The Beginnings of Literacy in Scotland: Where to start?

The Beginnings of Literacy in Scotland:

Where to start?

The study of literacy in early medieval Europe has generally focused on the surviving manuscript culture, evidenced by such works as Gregory of Tours' History of the Franks and Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica, and early writings such as diplomas, charters and letters, like St Patrick's letter to Coroticos of Clyde Rock. But what happens when there are no surviving manuscripts to study? Early medieval Scotland presents such a problem. Here, the historian is faced with a corpus of inscribed monuments and objects in a variety of scripts and languages, mainly dating from the fifth century onwards and it is only from the late ninth century that one possible manuscript of Scottish provenance survives. Work to date has focused on the epigraphic, paleographical, art-historical and linguistic study of these inscriptions. The question now is what do these inscribed objects tell us of the beginnings of literacy in early medieval Scotland?

For the evidence for literacy in early medieval Scotland the best or perhaps only place to start is at the end. The study of literacy in early medieval Europe has mainly focused on the evidence from manuscripts[1]. There are a few manuscripts from before 1000 AD in Ireland and Wales, such as the sixth or seventh century Cathach of St Columba[2], and many more survive in England and on the Continent. However, compared to the rest of Britain and Ireland, Scotland is notably lacking in early manuscripts. There are no Pictish or North British manuscripts that survive at all. From the Gaelic west there is a better survival rate. For example, the Schaffhausen, Stadtbibliothek, Gen.1  preserved at St Gall is the oldest surviving copy of Adomnán of Iona's Life of Columba. It was copied on Iona during or shortly following Adomnán's lifetime in the late seventh or early eighth century and was taken to the continent. There is, however, debate concerning whether the evidence from Iona and the Gaelic kingdom of Dal Riada would be better included in the Irish milieu.

Thus, arguably one of the earliest surviving manuscripts from Scotland is the Book of Deer[3] from Old Deer in Aberdeenshire. This is an illuminated Gospel Book which has generally been dated to the end of the ninth century and the beginning decades of the tenth, with later additions from the eleventh century. The Latin Gospel text was written in a hand that was current during the period c. 850-1000. Although the Book of Deer is closest in character to a number of Irish manuscripts, scholars have tended to agree on a Scottish origin. The eleventh century additions include a brieve of King David I in favour of the 'clerics of Deer', which at least suggests the manuscript was at Old Deer during this time. It belongs to a category of ‘Irish pocket Gospel Books’ which were produced for private use rather than for church services.

On the surface the Book of Deer would suggest that by c.900 there were people at Old Deer with the necessary skills, facilities and resources to produce this manuscript. Someone knew how to prepare vellum and ink. There was at least one scribe who could copy Latin text in a well-known contemporary script. The same scribe or possibly a separate artist had the skill to illuminate the Gospel pages. There was also somebody who commissioned its production, either for themselves or another individual. Of these various individuals, we would suspect the scribe and hopefully the owner of the book were literate to a certain extent. The scribe would be able to both read and write in Latin; the owner at least able to read Latin. What does this tell us about the beginnings of literacy in early medieval Scotland? To be honest, apart from demonstrating the ability to produce manuscripts at Old Deer and the literate skills of a scribe around 900 AD, not much can be gained from this.

Why are there no surviving manuscripts from before the late ninth/early tenth century? One answer would be that there were no manuscripts in the first place. Another may be that Pictish and northern British documents were unlikely to have continued to be preserved and copied in the new ‘Scottish’ kingdom of Alba under the MacAlpín dynasty and so are lost to history[4]. In either case, the result would be the same. For Scotland then the direct study of manuscripts is not suitable in the search for the evidence for the beginnings of literacy or the means to assess its use and impact except for later periods. With the surviving Book of Deer we only have the final results of a tradition literacy which must have been introduced much earlier.

