Donald E. Meek
Right at the outset, I would like to lay out my stall, so
that there can be no misunderstanding of who I am or what I aim to achieve in
what I want to say. Let me therefore say what I am not: I am not an ecclesiastical
historian, I am not a secular historian, and I am not an expert on Britain or
even ‘Scotland’ in the Dark Ages. My
talk therefore will not be a treatise on the latest research in the relevant
areas. I will not present any dazzlingly
new theories or unearth some staggeringly fresh facts. I can claim currently to be no more than a
‘Professor of Scottish and Gaelic Studies’, and before that I was ‘Professor of
Celtic’ (i.e. Professor of Celtic languages and matters pertaining
thereto). That remit is broad enough in
itself, but I would have to say that my research interests across the years
have been largely modern, in the sense that much of my work has been concerned
with Gaelic language and literature in the time-frame from the later Middle Ages (the
Early Modern period, in some people’s jargon) to the present day. Of course, I have strayed beyond these limits
from time to time, partcularly in my reflections on the nature of how people
arrive at certain views of the past. My
concern in The Quest for Celtic Christianity (published in 2000) was
with the challenge of interpreting the past, and particularly the spiritual
and ecclesiastical past, of Britain and Ireland. As you may be aware, ‘Celtic Christianity’
was all the rage in the 1990s, and I was constantly being assailed with
requests to support and validate the popular trend. It was assumed that, because I was a Gaelic
speaker, and therefore a ‘Celt’ in the eyes of some, I would be able to say
‘Amen’ to everything. I offered my
response in the book, and, to the absolute horror of some readers and to the
delight of others, I took issue with many aspects of the movement. I gave myself a crash course in philosophy
and the principles of history, reflected on patterns of interpretation, and came broadly to the
conclusion that the ‘intellectual cutting edge’ of rational thought was being
abandoned in the search for a comfortable historical validation of the problems
of the present day. That, to me, was no way
to read or to interpret the past.
This morning, then, I want us tor reflect on how we tackle
the question of ‘The Roots of Christian Scotland’, and to consider the best
approaches to a complex problem. I will
lay out the principles, so to speak, and leave you to gather the evidence
beyond what I say. It is easy to
‘short-circuit’ debate or enquiry by ‘parcelling up’ everything into a neat
package of prejudices and presuppositions.
We all do it in different areas.
So let me challenge myself, and challenge you, to consider how we should
see the ‘Christian past’ in Scotland and especially the ‘roots of Christian
Scotland’, by which we would mean the earliest ‘glimmers’ of Christianity in
what is now our country.
One of the first things that we need to do at the very
outset in considering ‘The Roots of Christian Scotland’ is to look at each word
in the title of the talk. Nowadays, we
are aware of how very large, generalised concepts can be packed into individual
words. Such words need to be ‘unpacked’.
Concepts like ‘roots’ and ‘Christian Scotland’ are immensely emotive,
and carry a fair amount of ‘baggage’ which we have to put through an
intellectual security check, to see what potentially misleading or even
explosive material may be hidden inside.
Roots?
Underlying the notion of ‘roots’ is the concept of an
organic growth of some sort, be that a plant or a family. It is easy to see how the idea that a family
has ‘roots’ can develop, and why those of us who indulge in ancestor-hunts like
to see how far back we can go with our own ‘roots’. The further back, the better; it all seems to
become much more respectable as we push into the mists of time, and we are also
that bit more secure when we perceive a ‘root’ that runs through the centuries. It tells us that ‘we have been here for a
very long time’, and from that sense of ‘having been’ we may conclude
optimistically that ‘we will be here for a long time in the future’. A student of mine told me just the other day
that she could trace her family line back to the thirteenth century, and that
she was sure that her family represented the genuine chiefly kindred of a
particular island. I too was asked about
my ancestors last week, and I had to confess humbly that the Meeks could not
boast of any nobility at all. Naturally,
I am very upset about that. We have
traced our line back to that well-known cultural hot-spot of central Scotland –
Whitburn! – and we can just about make it into the eighteenth century. My people on the Meek side were originally
weavers who diversified into trades and crafts in the course of the nineteenth
century. But then I was asked another
question, ‘How did the Whitburn Meeks become Gaelic speakers?’, and I had to
explain that one of the Meeks married a MacDonald from Tiree, and that the
family later emigrated to Vancouver, leaving my father in Tiree, where he
became a naturalised Gaelic speaker. For
that reason alone, I am extremely wary of being called a ‘Celt’, with all the
contradictory and self-reinforcing baggage that the ‘C word’ carries. On my father’s side, I have Lowland ‘roots’,
but I am very much a Gael, in language and worldview – and these too have
‘roots’.
