The Cult of Saints and the Virgin Mary in Medieval Scotland is a companion volume to Saints' Cults in the Celtic World (reviewed for TMR 10.05.05), both of which are outgrowths of the Survey of Dedications to Saints in Medieval Scotland, a database project hosted by the University of Edinburgh at http://www.shc.ed.ac.uk/Research/saints/index.htm. All three projects aim to further the study of Scottish devotional and cultic practices in both insular and international contexts, and taken together they lay invaluable groundwork for future scholarship on the spread of insular and universal cults, within and beyond Scotland. The essays in The Cult of Saints and the Virgin Mary in particular strive to situate Scottish veneration of saints within larger patterns of piety, ecclesiology, and politics in the archipelago and across western Christendom. Although all periods of Scottish history are treated in these essays, the majority focus on later medieval (14th- 16th c.) devotional practices surrounding both native and universal saints. As such, the ten essays collected here contribute not only to an understanding of Scottish piety, but also to broader issues surrounding cultic practices: the institutional promotion of cults; political and ecclesiastical use of saints; the adoption of local saints by regional newcomers; aristocratic and royal patronage practices; and devotional patterns in rural, civic, merchant, and even maritime communities. As such, The Cult of Saints and the Virgin Mary has much to offer scholars of northern religion as well as those interested in canonization procedures, early printing practices, patterns of lay and elite devotion, Marian cults, and political saints.
All the essays in this collection are invested, to varying degrees, in rejecting older assumptions of regional insularity and Scottish separation from broader ecclesiastical and devotional issues. These concerns are underwritten by the survey articles of Thomas Owen Clancy and David Ditchburn, which bookend the collection and set its tone in two ways. First, they contextualize Scottish devotional practices within larger patterns of saintly commemoration (within the Celtic- language world in Clancy's case and within insular and western devotional practices in Ditchburn's). Second, they encourage the rethinking of long-held paradigms that have governed methodological approaches to Scottish saints' cults, and of how we might develop a more nuanced understanding of the spread and depth of localized devotional practices.
Although it comes at the very end of the volume, I will begin with Ditchburn's contribution because his driving questions, and some of his conclusions, throw a long shadow over the other essays. Ditchburn reassesses David McRoberts's influential assertion (1968) that the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century veneration of Scottish saints was a form of "devotional nationalism" (177). He is concerned to refine long-held assumptions, not to overthrow McRoberts's claims but rather to nuance them by considering the evidence that the Scottish devout venerated a wide array of insular and universal saints. He particularly focuses on evidence for Marian and apostolic cults and on urban, maritime, and emigrant (rather than elite) devotion to point out that "many of the new christocentric and Marian cults found popularity in Scotland at much the same time as the rediscovery of national saints" (193) and to question the applicability of McRoberts's "devotional nationalism" thesis to non-elite contexts. His methodology, which extends beyond analyzing altar dedications to consider naming practices, altarpieces in emigrant churches, and even ship naming patterns, should also suggest lines of inquiry for scholars working on devotional practices in other areas of Europe.
Like Ditchburn, Clancy's opening essay seeks to interrogate long-held methodologies. He examines traditional scholarly interpretations of place-names as evidence for localizing early Celtic cult sites. His survey of these different assumptions and their procedural implications argues for "a greater openness about the fact that we interpret the available evidence of these cults using a number of different paradigms" (5). His contribution is followed by Rachel Butter's detailed essay on the spread of Munnu's cult in Scotland and Ireland. Here, she applies many of Clancy's insights to question whether the traditional interpretation of Munnu as a Leinster saint with Ionan connections is the most profitable reading of all the available evidence for Munnu's cult and particularly for explaining the spread of his cult in Scotland.
