Celtic Scotland : a history of ancient Alban / by William F. Skene.

  • William Forbes Skene
Date:
1886-1890
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Celtic Scotland : a history of ancient Alban / by William F. Skene. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    63/546 (page 39)
    districts north of the great mountain range called the Mounth, being still pagan; and we find indications that the church, as then constituted, proved ineffectual to win over the people to any great extent to a thorough adoption of Christianity, and that a very general relapse to paganism had taken place. Jocelin is probably reporting a genuine tradition when, Apostasy Of 0^p]y in his Life of Kentigern, he says that the Piets, who had churches, received the faith from Ninian, had lapsed into apostasy; and so also the author of the older Life of Kentigern, when he terms a king of the Piets of Lothian ‘semi-pagan.’77 St. Patrick, in his epistle to Coroticus, written probably towards the end of his life, terms Coroticus, in whom we have already recognised that Ceretic Guledig from whom the Icings of Alcluith or Alclyde were descended,78 ‘ a tyrant who fears neither God nor his priests,’ and his followers ‘ wicked rebels against Christ, and betrayers of Christians into the hands of the Scots and Piets.’ The latter, too, he repeatedly terms the apostate Piets, and says that the people ruled by Coroticus were no longer ‘his fellow-citizens, or the fellow-citizens of pious Eomans, but were the fellow-citizens of demons,’ and the ‘ associates of Scots and apostate Piets.’79 It is apparent that the churches founded by Ninian and Patrick had in the main failed to effect a permanent con- version of the native tribes to Christianity, and that the latter was doomed to witness, even in his own life, a great declension from the Christian Church and relapse into paganism. It required a different organisation to establish the Christian Church on a firm and permanent basis among 77 Cap. xxvii.—Picti vero prius 78 See vol. i. p. 158, note, per Sanctum Ninianum ex magna parte . . . fidem susceperunt. Dein 79 See Miss Cusack’s Life, of Saint in apostasiam lapsi . . . Patrick, p. 613, for this epistle and Rex igitur Leudonus vir semi- a translation, and for the expres- paganus. sions above quoted.