Introduction

The problem of medieval Scottish anchoritism evokes the conspiracy theorist's paradigm of the absence of evidence versus the evidence of absence. Although the medieval Scottish church as a whole has been well studied, forms of personal devotion, especially the various manifestations of the eremitical life, have not. Monsignor David McRoberts’ essay of 1965 on the hermits of medieval Scotland remains the only study of the eremitical phenomenon, and this focuses on hermits rather than anchorites. Ian Cowan, arguably the twentieth century's leading authority on the medieval Scottish church, did not discuss either hermits or anchorites in his two standard works on the subject,The Medieval Church in Scotland and Medieval Religious Houses in Scotland. In the early twentieth century, Bishop John Dowden's work The Medieval Church in Scotland: its Constitution, Organisation, and Law covered most aspects of the medieval church except that of the eremitical or contemplative life as lived by the laity. Apart from Mgr McRoberts’ comprehensive article, we are left with little scholarship of the anchoritic phenomenon and virtually no primary evidence (except what the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland databases provide in the way of archaeological evidence). There is nothing to compare with Rotha Mary Clay's exhaustive study of hermits and anchorites in medieval England; there are no known works of anchoritic instruction or authorship in Scotland; the two pontificals which survive from the Middle Ages do not contain a ceremony of enclosure. We are thus left somewhat adrift in our search for Scottish anchorites, and must therefore speculate as best we can about the existence and nature of Scottish anchoritism, and consider why there is so little evidence of a phenomenon which was so widespread throughout the rest of Europe.

Literature overview and the absence of evidence

McRoberts’ study of medieval Scottish eremitism begins with certain assumptions which should be examined by this newer attempt to explain the absence of anchoritism. His statement that ‘in general, the customs and ideas of medieval Scotsmen probably differed little from those of contemporary Europe’ encapsulates both ends of the problem of this absent anchoritism. On the one hand, McRoberts is probably correct that, in general, things, including the anchoritic phenomenon, differed little – the rest of Scotland's religious and cultural aspect was not so radically different from the remainder of Christian Europe to warrant any other assumption.