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Abernethy
- Iona Connection
When
Ninian ended his labours and descended into his grave, he left
the lamp burning which he had kindled on the promontory of Whithorn.
But no sooner was the hand that had tended it withdrawn than
its light began to wane, and soon thereafter it disappears from
history. At no time had the lamp of Candida Casa illuminated
a wide circuit. Hardly had its beams, even when they shone the
clearest, penetrated beyond the somewhat circumscribed territory
which was inhabited by the Picts of Galloway and the Britons
of Strathclyde, and even within that narrow domain it was only
a dubious twilight which its presence diffused. The Roman admixture
which Ninian had admitted into his creed had proved an enfeebling
element. The darkness was repulsed rather than dispersed; and
when Ninian's ministry came to a close, and his work passed
into the hands of his successors, men probably more Roman than
himself, the powerlessness of a dubious theology, drawn partly
from the Scriptures and partly from human tradition, became
even more apparent. The ground which had been but half won was
lost. The incipient darkness of Rome invited the return of the
older and deeper darkness of the Druid, and the imperfect evangelisation
of the south of Scotland--to designate the country by a name
it had not yet received--melted away. If not wholly obliterated,
it was nearly so.
What helped the sooner to efface the feeble Christianity which
Ninian had propagated in this remote corner of the land, was the
melancholy fact that the pagan night had again settled down deep
and thick on England. That country was then partitioned into several
kingdoms, but now all of them were overwhelmed by a common and
most deplorable catastrophe. The rush of barbarous tribes from
across the German Sea again darkened with their idols, as they
subjugated with their swords, the southern portion of our island,
and as the territory which we now behold borne down by this double
conquest came all round the region in which Ninian had kindled
his lamp, its light must have been much dimmed, if not wholly
extinguished. In times like these, even deeper footprints than
those which the apostle of Candida Casa had left behind him would
have run great risk of being effaced.
A century was yet to elapse before Columba should arrive. The
light of Candida Casa quenched, or nearly so, and the lamp of
Iona not yet kindled, what, meanwhile, was the condition of Scotland?
Did unbroken night cover from shore to shore our unhappy land?
The time was one in which, doubtless, the obscurity was great,
but in which the darkness was not total. At the critical moment,
when the light which had burned with more or less clearness for
half a century on the rocks of Whithorn was about to withdraw
itself, another evangelical beacon was seen to shine out amid
the darkness. He that brings forth the stars at their appointed
time kindled these lights in succession, and appointed to each
its hour and place in the morning sky of Scotland. This leads
us to narrate the little that is known respecting the second evangelical
school that was opened in our country, and which was placed at
Abernethy.
The site of Abernethy, if regard be had to its immediate environments,
is picturesque. And if we take into account the panoramic magnificence
of its more distant landscape, walled in by noble mountain barriers,
it is more than picturesque, it is grand. It reposes on the northern
slope of the Ochils, looking down on the Tay, which rolls along
through the rich carse lands of Gowrie, broadening as it nears
the estuary into which it falls. The wooded spurs of the mountain-chain
on which it is placed, and from which rushes down the torrent
of the Nethy, lean over it on the south, while the loftier summits,
bare but verdant, prolong their course till they sink and are
lost in the level sandy downs that hem in the waters of the bay
of St. Andrews, some twenty miles to the eastward. On the north,
looking, through betwixt the heights that border the valley of
the Tay, is seen the great plain of the Picts, now denominated
the valley of Strathmore. At Abernethy the kings of the southern
Picts had fixed their capital; and truly the position was wisely
as grandly chosen. From their palace gates they could look forth
over well-nigh the whole of their kingdom, stretching from the
cloudy tops of Drumalban to the eastern border of the Mearns.
On one side was the Firth of Forth, forming the boundary of their
territories to the south; and yonder in front were the Grampians,
running along to the eastward, and walling in their dominions
on the north.