We know that there must have been literate people in Scotland in the early medieval period. Christianity was reasonably well established in many regions by the seventh century. Although no liturgical or biblical texts survive, it is implausible that they did not exist as the Church could not function without them. Literacy in Scotland may not have been dependant on Christianity, but Christianity as a religion of the book was certainly dependant on literacy. For the church to function efficiently a considerable amount of writing was required; Psalters, Gospel Books, the Letters of Paul and other books of the Bible were just the start. Jane Stevenson in her work on the St Patrick and Book of Armagh has concisely stated that if Patrick founded a Christian church among the Irish on the fifth century he would also have had to found a school of Latin literacy and biblical study if the church was to survive after his death[5]. We know of no evidence to suggest that the church in Pictland and among the Britons was culturally or intellectually deviant to this. In his eighth century Historia Ecclesiastica Bede states that the four peoples of Britain were united in their use of Latin[6]. All four peoples to whom he referred lived in what is now Scotland: the Britons, Picts, Scots and Angles. Bede even names a literate Pict: king Nechtan mac Der-Ilei had assiduously studied ecclesiastical writings and computus before his consultation with the abbot of Wearmouth-Jarrow[7]. There are depictions of figures holding or reading books and carrying book satchels on Pictish sculpture, such as the cross-slab at Nigg, St Vigeans 11 and 17, Aberlemno 3 and the cross-slab on Papil, Shetland. It is believed that the monuments of Scotland both inscribed and not could only have been produced from a background familiar with manuscripts and art-historian point to the layout on the panels of monuments reflecting a ‘manuscript derived aesthetic’[8].

What then can be said about the beginnings of literacy in Scotland? What was the impact of literacy on the population? How was literacy used in society? How significant was the link with Christianity and Romanitas? What did it actually mean to be literate in this period? Who learnt to read and write? How did they do so and why? My research will hopefully answer these questions and more through a series of case studies investigated such topics as are highlighted below. Most work to date has been focused on the study of inscriptions, both on monuments of various functions and smaller artefacts. This has mainly concerned the content of the inscriptions and centred on epigraphical, paleographical, art-historical and linguistic studies. Little work has been concerned with impact of the spread and use of literacy that these inscriptions and other evidence could shed light on. It is hoped that new research will remedy this.

The first thing to understand is that what is now modern day Scotland was by no means a backwater in the early medieval period. The same influences that were at work in the rest of Britain and Europe were present in Pictland, the British kingdoms of the north and the lands of the incoming Angles. There were Christians in the south of what is now Scotland from the fourth and fifth centuries. A number of them left behind Latin inscriptions on upright pillars from the Solway to the Forth. The most famous of which is the ‘Latinus’ stone from Whithorn in Dumfries and Galloway. These early inscribed Christian, or otherwise, monuments of Scotland form the northerly extension of a cultural milieu which covered all the former western lands of the Roman Empire and later ranged from Ireland in the west and to Byzantium in the east. The work of Mark Handley has shown that the early inscriptions of Scotland share many features with the Roman inscriptions of Britain and should be seen as part of a larger pattern of epigraphic practice also indicated in Spain, Italy, France and North Africa during late antiquity[9]. There was a decline in inscriptions in Britain as elsewhere in the third century in the Roman Empire, followed by a rise in Christian inscriptions in the late fourth/early fifth centuries. The later monuments demonstrate a continuation of this practice adopted by the early medieval peoples of Scotland, who all seem to have taken their own unique interpretation of the tradition.

To begin with I have looked at the earliest inscribed monuments, the associated sites and buildings of the stones, and their landscape setting in southern Scotland and the surrounding regions of northern England, north-east Ireland and the Isle of Man[10]. Too often material from the different regions of Britain and Ireland has been looked at in isolation from each other. This is anachronistic as during the early medieval period there were no such entities as ‘England’ or ‘Scotland’ and may result in important evidence having been missed or ignored. These early monuments are part of a wider cultural milieu encompassing much of the British speaking regions in the west of Britain surrounding the Irish Sea and which spanned the sub-Roman and early medieval periods. It is important to include the sub-Roman material as the sculptural phenomenon was part of a longer tradition of commemoration. The evidence may help us to see how the function of such monuments might have changed over time and so how literacy was mobilised in different ways to fulfil certain needs.

