Scottish cathedrals and abbeys

Front matter

THE GUILD LIBRARY

“ All the manuals ai’e fine examples of careful workmanship and scholarly industry.”— “Independent and Nonconformist,” 17th August 1896.

“ A series of which we have often spoken in terms of very high commendation.”— “ Record,” 11th March 1898.

Contents

Glasgow Cathedral Frontispiece

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Introduction ix

Introduction

XI whatever lielps to illustrate the historical continuity which binds its present to its past. As regards this, nothing is so full of helpful stimulus as an intelligent study of our ecclesiastical architecture. In it we can read the lessons of the gradual growth of the Scottish nation from the loosely connected tribal conditions of the ninth and tenth centuries onwards to its consolidation under a settled monarchy ; the development of its commercial and industrial progress ; its expanding relations to the peoples of the Continent ; and the vital changes in its political life, and its religious system and belief, thence resulting. All these have left their mark in those records which neither time nor revolution, neglect nor violence, have been able wholly to destroy — the architecture of our cathedrals, abbeys, and monasteries. .

The primitive buildings of the early Celtic period of the Church have long since disappeared. Their clay and wattles could not withstand the wear and tear of time ; only in a distant glen or lonely island can we discover scattered traces of the beehive cell or simple shrine of the anchorite or missionary. Few relics of the more substantial structures of that time survive.

The Roman era of Church organisation superseded the Celtic ; and with the Roman dominance came the architecture of the Anglo-Normans, whom the presence and policy of Margaret, saint and queen, attracted to Scotland. It developed itself, always with some national characteristics of its own, until the War of Independence broke off all friendly intercourse with England.

Later came, in place of alliance with England, the alliance with France, which lasted till the Reformation, and left its mark on many of the pages of “ The Great Stone Book,’’ which chronicle for us the vicissitudes of the past, the days of peace and prosperity, of war and penury, of reviving national health and energy, of new

Xll combinations and ideas in politics and statecraft, of spiritual decay and carnal pride and ostentation. These annals can be deciphered by the patient student of the walls and cloisters of the ancient churches and religious houses.

To the founders and the owners of the latter, and chiefly to the great orders of the Augustinians, the Benedictines, and the Cistercians, we owe many of our noblest remnants of the past — all of them unhappily ruined ; for the popular violence of the sixteenth century raged more fiercely against the monasteries than against the cathedrals. To the Episcopal system of government, introduced under Margaret, we owe the bishops’ churches or cathedrals.

The life and thought of the Church at the present day, move far enough apart from either prelacy or monasticism to allow us to look at each with an impartial eye, and to consider whether in its abolition we have parted with aught that it would have profited the Church to retain.

The monasteries, at first the homes and shelters of charity and learning, had, before the sixteenth century, waxed fat with unduly accumulated wealth, become enervated with luxury and corrupt through bad government. They were swept away, their possessions secularised, and their communities broken up. But Avith them disappeared two things Avhich were of great price : a large and liberal provision for the poor, and a comprehensive scheme of Education. The monastery gate was never shut against the suffering and the needy. The monks were indulgent landlords and kind neighbours ; the sick benefited by their medical skill ; the indigent could always look to them for eleemosynary aid ; the houseless wanderer Avas never sent empty aAvay. Those great centres of friendly helpfulness and charity Avere planted all OA^er the land. No doubt the gift of indiscriminate alms to every applicant

INTRODUCTION

Xlll would tend to abuse and lazy beggary; but a scheme of sympathetic and well directed aid thoughtfully administered would not. Abiisus non tollit usum. The scandals of the monasteries did not justify the robbery of the destitute for the benefit of the secular supplanters of the monks. The Kirk-sessions of the Reformed Kirk did their best to take the place of the former guardians and kindly benefactors of the poor, but their funds were scanty ; the old wealth had fallen into tenacious hands ; and schism and sectarianism finally necessitated the transfer of the care of the poor from the Church to the State.

