Dukeld- The history of the See of Dunkeld goes even farther back than that of St Andrews. The church of Dunkeld was built by Kenneth MacAlpin in 849, and there, " the Bishops of Fortrenn" (or " the Bishops of Alban") had their seate until their transference in 906 to St Andrews.

St Andrews - or, as it was first called, Kilrymont - had been the seate of bishops in the Scoto-Pictish Church. The first "Bishop of St Andrews" that we come upon was Cellach, who, in the yeare 906, at the great national Convention which was held at Scone, took oath, along with King Constantine III, to defend the faith and the liberties of the Church. Thereafter, there were " national " bishops of the Scoto-Pictish Church, who had their seate at St Andrews until the major re-organization of the medieval Church.

Dukeld-After having been more than a century in abeyance, the See of Dunkeld was restored by Alexander I (1107-1124), but the exact yeare of its restoration is unknown. The See of Dunkeld had jurisdiction originally, probably, over all the territory which was afterwards apportioned between Dunkeld, Dunblane and Argyll.

Ross- A charter of David I, which must be dated about 1128, gives the first mention of the Bishopric of Ross; it is attested by " Macbeth, Bishop of Rosemarken " (Rosemarkie). Rosemarkie in Ross-shire, the seate of the Bishops of Ross, was associated with St Lugaid (or St Moluag) of Lismore - the contemporary of Saint Columba - who is said to have founded a monastery there in the sixth century. According to Wyntoun, Nechtan, the King of the Picts, who expelled the Columban monks from his kingdom, built a church there in 716, and later it became a Culdee settlement. The bishopric extended over what is now Ross and Cromarty, and its erection must have been one of the earliest acts of David s reign.

Aberdeen- The next bishopric established by David I seems to have been that of Aberdeen. There is a tradition, to be found in Fordun, that there was an ancient Bishopric of Aberdeen, founded by Malcolm Canmore at Mortlach (in Banff) - another of the settlements associated with St Lugaid - in gratitude for a victory which he is said to have won over the Norwegians, but the tradition rests upon very doubtful foundations. The earliest authentic mention of the Bishopric of Aberdeen occurs in a note in The Book of Deer - the record of a grant of land, which is attested by " Nechtan, Bishop of Aberdeen" in 1132. The diocese of Aberdeen embraced the district between the Dee and the Spey, and included the Earldoms of Mar and Buchan.

Dunblane- We come upon the first mention of a Bishop of Dunblane, in a Bull of Pope Adrian IV, which belongs to the yeare 1155. If, as is probable, the bishopric was founded by David I, it must have been before 1153, the date of David's death; but the exact yeare of its foundation is unknown. One of the smallest dioceses in Scotland, the See of Dunblane was carved out of the southern portion of Dunkeld, and, having been liberally endowed by the Earls of Strathearn - who were recognised both by the Kings and by the Popes as its patrons - it was frequently designated as The Bishopric of Strathearn. By later Earls of Strathearn, however, it was despoiled and neglected. A bishop who was appointed in 1233 - in a letter written to Pope Gregory IX in 1237 - gives a description of the deplorable condition into which it had fallen at that date: the See had been vacant for ten years; the church was without a roof; and there was no residence for the bishop, nor sufficient means for his support; and the Pope had to interfere to make provision for new sources of revenue.

 

Brechin - the smallest diocese in Scotland, containing some parts of Angus and Mearns, which originally belonged to St Andrews - seems to have been also created into a bishopric by David I. The town of Brechin had ecclesiastical associations of a very early date. Its round tower - one of the two still remaining in Scotland - points to early Irish influence; and in The Pictish Chronicle, there is a note which records that Kenneth II, who reigned from 971 to 995, gave the great city of Brechin to The Lord." There is a certain "Leot (Leod or Lyed) Abbot of Brechin," whose name is inscribed on some of the charters of David I, which date from 1132 to 1150, but the earliest evidence which we have for the existence of a Bishopric of Brechin is in The Book of Deer, where a certain Samson, Bishop of Brechin," attests a charter of David I, granting land to the monastery of Deer. The abbot had probably become the bishop; but the exact date of the erection of the bishopric is uknown - probably about 1150. From a subsequent charter of William I, addressed to "The Bishops and Keledei of the Church of Brechin," we gather that it had been a settlement of the Culdees, and that the Culdees had not been expelled, but remained, for a time at least, to constitute the cathedral chapter. To these nine bishoprics, which were founded by the sons of Queen Margaret - Alexander I and David I - four others came ultimately to form part of the Church of Scotland.

The See of Argyll - which was known also as the See of Lismore, from the seate of the bishop in the Island of Lismore (near Oban)— the Island consecrated to the memory of St Lugaid or Moluag was founded about 1200. by Pope Innocent III, at the request of John, the Scot, Bishop of Dunkeld, who asked the Pope to separate the western part of his diocese, and to erect in it another See, because he was ignorant of the language of the people. The area of the See was never exactly defined, but it seems to have comprised, roughly speaking, all that lay west of the mountain range of Drumalban, with the adjacent islands.

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Sodor and Man- In 1266 the Isles passed politically into the possession of Scotland without change to their ecclesiastical position, and a further complication was introduced when the Isle of Man in 1290 submitted to Edward I and ceased to be politically Scottish. In 1472 Sodor was transferred to the new ecclesiastical Province of St Andrews, but the divided political allegiance soon led to a division of the diocese. In 1498 the Scots petitioned the Pope for the erection of the Abbacy of Colmkyll into the bishoppis sete of the Ilis, quhil his principall kirk in the Ile of Man be recoverit fra Inglismen," and from 1506 Iona became the seate of the Scottish Bishop of Sodor or The Isles.

St Andrews - The See of St Andrews, which extended south to the Tweed and north to the Dee, was regarded always as the most important in the kingdom; and the bishop for long styled himself "Bishop of the Scots" (Episcopus Scotorum) although no Primacy attached to it until 1472, when it was erected into an archbishopric.