Roots, in short, are usually complex, and, in my experience
at least, they do not lead back to one single ‘tidy’ origin. So many shoots and runners intertwine. Some grow, some survive, some die. So it is with the Christian faith. The story of Christianity in Scotland is not
that of a simple, single organism that was washed up on the Scottish shoreline
at the dawn of history. It is much more
complex and multi-faceted. It is not a
simple matter of growth from a single ‘Celtic’ source of eccelesiastical
purity, back in the so-called Dark Ages.
Recently I was asked by a well-known ferry company to translate the
phrase, ‘Iona, Cradle of Christianity’, into Gaelic, and I found the words
sticking in my throat as I did so. I
thought of Whithorn (not Whitburn this time!), and wondered how Ninian was
feeling, and then I remembered that some historians have even been bold enough
to suggest that Ninian never existed – that he was a scribal error or
misreading of a manuscript. I felt my
brain pulsating. Slick sloganising it
was, certainly, to dignify Iona in that way, but it was very poor history,
resting on popular presuppositions. The
‘roots of Christian Scotland’, whatever they are, are unlikely to begin with
twelve men in a boat coming over from Ireland.
There are, in my view, numerous beginnings across the ages, and numerous
possible metaphors of process.
Let’s try waves, for example. When I was a schoolboy in Tiree, I read
Matthew Arnold’s great poem, ‘Dover Beach’ for the first time, and I never
forgot it. I knew the sea and the waves
at first hand, and I watched, and still watch, with delight and admiration, as
the waves surged in from the cold Atlantic, burst on the island shore, and
spread their white, creamy foam across the sand. Then they pulled back, leaving clumps of
bedraggled seaweed and a gloriously wet outline, which reflected the sunlight
back into the heavens. Arnold’s great
poem was written from an English perspective, and caught the receding tide of
faith in contemporary England. Broadly,
however, it is a metaphor that deserves a hearing; wave after wave coming in,
breaking, and sinking back into the deep – the Sea of Faith. So it has been with Christianity in Scotland.
I think too of the idea of a rope, with all its various
strands or cords, woven together to give strength and power. That is another emotive image. Take the image into the modern day, and
think, for example, of the Forth Road Bridge and its immense cables which hold
the roadway in place. Some are beginning
to decay, we are told, and will require to be replaced. The metaphor is transferrable to the
Christian faith. ‘Change and decay on
every hand I see’, wrote the composer of the hymn, ‘Abide with Me’, and we must
always remember that the various strands that make up our faith as an
historical entity are subject to decay. They have come and gone across the
years, and we do not have the full picture.
What does not, of course, decay
is the Deity whose Being is the securing-block of these cables, the one who
never changes, and is the same yesterday, today and forever. ‘O Thou who
changest not, abide with me.’ And
bridges can be built in all sorts of different ways – as the utterly
magnificent cantilevers of the Forth Railway Bridge always bear witness,
standing like a gigantic Meccano model, alongside its more modern ‘Airfix’
successor, constructed by engineers particularly skilled in working out the stresses
and breaking points of metal rope rather than metal girders. Change and decay affect both structures, of
course.
That point – variability and diversity – is perhaps more
important than we think, for there is a very subtle danger in thinking of ‘Christian
Scotland’ and its ‘roots’, stretching back in time; and it is that we suddenly
begin to be ‘proud’ of ourselves. We
have long roots, supposedly; we have longer roots than most other countries;
and so we have something to boast about.
We begin to boast, or quietly to take pride in, the wrong things, and we
can arrive at a jingoistic position.
When the mania for ‘Celtic Christianity’ was sweeping Britain in the
1990s, I found myself asking why I should be happier to subscribe to ‘Celtic
Christianity’ than to any other form of Christianity. The concept of an ongoing form of ‘Celtic
Christianity’, from Columba to Concord, so to speak, was alien to me; I did not
know about it from my own Gaelic-speaking Tiree background, although I knew
many, many little rhymes and sayings and invocations from ‘popular,
demotic Christianity’. What was wrong with going back to ‘New
Testament Christianity’ for some definitions?
