The Early Church in the North-east

The importance of Aberdeenshire in the history of the Early Church is that, after the Fife and Stirling areas, Aberdeenshire provided the advance base from which the Brythonic missionaries completed the Christianisation of the North Britons (Bede's "Southern Picts.") Seven successive and clearly defined missions were disposed over the area within the period from 400 to 600 A.D. "Aberdeenshire" was neither a geographical nor a political unit in the time of the earlier missionaries; but for the purposes of this study it may be considered by itself, as far as possible.

Each early Christian mission-centre controlled a group of Churches or Cells which were dependent on it and, usually, had been founded from it. Some of these were local, others more remote. These groups do not represent differing types of ecclesiastical government and discipline; but merely missionary activities separated in time, and directed by outstanding leaders, whose extensive work entitles them to consideration individually.

To understand the people and the country as the early missionaries found them, it is necessary to exercise a little historical imagination.

"Tak awa Aiberdeen an twa mile roon; an far are ye?"

It is doubtful if St Ninian and his co-workers found a community in existence at Aberdeen at all. In the second century, Ptolemy had credited one 'city', Devana, to the Taizaloi of the Aberdeenshire lowlands, but the site of Devana has never been identified with any certainty. It was reputedly a fortified place, whereas Aberdeen probably arose, as the late Dr. Keith Leask used to say, from a collection of fishermen's huts at the mouth of the Don. What, in time, gave 'civic' importance to this early township was not a chief's fort, but the humble cell of a Christian missionary.

What is now the County of Aberdeen was, along with an area that embraced Moray, one of the provinces in the federated kingdom of the Picts. During the period that the first missionaries were at work in this province, it was roughly divided into Buchan and Mar, whilst Murreff extended from the Deveron, round the Moray Firth, to the limits of Easter-Ross. The chiefs of Moray claimed and exercise control over the chiefs in Mar and Buchan, sometimes taking the proud title of "king". The people of Buchan were cultivators and arable farmers. The people of Mar cultivated the valleys; but they were a pastoral people rather than agriculturalists, and they engaged in hunting. The defence of the country depended on a judicious arrangement of forts and camps and, as the population increased, townships were generally supplied with a fort or tower.

The people were organised in families, or divisions of families, which were the precursors of the clan system. The chief was usually elected from a prominent family and he was the executive officer both of the local legal authority, and of the federal sovereign but the latter was usually at some distant location and so only of real influence in times of emergency when the tribes needed to unite. Law rested on ancient custom, and was expounded by the elders and druidhean whilst the bards cultivated the song and story of the tribe and race. The chieftain was a military leader not a great landlord - the land belonged to the tribe. Many of the people were skilled workers in metals; and the professional smith occupied a high place socially since he was able to work in gold as well as in iron. Stock-rearing, the preparation of pelts, tanning, agriculture, and wood-craft were thoroughly understood by the men; and the women wove both wool and fibre; and could dye their own fabrics. The women also made rough pottery, but the local clay in most districts was inferior, and the means of firing it were defective. This resulted in the potters of the southern Britons being more accomplished than those in the north.

The Church which the early missionaries introduced differed from the medieval, and from the modern Church in organisation. It was organised on St Martin's model - like the tribespeople themselves - in little religious clans or families (muinntirs, led by an ab, teaching and ruling in the midst of a central community of workers. A general as well as a religious education was given in all communities. Laymen, presbyters, and bishops were all theoretically equal under the ab, who might only be in one of the lower 'priestly' orders. Every member of a muinntir, ordained or unordained, was under the discipline of his own ab, no matter how far from the central muinntir he might be sent to labour. When sending out missions every ab appointed his own deputies, except that, if a deputy died whilst at a considerable distance from the mother community, then the sub-community appointed its own leader. Whenever the members of one community came in touch with the workers of another community, they were bound, by the Christian obligation of brotherhood in Christ, to co-operate with them to the utmost in carrying out the Master's work. Each community was settled near a populous centre, within a reasonable distance of the ab or his deputy, where each member had a hut of his own. Out of the hours spent on religious work, or maintenance work, he was master of his own 'leisure'. With the permission of the ab he could go away into retreat for a season so that he might give himself to prayer, study, or restful meditation. Every community had its Church, where the psalms were sung at intervals. Sometimes, in the large communities, continuous praise was sustained by relays of the brethren. The Sacraments were dispensed in the Church whilst preaching usually took place in the open air and many of the missionaries had fixed    preaching-places which are remembered in tradition, or marked by a Suidhe. The books of Scripture favoured by the missionaries for working purposes were the Psalter and the Gospels and these were treasured 'possessions' that were much venerated.

Knowledge of the missionaries and their work in Aberdeenshire comes:

(1) From the place-names in the countryside which often give testimony to the sites by bearing their names. The early missionaries did not dedicate cells or churches, but named them after the actual founders, even when the founder was some greater missionary's deputy. Unless the name has been lost in recent times, you can usually learn from an early site the name of the missionary that selected it. Documents, particularly documents relating to the early Church in Britain, have been subjected to great abuses, ranging from those caused by the physical frailty or shortcomings of a copyist, to deliberate garbling and suppression at the hands of propagandists, excusing themselves with the plea of "improvement." The testimony of sites and stones cannot easily be made to lie -  certainly in Scotland, where the conservatism of the people in local affairs is strong, and their fidelity to tradition pronounced. The churchyard has often preserved a founder's name when another has been forced upon the church standing within it. A good deal of history has been furnished by the nature of the site-names, and the place-names near the muinntir-sites.

(2) Documentary evidence is not wanting. It is still possible to separate matter that belonged to the old native Lives of missionary saints from the 'garnishing' in the later versions of the eleventh-century and twelfth-century, or other "improvements." Outside the Lives, in old Calendars, in ancient Offices, in fragments of old manuscripts, in State-papers, bounding charters, and other odd sources, there are scraps of history that frequently give unexpected confirmation to ancient local traditions. The honest copyist and interpreter has sometimes refused to adhere to his 'original', or to read it in the light of the 'accepted' geographical, or political knowledge of the period of the 'original', and, in so doing, he has recorded the ancient facts and truths.

The Christian religion was first carried to Aberdeenshire along an all-British route by missionaries who, in the early period, were mostly Britons and, whether British or not, all spoke the British dialect, in one or other of its forms. Certain Gauls are known to have been sent to Ninian, and are known among his first missionaries, but they would have had little difficulty in making themselves understood by the natives of Pictland because it is known that the Britons and Picts could communicate freely with the Gallic peoples in  most of their dialects. After Candida Casa had been fully organised by Ninian, Irishmen - St Finbar is an example - joined the community and then took part in the missions into Pictland. Somewhat later, other Irishmen who had been trained in one of Whithorn's sister houses in Ireland - St Moluag is the outstanding example - also entered the Pictish mission-field. These men would not be reckoned "outsiders" because they came from the tribes that lived in the east of Ireland that were descended from the Britons. In speech, culture, politics, and social customs they were 'kin' with the Britons of Pictland and, throughout a long history, they had been frequently allied by social and political ties. When the British Christians invited the Iro-Pictish workers, like Finbar and Moluag, into the mission-field, no Briton, north or south, would find any outstanding difference between the one set of workers and the other. The men from Ulster had a different articulation for two vowels from the Britons, just as they have to-day, (although not the same two vowels), and they used the same consonants. In intercourse, although Finbar was responsible to the president of Candida Casa, and Moluag to the Ab of Bangor, the two missionaries would be as helpful to one another as if both had belonged to one Community.