By CHE, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
Nobody knows exactly who the first Christians were in Scotland, but they were amongst the Britons. The gospel probably spread through trade and the Roman soldiers in the early years. A well-worn tradition referred to by most of our earliest historians is that King Lucius of the Britons was converted to Christ in AD 179, and that he placed a bishop in every one of the 28 leading cities among the Britons, which included Alt Clud, the rock fortress at Dumbarton on the west coast of Scotland. This must have been sometime between about AD 180–200.
Tertullian wrote in c.AD 200, ‘The regions of Britain which have never been penetrated by the Romans have received the religion of Christ’. This would include the area north of the Roman Antonine Wall, not far from Edinburgh. In Scottish tradition the first king to be baptised with his family and court was King Donald in AD 203.
Fordun records in his 14th century Chronicle of the Scottish Nation that on 9th May 1261, an ancient cross was unearthed at Peebles, which the scholars of the time thought was from the persecution period of the Roman Maximian in AD 296. Next to this cross was a stone with the words written, ‘Tomb of the Bishop St Nicholas’. This man would most likely have been Nicholas, Bishop of Penrhyn in Wales, who according to a ninth century Irish manuscript of Gildas’ The Ruin of Britain (AD 540s), lists him among the martyrs at the time of Emperor Diocletian. It was certainly not Nicholas of Santa Claus fame, which is proposed today at the site of the old church in Peebles.