SCOTLAND, CHURCII OF. An account has already been given of the conversion to Christianity of the early settlers of Scotland. Sec COLUMBA, CULDEES. NWAN, PICTS, SCOTLAND, Bistory. The doctrines of the ancient Scottish church were precisely the same as those of the rest of western Christendom. In ritual there were some points of difference, but they were so slight that the most important related to the time of observing the Ensterfestival. In these, also, the Scots gradually con fornied to the usage of the Roman and English churches. In one point, however. there continued for several cen turies to be a marked distinction between the Scots and the Irish on the one hand, and the churches of England and the continent on the other. This was in reference to ecclesiastical governinent. The Scots recognized the same orders of the ministry. bish ops. priests, and deacons, as other Christian s did: and, like them, they held that ordin ation could be given only by bishops. But they acknowledged no such supremacy of jurisdiction in the episcopal as was held by other churches. In Scotland, there were neither dioceses nor parishes; but there were numerous monasteries. in which the abbots, whether bishops or priests. bore the chief rule, all being in subordination to the successor of St. Columba. the presbyter-abbot of Iona, who, in virtue of that office, was primate of the Picts and Scots.
When Iona was desolated by the Northmen, the primacy seems to have been trans.. ferred in the middle of the 9th c. to the abbots of Duukehl, and about fifty years after ward to the bishops of St. Andrews, who became known as episcopi Scotorain, the bish ops of the Scots. Slowly at first, but gradually an assimilation to the English and continental practices began, a change rendered more easy by the Scottish dominion being extended over Lotnian, in which the ecclesiastical system was the same as that of England. A great impulse was given in the same direction by the marriage of Malcohn III., king of the Scots, with Margaret, the sister of Edgar Atheling. The king and queen used their utmost efforts m introduce the English usages in ecclesiastical as in other matters; and Margaret herself held repeated conferences for that purpose with the chief Scottish ecclesiastics, at which her husband acted as interpreter. The principal points in which she attempted to bring about a refortit were the commencement of the Lent fast, the superstitious infrequency of receiving the communion, and the lax observance of Sunday and of the Scriptural and canonical restrictions on marriage between relations.
The reform begun by Malcolm and Margaret was fully carried out by their youngest son, David I. These improvements were completed by his successors, and before the end of the 12th e. the ecclesiastical system of Scotland differed in no important point from that of the rest of Europe. Some Scottish writers have lamented the change, as being one from purity of belief and practice to superstition and immorality. This is un loubtedly a mistake. The Celtic church had become very corrupt, and the clergy were inferior both in learning and morals to their brethren in the south. King David was a reformer in the best sense of the word, and it does not detract from the charac ter of his reformation, that as time went on the Scottish church became involved in those saperstitions with which the rest of Christendom was overspread.
The ritual of the Scottish mediaeval church was almost the same as that of England, the Salisbury missal and breviary being the models of the liturgies and office books used in Scotland. The external system of the church—cathedral, parochial, and monastic—was also in almost every point identical. The chief monastic orders were the Benedictine, and most important branches the Cluniac and Cistercian. the canons regular of St. Augustine, and the reformed premonst•atensian canons. The Clumacs and Cistercians were in strict subordination to the mother-houses of their orders at Cluny and Citeanx. In the 13th c. the Dominican, Franciscan, and Carmelite friars were introduced into Scotland. The chapters of all the Scottish cathedrals, except those of St. Andrews and \Vhithorn, were composed of secular canons—the chief dig nitaries being it dean, archdeacon, chancellor, precentor. and treasurer. The prior and canons regular of the Augustinian monastery at St. Andrews formed the chapter of that see, and the prior and premenstratensian canons of Whithorn formed the chapter of the cathedral of Galloway. There were twelve dioceses in the Scottish church, to which Orkney was added on the transference of those islands to the Scottish sovereign in the 15'11 century. The twelve dioceses were Caithness, Ross, Moray, Aberdeen, Brechin, Duukeld, Dunblane, St. Andrews, Argyle, the Isles, Glasgow, and Galloway. The larger of these dioceses were divided, like the English dioceses, into rural deaneries. The single point in which the mediaeval Church down to the 15th c. differed from that of England and other churches of the west,: was in its having no metropolitan, St. Andrews, and next to it Glasgow, had a certain precedence; the bishops of the former see, and failing them the bishops of the latter, having the privilege of crowning and annointing the sovereign. But they had no jurisdiction over the other sees, nor did their bishops hear the style of archbishop This led to claims on the part of the archbishops of York to metropolitan authority in Scotland, which had no foundation except in regard to the southern portion of the diocese of St. Andrews, and the see of Galloway, the bishops of which were for several centuries suffragans of York. The court of Rome found it convenient, for the sake of its own privileges, to encourage this anomalous system; but to provide for the meetings of the Scottish bishops in pro vincial council, a hull of pope Honoring III., in 1225, authorized them to meet iu synod. In virtue of this bull, the bishops, abbots, priors. and other chief ecclesiastic's, with representatives of the capitular, collegiate, and conventual bodies. assembled annually in provincial synod, sitting in one house, under the presidency of a conservator chosen by and from the bishops. The chief government of the church under the pope thus devolved on these synods, and their elective presidents. This continued until the erection of St. Andrews into an archiepiscopal and metropolitan see, in virtue of a bull of pope Sixtus IV., in 1472. By this bull all the Scottish sees were made suffragans to that of St. Andrews, whose bishops were now to be styled archbishops.