Saint Columba and the Abbey Kells, the Book of Kells was produced by Celtic monks around 800 AD at the time of the Viking invasions, by monks from the monastery at Iona (off the Western coast of Scotland and as far as Iceland.) The western coast is indented by many lochs and bays of beautifully picturesque appearance, of which some form commodious havens. Ardmeanach, or the Black Isle, so called from its bleak moorland character, is nearly surrounded by the Friths of Cromarty and Moray. The district of Lewis, separated from the main land by the Great Minch, is, from deep indentations of the sea on both sides, apparently an island of itself, but in fact is joined to Harris, forming together the largest of the Western Islands: though less mountainous than Ardmeanach, it is equally dreary and barren.
| The ROSS family is shown in the ancient manuscripts and cartularies as tracing their ancestry to Dalriadian origin. The chief kindreds of the Dal Riada of Argyle, the Cineal Loairn and the Cenél nGabrain, soon spread into much of Scotland with the uniting of their kingdom and the Kingdom of the Picts. Ross was 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 it must have been one of the earliest acts of David's reign. |  |
The O' beolain family were hereditary lay abbots of Applecross, a monastery on the west coast of Scotland opposite the Gaelic island of Raasay. Lay abbot (abbatocomes, abbas laicus, abbas miles) is a name used to designate a layman on whom a king or someone in authority bestowed an abbey as a reward for services rendered. This custom existed principally in the Frankish Empire from the eighth century till the ecclesiastical reforms of the eleventh. Charles Martel was the first to bestow extensive ecclesiastical property upon laymen, political friends and soldiers. Earlier the Merovingians had bestowed church lands on laymen, or at least allowed them their possession and use, though not ownership. Similar to Regensburg (Bavaria). Numerous synods held in France in the sixth and seventh centuries passed. Many monasteries, though not founded by the king, placed themselves under royal patronage in order to share his protection, and so became possessions of the Crown. This custom of the Merovingian rulers was taken as a precedent by the French kings for rewarding laymen with abbeys, or giving them to bishops in commendam. St. Boniface and later Hincmar of Reims picture most dismally the consequent downfall of church discipline, and though St. Boniface tried zealously and even successfully to reform the Frankish Church. Louis the Pious aided St. Benedict of Aniane in his endeavours to reform the monastic life. Under Pepin the monks were permitted, in case their abbey should fall into secular hands, to go over to another community. The important Abbey of St. Riquier, Somme was part of the diocese of Amiens in Ponthieu (Centula) in Picardy had secular abbots from the time of Charlemagne, who had given it to his friend Angilbert, the poet and the lover of his daughter Bertha, and father of her two sons (Saint Angilbert).
The Cille place-name in Kiltearn tells us that there had been a very ancient Gaelic church near Evanton, like all Cille place-names, founded before 800. The current Gaelic name Cill Tighearna ("Church of the Lord") is probably a corruption of an older form, both because the name formation is unusual in being dedicated to the Lord Himself, and because the form given in 1227 is Kiltierny, suggesting some kind of connection to the Tigernach, Bishop of Clogher in Ireland.
As the Islands were situated on the way of the Norwegians to Ireland, Iceland, however, is not the only Norwegian settlement to which the Western Islands have been. Towards the end of the 8th century, came the Culdees from Ireland. The name of the Island of Sodor was based on a Church of England diocese named "Sodor and Man". The Papar (from Irish pap, father or pope) were, according to early Icelandic historical sources, a group Irish monks that inhabited Iceland at the time of the arrival of the Norsemen. In the Icelandic sagas, víking refers to an overseas expedition and víkingr, to a seaman or warrior taking part in such an expedition. The first book Gesta gives a history from 788 onwards of the Church in Hamburg-Bremen, and the Christian mission in the North. It consists of four volumes about the history of the archbishopry of Hamburg-Bremen, and the isles of the north. The court society surrounding Eric Bloodaxe in 10th-century Viking York has been celebrated in one of the more authentic portions of Icelandic saga-literature. The Native Norwegian settlers of Old West Norse often married women from Norse Ireland, the Orkneys, or Shetlands before settling in the Faroe Islands and Iceland. Long ago Viking destination-on the island of Sandoy, significant evidence from the Viking age islands of Skúvoy and Stóra Dimon are also areas of great importance in the Faroese Saga. Olaf Tryggvason converted the people to Christianity; as early as 1076 they had a bishop of their own. Canute IV is also the patron saint of Denmark.
The Dal Riada were originally a tribe of North Antrim in Ireland, but from as early as the third century, and especially during the late fifth century there had been a steady settlement of the adjacent coastal and island areas of Scotland by these Dal Riada Scots. In 1267 this Gillecrist (Gilchrist) was appointed hereditary keeper of the Castle of Fraoch Eilean on Loch Awe, thenceforward to be held for the King of Scots by the Clan MacNachtan. A branch of the clan returned to Loch Tay and Glen Lyon, and was connected with the bishopric of Dunkeld. The Cairneys or Cairdeneys (Cardanaigh) of Foss in Perthshire descend from Sir John de Ross, son of the Earl of Ross, who came south in the train of Euphemia de Ross in anticipation of her marriage to Robert The Stewart in 1355. Not long after the accession of Robert and Euphemia as King and Queen of Scots in 1371, John de Ross received a grant from the King of the barony of Cardeney near Dunkeld, in which charter he is styled dilectus consanguineus foster. He assumed the epithet "de Cardeney" to replace that of "de Ross" (Ross was not yet a surname). At Dunkeld, Crinan the mormaer, the grandfather of Malcolm Canmore, was a lay abbot, and tradition says that even the clerical members were married, though like the priests of the Eastern Church, they lived apart from their wives during their term of sacerdotal service. The Kindred of Saint Columba had come into the Crown of Scotland in earlier times, when Bethoc, daughter of Malcolm II, King of Albany married Crinan (ca. 975—1045), Thane (temporal lord) and (hereditary) Abbot of Dunkeld, and Seneschal (household officer or administrator) of the Isles. Gosfred, Duke of Aquitaine, was Abbot of the monastery of St. Hilary at Poitiers-bishop of Pictavium, and as such he published the decrees issued (1078) at the Synod of Poitiers (Hefele, op. cit., V, 116).