Page:The ecclesiastical architecture of Scotland ( Volume 3).djvu/49

 venerable ruin adds an unexpected and charming interest to the lovely scenery of the locality. The mountain range through which the pass penetrates long formed a barrier to the access of the Scottish kings to the Celtic provinces further north, and the nearness of the Highland clans was a constant source of menace to the Church. For that reason the bishop's palace had to be constructed as a fortified stronghold; hence, perhaps, the name of Dunkeld, the fort of the Keledei or Culdees.

After the destruction of Iona by the Norsemen in the beginning of the ninth century, Dunkeld was selected by the King of the Picts as a secure place, remote from the sea, and comparatively safe from the attacks of the Vikings, in which a mother church in lieu of Iona might be established. To this retreat a portion of the relics of Columba were brought by King Kenneth Macalpine in 850, and here he resolved to place the abbot of his new monastery as bishop over the Church in the territories of the Southern Picts, with a view to the ready reorganisation of the Scottish monasteries, so that they should form one diocese under one bishop.

But the primacy of the Pictish Church did not remain long at Dunkeld, being transferred in the end of the ninth century to Abernethy, on the south side of the Frith of Tay.

The abbots in those days had become great lay proprietors, having lawful wives, and succeeding to the benefices of their abbacies by hereditary descent. One of these lay abbots of Dunkeld married a daughter of Malcolm, and it is remarkable that it was by their descendants that the religious order in Scotland was changed. The new order of things, which had been initiated by St. Margaret, was continued by her son, Alexander, who, in 1107, created two new bishoprics in the more remote and Celtic portion of his kingdom, the first being that of Moray, and the second that of Dunkeld. Alexander also brought, in 1115, a body of canons regular to Scone Abbey, and a few years later he established the same order in the diocese of Dunkeld. He also, in 1122, introduced canons regular to a monastery he had built on an island in Loch Tay, and, in 1123, founded the monastery of Inchcolm, and introduced the same order there.

The Cathedral of Dunkeld has been the see of several distinguished bishops. Bruce's friend and supporter, Bishop Sinclair, held this see; and Gavin Douglas, the well-known scholar and translator of the ''Æneid of Virgil'', was Bishop of Dunkeld.

The buildings which now exist are of much more recent date than the days of Queen Margaret's sons. Alexander Myln, a canon of Dunkeld in 1505, and afterwards Abbot of Cambuskenneth and first President of the College of Justice, has fortunately left a history of the lives of the Bishops of Dunkeld, which professes to give a more minute account of the