Could the ancient system have been reformed and not destroyed, the poverty of the country would have been less grievous than it is to-day ; the Church’s relation to the poor more intimate ; and the method of relief pleasanter to the recipients than that which makes them familiar with the grim charity of the Poor’s House, the Inspector, and the Parochial Board.

The monasteries were the seats of a general system of higher education. The burghs had their own independent seminaries ; the “ song schools ” were more closely connected with the churches in town and in country ; but the highest grade of education was found in the monasteries. Before the foundation of any of the universities they supplied the place both of secondary school and university, and trained the youth, especially of the higher ranks, until prepared to go out into the world, as they constantly did, speaking the “ lingua-franca ” of all scholars, and carrying Scottish energy, genius, and scholarship into the halls and cloisters of many a college and many a monastery, from Coimbra to Cracow, from Salerno to Upsala. These schools all perished with the downfall of the monasteries ; and consequently we cannot, to this day, cope with the great public schools of

XIV

England, or adequately supply the blank in our educational system created by their spoliation and abolition. Here, too, wise reform might have spared and remodelled what misguided zeal, allied with unprincipled greed, destroyed.

With the ruination and impoverishment of the cathedrals, an element in the Church’s life inseparable from them, and most salutary and useful, ceased to be. ’rhe bishops’ deprivation of an authority they had too often disgraced and misused, vested the government of the Church in the presbyterate ; and the national sentiment approved of the change. But there was no necessity for upsetting the whole cathedral system, and rooting out the whole cathedral staff, because the bishop was turned adrift. Had the Canonries been spared, an immense boon would have been secured for the Reformed Church. Had the stipends attached to them not been alienated, the Church would have possessed, at all its most important centres, a staff of clergymen chosen for their ability and worth, for their learning and power of government and organisation, aiding the minister in his work, or enriching the theological literature of their time. With them might have been associated younger men, either under their supervision as candidates for the ministry, or as probationers acquiring practical knowledge of its duties and requirements. The cathedral would have stood out, in its city, great or small, as the Mother Church — holding forth the model of devout ritual, of earnest and learned teaching, of zealous work. How vastly superior its influence would have been, spiritual 1}^ intellectually, socially, to that of struggling quoad sacra churches, with their ill-paid clergy, or “missions” in charge of worse-paid probationers, it is, I think, needless to point out. But the possibility of such an institution passed away when the cathedrals were desecrated.

INTRODUCTION

XV and their revenues were “ grippit ” — to use Knox’s phrase — by the ungodly robbers of the Church.

I have written these few pages to serve as an introduction to what follows, from the hand of my friend, Mr. Butler. The Committee of the Guild asked me to prepare a volume on the most notable of our ancient churches ; and finding that other engagements stood in the way of my doing so, I recommended that the work should be entrusted to Mr. Butler, of whose ability to do it well I felt confident. Having read what he has written, I find my confidence was not misplaced, and that his treatment of the subject is most instructive, thorough, and exact. It will add to the reputation he has already gained by his history of his own parish of Abernethy on Tay, and his books on Wesley in Scotland, and on Henry Scougal ; and will prove an invaluable guide to all students of our historic churches, cathedral, collegiate, and monastic.

R. H. S.

Chapter 1 Relation Of Celtic Church To Roman Catholic Church

The . period begun by the influence of Queen Margaret (1047-1093), continued by her sons and their successors on the Scottish throne, and culminating in the Scottish Reformation of 1560, is that with which this book deals.

