page_title: Scotland in the High Middle Ages
section_title: Organisation
hierarchical_section_title: Scotland in the High Middle Ages / Christianity and the Church / Organisation
context_page_description: The High Middle Ages of Scotland encompass Scotland in the era between the death of Domnall II in 900 AD and the death of King Alexander III in 1286, which was an indirect cause of the Wars of Scottish Independence.
  At the close of the ninth century, various competing kingdoms occupied the territory of modern Scotland. Scandinavian influence was dominant in the northern and western islands, Brythonic culture in the southwest, the Anglo-Saxon or English Kingdom of Northumbria in the southeast and the Pictish and Gaelic Kingdom of Alba in the east, north of the River Forth. By the tenth and eleventh centuries, northern Great Britain was increasingly dominated by Gaelic culture, and by the Gaelic regal lordship of Alba, known in Latin as either Albania or Scotia, and in English as "Scotland". From its base in the east, this kingdom acquired control of the lands lying to the south and ultimately the west and much of the north. It had a flourishing culture, comprising part of the larger Gaelic-speaking world and an economy dominated by agriculture and trade.
context_section_description: There is some evidence that Christianity made inroads into the Viking controlled Highlands and Islands before the official conversion at the end of the tenth century. There are a relatively large number of isles called Pabbay or Papa in the Western and Northern Isles, which may indicate a "hermit's" or "priest's isle" from this period. Changes in patterns of grave goods and the use of Viking place names using -kirk also suggest that the Christianity had begun to spread before the official conversion. According to the Orkneyinga Saga the Northern Isles were Christianised by Olav Tryggvasson in 995 when he stopped at South Walls on his way from Ireland to Norway. The King summoned the jarl Sigurd the Stout and said "I order you and all your subjects to be baptised. If you refuse, I'll have you killed on the spot and I swear I will ravage every island with fire and steel." Unsurprisingly, Sigurd agreed and the islands became Christian at a stroke, receiving their own bishop in the early eleventh century. Elsewhere in Scandinavian Scotland the record is less clear. There was a Bishop of Iona until the late tenth century and there is then a gap of more than a century, possibly filled by the Bishops of Orkney, before the appointment of the first Bishop of Mann in 1079.
  At the beginning of the period Scottish monasticism was dominated by monks called Céli Dé (lit. "vassals of God"), anglicised as culdees. At St Andrews and elsewhere, Céli Dé abbeys are recorded and the round towers at Brechin and Abernethy are evidence of Irish influence. Gaelic monasticism was vibrant and expansionary for much of the period and dozens of monasteries, often called Schottenklöster, were founded by Gaelic monks on the continent. The introduction of the continental type of monasticism to Scotland is associated with Queen Margaret, the wife of Máel Coluim III, although her exact role is unclear. She was in communication with Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury, and he provided a few monks for a new Benedictine abbey at Dunfermline (c. 1070). Subsequent foundations under Margaret's sons, the kings Edgar, Alexander I and particularly David I, tended to be of the reformed type that followed the lead set by Cluny. These stressed the original Benedictine virtues of poverty, chastity and obedience, but also contemplation and service of the Mass and were followed in various forms by large numbers of reformed Benedictine, Augustinian and Cistercian houses.
  Before the twelfth century most Scottish churches had collegiate bodies of clergy who served over a wide area, often tied together by devotion to a particular missionary saint. From this period local lay landholders, perhaps following the example of David I, began to adopt the continental practice of building churches on their land for the local population and endowing them with land and a priest, beginning in the south, spreading to the north-east and then the west, being almost universal by the first survey of the Scottish Church for papal taxation in 1274. The administration of these parishes was often given over to local monastic institutions in a process known as appropriation. Scotland had little clear diocesan structure before the Norman period. There were bishoprics based on various ancient churches, but some are very obscure in the records and there appear to be long vacancies. From around 1070, in the reign of Malcolm III, there was a "Bishop of Alba" resident at St. Andrews, but it is not clear what authority he had over the other bishops. After the Norman Conquest of England, the Archbishops of both Canterbury and York each claimed superiority over the Scottish church. The church in Scotland attained independent status after the Papal Bull of Celestine III (Cum universi, 1192) by which all Scottish bishoprics except Galloway were formally independent of York and Canterbury. However, unlike Ireland, which had been granted four Archbishoprics in the same century, Scotland received no Archbishop and the whole Ecclesia Scoticana, with individual Scottish bishoprics (except Whithorn/Galloway), beca
caption: King Olav Tryggvason of Norway, who forcibly Christianised Orkney.[149] Painting by Peter Nicolai Arbo
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