The seat of royalty, Abernethy now became for a short while the
center of the Christianisation of Scotland. Even in this we trace
advance in the great work of our country's elevation. Candida
Casa, set down on the frontier of Scotland, washed on the one
side by the waters of the Irish Channel, and hemmed in on the
other by the darkness of Bernicia, the modern Northumberland and
Lothian, enjoyed but straitened means of evangelizing the country,
at the gates of which it stood. But the new champion, who stepped
into the field as the other was retiring from it, to maintain
the battle with the old darkness, advanced boldly into the very
heart of the land. Placed midway betwixt the eastern and western
shore, it was out of the way of the foreign invasions which were
beginning to ravage the coasts of Scotland. Under the shadow of
royalty the evangelical agency established at Abernethy enjoyed
a prestige, doubtless, which was wanting to that which had had
its seat in the more remote and provincial district on the Solway.
Abernethy has other and most important significance. Its rise
shows us that the new life of Scotland had begun to broaden. That
life had flowed hitherto in the channel of individual men; now
it begins to operate through the wider sphere of associated workers.
For whatever name we give the establishment at Abernethy, whether
we call it a community, or a church, or a monastery, what we here
behold is simply a congregation of pious men associated for the
purpose of diffusing Christianity. Their arrangements and methods
of working are all of the simplest kind, and such as are dictated
by the circumstances of the men and their age. They are no more
like the graduated and despotically ruled confraternities into
which monasteries grew up in the tenth and twelfth centuries,
than the patriarchal government of early times was like the military
despotisms of succeeding ages. The members are voluntarily associated,
and stand to each other in only the relation of brothers. Outwardly
separate from the heathen population around them, they yet mix
daily with them in the prosecution of their mission. The new doctrine
which they have received is their law. The teacher from whom they
have learned it is their ruler, just as in primitive times the
first convert ordinarily became the pastor of the congregation
that gathered round him. They are distinguished from the rest
of the population by character rather than by dress. The Gospel
has sweetened their spirit and refined their manners. And they
enjoy certain privileges unknown outside their community. They
have the school, they have the Sabbath, and they enjoy the advantage
of mutual defense. They are, in short, a new nation rising on
the soil of Scotland.
The foundation of Abernethy is commonly referred to the middle
of the fifth century. Fordun and Wintoun date it betwixt A.D.
586 and A.D. 597, and attribute its founding to Garnard, the successor
of that King Brude who was converted by Columba, and who reigned
over the northern Picts. But the legend of its first settlement
connects it with the church of Ninian, and attributes its foundation
to King Nectan, who is called in the Pictish chronicle king of
all the provinces of the Picts, and reigned from 458 to 482.[1]
He is said to have just returned from a visit to Kildare, in Ireland,
where St. Bridget was held in honour, when he founded this church
at Abernethy, and dedicated it to God and St. Bridget. King Nectan
is farther credited with having piously endowed it with certain
lands that lay in the neighbourhood, so providing for the support
of the labourers to be in due time gathered within its walls.
We are curious to know the style of building in which the missionary
staff at Abernethy was housed. The Scotland of that day possessed
no lordly structures. It could boast no temple of classic beauty
like Greece, no Gothic cathedral like those that came along with
the Roman worship. The singing of a psalm and the exposition of
a passage from Holy Scripture, needed no pillared nave or cloistered
aisle, such as banners and processions and chantings require for
their full display. The Norman architecture, or rather the Romanesque,
the earliest of our styles, had not yet been introduced into Scotland.
A cave dug in the rock, or a shed constructed of wattles, served
not infrequently in those early days as a place of worship. But
about this time edifices of a more elaborate character began to
be reared for the use of Christian assemblies. Candida Casa had
been built of stone, and it is not probable that the later sanctuary
of Abernethy, standing as it did in the immediate proximity of
the royal residence, would be constructed of inferior materials.
A house, or rather cells, in which the evangelists might reside,
a church in which the people might worship, and a school in which
the youth might be taught, would probably comprise the whole structural
apparatus of the new mission. But all was to be plain and unpretending,
such as met the ideas of the times, and such as was adapted to
the uses intended to be served. The light which these buildings
were to enshrine, and which was thence to radiate over all the
territory of the southern Picts, must be their peculiar glory.
The church at Abernethy resembled, doubtless, the early churches
of Scotland. The type of these fabrics is not unknown. Two specimens
at least remain in the remote western islands of Scotland which
enable us to determine the style and appearance of the churches
in which the first congregations of Picts and Scots, gathered
out of heathenism, met to offer their worship. On the mainland
no such remains are to be met with, for this reason, that when
the early fabrics fell into decay they were replaced by larger
and finer structures, whereas in poor and lonely parts the inhabitants
were without the means of erecting such restorations. Judging
from the ruins that exist in some of the island of our western
seas, the early Scottish churches were marked by three characteristics--a
severe simplicity, a diminutive size, and an entire absence of
ornament. They were rectangular in form; they were one chambered,
and the average size of the chamber was 15 feet by 10. The wall
was low, and the roof was of stone. The door was commonly in the
west end, and the window, which was small, was placed high in
the eastern gable.