This assemblage of monuments, labelled Group I by Nash Williams, has been dated to the fifth to seventh centuries and consists of 240+ inscribed stones, twelve of which are spread from the Solway to the Forth and which have examples spanning the whole period. The stones in Scotland seem to mostly lack the ogham inscriptions that are found further south, but an important group dated to the sixth century show the influence of ogham. Research so far has shown the Group I stones from the north of Britain can be divided into two epigraphic sub-groups based on their interpreted function. The first sub-group is firmly established in an ecclesiastical background. Those, such as the group of monuments at Kirkmadrine on the Rhinns of Galloway, make prominent use of Christian art and are either dedicated to clerics with no lineage or kinship information related or they are not funerary monuments. They are all sited it places which became medieval parish churches. The second sub-group appear to have had a more secular, proprietorial function.

The earliest stones in Group I, such as the Latinus Stone from Whithorn and the Catstane from Kirkliston, seem to be linked with a group of around twelve so-called ‘extended Latinate’ inscriptions from western Britain dated on paleographical grounds to the fifth century. These share a classically-inspired horizontal layout, early forms of Roman capital script, the use of Roman influenced names and relatively lengthy texts of similar but unique compositions. They are also overtly Christian. Analogies from further south seem to indicate that this earliest group marked special graves at or near secular power centres. The ‘extended Latinate’ inscriptions from elsewhere in Britain frequently show strong Roman connections and often stand at important points on the Roman road system as well as on or near later medieval parish boundaries. It is increasingly clear that medieval parish boundaries date back to earlier secular administration units. This can be arguably said of the Latinus stone and especially of the Brigomaglos and Catstane stones[11]. The stones also express the lineage and kin associations of those named. The later group of the Group I inscribed stones dated to the sixth century are not so overtly Christian, indicating a society where Christianity was more widespread. They also differ in their vertical layout and ungrammatical use of the genitive case. An example is the Yarrow stone. These characteristics seem to have been derived from the Irish ogham tradition of inscriptions widespread in the British speaking world. There is emphasis on the lineage of the named individuals and the settings of the stones that can be reconstructed show they were located at important points in the secular landscape and used to mark special or family graves. The monuments seem less like individual commemorations and more like communal monuments.

These provide tantalising hints that although literacy was linked with Christianity and the church, in the centuries immediately following the removal of the Legions literacy was utilised by the emerging military elites to forge new landowning aristocratic identities. The elites seem to have been drawing prestige from association with the old imperial religion and its tradition of literate commemoration. This has important implications for the status of literacy amongst the elite and the possible continuance of schools catering to the education of aristocrats. Linked to this is the work of Charles Thomas’s on biblical style used on early Christian monuments, where the inscriptions seem to contain embedded messages for those with the knowledge of arithmetical and numerological patterns encoded into the letters, syllables and words of the text, thus hinting at the extensive educational background of those who composed the texts^[12]. The inscribed stones also seem to being used to mark boundaries and land units, indicating the importance of literacy and the expression of literacy to power and control of land. A catalogue of known inscriptions describing their spatial placement, landscape location and interpreted function is in the process of construction.

