A new investigation of the saints' cults which flourished in medieval Scotland, fruitfully combining archaeological, historical, and literary perspectives. Of all the Celtic countries, Scotland has lacked the kind of scholarly attention that has been lavished fruitfully on Wales, Ireland, Cornwall and Brittany. And yet of all of them, Scotland offers the widest range of interfaces with broader work on the cult of saints. The papers presented here cover this territory very effectively.... [the book] brings together excellent studies that successfully explore the wide ramifications of the topic. Anyone with aninterest in saints' cults will want this book. DAUVIT BROUN, Professor of Scottish History, University of Glasgow. This volume examines the phenomena of the cult of saints and Marian devotion as they were manifested inScotland, ranging from the early medieval period to the sixteenth century. It combines general surveys of the development of the study of saints in the early and later middle ages with more focused articles on particular subjects,including St Waltheof of Melrose, the obscure early medieval origins of the cult of St Munnu, the short-lived martyr cult of David, duke of Rothsay, and the Scottish saints included in the greatest liturgical compendium producedin late medieval Scotland, the Aberdeen breviary. The way in which Marian devotion permeated late medieval Scottish society is discussed in terms of the church dedications of the twelfth and thirteenth-century aristocracy, the ecclesiastical landscape of Perth, the depiction of Mary in Gaelic poetry, and the pervasive influence of the familial bond between holy mother and son in representations of the Scottish royal family. Dr Steve Boardman is Reader in History, University of Edinburgh; Eila Williamson gained her PhD from the University of Glasgow. Contributors: Helen Birkett, Steve Boardman, Rachel Butter, Thomas Owen Clancy, David Ditchburn, Audrey-Beth Fitch, Mark A.Hall, Matthew H. Hammond, Sim Innes, Alan Macquarrie

Essays consider the changes and development of Scotland at a time of considerable flux in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The years between the deaths of King Mael Coluim and Queen Margaret in 1093 and King Alexander III in 1286 witnessed the formation of a kingdom resembling the Scotland we know today, which was a full member of the European club ofmonarchies; the period is also marked by an explosion in the production of documents. This volume includes a range of new studies casting fresh light on the institutions and people of the Scottish kingdom, especially in thethirteenth century. New perspectives are offered on topics as diverse as the limited reach of Scottish royal administration and justice, the ties that bound the unfree to their lords, the extent of a political community in the time of King Alexander II, a view of Europeanization from the spread of a common material culture, the role of a major Cistercian monastery in the kingdom and the broader world, and the idea of the neighbourhood in Scots law. There are also chapters on the corpus of charters and names and the innovative technology behind the People of Medieval Scotland prosopographical database, which made use of over 6000 individual documents from the period. Matthew Hammond is a Research Associate at the University of Glasgow. Contributors: John Bradley, Stuart Campbell, David Carpenter, Matthew Hammond, Emilia Jamroziak, Cynthia Neville, Michele Pasin, Keith Stringer, Alice Taylor.

A landmark of scholarship on medieval Scotland. Professor Dauvit Broun, University of Glasgow. Personal names can provide a rich and often overlooked window into medieval society, and Scotland's diversity of languages over the course of the Middle Ages makes it an ideal case study. This book offers a range of new methodological approaches to anthroponymy, covering Gaelic, Scandinavian and other Germanic names, as well as names drawn from the Bible, the saints, and secular literature. Individual case studies include a comparison of naming in early medieval Scottish and Irish chronicles; an authoritative taxonomy of Gaelic names drawn from twelfth and thirteenth-century charters; a revolutionary new analysis of the emergence of surnames in Ireland, with implications for Scottish history; a complete linguistic discussion of the masculine Germanic names in the 1296 Ragman Roll; a detailed local case study of saints. names in Argyll which bears on place-names as well; and an examination of the adoption of Hebrew Old Testament names in central medieval Scotland. Dr MATTHEW HAMMOND is a Research Associate at Kings College London. Contributors: Rachel Butter, Thomas Owen Clancy, John Reuben Davies, Valeria DiClemente, Nicholas Evans, Matthew Hammond, Roibeard O Maolalaigh, David Sellar, Tom Turpie.

A new investigation of the saints' cults which flourished in medieval Scotland, fruitfully combining archaeological, historical, and literary perspectives. Of all the Celtic countries, Scotland has lacked the kind of scholarly attention that has been lavished fruitfully on Wales, Ireland, Cornwall and Brittany. And yet of all of them, Scotland offers the widest range of interfaces with broader work on the cult of saints. The papers presented here cover this territory very effectively.... [the book] brings together excellent studies that successfully explore the wide ramifications of the topic. Anyone with aninterest in saints' cults will want this book. DAUVIT BROUN, Professor of Scottish History, University of Glasgow. This volume examines the phenomena of the cult of saints and Marian devotion as they were manifested inScotland, ranging from the early medieval period to the sixteenth century. It combines general surveys of the development of the study of saints in the early and later middle ages with more focused articles on particular subjects,including St Waltheof of Melrose, the obscure early medieval origins of the cult of St Munnu, the short-lived martyr cult of David, duke of Rothsay, and the Scottish saints included in the greatest liturgical compendium producedin late medieval Scotland, the Aberdeen breviary. The way in which Marian devotion permeated late medieval Scottish society is discussed in terms of the church dedications of the twelfth and thirteenth-century aristocracy, the ecclesiastical landscape of Perth, the depiction of Mary in Gaelic poetry, and the pervasive influence of the familial bond between holy mother and son in representations of the Scottish royal family. Steve Boardman is Professor of Medieval Scottish History at the University of Edinburgh; Dr Eila Williamson is a Research Associate in English Language and Linguistics at the University of Glasgow. Contributors: Helen Birkett, Steve Boardman,Rachel Butter, Thomas Owen Clancy, David Ditchburn, Audrey-Beth Fitch, Mark A. Hall, Matthew H. Hammond, Sim Innes, Alan Macquarrie