The early churches of Scotland did not belong to the European
or Continental type. They were of a style that was found only
within a certain area, that areas being Scotland and Ireland.
Outside these islands no such humble religious edifices were to
be seen.[2] Nor were their architecture or arrangements borrowed
from the Roman churches. The churches of Rome from the fourth
century to the middle of the twelfth were basilicas, i.e., they
terminated in a circular apse. Not a single instance of an apsical
church is to be found among the remains of the early sanctuaries
of Scotland. All of them consist of a simple rectangular chamber,
exactly resembling the small and undecorated churches in which
the early Christians worshipped while under persecution, but which
had perished from the face of the earth, swept away by the fury
of Dioclesian, and we ought to add, by the sunshine of imperial
favour that succeeded, which reared in their room sumptuous temples,
but failed to fill them with equally devout worshippers.
Around the church were grouped the houses of the ecclesiastics.
These were equally primitive with the church. They consisted of
bee-hive shaped cells, formed of dry-built masonry, the wall thick,
and rising to a height of seven feet or so. The roof was dome-shaped,
being formed by stone overlapping stone till the circle was roofed
in. In some instances a rash, or strong palisading, was drawn
round the whole for protection. When we have put this picture
before the reader, he will have a tolerably correct idea of the
external appearance of the second great missionary school that
was set up in Scotland, Abernethy.
Who or what were the numbers of this missionary colony? What was
their ecclesiastical rank, and by what titles were they designated?
Were they called presbyters, or monks, or were they styled bishops?
It is natural that we should wish to be informed on these points,
but the legendary mists that have gathered round this early institution
and its venerable associates are too dense to permit any certain
knowledge regarding them. It is most likely that these fathers
bore the early and honoured name of presbyter or elder. If we
read of the monks and bishops of Abernethy, we must bear in mind
that it is on the pages of writers who flourished in times subsequent
to this early foundation, and that in thus speaking they employ
the nomenclature of Italy to describe an order of things in Scotland
which was far indeed from resembling that which was now beginning
to exist on the south of the Alps. These designations, in most
cases, would have been unfamiliar and strange to the men who are
made to bear them. The community of pious persons which we see
establishing themselves on the banks of the Nethy, have not come
from Rome. Her scissors had not passed upon their heads, nor have
her cords been wound round their minds. The Popes of those days
had neither throne nor tiara; the Vandal tempest was hanging at
that hour in the sky of the Seven Hills, and was about to burst
in desolation over the temples and palaces of the eternal city.
Amid the confusions and revolutions of the time, the Bishop of
Rome might well be content if his crosier was obeyed on the banks
of the Tiber, without seeking to stretch it so far as to the Tay.
The associated evangelists at Abernethy formed a brotherhood.
The idea that these men were under "rules " which had
not then been invented, is inadmissible. It was not till several
centuries after this that Rome sent forth those armies of cowled
and corded "regulars," with which she replenished all
the countries of western Christendom.
The following, picture of Boethius may be held as fairly applicable
to this period. "Our people," says he, " also began
most seriously at that time to embrace the doctrine of Christ
by the guidance and exhortation of some monks, who, because they
were most diligent in preaching, and frequent in prayer, were
called by the inhabitants "worshippers of God," which
name took such deep root with the common people, that all the
priests, almost to our time, were commonly without distinction
called Culdees (cultores Dei), worshippers of God."[3] In
other places Boethius calls these teachers indifferently priests,
monks, and culdees. Other of our early historians apply the same
appellations indiscriminately to the same class of men, and speak
of them sometimes as monks, sometimes as presbyters, and at other
times as bishops, doctors, priests, or Culdees. Hence it is clear
that the term monk in this case does not mean a lay hermit. These,
our primitive pastors, were called monks only by reason of their
strictness of life, and their frequent retirement to meditate
and pray when the work of their public ministry admitted of their
withdrawing themselves. It is possible also that divers of then
may have abstained from marriage, solely on grounds of expediency,
and with the view of keeping themselves disentangled from the
cares of the world, but without enjoining this practice on others.
