Châteaux, concepts et contextes : castellologie en Écosse, rétrospective et perspectives

Castellology in Scotland has a history extending back to the mid-1800s when contemporary architects began to plunder medieval architectural styles for inspiration, leading to the development of the Scots Baronial style. Originating in the work of practising architects, in the early 1900s the stiudy of castles became an academic endeavour in which military engineering and typological classificvation dominated analysis. This field of study, where castles were viewed as artefacts to be typologised and categorised in a morphological sequence, remains one of the main strands in Scottish castellology. Since the 1920s, however, there has developed a separate tradition which focuses on the social, economic and political function of castles and on the symbolism and psychology in their construction. In this approach, the emphasis as shifted from chronological typology towards consideration of broader social, cultural, economic and political contexts. this trend has diverged from the traditional structural analyst approach, with its exponents now interpreting castles as components of a broader cultural landscape or landscapes of lordship. The future study of castles in Scotland appears to be moving towards a socio-economic or sociological approach, ending a 150-year fixation of form over function

The Medieval Church in the Dioceses of Aberdeen and Moray

Aberdeen and Moray dioceses emerged in the second quarter of the 12th century as part of the wider development of Scottish ecclesiastical government. Growth of diocesan structures was coeval with formation of a parochial system; many parishes were quickly appropriated to the cathedrals to provide prebends for diocesan officials and canons. Consequently, whilst the cathedrals were richly-endowed and architecturally sophisticated few parish churches saw resources devoted to their enlargement. A limited pool of magnate patrons and their limited economic resources resulted in the founding and endowment of few significant monasteries but royal patronage resulted in some being conceived and built on a grand scale before crown support switched from the monastic orders to the orders of friars. Lesser nobles directed their patronage to the founding of hospitals and, later, to collegiate churches, whilst burgess communities invested heavily in endowing their burghs’ parish churches. A late medieval flourishing of patronage coincided with internal reform at diocesan and individual monastic level, resulting in a higher standard of clerical education and spiritual commitment at the time of the Reformation than in some other Scottish dioceses. Reform, when it came, was often imposed through external political direction rather than local actio

Holy Blood Devotion in Later in Medieval Scotland

Of the Christocentric devotions which achieved widespread in popularity in later medieval Scotland, the cult of the Holy Blood gained the greatest prominence. Connections with the blood-relic centres at Bruges and Wilsnack, primarily established by merchants, provided the conduit for the development of the cult in Scotland’s east coast burghs from the second quarter of the fifteenth century. The cult remained principally an urban phenomenon and was associated closely with the guildry of those burghs where Holy Blood altars were founded. Holy Blood devotion, while not exclusively associated with members of the merchant community, provided a vehicle for expression of guild identity and, as in Bruges, a mechanism for the regulation and control of guild members’ public behaviour. That regulatory function was secondary to the cult’s soteriological significance, its popularity in urban Scotland reflecting the wider late medieval European lay quest for closer and more direct personal connections with God

The Medieval Bishops of Whithorn, Their Cathedral and Their Tombs

First paragraph: Although the diocese of Whithorn is amongst the more poorly documented of Scotland's medieval sees, its bishops have been the subject of considerably more historical research than their counterparts in wealthier, more influential and better documented dioceses such as Moray, Aberdeen, St Andrews or Glasgow. Much of this research has been stimulated by the successive programmes of modern excavation at the ruins of their cathedral at Whithorn, commencing in 1949 with CA Ralegh Radford's work in the nave and at the extreme east end of the choir (Radford 1956). In conjunction with that work, which formed part of a Ministry of Works project aimed at improving public access to, and interpretation of, the ruins of the cathedral priory and the Early Christian remains at St Ninian's Cave and Kirkmadrine, the late Gordon Donaldson produced a re-analysis of the medieval bishops and priors which considerably expanded upon the pioneering study of all Scottish pre-Reformation bishops by Bishop John Dowden (1912). Donaldson's work was undertaken at the beginning of Ralegh Radford's excavations and subsequently formed the core of the historical sections of the Ministry of Works' 'Blue Guide' to Whithorn and Kirkmadrine: indeed, it still does in its current revised form (Donaldson 1949; Radford & Donaldson 1953; Radford & Donaldson 1984).Funded by Historic Scotlan

