The Early Church

Juliet220, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons Puffing and panting, I finally scaled the 199 steps leading to the ruins of Whitby Abbey, once called Streanaeshalch. Catching my breath and admiring the view of the Yorkshire fishing town, I turned to look at the ruined...

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...

By CHE, licensed under CC BY 4.0. We run the Christian Heritage Centre in Edinburgh during the summer months and often we get asked about the meaning of the Celtic cross; sometimes people think it’s a mixture of Christian and Pagan symbolism. Let me briefly explain...

By CHE, licensed under CC BY 4.0. With growing anticipation we approached Ninian’s Cave¹ near Whithorn. At first we could not see any cave, but then we made out the opening in the cliff rock. As with so many of the early missionaries in Scotland, he had chosen a...

By CHE, licensed under CC BY 4.0. On the other side of the estuary from Edinburgh in Fife there is the beautiful village of Culross. These days it tends to be a pilgrimage site for Outlander fans who have sat glued to the screen watching the adventures of Jamie and...

Man vyi, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons ‘My name is Patrick. I am a sinner, a simple country person, and the least of all believers. I am looked down upon by many. My father was Calpornius. He was a deacon; his father was Potitus, a priest, who lived at Bannavem...

By CHE, licensed under CC BY 4.0. Merlin ‘the Wizard’ is one of the most famous characters in legend. Usually we are presented with a Disney-style, romantic and largely fictional account. The bare bones of the actual history rarely see the light of day. In this short...

By CHE, licensed under CC BY 4.0. Princess Thaneu wept as the coracle drifted with the currents in the Forth Estuary. Her father, King Leodonus (Loth) of the Gododdin tribe, had angrily insisted that she should be thrown off the steep edge of Traprain Law. Her crime...

Romary, CC BY 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons If Kentigern has been called the Apostle of Strathclyde in Scotland, Gildas, his contemporary, could be called its prophet. Both of the earliest medieval accounts of The Life of St Gildas place his birthplace near the River...

By CHE, licensed under CC BY 4.0. It’s not often that a king goes on his knees to beg a hermit to become a bishop. But this is what happened to Cuthbert in AD 685. A great synod of church leaders presided over by Archbishop Theodore, in the presence of King Ecgfrith,...

One of Columba’s rugged fellow apostles in the sixth century was Moluag of Lismore in Argyll. Unfortunately most of our information about him comes from later medieval works, and even this is scanty. He was ordained by Comgall who founded the famous Bangor Abbey in...

By CHE, licensed under CC BY 4.0 It is likely that our oldest Celtic crosses no longer exist because of the waves of pagan persecution in the early centuries of the church in Scotland in which Christian buildings, bibles and crosses were destroyed. A further wave of...