But these early communities did not disdain the advantages that
spring from organization. That order might be maintained, and
the work for which they were associated go regularly on, one of
their number, doubtless, was chosen, as in the subsequent case
of Iona, to preside over the rest. Without claiming any lordship
over his brethren, he appointed to each his sphere, and allotted
to all their work. They obeyed, because devotion to that work
constrained them. Their duties lay outside their monastery--if
so we must call it--rather than within. They did not think to
serve God and earn salvation by singing litanies and counting
beads within the walls of their building. On the contrary, they
had assembled here that by united counsel and well-organised plans
they might diffuse the light of Christianity among their countrymen.
They were not recluses; they had not forsaken the world; they
had not set down their building in the heart of a desert, or on
the top of an inaccessible mountain, nor had they buried themselves
in the depth of some far-retreating glen: on the contrary, they
had taken up their position at the heart of the kingdom; they
had fixed their seat where the kings of Pictland had planted theirs,
that they might have easy access to every part of the Pictish
territory, and that they might spread the light from the one extremity
of it to the other--from the foot of Ben Voirloch, which rose
in the west, to the rocky shores of Angus and Mearns on the east.
On
what plan did these pious men carry on their mission? How engrossingly
interesting it would be to read the record of their early missionary
tours! and to be told, in their own simple language, or in that
of some chronicler of the time, how they journeyed from village
to village and from one part of the country to another, telling
in artless phrase, such as might win the ear and penetrate the
understanding of the sons of the soil, their heavenly message!
How, among their hearers, some mocked, and others wondered at
the tale! How the Druid launched his anathema, and raised tumults
against the men who had come to overturn the altars of their ancestors,
and to extinguish the fires which from time immemorial had lighted
up their land on Beltane's eve. How, while multitudes scoffed
and blasphemed, there were hearts that were opened to receive
their words, and how the missionaries rejoiced when they saw men
who had withstood Caesar bowing to Christ, beholding in these
converts the undoubted proofs that at the foot of the mountains
of Caledonia, as amid the hills of Palestine and on the shores
of the Levant, the Gospel was "the power of God unto salvation."
But, alas! no pen of chronicler records the battles of these soldiers
of the cross with the champions of the ancient darkness, though
issues a thousand times more important hung upon them than any
that depended upon the obscure and doubtful conflicts between
Pict and Scot, which form the long and wearisome thread of our
early annals. Or if such records ever existed, the accidents of
time, the carelessness of ignorance, and the ravages of war have
long since scattered and annihilated then. We can draw the picture
of the labours of these early preachers only by borrowing from
what we know of the method commonly pursued in similar establishments
of the period. Affecting neither high-sounding titles, nor costly
raiment, nor luxurious living, and fettered by no monastic vow,
they went out and in, discharging their ministrations with all
freedom, and seeking no reverence save what their piety and their
many kind offices might procure from those around them. At the
first dawn they left their couch, and the day thus early begun
was diligently occupied to its close. Its first hours were given
to the reading and study of the Scriptures, to meditation and
prayer. They taught themselves, that they might be able to teach
others. These exercises they intermitted and varied at certain
seasons with manual labour. They did not disdain to cultivate
with their own hands the lands of the fraternity, and their fields,
waving with rich crops, taught the Picts what an abundance of
good things a little pains and labour might draw forth from the
soil, and that the plough would yield them a less precarious subsistence
than the chase, and a more honest one than the spoil of robbery
or war. Others of the brethren practiced various handicrafts,
and making no monopoly of their skill, sought to instruct the
natives in the art of fabricating for themselves such implements
as they needed. Thus they made it their aim that civilisation
and Christianity should advance by equal steps, and that the arts
of life and the Christian virtues should flourish together.
But they knew that while art is powerful the Gospel is omnipotent,
and that the light of heavenly truth alone can chase the darkness
from the soul, and lay the sure foundations of the order and progress
of a realm. Accordingly, they never lost sight of what was their
main business, the spiritual husbandry even. Their morning duties
concluded, we see them issue from the door of their humble edifice,
and staff in hand, wend their way over the surrounding country.
