History Scotland Magazine: Review - Scotland and Europe. The Medieval Kingdom and its contacts with Christendom, 1214-1560

Scotland and Europe. The Medieval Kingdom and its contacts with Christendom, 1214-1560

David Ditchburn

Tuckwell Press, East Linton 2001. Pb 16.99.

This is the first volume of David Ditchburns magisterial survey of Scotlands relations with Europe in the High and Later Middle Ages. It is sub-titled Religion, Culture and Commerce, while vol. 2 will be more broadly political. The present one is therefore concerned with social and economic interaction between Scotland and Christendom from the 4th Lateran Council of 1215 to the Council of Trent (1545), or in regnal terms from the beginning of the reign of Alexander II to the end of James Vs reign. The author demonstrates that religion was of fundamental importance in this period whatever area of contact is being analysed, and it is his discussion of the later medieval church throughout Europe, and Scotlands place within the European church which is fluent and informative, full of detail derived from a wide range of sources.

So the chapter on The Religious Bonds starts off with Religious Education and the international quality of learning and of Church Councils: Orthodoxy and heterodoxy discusses the forms of devotional expressions and the lack of evidence for early adherents of Lollardy or Hussite heresy in Scotland. In a Europe - indeed England - where these forms of religious dissent flourished and provide evidence of an intelligentsia dissatisfied with the late medieval church it is rather surprising to find that such dissent struck little resonance in a country notable throughout the modern era for its adherence to non-conformism and antagonism to establishment structures. This evidence for a religiously conservative population is mirrored in the rest of the book, and tells us about a society on the northern fringes of medieval Christendom, which received impulses at second-hand from the richer, more urbanised and more forward-looking societies of the larger national units to the south. One would not really expect anything else, given the geographical remoteness of much of Scotland. What is more remarkable is the evidence that Scotland was an integral part of medieval Christendom, and the point is made that the piety of kings and nobility opened the country up to the international monastic orders which contributed to the Europeanisation of the country. Scots were involved in the fashionable pilgrimage ventures despite the great distances involved, as also in the later crusading movements.

In his discussion of the Structural Bonds the author skilfully sketches out Scotlands incorporation in the international corporate company which was the medieval church. One can never ceased to be amazed by the way in which this company functioned, with its complex administrative structures, its chain of command, its provisions and appointments, its fiscal devices. This is the stuff of medieval administrative history, and the complexity is beyond many medieval historians (this reviewer anyway!). But the author makes it all very intelligible, with wide-ranging European comparisons drawn from his deep reservoir of knowledge sometimes usefully derived from the Atlas of Medieval Europe (which he co-edited). All historians of the medieval church in their own country have to understand the wider picture and should fit their own episcopal/parish/taxation structures into the institutional framework, but few do. The language barrier is one of the biggest hurdles to our understanding. But this author has no language problems and no problems comprehending what the medieval church is all about. His own European background must certainly help him here. I did sometimes wonder if he was too much of an apologist for the late medieval church. Unlike many historians he does defend it, and exonerates its failings by reason of the demands put upon it.

The Cultural Bonds encompasses another huge area, and obviously can only touch on certain aspects of art, literacy, architecture. It is unfair to pick on absent elements, but I did wonder why the library of Henry Sinclair (1506-1565) was not mentioned, described as the largest surviving pre-Reformation group of books in secular hands in the recent Oxford Companion to Scottish History. It is also rather odd that the wills of Alexander Sutherland of Dunbeath and David Sinclair of Sumburgh are said to contain no references to books, and then a few lines later we learn that a primar buk is mentioned in the formers will (while it can be added that The Buke of Gude Maneris is definitely referred to in the latters!). Sticking with the Sinclairs I would have thought that Rosslyn Chapel (founded 1446) was certainly worthy of mention as a building which completely baffles the architectural historians looking for continental examples from which its fantastical embellishment may have been derived.

Moving to the Economic Bonds the author enters a sphere in which he is a specialist, and he covers the commodities, the trading ventures, the manufacture of cloth, the imports and exports, and the boom and decline of the medieval Scottish economy with a light touch and a depth of understanding. His knowledge of Germanic languages gives him a mastery over the Dutch and north German source material which is probably unparalleled in recent Scottish historiography. Understanding the origins of the different trading links and the way in which Scottish merchants had to contend with other trading rivals in the North Sea and the Baltic, and with the political and military uncertainties, is not simple. The nature of the Baltic trade and the balance of trade with the different Baltic ports is outlined and quantified as far as the evidence permits, but the pattern is not easy to establish. If it is reasonable to assume (p.178) that Scottish merchants who brought cloth to the Baltic ports may have returned with fish, why can one not also assume that they may have taken back timber - the Eastland buirds which have been a matter of some lengthy discussion a few pages earlier? Incidentally Tallinn is not, of course, a Latvian town, but an Esthonian one.

So far, the book has been concerned with many aspects of Scottish history which have been written about before, perhaps primarily based on others use of the sources. But in the last chapter, Immigrants and Emigrants we have a wealth of new evidence which opens up a window on the role of the Scot abroad, as merchant, craftsman, labourer, huckster and vagabond, soldier, cleric and student. It is in these roles that the medieval kingdom had its prime contacts with Christendom, through the individual experience of the itinerant Scot abroad. The extent to which the itinerant Scot penetrated the north European countries from England to Poland in the later medieval centuries and early modern period is truly amazing (of course they continued to play a mercenary role for much longer). It is difficult to generalise from the wealth and variety of the evidence but the Scottish pedlar was a standard figure throughout northern Europe, and one who was not always- or indeed much-welcome in the host countries. From recently-discovered Continental heraldic evidence it would appear that the figure of a beggar was regarded as a suitable heraldic device for the kingdom of Scotland, however much one might shy away from such a characterisation.

This development is a separate story: an extension of the medieval kingdoms contact with Christendom. It is a story of emigrant Scots who became affiliated into foreign societies, many of whom stayed and did not come home again. It is not the story of Scotlands internationalism. It could be a reflection of Scotlands isolation. As the author says, it is facile to generalise about the experience of emigrant Scots (p.249), and the evidence he has marshalled (much of it new) and presents with such masterly understanding provides more than a glimpse of the variety of experience and achievement of the Scot abroad. The analysis he offers for this phenomenon is as convincing as the explanations for the natural hostility with the English. We look forward to the follow-up to this final section in Volume 2. May one suggest that better maps might be produced for that volume (the usual grouse of this reviewer!), and possibly some illustrations?

Barbara E.Crawford, University of St. Andrews