The Cult of Saints and the Virgin Mary in Medieval Scotland

A new investigation of the saints' cults which flourished in medieval Scotland, fruitfully combining archaeological, historical, and literary perspectives.

Of all the Celtic countries, Scotland has lacked the kind of scholarly attention that has been lavished fruitfully on Wales, Ireland, Cornwall and Brittany. And yet of all of them, Scotland offers the widest range of interfaces with broader work on the cult of saints. The papers presented here cover this territory very effectively.... [the book] brings together excellent studies that successfully explore the wide ramifications of the topic. Anyone with aninterest in saints' cults will want this book. DAUVIT BROUN, Professor of Scottish History, University of Glasgow.

This volume examines the phenomena of the cult of saints and Marian devotion as they were manifested inScotland, ranging from the early medieval period to the sixteenth century. It combines general surveys of the development of the study of saints in the early and later middle ages with more focused articles on particular subjects,including St Waltheof of Melrose, the obscure early medieval origins of the cult of St Munnu, the short-lived martyr cult of David, duke of Rothsay, and the Scottish saints included in the greatest liturgical compendium producedin late medieval Scotland, the Aberdeen breviary. The way in which Marian devotion permeated late medieval Scottish society is discussed in terms of the church dedications of the twelfth and thirteenth-century aristocracy, the ecclesiastical landscape of Perth, the depiction of Mary in Gaelic poetry, and the pervasive influence of the familial bond between holy mother and son in representations of the Scottish royal family.

Steve Boardman is Professor of Medieval Scottish History at the University of Edinburgh; Dr Eila Williamson is a Research Associate in English Language and Linguistics at the University of Glasgow.

Contributors: Helen Birkett, Steve Boardman,Rachel Butter, Thomas Owen Clancy, David Ditchburn, Audrey-Beth Fitch, Mark A. Hall, Matthew H. Hammond, Sim Innes, Alan Macquarrie