Some of them penetrate into the hills that sweep past their abode
on the south, others descend into the strath of the Earn and the
valley of the Tay. The wayfarers whom they chance to meet tender
them respectful greeting, and the fathers courteously return the
salutation. They turn aside into the fields, and sitting down
beside the workers, they converse with them during the hour of
rest on divine things, or they read a portion of the Scriptures,
mayhap of their own transcription, for even already in the Scottish
monasteries copies of' the Word of God, beautifully illuminated,
had begun to be produced. The budding taste of our country showed
itself, first of all, in works of exquisite beauty created by
the pencil, before throwing itself on the mallet and the chisel,
and aspiring to the grander achievements of architecture.
We return to our pilgrims,--humble men, but the bearers of a great
message. Nor crucifix nor rosary hangs suspended from their girdle;
they buckle on instead, mayhap, some trusty weapon of defense,
lest peradventure wolf or wild boar should thrust his attentions
upon them when traversing lonely moor or tracing their steps by
the margin of dusky wood. They enter the wigwams of the Pictish
peasantry. The produce of the chase, or of the herd, or of the
stream, hastily cooked, furnish a plain repast, and as the strangers
partake, they take occasion to say, "Whoso eateth of this
bread shall hunger again, but whoso eateth of the bread that we
shall give him shall never hunger." "Give us of that
bread," we hear the unsophisticated listeners say, "that
our tables may be always full, and that we may never again have
to dig and toil and sweat." " That bread grows not on
the earth,"we can fancy the missionaries replying, chiding
gently their dull and gross understandings; "that bread grows
not on the earth, it came down frown heaven. He who made the world
sent His Son to die for it, that so He might redeem man who had
destroyed himself by transgression. He that believeth on the Son
hath everlasting life.'' These simple men muse and ponder over
the strange saying. They only half comprehend it; and yet it has
awakened a hope within them till then unfelt, and which they would
not willingly let go. With that story, mysterious and almost incomprehensible
as it is to them, a new light has dawned on their path, and should
that ray withdraw the darkness around them would be deeper than
it was aforetime. The great message has been delivered, the words
of life have been spoken, and with the benediction, "Peace
be on this house," the missionaries arise and go on their
way.
Over all the land do they journey. Some hold their way eastward
to where the jutting coast of Fotherif (Fife) spurns back the
German tides; and others turning their face towards the Grampians
traverse the great plain of Strathmore, and halt only when they
have reached the foot of the great hills. This is the vineyard
which has been given then to cultivate. Before their arrival it
was all overgrown with the briars and thorns of an ancient Druidism.
They will essay with spade and mattock to root up these noxious
plants, and set in their room that Tree, the leaves of which are
for the healing of the nations. They enter the villages that lie
on their path. They turn aside to the towns that they may kindle
a torch in the centers of the population. We can imagine them
lifting up their voice and saying, to the crowds that gather round
them, "Seek not God in dark woods: He that made the world,
and the things that are therein, dwelleth not in groves planted
by the hand of man. He dwells in heaven, and also in the heart
of the contrite on earth. We come to make known to you that Great
Father. Ye also are His offspring, and He hath sent us forth to
bid you, his erring children, return to Him. It is not by the
altar of the Druid that the way to that Father lies. We proclaim
to you a better sacrifice. It is others whom the Druid binds and
lays upon his altar. This Priest offered up himself. His sacrifice
expiates your sin; His blood cleanseth your souls. Come to Him
and He will make you the sons of this Father, and admit you to
the fellowship of a holy and glorious society which He is gathering
out of all nations by His Gospel, and which at a future day He
will come to raise from the grave and carry with Him to the skies."
So may we picture these early missionaries, their headquarters
at Abernethy, traversing the Pictish territory in all directions,
and of "these stones" raising up children to Abraham.
We see the Pict pressing into the kingdom, while the Jew who had
monopolized its honours and privileges so long that his eyes were
darkened and his heart was indurated, is cast out. We by no means
imagine that the theology of these preachers was systematic and
complete. On the contrary, we believe it was imperfect and crude,
and their views were narrow and clouded. Nevertheless they had
grasped the two cardinal doctrines that underly all theology,
even the sin of man and the grace of the Saviour. One great beacon
they made to stand out full and clear amid the darkness of Pictland--the
Cross. One ray from it, they knew, would chase away the night
and overturn the altars of the Druid. As they gazed on the men
who stood round them, encrusted all over with barbarism, brutalized
by passion, and their native fierceness whetted by the bloody
rites of their worship and the cruel wars in which they were continually
occupied, they reflected that thereon was not one of them into
whose heart a way had not been made ready beforehand for the Gospel.
