The Cult of Saints and the Virgin Mary in Medieval Scotland

Of all the Celtic countries, Scotland has lacked the kind of scholarly attention that has been lavished fruitfully on Wales, Ireland, Cornwall and Brittany. And yet of all of them, Scotland offers the widest range of interfaces with broader work on the cult of saints. The papers presented here cover this territory very effectively.... (the book) brings together excellent studies that successfully explore the wide ramifications of the topic. Anyone with an interest in saints' cults will want this book. DAUVIT BROUN, Professor of Scottish History, University of Glasgow. This volume offers studies of saints' cults in Scotland, ranging from the early medieval period to the sixteenth century, and combining major overviews with exploration of different topics from different disciplines -- archaeology, literature, and history, especially political. There is a strong focus on the development of particular cults, using them to discuss wider issues such as the tension between 'popular' sanctity and official canonisation processes in medieval Europe, and the difficulty of establishing the validity of geographical patterns in the distribution of dedications to individual saints. The volume also includes two major overview articles, surveying the general trends in modern scholarship on, and the investigation of, saints' cults. Contributors: Helen Birkett, Steve Boardman, Rachel Butter, Thomas Owen Clancy, David Ditchburn, Audrey-Beth Fitch, Mark A. Hall, Matthew H. Hammond, Sim Innes, Alan Macquarrie