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Alexander Myln, Bishop George Brown, and the Chapter of Dunkeld
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 February 2016
Extract
It might seem reasonable to assume that Alexander Myln’s Vitae episcoporum Dunkeldensium was a humanist document. He begins with a paragraph called by Hannay a dedication to Bishop Gavin Douglas and to the canons of Dunkeld who were promoted in the time of Bishop George Brown. If anyone in early sixteenth-century Scotland deserves the name humanist, Douglas is the man, and one would expect a work dedicated to him to adopt a corresponding style. The book, however, does not wholly live up to expectations. Myln was a lawyer devoted to documents, and his normal style is that of the early records which he consulted. The dedication is no more than a formal greeting to the Bishop and Myln’s other colleagues on the residentiary Dunkeld chapter.
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- Part III. The Church in Scotland
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- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1991
References
1 Myln, A., Vitae Dunkeldensis eccleshe episcoporum, Bannatyne Club (1831)Google Scholar hereafter Myln, Vitae].
2 Hannay, R. K., Réntale Dunkeldense (Edinburgh, 1915), p. 338Google Scholar [hereafter Dunkeld Réntale]. A translation of Myln, Vitae, from the election of Bishop Brown to the end of the work occupies pp. 302–34.
3 Myln, Vitae, pp. 54–70; Dunkeld Rentale, pp. 320–31. For a good general account of medieval Scottish cathedral chapters see Dowden, J., The Medieval Church in Scotland (Glasgow, 1910), pp. 55—104Google Scholar; Dilworth, cf. Mark, ‘The Augusrinian Chapter of St Andrews’, The Medieval Church of St Andrews, ed. McRoberts, D. (Glasgow, 1976), pp. 121–36Google Scholar.
4 Dates for ecclesiastic officers are taken from D.°£. Watt, R., Fiuti, Ecclesiae Scoticarne medii Aevi adannum 1638, 2nd edn (St Andrews, 1969Google Scholar).
5 New Spalding Club (1894).
6 Bannacyne Club (1839).
7 Myln, Vitae.pp. 1–2.
8 Dunkeld Rentale, pp. xiv-xvi.
9 Anderson, Marjorie O., Kings and Kingships in Early Scotland, rev. edn (Edinburgh and London, 1980), p. 233. The regnal lists occupy pp. 264–89Google Scholar.
10 Joannis de Fordun Scotichronicon cum Supplementi et Continuatione Walteri Boweri, ed. W. Goodall, 2 vols (Edinburgh, 1759). See also the edition of books iii and iv by J. and W. MacQueen (Aberdeen, 1989).
11 For the Highland house see John Dunbar, ‘The medieval architecture of the Scottish Highlands’ in Maclean, L., ed., The Middle Ages in the Highlands (Inverness, 1981), pp. 48–9, 67Google Scholar (hall-houses); 53–4, 68 (tower-houses). The old bishop’s palace mentioned below appears to resemble the principal residence of the MacDonald Lords of the Isles on two small islands in Loch Finlaggan, Islay, see Argyll. An Inventory of the Monuments (Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland, 1984), pp. 275–81.
12 Two poems in Watson, W.J., ed., Scottish Versefrom the Book of the Dean of Lismore; (Scottish Gaelic Text Society, 1937Google Scholar) deal with sorneis or thiggers, as they are sometimes called. The more general, a poem probably composed between 1476 and 1490 by a MacDonald bard, Giolla Coluim, occupies pp. 66–81; there are valuable notes, pp. 272–7. A direct satire on an individual sorner, Lachlann Galbraith, occupies pp. 14–21; it is by Sir Duncan Campbell of Glen Orchy, who was killed at Flodden. Both poems are thus approximately contemporary with the reference in the text.
13 See the Introduction to Watson, Scottish Verse.