Mid-Argyll Theme
- 16
Monastic and Episcopal
Organisation
Much is made in popular literature of the
'monastic' character of the early medieval church
in the Celtic world.
At first sight this seems to be true of Scottish
Dál Riata, given the enormous importance of
Iona. This was a
great monastery where monks under the leadership of
Columba established their community in 563 AD.
It lasted for a thousand years as a monastery,
until the Reformation in 16th century.
No one can dispute the importance of monasteries
in the Celtic world, surely, or further south in
the Anglo-Saxon church for that matter. They were
landowners on a huge scale, and did much to
transform the landscape of the medieval world. They
were also able to have great cultural and political
impact, given their wealth and prestige, so they
often appear on our radar screens of 'historically
visible' events.
Furthermore, many of our records of the early
medieval period were actually written by monks in
the first place, which must influence our
perception of their importance. Our best annals for
Dál Riata in this period, for example, up to
the year 740 AD or thereabouts, are the entries in
the Annals of Ulster which were apparently recorded
in Iona.
However, this pattern overlooks the fact that
there were many bishops ruling churches too. If a
monastery's primary concern was with its own inner
life, the prayer and study and work of the
monastery itself, the bishop's primary concern was
pastoral: caring for the Christian community
outside the monastery.
When Columba came from Ireland to Scotland to
found a monastery, he came to an already Christian
Dál Riata. There was a Gaelic church
there already, and if there was a church there must
have been books, altars, priests - and at least one
bishop available to ordain them - and all the rest
of the necessities of church life to ensure
preaching, baptism, communion, prayer and burial of
the dead. These were the functions of the bishop
and his clergy.
Certainly the monastic churches provided clergy
for pastoral purposes, too, but the church laws of
the time stress the role of the bishop in the
provision of pastoral care. And in the density of
ancient churches scattered round the landscape, we
can see the remains of the pastoral provision of
the church, some of which must have had nothing to
do with Iona. The material evidence for some of
these churches is now lost, except for the name of
places with a Cill element - the Gaelic word
for 'church' - which appears as 'Kil' in Anglicised
place-names.
This map gives a good impression of the number
and density of churches around Kilmartin.
The distribution of Cill -names in Mid-Argyll
shows that there were at least nine churches within
12 kilometres of Kilmartin. No one had far to go to
church.
In these circumstances, the whole landscape took
on a sacred character, dotted with places of prayer
and worship. There were no doubt other places with
a sacred meaning to the inhabitants - holy wells,
places marked with a cross,
and so on - which are lost to us now.
These churches might not have amounted to much,
architecturally speaking. In the first millennium
the majority of such churches in Argyll would have
been made of wood, and very little survives.
Surviving place-names and sculpture, however, speak
of a rural population well provided with pastoral
care.
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This
project has been supported by the EU as part of the Culture
2000 programme.