morayonly3.png "Arms of the Diocese of Moray")
The Deaneries of Moray
From very early times it would appear that what was a huge diocese geographically was divided into four deaneries:
• Elgin Deanery - 26 parishes
• Inverness Deanery - 19 parishes
• Strathbogie Deanery - 16 parishes
• Strathspey Deanery - 13 parishes
Each of the four deaneries had a Dean of Christianty at its head who was responsible to the Bishop through the Archdeacon. This title, Dean of Christianty, is a feature of the medieval church in Scotland - in England the title used was Rural Dean.
The four deaneries were of dissimilar sizes both in terms of the number of parishes they each contained and the geographical area which they covered. Largely, of course, this reflected the different population densities across the diocese but they each had strong links with the civil administration areas and some of the boundaries were shared.
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