A Celtic Dirk at Scotland's Back? The Lordship of the Isles in Mainstream Scottish Historiography since 1828

This paper provides a detailed historiographical analysis of published work on the Lordship of the Isles produced in the last 200 years, commencing with Patrick Fraser Tytler's discussion in his monumental History of Scotland.  It examines the changing perspectives offered on the nature of the Lordship and its relationship with the lowlands-based monarchy, and attitudes on the nature of Gaelic culture and society, projecting these against the evolving Scottish historiographical traditions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and views on the nature of government and relationships between rulers and subjects

Cambuskenneth Abbey and Its Estates: Lands, Resources and Rights

Considering its prominence as one of the greatest of the Scottish royal abbeys, Cambuskenneth near Stirling has remained relatively under-researched despite the survival of an extensive body of pre-Reformation record evidence for its history and development.  This essay explores the material relating to the structure and composition of the abbey's economic resources, from the landed properties acquired in the twelfth century through to the rental income from urban holdings acquired in the sixteenth century, and considers the changing profile of its portfolio over time.  It offers a broad overview of the composition and physical spread of the landed estate and the progressive shifts in significance to the canons of the different elements from which their income was derived

Lay Religiosity, Piety, and Devotion in Scotland c.1300 to c.1450

In its first half, this paper presents an overview of recent research on the popular experience of religion in pre-Reformation Scotland and focuses especially on that experience in the century-and-a-half after 1300. In the second part, it explores in detail evidence for lay patronage, new patterns and forms of religious endowment, commemoration of the dead, and expansion of church buildings. It argues that far from being a fallow period between the evangelical enthusiasm of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and the intense expressions of popular piety evident in the immediate pre-Reformation period, it was a time of dynamic change and vigorous popular engagement with the new forms of religious expression that were then current in Europe

Arrested Development? Energy Crises, Fuel Supplies, and the Slow March to Modernity in Scotland, 1450-1850

This essay explores the transitions in fuel use that occurred in Scotland between the later 15th and mid 19th centuries and the various drivers behind those transitions: shortages/market price; technological; ideological; fashion

Waste management and peri-urban agriculture in the early modern Scottish burgh

The anthropogenic deepening of soil for agriculture is a widely-recognised northern European phenomenon. In Scotland, geoarchaeological investigation has identified such anthropogenically-deepened soils in urban and rural contexts and interpreted them in terms of this more general experience, but has not explored the processes behind their formation. While it is well known that Scotland's medieval town-dwellers grew their dietary staples, their agricultural practices and impact on peri-urban fields has lacked detailed investigation. This paper reviews the geoarchaeological evidence and analyses documentary records from 17 Scottish burghs, illustrating a central component of burgess agriculture, the management of urban waste for use as manure. Burgh regulations reveal changing cultural attitudes towards waste in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as fewer townsmen engaged directly in cultivation, but urban waste nevertheless remained in demand as fertiliser in the hinterland of many Scottish towns into the later nineteenth century

Community of the Realm: the Middle Ages

THis chapter begins by dealing with the place in Scotland which lacked the formal, regularised architectural characteristics of the governmental and assembly settings of Mediterranean antiquity, which have today mostly vanished. It looks at the use of royal halls and the large spaces provided by the major monasteries - churches, chapter-houses and refectories - in the 13th and earlier 14th centuries, before focusing on the emergence of first Blackfriars in Perth and subsequent to 1437 of the tolbooth of Edinburgh as the principal meeting-places of the Three Estates of Scotland