page_title: Christianity in Medieval Scotland
section_title: Church and politics
hierarchical_section_title: Christianity in Medieval Scotland / Late Middle Ages / Church and politics
caption_attribution_description: Photo of the bust of Henry Wardlaw, Bishop of St Andrews
context_page_description: Christianity in Medieval Scotland includes all aspects of Christianity in the modern borders of Scotland in the Middle Ages. Christianity was probably introduced to what is now Lowland Scotland by Roman soldiers stationed in the north of the province of Britannia. After the collapse of Roman authority in the fifth century, Christianity is presumed to have survived among the British enclaves in the south of what is now Scotland, but retreated as the pagan Anglo-Saxons advanced. Scotland was largely converted by Irish missions associated with figures such as St Columba, from the fifth to the seventh centuries. These missions founded monastic institutions and collegiate churches that served large areas. Scholars have identified a distinctive form of Celtic Christianity, in which abbots were more significant than bishops, attitudes to clerical celibacy were more relaxed and there were significant differences in practice with Roman Christianity, particularly the form of tonsure and the method of calculating Easter, although most of these issues had been resolved by the mid-seventh century.
context_section_description: Late Medieval religion had its political aspects. Robert I carried the brecbennoch (or Monymusk reliquary), said to contain the remains of St. Columba, into battle at Bannockburn. In the Papal Schism (1378–1417), the Scottish church and crown sided with the Avignon Popes, beginning with Clement VII, along with France and other countries, while nations including England and the Holy Roman Empire sided with the Roman popes beginning with Urban VI. In 1383, Clement VII appointed Scotland's first cardinal, Walter Wardlaw, Bishop of Glasgow. The withdrawal of France from support of Clement's successor Benedict XIII created problems for Scottish clergy attending French universities and necessitated the creation of Scotland's first university at St. Andrews from 1411–13. Scotland was one of the last churches to abandon Benedict in favour of the compromise pope, Martin V, proposed by the Council of Constance (1414–28). In the subsequent debates over Conciliarism and the authority of the pope, between those who backed the church council as the ultimate authority in the Church, and those that backed the papacy, divisions in loyalty mirrored political divisions in the country and Church. King James I and his chancellor John Cameron, Archbishop of Glasgow, became conciliarists and William Croyser, Archdeacon of Teviotdale, the leading opponent of Cameron, became a papalist. After his accession, James II backed the Pope, while the Douglases, who had dominated politics in the years after James I's death, backed the conciliar movement.
  As elsewhere in Europe, the collapse of papal authority in the Papal Schism allowed the Scottish Crown to gain effective control of major ecclesiastical appointments within the kingdom. This de facto authority over appointments was formally recognised by the Papacy in 1487. This led to the placement of clients and relatives of the king in key positions, including James IV's illegitimate son Alexander, who was nominated as Archbishop of St. Andrews at the age of 11, intensifying royal influence and also opening the Church to accusations of venality and nepotism. James IV used his pilgrimages to Tain and Whithorn to help bring the respective regions of Ross and Galloway, which lay on the edges of the kingdom, under royal authority. Relationships between the Scottish Crown and the Papacy were generally good, with James IV receiving tokens of papal favour. In 1472 St Andrews became the first archbishopric in the Scottish church, to be followed by Glasgow in 1492.
caption: Bust of Henry Wardlaw (d. 1440), Bishop of St Andrews, tutor, royal adviser, educator and leading opponent of heresy
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