In the Pict, as in the most barbarous and vicious on earth, God
had placed a conscience. And what conscience is it that does not
at times feel the burden of sin. Herein lies the strength of the
Gospel, and herein consists its infinite superiority as an elevating
agency over every other influence. It touches that within the
man which is the strongest force in his nature. While letters,
science, and philosophy, make their appeal to the barbarian in
vain, because they address themselves to the understanding and
the taste, and presuppose some previous cultivation of these faculties,
the Gospel goes directly to the mighty inextinguishable and divine
power in man--inextinguishable and divine in the savage, as in
the civilized--and awakens that power into action. Conscience
can expire only with the annihilation of the being in whom it
resides. And herein lies the hope of the reclamation of the race.
For without this point of stability, placed so deep in humanity
as to be unremovable by the combined powers of ignorance and licentiousness
and atheism, the Gospel would have lacked a fulcrum on which to
rest its lever, and the world would have lain hopelessly engulfed
in those abysses into which at more than one epoch of its career
it has descended.
When the first buildings at Abernethy, which were of a very humble
description, fell into decay, they were replaced, doubtless, by
statelier structures. By this time too, the missionary staff had
grown more numerous, and larger accommodation had to be provided
for the fathers. It was, doubtless, in connection with these modern
restorations--modern as compared with Nectan's church, but ancient
looked at from our day--that the well-known round tower of Abernethv
arose. Scotland possesses only three examples of this unique and
beautiful species of architecture: one in the island of Egilsay,
Orkney; one at Brechin, and one at Abernethy, that of which we
now speak. The native land of the round tower is Ireland, and
there we should expect to find the specimens in greater abundance.
In that country there are not fewer than seventy such towers still
entire, and twenty-two in ruins. The Irish round towers are divided
into four classes. To the third class belongs the round tower
of Brechin. Its height is 86 feet 9 inches. It was built, according
to Dr. Petrie, betwixt 977 and 994, and with this estimate of
its age agrees Dr. Anderson, who supposes that its erection was
later than the first half of the tenth century. It is the more
elegant of the two, its workmanship being finer, and its symmetry
more perfect than its companion tower at Abernethy.
As regards the question of antiquity, the balance of opinion inclines
in favour of the Abernethy tower. Dr. Petrie thinks that it was
built by Nectan III., from 712 to 727. Dr. Anderson, however,
places its erections somewhat later, deeming its date to lie somewhere
between 900 and 1100. The three Scottish round towed are included
in the third and fourth class of their Irish brethren; and the
era of the Irish round towers Dr. Anderson places betwixt the
end of the ninth and the beginning of the thirteenth century.
What was the purpose intended to be served by these round towers?
This question has given rise to much ingenious discussion. Some
have said that they were simple belfrys. In those ages the bells
were made rectangular, and instead of being swung in steeples
were sounded from the top of lofty edifices. But if they were
bell-towers, why were they so few? There were surely bells at
more places than Brechin and Abernethy?
Others contend, and we think with more probability, that these
round towers were constructed as safes for church valuables. By
the ninth and tenth centuries the church had amassed a considerable
amount of treasure. The monastic houses had store of valuables
in money, in plate, in church vessels, in gifts of devotees, in
crosiers and rich vestments, and these were a tempting prize to
the Northmen when they swept down on Scotland. The hut of the
peasant could yield them nothing worth their carrying away. Even
the dwelling of the chief would not, in all cases, repay a visit;
but these marauders could reckon without fail on finding a rich
booty in the ecclesiastical establishments, and seldom passed
them by unvisited. When sudden danger emerged, the inmates of
these places would convey their goods, and sometimes themselves,
to the loftier chambers of the round tower, which stood in close
proximity to their church buildings, but did not form part of
them, and there they would enjoy comparative safety till the torrent
of invasion had rolled past, and it was safe to descend. It strengthens
the supposition that these towers were erected for some such purpose
as this, that their remains exist most numerously in what was
the ancient track of the northern ravagers.