The old Celtic Church of Scotland was brought to an end by two causes — internal decay and external change. Under the first head, notice must be taken of the encroachment upon the ecclesiastic element by the secular, and of the gradual absorption of the former by the latter. There was a vitality in the old ecclesiastical organisation, but it was weakened by the assimilation of the native Church to that of Rome in the seventh and eighth centuries, which introduced a secular element among the clergy; and the frequent Danish invasions, which may be described as the organised power of Paganism against Scottish Christianity, grievously undermined its native force. The Celtic churches and monasteries were repeatedly laid waste or destroyed, and the

I native clergy were compelled either to fly or take up arms in defence; the lands, unprotected by the strong arm of law, fell into the hands of laymen, who made them hereditary in their families, and ultimately nothing was left but the name of abbacy, applied to the lands, and that of abbot, borne by a secular lord. Under the second head — external change — may be noted the policy adopted towards the Celtic Church by the kings of the race of Queen Margaret. It consisted (1) in placing the Church upon a territorial in place of a tribal basis, in substituting the parochial system and a diocesan episcopacy for the old tribal churches with monastic jurisdiction and functional episcopacy; (2) in introducing the orders of the Church of Rome, and founding great monasteries as counter influences to the Celtic Church ; (3) in absorbing the Culdees or Columban clergy into the Roman system, by first converting them from secular into regular canons, and afterwards by merging them in the latter order. ^ King David especially founded bishoprics and established cathedrals, equipped with the ordinary cathedral staff of deans, canons, and other functionaries, and monasteries equipped with representatives of the monastic orders. Thus the native Celtic Church, undermined by internal decay, was extinguished by external change and a course of aggression which rolled from St. Andrews until it reached the far-off shores of Iona. All that remained to speak of its vitality and beneficence to the people of Scotland consisted of the roofless walls of an early church, or an old churchyard with its Celtic cross ; the names of the early pastors by whom the churches were founded, or the neighbouring wells at the old foundations, dedicated to their memory ; the village fairs, stretching back to a remote antiquity.

^ Skene’s Celtic Scotland, vol. ii. pp. 365, 366.

CELTIC CHURCH AND ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH 3 and held on the saint’s day in the Scottish calendar; here and there a few lay families possessing the church lands as the custodiers of the pastoral staff or other relics of the founder of the church, and exercising a jurisdiction over the ancient “girth” or sanctuary boundary such as the early missionaries instituted in the days when might was right, and they nobly witnessed to the right against the might.

The new policy was connected with the introduction of the orders of the Roman Catholic Church, and with the building of cathedrals and abbeys. This movement commenced with the close of the eleventh century, and continued to the middle of the sixteenth ; it embraced all the time when the Church of Scotland was guided by the regime of Rome, although it is to be recalled that the Scottish Church never ceased to maintain a native independence — its heirloom from the ancient Celtic Church. This independence, manifested on important historical occasions throughout mediaeval times, at last found its national embodiment in the Reformed Church of 1560.

Scotland was divided into thirteen dioceses — St. Andrews, Glasgow, Dunkeld, Aberdeen, Moray, Brechin, Dunblane, Ross, Caithness, Galloway, Lismore or Argyll, the Isles, and Orkney ; but before sketching the history and architecture of each of the thirteen cathedrals, it will be necessary to indicate the general features of the various periods of Scottish architecture itself, as it is of this movement the structures themselves are all an expression.

Chapter II Sketch Of Scottish Architecture

Architecture is a great stone book in which nations have recorded their annals, before the days of the printing-press : have written their thoughts, expressed their aspirations, and embodied their feelings as clearly and truly as by any other form of utterance. We know Egypt as vividly by its pyramids, the age of Pericles by the Parthenon of Athens, Imperial Rome by the Flavian Amphitheatre and the Baths of Caracalla, as from the pages of their respective literature. The mediaeval cathedrals, monasteries, and churches are a living record of the faith and devotion of mediaeval men, Avho have left besides them but little else whereby we can know their aspirations and civilisation ; we find in them an expression of the deepest life that characterised the periods to which they belong, and a record which, though often mutilated, and sometimes nearly obliterated, never deceives. Wherever these architectural creations are found, there also a voice ought to be heard, telling what at that spot and at some previous time men thought and felt ; what their civilisation enabled them to accomplish, and to what state they had attained in their conception of God. In a very true sense it can be said that the architecture of a country is the history •of that country, and that the record of the architecture is the record of its civilisation.

