Note 46 — V. THULE=ICELAND.

The word “Culdee” is used by Dasent. It was reserved for a sub-learned and ultra-disputatious Icelander, Mr Eirikr Magnússon, to assert at the Anthropological Institute (November 19, 1872), that Culdee is a “general term for men of religious and monastic living, and that the epithet is derived from ‘Cultores Dei.’ The singular is simply the Erse ‘Ceile De,’ or ‘servant of God.’”

The following exhaustive note upon the Culdees was kindly forwarded to me by Dr Richard S. Charnock:

“The Culdees anciently had establishments not only in Scotland and Ireland, but also in England and Wales. They were numerous in Scotland, and continued there from the ninth century to the Reformation. Chalmers (Caledonia) says the Culdees of Scotland are not mentioned in history till about the beginning of the ninth century (circ. A.D. 800-815), and their first establishment was at Dunkeld, under the bishop of that see. They were afterwards (circ. A.D. 850) placed at St Andrews, where they had their chief establishment for many centuries; and it is stated by Buchanan that Constantine III., king of Scotland, who died in A.D. 943, spent the last five years of his life in religious retirement amongst the Culdees of that city. Chalmers states that before the introduction of the canons regular of St Andrews (twelfth century), the Culdees alone acted as secular canons in cathedrals, and as dean and chapter in the election of bishops; and that thenceforth both orders were joined in the right until A.D. 1272, when it was usurped by canons regular. He also says that the Culdees of Brechin continued for many ages to act as dean and chapter of that diocese, and according to Jamieson (History of the Culdees) the Culdees of St Andrews elected the bishop of that see down to the election of William Wishart (1270), when the power was abrogated; but in those early times it appears that the bishops in many sees in Scotland were of the order of Culdees. In G. Cambrensis mention is made of Culdees in the island of Bardsey, off the Welsh coast. The annotator of the Annals of the Four Masters (A.D. 1479) says, ‘By the Latin writers they were called Colidæi, Culdei, Kelidei, and sometimes Deicolæ.’ The Colidei or Culdees are mentioned by various other ancient writers, and by several Scotch historians, as monks in Scotland as early as the fourth and fifth centuries. But the statements of John of Fordan, Hector Boethius, and others, are entirely contradicted by the learned Lanigan. Smith (Life of St Columbkill) and Jamieson (History) have maintained that they were Columbian monks, or members of that order instituted by St Columbkill at Iona, in the Hebrides, and also in various parts of Scotland; and they have represented these Culdees as a very strict and religious order in those early times, from the sixth to the twelfth century. But Lanigan shows that these statements are erroneous, and that the Culdees were not mentioned by the Venerable Bede or any other ancient ecclesiastical writer as Columbian monks, nor in the works of Usher or Ware, nor in the five lives of Columbkill published by Colgan. Lanigan considers that the Culdees were first instituted in Ireland in the eighth or ninth century; and Aongus, surnamed Ceile De, a celebrated ecclesiastical writer of the eighth century, author of Lives of Irish Saints, etc., is supposed to have been a Culdee. They are mentioned in the Annals of the Four Masters and of Ulster (A.D. 920), in which it is recorded that Godfrey, king of the Danes of Dublin, plundered Armagh, but he spared the churches and Colidæi. It appears from Lanigan and other authorities that the Culdees were not, strictly speaking, monks, neither were they members of the parochial clergy, but were a description of secular priests called ‘secular canons,’ and attached to cathedrals or collegiate churches termed prebendaries; and although bound by rules peculiar to themselves, they belonged to the secular clergy, and are to be distinguished from the canons regular, or communities of monks, who sprang up at a much later period, and officiated in the chapters of cathedral churches. The Culdees also sang in the choir, lived in community, and had a superior called ‘Prior of the Culdees,’ who acted as precentor or chief chanter. The principal institution of the Culdees was at Armagh, and, according to Usher and others, there were Culdees in all the chief churches of Ulster; and some of them continued at Armagh down to the middle of the seventeenth century. The Culdees had priories and lands in various parts of Ireland, particularly at Devenish Island, in Fermanagh, and at Clones, in Monaghan, both in the diocese of Clogher; also at Ardbraccan in Meath: and G. Cambrensis gives an account of the Colidæi who lived on an island in a lake in North Munster, which island was called by the Irish Inis na mbeo, or the ‘Island of the Living’ (or of cattle?), from a tradition that no person ever died on it; it was afterwards called Mona Incha, and was situated about three miles from Roscrea, in the bog of Monela, in Tipperary. In the time of G. Cambrensis this island was a celebrated place of pilgrimage; and their residence was afterwards removed to Corbally, a place near the lake, where the Culdees became canons regular of St Augustíne. Though the Irish Culdees were generally clergymen, yet some pious unmarried laymen joined their communities. There were also Culdees in Britain, particularly in the North of England, in the city of York, where they had a great establishment called the Hospital of St Leonard, and were secular canons of St Peter’s Cathedral, as mentioned in Dugdale’s Monasticon; and got some grants of lands in A.D. 936, during the reign of Athelstan, and continued at York at least down to the time of Pope Adrian IV., who confirmed them in their possessions. We also read in the ‘Annals,’ under A.D. 1479, that Pearce, son of Nicholas O’Flanagan, who was a canon of the chapter of Clogher, a parson, and a prior of the Ceile De, a sacristan of Devenish, and an official of Loch Erne (vicar-general of Clogher), a man distinguished for his benevolence, piety, great hospitality, and humanity, died after having gained the victory over the world and the devil. It would appear by the Annals of the Four Masters that Culdees were found in Ireland in A.D. 1601: ‘O’Donnell having received intelligence that the English had come to that place (Boyle), was greatly grieved at the profanation of the monastery, and that the English should occupy and inhabit it in the place of the Mic Beathaidh (monks) and Culdees, whose rightful residence it was till then, and it was not becoming him not to go to relieve them if he possibly could.’ At the Reformation, a little later, out of 563 monasteries in Ireland mentioned by Ware, and also in Archdale’s Monasticon, it would appear that there was one belonging to the Culdees, viz., the Priory of Culdees at Armagh. See also Dr Jamieson’s History of the Culdees, 4to, Edin.; Maccatheus’s History of the Culdees, 12mo, Edin. 1855; and Keith’s Catalogue of Scottish Bishops, new edition.”