Why did we have to move sideways so to speak, or exit left, in order to
rejoin the motorway further down the track?
It all seemed nonsensical to me at the time, and it still does.
I suspected then, and I still suspect, that ‘agendas’ are at
work when one style of Christianity, ‘Celtic’ or otherwise, is championed over
another. Over the years that I have
reflected on Christianity in Scotland, I have found it fascinating to consider
its many forms, its many likely origins, its many different shapes and
expressions, meshing so often with the different forms of cultural expression
in Scotland itself, from the scarf-wearing ‘hard men’ on the terraces of
Glasgow, mouthing empty Protestantism or Catholicism, to the fishermen of the
North-east of Scotland, with their strong sense of family identity and their
deep and profound commitment to being ‘Brethren’ second and New Testament
Christians, first and foremost; from the monks of Pluscarden in their white
habits to the evangelical Presbyterians of Lewis and Harris, with their
(stereotypically) dark suits and hats, and the Roman Catholics of South Uist
and Barra, with their colourful variety of Holy Days and small chapels. The ‘roots’ of Christianity in Scotland are
both diverse and different.
Christian Scotland?
We must now ‘unpack’ the phrase, ‘Christian Scotland’. It is a handy phrase, which seems to sum up
the character of the nation, in much the same way as ‘Celtic Christianity’ sums
up what some people believe to be a ‘Christian tradition’ of some kind. Like ‘Celtic Christianity’, it seems valid on
the surface, but was there ever a time when ‘Christian Scotland’ existed, in
the sense that the nation was the home of Christianity from east to west and
from north to south? If so, when? Scotland itself has changed with time, and we
need to be careful about geographical and cultural definitions, to say nothing
of the religious ones. I do not doubt
that there may have been a Christian
presence in Scotland since the time of the Romans, but I am not at all sure
that that presence has been pervasive and fully national. We have a ‘national church’ in the present
day, but what does that mean? It
certainly does not mean that ‘the nation as a whole’ adheres to it. The fact that there is a ‘national church’
does not mean that it is the sole ‘national church’ in the eyes of everyone,
nor does it mean that there are not other churches. ‘Christian Scotland’ is a mosaic of spiritual
expression of different kinds, but the mosaic does not cover the entire
landscape.
This was a problem that was more than evident to Professor
Gordon Donaldson when he wrote his book, The Faith of the Scots, which
offers a very useful overview of the many strands of Christianity in
Scotland. Professor Donaldson concluded
with characteristic clarity:
Ever since the first conversions,
Scotland has contained a Christian community, but whether or not that community
has ever been co-extensive with the nation is simply not a realistic subject
for debate, because there is such limited evidence about faith, which is
largely imponderable…No doubt there have been periods which were more religious
and periods which were less religious.
There are other phrases, much more questionable and ‘loaded’
than ‘Christian Scotland’, which show even more clearly that Scotland’s
religious history can be compressed misleadingly. One that springs to mind is ‘Bible-loving
Scotland’, which is usually employed as a rebuke to modern secularism.
If we pick up Professor Donaldson’s point about the limited
evidence of ‘faith’ and its imponderable nature, we can apply it even more
strongly to the early stages of Christianity in Scotland. ‘Imponderable’ indeed. The problem is lack of firm evidence.
Disentangling the ‘roots’
Nevertheless, let us turn to the question of ‘roots’ as some
would see them, and try to see broadly what was happening in the early Middle
Ages, with a modicum of reflection on more recent times. As I have said, I prefer to think in
metaphors other than ‘roots’, such as strands or cords in a rope.
In trying to find answers, we must reject a number of
assumptions emanating from the present day, besides the concept of ‘roots’
itself. It is not, for instance,
particularly helpful to think in ‘denominational’ terms when reflecting on the
early Middle Ages in Scotland or elsewhere.
There were no ‘denominations’ of the kind we envisage today. ‘Denominationalism’ is a post-Reformation
phenomenon, and belongs principally to the Protestant side. That is one of the reasons that I have to
part company with the promoters of ‘Celtic Christianity’, who often assert that
the ‘Celtic Church’ was a different entity from the ‘Roman Church’. In what ways was it different? Did it differ in major points of belief or
practice? The answer quite simply is,
‘No’. There were, however, distinctive
ways in which the Christian faith in the regions now called ‘Celtic’ expressed
itself. The buildings, for example, were
different; the vernacular languages were different; the culture was therefore
different too, and that was the key point of divergence. There was, of course, a famous arithmetical
dispute, which had to do with the date of the celebration of Easter – but it
was a matter of arithmetic, and not of belief.
