The Architecture Of The Scottish Medieval Church 1100 1560

Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art.

A major difficulty for those who wish to understand and enjoy Scottish medieval churches is the ecclesiological groundwork was not carried out in the nineteenth century in the way that was done for England and other parts of Europe. In an effort to interpret what they see when visiting Scottish churches, many people attempt to apply techniques of analysis they have learned from English publications but that way madness lies. Even in the twelfth and eleventh centuries, when architectural relationships between Lowland Scotland and England were close, Scotland followed its own course in many respects, while in the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries Scottish architecture followed an almost completely different course from that of England. The present ground-breaking work makes good this deficit and analyses the planning and detailing of Scottish churches from 1120 to 1560 with hundreds of illustrated examples that can be firmly dated. The result is a book that will be welcomed by scholars but, equally importantly, will also be treasured by the hundreds of thousands of ordinary church-crawlers who value this aspect of Scotland's medieval heritage. For them this book, overdue by more than 100 years is a must.

Exploring the medieval heritage of Aberdeenshire and Moray, the essays in this volume contain insights and recent work presented at the British Archaeological Association Conference of 2014, based at Aberdeen University. The opening, historical chapters establish the political, economic and administrative context of the region, looking at both the secular and religious worlds and include an examination of Elgin Cathedral and the bishops’ palaces. The discoveries at the excavations of the kirk of St Nicholas, which have revealed the early origins of religious life in Aberdeen city, are summarized and subsequent papers consider the role of patronage. Patronage is explored in terms of architecture, the dramas of the Reformation and its aftermath highlighted through essentially humble parish churches, assailed by turbulent events and personalities. The collegiate church at Cullen, particularly its tomb sculpture, provides an unusually detailed view of the spiritual and dynastic needs of its patrons. The decoration of spectacular ceilings, both carved and painted, at St Machar’s Cathedral, Provost Skene’s House and Crathes Castle, are surveyed through the eyes of their patrons and the viewers below. Saints and religious devotion feature in the last four chapters, focusing on the carved wooden panels from Fetteresso, which display both piety and a rare glimpse of Scottish medieval carnal humour, the illuminated manuscripts from Arbuthnott, the Aberdeen Breviary and Historia Gentis Scotorum. The medieval artistic culture of north-east Scotland is both battered by time and relatively little known. With discerning interpretation, this volume shows that much high-quality material still survives, while the lavish illustrations restore some glamour to this lost medieval world.

The construction of a church was undoubtedly one of the most demanding events to take place in the life of a medieval parish. It required a huge outlay of time, money and labour, and often a new organisational structure to oversee design and management. Who took control and who provided the financing was deeply shaped by local patterns in wealth, authority and institutional development - from small villages with little formal government to settlements with highly unequal populations. This all took place during a period of great economic and social change as communities managed the impact of the Black Death, the end of serfdom and the slump of the mid-fifteenth century. This original and authoritative study provides an account of how economic change, local politics and architecture combined in late-medieval England. It will be of interest to researchers of medieval, socio-economic and art history.

A Companion to the Reformation in Scotland deals with the making, shaping, and development of the Scottish Reformation. 28 authors offer new analyses of various features of a religious revolution and select personalities in evolving theological, cultural, and political contexts.

Essays centred on the methods, pleasures, and pitfalls of architectural interpretation. Architecture affects us on a number of levels. It can control our movements, change our experience of our own scale, create a particular sense of place, focus memory, and act as a statement of power and taste, to name but a few. Yet the ways in which these effects are brought about are not yet well understood. The aim of this book is to move the discussion forward, to encourage and broaden debate about the ways in which architecture is interpreted, with aview to raising levels of intellectual engagement with the issues in terms of the theory and practice of architectural history. The range of material covered extends from houses constructed from mammoth bones around 15,000 years ago in the present-day Ukraine to a surfer's memorial in Carpinteria, California; other subjects include the young Michelangelo seeking to transcend genre boundaries; medieval masons' tombs; and the mythographies of early modern Netherlandish towns. Taking as their point of departure the ways in which architecture has been, is, and can be written about and otherwise represented, the editors' substantial Introduction provides an historiographical framework for, and draws out the themes and ideas presented in, the individual contributors' essays. Contributors: Christine Stevenson, T. A. Heslop, John Mitchell, Malcolm Thurlby, Richard Fawcett, Jill A. Franklin, StephenHeywood, Roger Stalley, Veronica Sekules, John Onians, Frank Woodman, Paul Crossley, David Hemsoll, Kerry Downes, Richard Plant, Jenifer Ní Ghrádraigh, Lindy Grant, Elisabeth de Bièvre, Stefan Muthesius, Robert Hillenbrand, AndrewM. Shanken, Peter Guillery.

Written to celebrate the prestigious career of Professor Denys Pringle, this collection of articles produced by many of the leading archaeologists and historians in the field of crusades studies offers a compilation of pioneering scholarship on recent studies on the Latin East. The geographical breadth of topics discussed in each chapter reflects both Pringle’s international collaborations and research interests, and the wide development of scholarly interest in the subject. With a concentration on the areas corresponding to the crusader states during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the articles also offer research into the neighbouring areas of Cyprus, Anatolia, Greece and the West, and the legacy of the crusader period there, with results from recent archaeological fieldwork in the Middle East.

"Excavations and surveys adjacent to Hirsel House, Coldstream, have revealed a remarkably detailed history of a proprietory church and its cemetery for a period when the parochial structure in Scotland was in course of development, and when very little is known about the fate of estate churches after they were donated to support the newly founded monasteries of the 12th century. The church is set in a landscape with evidence for settlement from the Neolithic to the establishment of Hirsel House, the seat of the Earl of Home. Here, in an estate the boundaries of which has changed very little since the Middle Ages, a small unicellular drystone structure developed into a well-built Romanesque church with a rare example of its bell founding structure intact. The subsequent history when the church was burnt, robbed of stone and used for domestic purposes, then finally destroyed and covered over in the late Middle Ages is graphically illustrated by the wealth of artefacts from the site. There are traces of other medieval buildings to the north of the site and the cemetery-one of the largest rural cemeteries in Scotland- provides an interesting range of burial modes, as well as, together with the environmental evidence from the site, an insight into the community which the church and cemetery served."