This may have implications concerning the function of the Pictish Class I and II stones from further north in Scotland displaying the enigmatic Pictish symbols. Current thought is divided as to whether or not these symbols constituted a form of writing[13]. What is agreed is that the monuments themselves seem to conform to the wider background of sculptural commemoration. They seem to have functioned in the same way as the two sub-groups above. Pictish Class I symbols stones are often found in early burial grounds. For example, at Garbeg, Invernesshire, there are at least 26 round and square burial mounds within a cemetery, from which a Pictish symbol stone was recovered. At Lundin Links in Fife, the unusual design of a number of individual and composite burials, their location and relationship to other commemorative monuments has been likened to the symbols stones and the use of the symbols themselves[14]. Class II monuments like the three examples from the Tarbat peninsula, situated at Shandwick, Nigg and Hilton of Cadboll, seem to have held conspicuous places in the landscape and there are hints of their use as boundary markers and symbols of power and control of both secular and ecclesiastical administration units. If the Pictish symbols were used as a form of communication or writing, we may be seeing an indigenous reaction to Roman influence. The Irish ogham script and Germanic runic scripts seem to have been developed with some influence and knowledge of Roman writing. The next stage for research is to investigate how far this can be said of the Pictish symbols. One point in favour of this is the use of Pictish symbols on portable objects, such as on a number of Pictish silver chains, and as what appears to be graffiti, such as at the caves in East Wemyss in Fife. This incidental and informal use of the symbols does suggest they were used in the same ways as other known scripts.

A different aspect of research has focused on the materiality of literacy. Whether writing was committed to velum, inscribed on stones or carved in wood in various scripts, the processes would have left material remains, some of which would have left tangible traces in the archaeological record. Martin Carver’s work at Portmahomack on the Tarbat peninsula has uncovered the evidence one would expect for leather working and the production of vellum manuscripts: large amounts of cattle and sheep bone, a workshop area with what appears to be a lined tank with a culvert, interpreted as a tanning pit, knives and bone needles for cutting, finishing and stitching leather, implements for smoothing and finishing fine leather surfaces, and pegs for frames to stretch leather. There was also evidence suggestive of seaweed ash in the hearths of the workshop[15]. This would have been an additive to the tanning process if the result wanted was light coloured, smooth, stretched, fine leather; the surface of which would be suitable for writing. These processes would have required a huge amount of resources. Only the very well off would be able to produce books and manuscripts.

This however only refers to such formal and display texts as Gospel books and manuscripts; reading and writing need not have been an expensive pursuit. Analogy from elsewhere in Britain, Ireland and Europe shows the use of wood, bone and wax to produce writing. As these are organic in nature, such finds are unusual survivals and need extreme conditions for preservation. Such survivals include the Springmount bog tablets from County Antrim. These are six waxed yew tablets dated to the sixth century displaying portions in Latin of Psalms and interpreted as aids to learn both the Psalms and to read and write. The Vindolanda tablets from Hadrian’s Wall and examples of runes on slips of wood from Scandinavia also provide evidence of the kinds of inexpensive but sadly ephemeral material that could have had widespread use for writing in the early medieval period. An ogham-inscribed spindle-whorl made from chalk/limestone found during excavation of the Point of Buckquoy, Birsay, on Mainland Orkney, provides a significant hint in this direction and evidence of the personal use of writing.

Further work will be centred on the how literacy in the early medieval period was related to the reading of images. Reading the images on the monuments and what lies behind them is like reading a text and deciphering the meanings and layers behind. Many monuments, in Argyll particularly, do not have inscriptions, just highly complex images, although they seem to fulfil some of the same functions as inscribed monuments elsewhere. Some monuments, such as the Drosten Stone from St Vigeans, Angus, have inscriptions but they are tiny in size and appear in secondary locations compared to the main visual ‘text’ of the carved images. The work of Leslie Webster on ‘Visual Literacy’ in Anglo-Saxon England suggests the early medieval period writing was first used as an image and the long standing tradition of reading complex images amongst the Anglo-Saxons helped assimilate the use of the written word[16]. Many monuments not only depict scenes from the bible but also images which may refer to local secular tales or literature. This iconography shows the cultural context within which the carvers and inscribers worked. The images also highlight that there were various modes of communication that were available in early medieval society and may shed some light on how writing may have been used as well.

