The Highlanders of Scotland - Clan Strachan Society

130 THE HIGHLANDERS [part i
essentially, and in the strictest meaning of the term, an episcopal
church.
On the transference of the primacy from Armagh to lona,
many of the other monasteries of the Picts became episcopal,
and were placed under the government of the bishop-abbot. In
this state the church continued with little variation till the
conquest of the southern Picts by the Scots of Dalriada. The
church which previously existed among the southern Picts was
one of those which had emanated, though not immediately,
from Rome, and it .differed in no essential particular from other
churches. On the conquest of that race by the Scots, the
Culdee church and .system of polit}- was introduced by the
conquerors, and in consequence of this great
accession of terri-
tory to the Culdee church, and of the ruin of the Irish part of
their Establishment by the Danes, the primacy was once more
removed from lona to Dunkeld, a church belonging to the
northern Picts ; and this monastery being an episcopal one, the
anomalous form of government which had resulted from the
primacy of lona ceased for ever. ^ With Dunkeld the primacy
continued for forty years only, for the Culdee churches estab-
lished by Kenneth in the conquered territory of the southern
Picts, and which were peculiarl}^ Scottish, appear to have
become jealous of their subjection to the Pictish bishop of Dun-
keld, arid to have taken advantage of the usurpation of the
throne by Grig, a chief of the northern Picts, to procure from
him, probably as the price of their subm.ission, the removal of
the primacy from Dunkeld to Saint Andrews. ^ After this
period there appears to have been no alteration in the outward
form of the church until the reign of David.
^ It is universally admitted that ' The Chronicon Elegiacum says of
Dunkeld was founded after the con- Grig, " Qui dedit Ecclesiae libertates
quest, by Kenneth M'Alpine. That Scoticante quse sub Pictorum lege
the primacy was likewise removed to redacta fuit " ; and as it is in this
it appears from the two following reign that the Bishop of St. Andrews
passages in the Annals of Ulster :— is first termed "Primus Episcopus,"
A.D. 864. TuathalMacArtguso,Prmz