Wherever Christianity takes root, it adapts itself to the culture of the
region concerned, and even when there is a lingua franca (like Latin)
which is used by the church in its offices and services, the locally spoken
languages encapsulate the names of saints, the locations of churches, the high
days and ‘holidays’. That does not mean
that basic beliefs are jettisoned; what it means is that they are made
meaningful to different people, or population groups, in different ways,
through their individual cultures.
Nor is it always helpful to operate in terms of chronology
(‘the early Middle Ages’, ‘the later Middle Ages,’ ‘the Reformation’ etc.)
because this can disguise continuities and create false distinctions.
There is no easy solution to the question of ‘roots’, and
there is no point in a spiritual ‘ancestor-hunt’, given the arguable nature of
the evidence. For the moment, I will remain
with ‘strands’ or ‘cords’, and offer you an approach based on culture and
context. To my mind, the ‘strands’ are best expressed in terms of prevailing
cultures – prevailing, that is, at particular times, and in particular parts of
Scotland, and at periods of ‘domination’ by a religious group, which was often
identified with a powerful secular authority.
Christian belief, of different shades, is ‘fed’ into these channels, if
you like, and adopts and adapts them, to varying degrees.
Let me therefore list a few of the ‘strands’ that come to
mind when I think of Christianity in Scotland in the early Middle Ages. You may think of ‘roots’ if you like, and
‘roots’ of some sort may well be there, but I fight shy of the concept!
(1) The Latin strand: I prefer this to ‘the Roman strand’, as the
word ‘Roman’ can lead to all sorts of false distinctions. I would suspect that the ‘Latin strand’ does
go back to the time of the Roman presence in Britain, but that is not the same
as a direct link with Rome in the ecclesiastical sense – and there was no Roman
occupation of Scotland. I think here of
the early memorials in Scotland to religious officials, which are in Latin, and
can be found on stones such as those at Kirkmadrine, with its sixth-century
memorial to Viventius and Mavorius. The
Latin strand is also found in saints’ lives, like those of Kentigern and
Columba, and through it the Scottish tradition of Christianity links into a
broader European framework, with the Latin Vulgate of Jerome at its heart. The use of Latin continued in certain
churches well into our own time.
Unfortunately, the vitae of the saints were written
considerably later than their deaths, and it is extremely difficult to
extrapolate firm historical evidence from them for the period of the saints.
(2) The Gaelic strand: This is perhaps the strand
that people will think of most readily, and associate in some way with ‘Celtic
Christianity’. It is found in the close
connection between Ireland and the early Gaelic kingdom of Dalriada, roughly
coterminous with present-day Argyll, with its principal religious centre at
Iona, made famous by Columba when he arrived from Ireland in 563 AD. The Gaelic strand of Christianity in early
Scotland can be appreciated in different ways, as it is still with us through
the hymns attributed to Columba, but perhaps most noticeably in our early
place-names, which often include dedications to saints. The cella of the saint, which becomes ceall
in Gaelic, and cill in its locative form (‘at the church’), is regularly
followed by the name of the saint, as in Cill Mhearnaig (‘Kilmarnock’)
and Cill Mo Naomhaig (‘Kilmonivaig’).
Church lands too are commemorated in Gaelic, as we can see in the
Falkirk place-name, Bantaskin, which comes from Pett in tSoisgeil, ‘the portion
of land set apart for the Gospel’.
The Gaelic dimension of Christianity has, of course,
remained alive to the present, but that does not mean that it contains the same
form of Christianity as Columba had in his time. ‘Roots’ of many different kinds are to be
found under the Gaelic cultural umbrella.
The ‘root’ that takes us back no further than the Geneva of Calvin and
Knox is now well represented in Gaelic, as is the Catholicism of the Counter
Reformation. Culture and language, in
short, disguise many different ‘roots’ and pull together numerous fresh
starting-points. Not all ‘roots’ are old
ones, by any means, and we cannot assume continuities.
