat of the head of the Columban Church moved to Ireland (Herbert 1996). That the relics were kept at Iona for much of the period up to 849 reinforces its continuing significance, an importance that Norse settlers ultimately respected too (Clancy 1996; Jennings 1998). It is an indication of Cinaed’s background and authority that he was able to acquire some of these prestigious, venerated objects for Dunkeld (88). We can but imagine the spectacle of popular devotion that would have accompanied their formal translation.
88. Decorative mounts from church metalwork, such as a reliquary or altar cross, later reused to decorate horse saddles. These examples both come from Crieff, Perth and Kinross.
Into this picture steps the 8th/9th-century céli Dé (‘Servants of God’) monastic reform movement with strong southern Irish connections. Dedicated to the renewal of the coenobitic (communal) lifestyle, it promoted an episcopal church structure with clear pastoral duties. Iona (in particular its abbot Diarmait, 814–sometime after 831) is likely to have played a significant role in promoting this influential style of church in Pictland, as for instance at St Andrews. Dunkeld may even have been an early 9th-century céli Dé foundation. A reference in the Chronicle of the Kings of Alba can be interpreted as suggesting that King Giric (878–89) was responsible for the legal clarification of the relationship of the Church and state in line with the expectations of this Irish reform movement, particularly removing the role that Pictish potentates apparently had in the running of individual church establishments (Clancy 1996). This is perhaps another reason why Pictish symbols might disappear from ecclesiastical sculpture.
In this chapter we have seen how the influence of the Church came to permeate all levels of society and was probably the most successful and effective method by which the authority of kings could be peacefully extended. It did so by extolling an international and outward-looking belief system as part of a Universal Church, reinforcing and sustaining the breakdown of locally based power structures that were highly individual and personal in their character. Its ideology was pro-state and hence supported the aspirations of kings who now modelled themselves upon leaders of the former Christian Roman Empire and sought to expand and centralise their power base. With time, the Church also came to provide some degree of administrative support for the king and nobility. Through the history of the Church and its interrelationship with the rest of society we can therefore trace evidence for the consolidation of society. Before discussing when this effectively took place, we must turn to examine the fourth source of power – military might.
