Page:Chronicles of the Picts, chronicles of the Scots, and other early memorials of Scottish history.djvu/167

 PEEFACE. cHx exactly seven, points so strongly to the seven provinces of the Pictish kingdom, that it seems to indicate the establishment of a diocesan episcopacy. The "Legend of St. Servanus" (App. No. vi.) also belongs to this period, for he is said, according to the chronicle in the " Scalacronica," to have entered Fife in the reign of Brude, brother of this Nectan ; and that he belonged to the same mission seems indicated by the fact that both he and Bonifacius are said to have been natione Israelitici, and that one of the seven bishops mentioned in the " Legend " of Bonifacius " is Servandus or Servanus. With the departure of the Columban clergy, the veneration of St. Columba as the apostle of the northern Picts seems to have been given up, at least by the southern portion of that people, and St. Peter now became the patron saint of the kingdom, and continued to be so till the year 736, when Angus, the son of Fergus, established his power by the defeat of Nectan himself, and the other compe- titors for the throne. As this king rapidly brought the territories of the other Pictish families under his sway, and even added Dalriada to his kingdom, he seemed desii'ous to connect a new ecclesiastical influence with his reign, for, in the same year that he completed the conquest of Dabiada, he founded a church at St. Andrews, in which he placed a new body of clergy, who had brought the relics of St. Andrew with them, and this apostle soon became the more popular patron saint of the kingdom, while