SKETCH OF SCOTTISH ARCHITECTURE

“Mediaeval architecture,” said Sir Gilbert Scott, “is distinguished from all other styles as being the last link of the mighty chain which had stretched unbroken through nearly 4000 years — the glorious termination of the history of original and genuine architecture.^. . . It has been more entirely developed under the influence of the Christian religion, and more thoroughly carried out its tone and sentiment, than any other style. It is par eminence Christian. ... Its greatest glory is the solemnity of religious character which pervades the interior of its temples. To this all its other attributes must bend, as it is this which renders it so pre-eminently suited to the highest uses of the Christian Church. It was this, probably, which led Romney to exclaim, that if Grecian architecture was the work of glorious men, Gothic was the invention of gods.” ^ This architecture was perfected by the mediaeval builders — the round arch in the twelfth and the pointed arch in the two succeeding centuries. Its progress was the realisation of three great aims, towards which the Romanesque architects were ever striving — the perfecting of the arcuated and vaulted construction, the increase of the altitude of their proportion, and the general adding of refinement and delicacy to their details.^

Scotland, it has been maintained by those competent to judge, can show a continuous series of Christian structures, beginning with the primitive cells and oratories of the early anchorites, and extending through all the periods of mediaeval art. It exemplifies two distinctive phases of artistic development — the first comprising the rise and decline of Celtic Art in early Christian times, and the second allied to the various stages of general European culture. The Celtic churches, round towers,

^ Mediaeval Architecture, vol. i. p. 8.

and sculptured monuments similar to those found in Ireland, are followed by primitive examples of Norman work, pointing to the Saxon and Norman influence of the eleventh century, which produced a complete revolution in the artistic elements of the country and led to a full development of the Romanesque or Norman style of architecture — a style similar to the round arched architecture of other European countries in the twelfth century. This is manifested chiefly in small parish churches, but also in large, elaborate buildings, and one cathedral.^ The succeeding Gothic styles are also well represented in Scotland, and exhibit both certain local peculiarities and a general correspondence with the arts of the different periods in France and England. The First Pointed style is represented in Scotland during the thirteenth century, but owing to the disastrous situation of the country during the fourteenth century, the number of “ decorated ” buildings is pronounced to be comparatively small. On the other hand, it is maintained that during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when the “ Perpendicular ” style prevailed in England and the “Flamboyant” in France, the architecture of Scotland was distinguished by a style peculiar to the country, in which many features derived from both the above styles may be detected.^ “While the mediaeval architecture of Scotland thus corresponds on the whole with that of the rest of Europe, there exists in the ecclesiology of the country an amount of native development sufficient to give it a special value as one of the exponents of the art of the Middle Ages. Its buildings further contribute largely to the illustration of the history of the country, by showing in their remains the condition and growth of its religious ideas and observances at different epochs, and

2 Ibid.

SKETCH OF SCOTTISH ARCHITECTURE the manner in which its civilisation advanced. We observe striking evidences of the Irish influence in the relics of the primitive Celtic Church. The Norman and English influences are clearly traceable up to the invasion of Edward I., and the political connection with France and the Netherlands is distinctly observable in the period of the Jameses.” ^

1. Norman Architecture

The Abernethy Hound Tower, the Priory of Restennet, Forfarshire, and St. Regulus’ or St. Rule’s Church, St. Andrews, illustrate the transition from Celtic to Norman architecture. 2 The dates of the Irish round towers^ extend from the ninth to the twelfth century, and the Abernethy Tower is regarded on historical grounds by Dr. Skene as belonging to the period about 870 a.d. ; the upper windows and doorway are either additions of the twelfth century, or, as this was an early Irish house in Scotland, may illustrate what has been asserted, that in Ireland a form of Romanesque was introduced before the Anglo-Saxon Invasion.^ At any rate, the tower is a combination of Celtic and Norman work. As to Restennet, the present choir is a First Pointed structure. David I. founded there an Augustinian Priory, which Malcolm IV. made a cell of the Abbey of Jedburgh. The tower is the only one of the square towers which has very marked features of a pre-Norman character.^ The building above the second story is probably fifteenth-century work. St. Regulus’ Church is treated pp. 17-19.