Finally, as a side project hagiography, annals, chronicles and early historical narratives will be studied for references to communication of all forms, including literate modes, to consider the intricate way oral and written modes were intertwined and understand for what purposes writing was used. The difficulty with this is establishing how far back the information contained within the documents goes back, as all survive in much later manuscript copies, and what elements have been edited along the way for different purposes. For example, the earliest surviving life of St Kentigern, an early British saint, was written in the twelfth century by Jocelin of Furness but drew on earlier sources.

It is hoped that this research into these various indications for the beginnings of literacy in Scotland will be able to highlight the multifunctional use of the written word outside of the world of manuscripts and assess the impact of the spread and use of literacy in early medieval northern Britain.

Bethan Morris

School of History, Classics and Archaeology

University of Edinburgh

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[1] See for example the articles in R. McKitterick, ed., The Uses of Literacy in Early Medieval Europe (1990) and H. Pryce, ed., Literacy in Medieval Celtic Societies (1998).

[2] Royal Irish Academy MS 12 R 33

[3] Cambridge University Library, MS. Ii.6.32

[4] There are documents surviving from the tenth century and later which may have earlier exemplars. These seem to have been earlier documents which were of interest or use to the new Gaelic/’Scottish’ monarchy and so copied, edited and preserved. Examples are the two genealogical tractates, Cethri príchenéla Dáil Riata and Míniugud senchasa fher nAlban and the Pictish kings lists.

[5] J. Stevenson, ‘Literacy in Ireland: the evidence of the Patrick dossier in the Book of Armagh’, in R. McKitterick, ed., The Uses of Literacy in Early Medieval Europe (1990), 11-35; 15.

[6] Bede, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum; B. Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors, eds., Bede’s Ecclesiastical History (Oxford, 1991), I.1.

[7] Bede, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum; B. Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors, eds., Bede’s Ecclesiastical History (Oxford, 1991), V.21.

[8] K. Forsyth, ‘Literacy in Pictland’, in H. Pryce, ed., Literacy in Medieval Celtic Societies (1998), 39-61; 41.

[9] M. Handley, ‘The Origins of Christian commemoration in late antique Britain’, Early Medieval Europe 10, 2 (2001), 177-199.

[10] An approach advocated by K. Forsyth in her ‘Hic Memoria Perpetua: the early inscribed stone of southern Scotland in context’ in S. Foster and M. Cross, eds., Able Minds and Practised Hands (2005).

[11] We do not know where the Latinus stone originally stood at Whithorn, and the Roman evidence from the site is weak. However, the area has wider Roman associations and is linked visually with the Roman fort of Maryport on the Cumbrian coast even on a moderately clear day. Maryport has its own Christian inscribed stones from the fourth century and shares many epigraphic characteristics with the fifth century Brigomaglos stone from Chesterholm in Cumbria and so to the Latinus stone.

[12] Cf. C. Thomas, Christian Celts: Messages and Images (1998).

[13] Cf. K. Forsyth, ‘Some thoughts on Pictish symbols as a formal writing system’ in I. Henderson and D., Henry, eds., The Worm, the Germ and the Thorn: Pictish and Related Studies Presented to Isabel Henderson (1995), 85-98, and R. Samson, ‘The reinterpretation of the Pictish symbols’, Journal of British Arch Assoc 145 (1992).

[14] Cf. H. Williams, ‘Depicting the dead: Commemoration through cists, cairns and symbols in early medieval Britain’, Cambridge Archaeological Journal 17:2 (2007), 145-64.

[15] Cf. M. Carver, ‘An Iona of the East: The Early-Medieval Monastery at Portmahomack, Tarbat Ness’, Medieval Archaeology 48 (2004), 1-30.

[16] Cf. L. Webster, ‘Visual Literacy in a Protoliterate Age’, in P. Hermann, ed., Literacy in Medieval and Early Modern Scandinavian Culture (2005), 21-46.