The three essays that follow Butter's all contextualize high or late medieval cults in light of parallel English and/or continental practices, identifying the ways in which these Scottish cults align with and differ from broader European trends. Helen Birkett examines the hagiographic dossier of Waltheof of Melrose, a twelfth-century Cistercian border saint. She undertakes a close reading of changes to Melrose's commemoration of Waltheof in light of Cistercian and insular practices concerning saints' relics and the rising drive for papal canonization. Ultimately, she concludes that "while papal authorization was a desirable asset" for this Cistercian community, "it was more a way of keeping up with the ecclesiastical fashions of the day than the ultimate authenticator of Waltheof's status" (54). Matthew Hammond's densely packed article on shifting fashions in aristocratic and royal patronage of saints' cults continues Birkett's international focus and complements Ditchburn's later focus on non- elite patterns of veneration. Hammond lays out the evidence that patterns of noble foundation and patronage from the eleventh to the thirteenth century saw a shift from regional saints (like Cuthbert, Andrew, and Columba) to universal cults of Mary, the Apostles, and the Trinity as royal patrons were increasingly influenced by continental and southern English devotional models. This elite turn toward international devotional fashion did not entirely determine noble patronage, however, as Hammond finds that "the underlying reservoir of veneration and devotion to local, insular saints remained intact, surviving in many ways until the Reformation" (85). This cluster of essays concludes with Steve Boardman's examination of the short-lived cult of the political "martyr" David, Duke of Rothesay, whose ephemeral cult is contrasted with the dominant political saints of England in order to raise questions "about the structures and expectations that governed political life in late medieval Scotland" (103).
Another cluster of three essays examines the veneration of the Virgin Mary in late medieval Scotland, extending Hammond's discussion of a new-found Marian piety. Mark Hall discusses gender and devotion in late medieval Perth, with a focus on the urban landscape and archaeological evidence. Marian texts produced in Gaelic-speaking Scotland are the focus of Sìm R. Innes's contribution, which notes how classical Gaelic poetry in particular invokes Mary as both wrath- deflecting Virgin and wrath-employing "Empress of Hell." Finally, the late Audrey-Beth Fitch surveys the appeal of the mother-son bond between Mary and Jesus in the later medieval period, especially as it parallels royal models of power and female intercession. All three conclude that Scottish Marian devotion followed the same patterns as found elsewhere in later medieval Christendom. These conclusions may not seem surprising on their own, but they become noteworthy when read in light of Ditchburn's substantial rethinking of the paradigms that have governed similar scholarship to date. As such, this reviewer recommends that these Marian essays be read alongside Ditchburn's essay, as their contributions to the understanding of Scottish devotional practices become more apparent in its shadow.
Alan Macquarrie's essay on Scottish saints in the Aberdeen Breviary, overseen by William Elphinstone, bishop of Aberdeen, and printed by Chepman and Myllar in 1510, makes a fitting concluding companion to Ditchburn's, for Macquarrie focuses on the elite ecclesiastical priorities that Ditchburn largely sets aside. Together, the two offer a thorough introduction to the veneration of local and universal saints in Scotland in the early sixteenth century. Macquarrie offers a welcome contribution to the study of the Aberdeen Breviary's creation and context, its sources and style, and its principles of inclusion. In particular, he focuses on the exceptional number of Scottish saints presented in the breviary, using the vagaries of Elphinstone's sources for the lessons and antiphons to discuss the evidence for late medieval veneration of Scottish saints, major and minor, before 1510. As he states, a new edition of the Aberdeen Breviary "is a major desideratum in Scottish church history and hagiography" not only for scholars of Scottish and Irish devotion, but for anyone interested in hagiography, ecclesiology, and early print culture (155). The essay concludes with an appendix of saints connected to Scotland represented in the Aberdeen Breviary.
The essays gathered in The Cult of Saints and the Virgin Mary in Medieval Scotland have much to offer all students of hagiography and medieval devotion, not only those interested in Scottish cults, in the way they situate these cultic practices within larger European contexts. The quality of the scholarship across the essays is consistently high, and they are generally engagingly written. Many of these essays--particularly those by Clancy, Hammond, Macquarrie, and Ditchburn--open up provocative avenues for future scholarship and/or models to emulate, while all offer solid contributions in their respective fields. This is a collection that, especially in conjunction with Saints' Cults in the Celtic World and the Survey of Dedications to Saints in Medieval Scotland database, will be a continuing resource for scholars of Scottish religion.