The twelfth century was in Scotland as elsewhere^the great church-building period, and the number of churches in the south and east that reflect the Norman movement is very large. All the large ones were conventual. Parish

^ Eccles. Arch, of Scot. vol. i. pp. 1, 2. ^ Ibid. pp. 175-190.

churches of the period are generally small and aisleless — the most of them being single oblong chambers, with an eastern chancel, sometimes with an eastern apse, and occasionally wdth a w’^estern towerd Towards the close of the period, the ornament became very elaborate, especially in the arched heads of door\vays. A common feature was the arcade running round the walls below^ the window's, either in the exterior, interior, or both ; the caps and arches are generally carved elaborately and richly with ornaments, the chevron or zig-zag enrichment being a characteristic feature. The windows are always single and simple in detail. ^

Some of the towers connected with such churches are amongst the earliest instances of Norman w'ork which survive ; they are simple in design, square on plan, and are carried up, without break or buttress, to the parapet, where they are finished with a gable roof, forming the saddle-back arrangement still preserved in the Muthill Tower.^ The break in the height is formed by string courses, which mark the unequal stories. A small wheel-stair usually leads to the top, and the doorway is occasionally several feet from the ground. Such are the leading features that can be traced in the buildings connected w'ith the period.

2. Scottish Transition Style

The term “ transition ” is by general agreement reserved for the architecture of the end of the twelfth century, w'hen the Norman style gradually gave place to the first pointed Gothic style. In England this period extends from about 1180 to 1200 ; in Scotland it extends considerably into the thirteenth century. The characteristics of the style are the gradual introduction of the

^ Ecdes. Arch, of Scot. vol. i. p. 191. ^ Ibid. p. 192. ^ Ibid.

SKETCH OF SCOTTISH AKCHITECTURE pointed arch and its use along with some of the decorative features of the Norman style. “ The pointed arch shows the advent of the new style, but the ornaments of the old style continue to linger for a time. The first pointed style was not complete till these old ornaments were abandoned, and the more vigorous enrichments of the new style were introduced. The other constructive features of the Norman style gradually changed at the same time as the arch. The buttresses by degrees assumed the projecting form of the first pointed style, and the pinnacles and spires of the latter style were in course of time introduced.” ^

3. Scottish First Pointed Period

“ The pointed Gothic style which had its origin in the north of France about the middle of the twelfth century appeared in England about 1170, but can scarcely be said to have reached Scotland till after the close of the twelfth century. . . . The pointed arch, for example, although generally adopted, did not entirely displace, as it had done in the south, the round form of the Normans, a feature which, especially in doorways, continued to be employed not only in the thirteenth century, but throughout the whole course of Gothic art in Scotland. In other respects the thirteenth century style in this country corresponds very closely with that of England. Its features are however, generally speaking, plainer and the structures are smaller.” ^

“ This new departure sprung from the necessity which arose for the invention of an elastic system of vaulting which should admit of all the arches, forming vaults over spaces of any form or plan, being carried to the same height at the ridge. This requirement led to the intro- ^ Eccles. Arch, of Scot. vol. i. pp. 387, 388. ^ Ihid. pp. 46, 47.

duction of the pointed arch in the vaulting, and from that departure it soon spread to all the other arched features of the architecture.” ^ Architecture, which had hitherto been confined to the monasteries, was now undertaken by laymen, and while the great monasteries were either rebuilt or founded, the cathedrals mostly belong to this period. To these attention was chiefly devoted, and the number of parish churches constructed was comparatively small. This partly arose from the large number of parish churches built during the Norman period. In Scotland the cathedrals of St. Andrews, Dunblane, Glasgow (the choir and crypt), Elgin, Brechin, Dunkeld, Caithness, the choir of St. Magnus in Orkney and Galloway belong in Avhole or in part to this epoch. ^

