The Highlanders of Scotland - Clan Strachan Society

122 THE HIGHLANDERS [part i
termed the northern Scots, it will appear very plain that the
Scoti in Christum Credentes, to whom Palladius was sent as
primate, were the southern Scots, or Scots proper, and that Saint
Patrick's mission was directed principally to the Irish Picts,
or northern Scots, who alone formed his church. In A.D. 414,
Ninian, a bishop of the British church, converted the southern
Picts to ; Christianit}' and in 565, Columba, a presbyter of the
church founded b_\- Saint Patrick, by
the conversion of the
king- of the northern Picts, added that nation to the church,
which previousl}- consisted of the northern Scots of Ireland
onl\-. To the same church also belonged the Scots of Britain,
who came over from the north of Ireland sixty years before-
the arrival of Saint Columba. Now,
it must be remarked that
the churches of Britain, of the southern Scots founded b}'
Palladius, and of the southern Picts by Ninian, had all emanated
and although they did not owe ecclesiastical
from Rome ;
obedience to the aspiring bishops of that cit}-, they unquestion-
abl\' derived their form of government and worship from her,
and, accordingl}', when again brought in contact with their
mother church, in the person of Augustine, they were not found
to differ in an}- essential particular. The church of the northern
Picts and northern Scots, to which the name of Culdee was
afterwards given, and which owed its origin to St. Patrick,
was in a very different situation, for it as unquestionably
emanated from the church of Gaul, a church ahvays opposed
to that of Rome, and claiming a descent from the church of
it was
Ephesus, and its founder, St. John the Evangelist ; and
under the teaching of St. Martin of Tours that St. Patrick
framed the system of church government which he afterwards^
introduced. The principal writer from whom any information
regarding the Culdee church is to be derived is the Venerable
Bede, and we accordingl)' find that writer imputing to the Culdee
church certain peculiarities
in its outward form and government
which he implies not to have existed in other churches.
The passage in Bede upon which both parties found their
principal argument with regard to the form of government
in the Culdee church, is the following :— " Habere autem solet
ipsa insula rectorem semper Abbatem Presbyterum cujus juri et
omnis provincia et ipso etiam episcopi, ordine inusitato debeant