The Isle of May Priory was a monastery and community of Benedictine monks established for 9 monks of Reading Abbey on the Isle of May in the Firth of Forth, Scotland, in 1153, under the patronage of David I of Scotland. The priory passed into the control of St Andrews Cathedral Priory in the later 13th century, and in 1318 the community relocated to Pittenweem Priory on the Fife coast.
The upstanding and excavated remains of the priory were listed as a scheduled monument in 1958. [1] [2]
Ethernan was a 7th-century Scottish monk martyred by the Picts around 669 and believed to be buried on the Isle of May. which became the centre of his cult. [3] He was honored in a number of places in Scotland; [4] pilgrims came to the Isle of May to pray at his shrine for healing. [5]
Adrian of May later built a monastery on the Isle of May, which likely consisted of a series of Irish-style beehive-shaped houses and a chapel. [6] The island was a popular destination for pilgrims during the later Middle Ages. Around 875, marauding Vikings invaded the island and slaughtered the monks. [7] The island was then abandoned for centuries.
At some point during the Middle Ages, Ethernan got conflated with Adrian of May, whose shrine attracted pilgrims for the next several centuries. His cult is most likely a misremembering of Ethernan from a time when the Picts had ceased to function as an ethnic group within Scotland and ancient martyrdoms in Britain and Ireland were commonly attributed to Vikings. [5]
In 1145, King David I of Scotland gave the island to Reading Abbey, (founded by his brother-in-law, Henry I of England) in Berkshire, England. The monks agreed to maintain nine priests on the island to pray for the souls of the Kings Of Scots. The English Benedictines erected a small monastery dedicated to St. Mary the Virgin, with a shrine to St. Ethernan. [6] The King and his successors endowed the priory with many gifts. [8]
Building was hampered due to raiding parties of Scandinavians who had settled in Orkney. The privations and isolation of the location finally led Reading Abbey to sell the property to the Bishop of St. Andrews in 1288, who gave it the canons of St. Andrews.
In the late thirteenth century, a jurisdictional dispute arose between the Bishop of St. Andrews and Reading over ownership of the island. When in 1313 the island was declared a part of the diocese of St. Andrews, English forces attacked the island and destroyed the monastery. A new chapel was subsequently built in honor of St. Adrian. In 1318, the Augustinians relocated to Pittenweem Priory.
Lindisfarne, also known as Holy Island, is a tidal island off the northeast coast of England, which constitutes the civil parish of Holy Island in Northumberland. Holy Island has a recorded history from the 6th century AD; it was an important centre of Celtic Christianity under Saints Aidan, Cuthbert, Eadfrith, and Eadberht of Lindisfarne. The island was originally home to a monastery, which was destroyed during the Viking invasions but re-established as a priory following the Norman Conquest of England. Other notable sites built on the island are St Mary the Virgin parish church, Lindisfarne Castle, several lighthouses and other navigational markers, and a complex network of lime kilns. In the present day, the island is an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and a hotspot for historical tourism and bird watching. As of February 2020, the island had three pubs, a hotel and a post office as well as a museum.
Dunfermline Abbey is a Church of Scotland parish church in Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland. The church occupies the site of the ancient chancel and transepts of a large medieval Benedictine abbey, which was confiscated and sacked in 1560 during the Scottish Reformation and permitted to fall into disrepair. Part of the old abbey church continued in use at that time and some parts of the abbey infrastructure still remain.
The Culdees were members of ascetic Christian monastic and eremitical communities of Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England in the Middle Ages. Appearing first in Ireland and then in Scotland, subsequently attached to cathedral or collegiate churches; they lived in monastic fashion though not taking monastic vows.
Dunsmore is a name with a separate origin in Scotland and England.
St Neots Priory was a Benedictine monastery beside the town of St Neots in the historic county of Huntingdonshire, now a non-metropolitan district in the English county of Cambridgeshire.
Pittenweem ( ) is a fishing village and civil parish in Fife, on the east coast of Scotland. At the 2001 census, it had a population of 1,747.
Pittenweem Priory was an Augustinian priory located in the village of Pittenweem, Fife, Scotland.
The Isle of May is located in the north of the outer Firth of Forth, approximately 8 km (5.0 mi) off the coast of mainland Scotland. It is about 1.5 kilometres long and 0.5 kilometres wide. The island is owned and managed by NatureScot as a national nature reserve. There are now no permanent residents, but the island was the site of St Adrian's Priory during the Middle Ages.
The Tironensian Order or the Order of Tiron was a medieval monastic order named after the location of the mother abbey in the woods of Thiron-Gardais in Perche, some 35 miles west of Chartres in France). They were popularly called "Grey Monks" because of their grey robes, which their spiritual cousins, the monks of Savigny, also wore.
Saint Fillan was a sixth-century Scottish monk active in Fife. His feast day is 20 June.
Iona Abbey is an abbey located on the island of Iona, just off the Isle of Mull on the West Coast of Scotland.
The English Benedictine Congregation (EBC) is a congregation of autonomous abbatial and prioral monastic communities of Catholic Benedictine monks, nuns, and lay oblates. It is technically the oldest of the nineteen congregations affiliated to the Benedictine Confederation.
Christianity in medieval Scotland includes all aspects of Christianity in the modern borders of Scotland in the Middle Ages. Christianity was probably introduced to what is now Lowland Scotland by Roman soldiers stationed in the north of the province of Britannia. After the collapse of Roman authority in the fifth century, Christianity is presumed to have survived among the British enclaves in the south of what is now Scotland, but retreated as the pagan Anglo-Saxons advanced. Scotland was largely converted by Irish missions associated with figures such as St Columba, from the fifth to the seventh centuries. These missions founded monastic institutions and collegiate churches that served large areas. Scholars have identified a distinctive form of Celtic Christianity, in which abbots were more significant than bishops, attitudes to clerical celibacy were more relaxed and there were significant differences in practice with Roman Christianity, particularly the form of tonsure and the method of calculating Easter, although most of these issues had been resolved by the mid-seventh century. After the reconversion of Scandinavian Scotland in the tenth century, Christianity under papal authority was the dominant religion of the kingdom.
St Andrews Cathedral Priory was a priory of Augustinian canons in St Andrews, Fife, Scotland. It was one of the great religious houses in Scotland, and instrumental in the founding of the University of St Andrews.
The Prior of May then Prior of Pittenweem was the religious superior of the Benedictine monks of Isle of May Priory, which later moved to the mainland became called Pittenweem Priory. The priory was originally based on the Isle of May, but was moved by 1318 to its nearby mainland site of Pittenweem, Fife, passing from the overlordship of Reading Abbey (Benedictine) to St Andrews Cathedral Priory (Augustinian). The following is a list of priors and commendators:
In the Middle Ages, from the 11th century, the Cluniac order established a number of religious houses in England, Wales, and Scotland.
Saint Canute's Abbey, Odense was a Benedictine monastery built to support the pilgrimage centre for the relics of the royal Danish martyr Saint Canute, and was the successor to the priory of St. Mary and St. Alban, Denmark's earliest monastic house. Located in Odense, it was the island of Funen's most important medieval religious institution.
Saint Adrian of May was a martyr-saint of ancient Scotland, whose cult became popular in the 14th century. He is commemorated on 3 December. He may have been a bishop of Saint Andrews.
Ethernan was a 7th century Scottish martyr and saint. The focus of his cultus was the Isle of May.
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