4. Scottish Middle Pointed or Decorated Period

The period from 1214 to 1286 comprised the first pointed work in Scotland. The country was during the time prosperous, and is believed to have been more wealthy than at any time till after the Union with England.^ The disputed succession after the death of Alexander III. gave Edw'ard I. the opportunity of asserting his claims to the Scottish throne ; war follow^ed, and with it poverty and barbarism. “The first note of contest,” says Dr. Joseph Robertson, “ banished every English priest, monk, and friar from the northern realm. Its termination was followed by the departure of those great Anglo-Norman lords — the flow'er of the Scottish baronage — who, holding vast possessions in both countries, had so long maintained among the rude Scottish hills the generous example of English wealth and refinement. Then it was that De la Zouche and De Quincy, Ferrars and Talbot, Beaumont and Umfra-

SKETCH OF SCOTTISH ARCHITECTURE ville, Percy and Wake, Moubray and Fitz-Warine, Balliol and Ciimyn, Hastings and De Coursi, ceased to be significant names beyond the Tweed — either perishing in that terrible revolution or withdrawing to their English domains, there to perpetuate in scutcheon and pedigree the memory of their rightful claims to many of the fairest lordships of Albany, and to much of the reddest blood of the north.” ^ This had a twofold consequence to architecture. Comparatively few buildings arose in the north, and these were in a smaller scale. And England now becoming an hereditary enemy, no longer supplied models for the churches north of the Tweed, which received the impress of France. In England the First Pointed was succeeded about 1272 by the Middle Pointed or Decorated, which swayed for about a century, being succeeded by the Third Pointed or Perpendicular, whose reign, beginning about 1377, ended with the Reformation. ^ The Decorated style did not reach Scotland till it had passed away in England, and the Scottish representatives of the style are scanty in number and late in date.^ When the country revived after the long struggle with England, and building began towards the close of the fourteenth or the beginning of the fifteenth century, few new works were undertaken, energy and resources were concentrated on the rebuilding or completion of the edifices that had been destroyed or left unfinished. This period, along with the Third Pointed in Scotland, is regarded as the work of native architects.^

5. Scottish Third or Late Pointed Period

The Middle Pointed passed by a gentle gradation into the Late Pointed style, and it is difficult to say when the

^ Scottish Abbeys and Cathedrals, pp. 68, 69. Ibid. p. 70.

^ Eccles. Arch, of Scot. vol. ii. p. 332. ^ Ibid. vol. i. p. 57.

one ceased and the other began. Y"et there are some characteristics of the Third Pointed which are peculiar to it and render it a distinct epoch. The large churches are nearly all restorations, and no new churches of great size were undertaken. The Scottish churches are usually smaller in size than the English ones, and consist of single compartments without aisles. The east end frequently terminates wdth a three-sided apse — a feature w^hich owes its origin to the Scottish alliance and intercourse with France. The leading and distinguishing feature is, however, the vaulting — the pointed barrel vault being almost universally employed. The windows of these churches are necessarily low, so as to allow the point of the arch-head to come beneath the spring of the main vault. The buttresses are generally somewhat stunted. The windows are almost always pointed, and contain simple tracery derived from the earlier styles. The doorways are generally of the old round-headed form, with late foliage and enrichments. Porches are occasionally introduced, and coats of arms are commonly carved on shields of the period, and are useful in determining the dates of portions of the buildings. Towers were generally erected or intended, and are somewhat stunted, finished wdth short spires, having small dormer windows inserted in them. Monuments are of frequent occurrence, and are frequently placed in arched and canopied recesses. Richly carved sacrament-houses are occasionally introduced, and perhaps some of the good carving may be due to the French masons who were numerous in Scotland during the reigns of James IV. and James V. The structures of the period were either parish or collegiate churches.^

^ Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland, vol. iii. pp. 1-7.