(3) The Anglo-Saxon strand: In the early Middle Ages,
what we now know as Scotland had close connections with Anglo-Saxon
England. These connections existed
mainly in the south of Scotland, which was, of course, hotly disputed
territory, liable to incursions by the Anglo-Saxons. When I was a student in Cambridge in the
early 1970s, studying Anglo-Saxon, I was captivated by an Anglo-Saxon poem
called ‘The Dream of the Rood’, which described Christ’s crucifixion, and
especially his ascending of the cross.
One of the versions of that poem was inscribed on a beautiful stone
cross which you can still see in the church at Ruthwell, Dumfries-shire. It is a reminder of the fluidity of political
boundaries, as it belongs, in all likelihood, to the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of
Northumbria. That, in itself, is enough
to silence the arguments of those who advocate wall-to-wall ‘Celtic
Christianity’ in Scotland. Bede, the
Anglo-Saxon historian (who wrote in Latin), gives us some our earliest accounts
of Columba and Ninian. Anglo-Saxon
saints such as Cuthbert operated in the south of present-day Scotland.
(4) The Pictish strand: Scotland, and particularly the eastern side
of Scotland, has a rich heritage of Pictish symbol-stones, often carrying the
cross, incised in relief on the stone.
The Picts are often regarded as mysterious people, but we do know that
they were in contact with both the Gaels and the Anglo-Saxons. The practices of the Anglo-Saxons influenced
the Pictish forms of religious expression.
(5) The Norse strand: The presence of a substantial
Norse population in the Hebrides is well attested. After 1000 AD, Christianity began to take
effect in Norse-occupied territory, and for a long period, from 1153 to c.
1350, the diocese of Sodor (the ‘southern isles’, meaning the Hebrides) and Man
was placed under the metropolitan authority of Trondheim in Norway. The Christian legacy of the Norse is just as
evident in the Hebrides as that of the Gaels, and finds lasting expression in
such place-names as Crossapol and Circinis in my native island of
Tiree, in the southern Hebrides.
(6) The Continental strand: Following the Norman
Conquest, Normans arrived in Scotland, and the country was also opened up to
the monastic orders which were to be found in France and beyond. Benedictines, Cistercians, Premonstratensians
and numerous other orders came to Scotland, where they set up their monasteries
and abbeys, with their rich farmlands and beautiful locations. Here the vernacular culture would originally
have been French, in many instances, though that strand too was doubtless adapted
to the prevailing culture in the new location in Scotland.
As such orders came into Scotland, they often found
themselves in conflict with existing practices, and reformation – in its
twelfth-century guise – could be painful.
The older, ‘Gaelic’ models of monasteries were gradually phased out, and
the Iona of Columba, for example, eventually became Benedictine.
So there we have six strands or cords in our rope. Several of the ‘strands’ that I have
identified ran in parallel or even intertwined, as in the case of Gaelic and
Latin, and Gaelic and Norse. It is
therefore misleading to see ‘Celtic Christianity’ as the principal or pure
‘root’ of ‘Christian Scotland’. Some of the strands petered out in the course
of time. In truth, and if I may be
permitted a rather obvious pun, there were various ‘routes’ by which
Christianity came into Scotland.
Conclusion
We could go on, but it may be best to stop before we reach
the high Middle Ages. I hope I have said enough to convince you that a pure and
simple search for ‘the roots of Christian Scotland’ is misguided, if we have a
self-glorifying ancestor-hunt in mind.
A more ‘grown-up’ approach will look for interactions as well as
co-existences, and it will avoid wishful thinking. The truth appears to be that Christianity
came to Scotland through different channels and conduits, some of them now
obscure, some still clear (we think), and that it was reformed and revitalised
at different times. It is a complex
story, and one needs patience as well as even-handedness when handling the
surviving evidence fairly.
One final point, if I may.
For me, Christianity is not about some ancient root that we can trace
back to a particular chronological point.
It is a religion of new beginnings, not old ones, as the faith is not
kindled through history or culture. The
impulses may be transmitted through culture, but culture does not make
Christianity, nor will the study of history or culture make one a
Christian. I am always wary when I hear
that people have been forced to become ‘Christians’ by such and such a force,
political or otherwise. Yes, there may
be contextual facilitation, but what
makes Christianity what it is, and what makes the Christian faith real, is that
it takes root in the hearts of human beings.
It has done so across the ages, and it continues to do so. That, as I see it, is the real root of the
matter.
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