We have already shown that the evangelistic operations, of which
Abernethy was the center, were not the first planting of Christianity
in the region of the southern Picts. The Gospel had found disciples
here in the third century, if not before. The numbers of these
disciples had been reinforced by refugees from the all but exterminating
storm of the Dioclesian persecution. But the seeds of Druidism
were still in the soil, and after the tempests of persecution
had lulled, there would seem to have come an aftergrowth of this
noxious system, covering; up, and all but effacing, the footsteps
of the earliest missionaries. The altar was seen rising again
under the oaks, and the smoke of the Druid's sacrifice was beginning
once more to darken the sky. It was at this crisis that the southern
Picts were visited first by the missionaries of Candida Casa,
and now by the evangelists of Abernethy, and the Christianity
which was on the point of becoming extinct was revived, and the
seed sown by the hands of the first cultivators, watered anew,
sprang up in a vigour unknown to it before. On the other side
of the Grampian range no evangelical lights had yet been kindled.
The darkness reigned unbroken, and the inhabitants still served
the gods of their fathers, and offered sacrifice to the Baal of
Druidism. But in the region occupied by the southern Picts, which
was the heart of Scotland, Christianity now obtained such a footing
that it never again receded before Druidism. Abernethv kept its
place as an evangelical light in the sky of Scotland during the
latter half of the fifth century, that is, till a greater light
shone out from Iona; nor did it even then become extinct: it merged
its rays in those of the great northern luminary.
In due time Abernethy multiplied itself. Branch institutions arose
on the great plains on which it looked down, which owned dependence
upon it as the parent foundation. We can name with confidence
at least Dunkeld and Brechin as its affiliated institutions. These
daughters became the praise of the mother by their evangelistic
activities, which soon bore fruit in the Christian virtues which
began to flourish in the neighbourhood, in the fairer cultivation
which markets the district to which their operations and influence
extended, and the cleansing of the land from the foul rites which
accompanied the worship of the groves and the stone circles.
When Iona rose to its great pre-eminence as a fountain of Christian
light and letters, Abernethy fell, of course, into the second
place. It ranked as one of the affiliated institutions of the
northern establishment. But when Icolmkill began to wane, and
its first glory had departed, Abernethy resumed once more something
like its early position and influence. About the time of the union
of the Scots and the Picts in the ninth century, it became again
the ecclesiastical head of the nation. An old house of Culdees,
with its abbot, survived at Abernethy the great revolution of
David.[4] And a convent of Culdees existed at the same place till
the end of the reign of William the Lion, Men they seem to have
expired, though in what manner is not certainly known, for no
record exists of their transference to St. Andrews, which was
the mode of suppression in the case of some other houses.[5] In
the charters of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the lands
of the Culdee establishment at Abernethy appear divided into two
unequal parts. The larger half is possessed by a layman, who has
the title of abbot; and the smaller half remains the property
of the ecclesiastics, who, with their head, the prior, discharge
the duties for which the whole of the estates had been originally
assigned.
Abernethy retains now little beside the imperishable interest
of its name. This ancient capital, once graced by monarch and
abbot, has faded into a lonely provincial town. Lying landward,
its solitude is deep. But that solitude is sweetened by the
noble landscape that lies spread out around it in all its old
magnificence of valley and mountain chain, with the Tay--that
ancient river, whose banks the Roman has trodden, and whose
waters have been so often dyed with the blood of Pict and Scot,--pursuing
its course amid orchards and cornfields, past village and baronial
castle, to the ocean. As it rolled when the Picts crossed its
stream on their way from the bloody field near Dundee, carrying
the head of King Alpin to fix it on the walls of Abernethy,
so rolls it now. But it is not the trophies of victory or the
tragedies of the battle-field that give interest to this little
town. It owes the fragrance of its name not to the Pictish kings
who made it their capital, but to the humble and pious men who
fixed here their abode, and made it a fountain of light in the
realm of the southern Picts, in the dawn of our country's history.
The one remaining memorial of its old glories is its famous
round tower. It is one of the oldest, if not the oldest round
tower that now exists. Storm and battle have spared the tower
of Abernethy, and to this day, gray with age, it lingers lovingly
on this venerable site of early Scottish Christianity.
If
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small group tour of my native Scotland please e-mail me:
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