Book 2 — CHAPTER VI. THE SECULAR CLERGY AND THE CULDEES. (continued 2)
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Canonical rule brought into Scotland, and Keledei become canons.
The canonical rule appears to have been adopted in Scotland not long after it had been introduced into Ireland; for, as we learn from the Chronicles, two hundred and twenty-five years and eleven months after the church of Abernethy had been founded by Gartnach, son of Domelch, who reigned from 584 to 599, the church of Dunkeld was founded by Constantin, son of Fergus king of the Picts, who reigned from 790 to 820. This places the foundation of 276Dunkeld some time between the years 810 and 820, and the tradition of Dunkeld, as reported by Alexander Mylne, a canon of that church in 1575, is that he placed there ‘religious men who are popularly called Keledei, otherwise Colidei, that is God-worshippers, who, according to the rite of the Oriental Church, had wives, from whom, however, they withdrew while ministering, as was afterwards the custom in the church of St. Regulus, now St. Andrew;’[503] while Wyntoun, the prior of Lochleven, tells us that
Awcht hundyr wyntyr and fyftene
Fra God tuk fleysch off Mary schene,
Leo and Charlys bath ware dede,
And Lowys than in Charlys stede.
The kyng off Peychtis Constantyne
Be Tay than foundyd Dwnkeldyne,
A place solempne cathedrale,
Dowyd welle in temporalle.
The byschape and chanownys thare
Serẅys God and Saynct Colme, seculare,
Off oure byschoprykis, off renowne
The thryd, and reputatyowne.[504]
The date assigned by Wyntoun to the foundation of Dunkeld is probably correct, and those religious men who Mylne says were popularly called Keledei, Wyntoun here calls ‘chanownys seculare.’
Conclusion as to origin of the Culdees.
The result, then, that we have arrived at is that the Culdees originally sprang from that ascetic order who adopted a solitary service of God in an isolated cell as the highest form of religious life, and who were termed Deicolæ; that they then became associated in communities of anchorites, or hermits; that they were clerics, and might be called monks, but only in the sense in which anchorites were monks; that they made their appearance in the eastern districts of Scotland at the same time as the secular 277clergy were introduced, and succeeded the Columban monks who had been driven across the great mountain range of Drumalban, the western frontier of the Pictish kingdom; and that they were finally brought under the canonical rule along with the secular clergy, retaining, however, to some extent the nomenclature of the monastery, until at length the name of Keledeus, or Culdee, became almost synonymous with that of secular canon.
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