sniffy
Senior Reporter
This is nearly a thousand years before the Renaisnace: the book of Kells, hords of Roman and Saxon invasions. Celtic lore and actual history as broad and expansive as Lord of the Rings.
Martin of Tours day Nov 11
http://www.electricscotland.com/history/wylie/vol2ch6.htm
Martin, as a matter of course, could communicate his views to Ninian; and Ninian would as naturally defer to the great doctor then in the zenith of his fame. The missionary of Galloway became a convert to monachism as an agency for combating the corruption and dispelling the ignorance of the age. On these lines he would henceforward work on returning to his native land. Accordingly, before leaving Tours he arranged with Martin that masons should follow him into Scotland and build him a sanctuary in which he might celebrate wo
rship with more solemnity than aforetime. Were there no worke
rs in stone in Scotland? Doubtless there were, but they were unskilled in the architecture of such edifices as Ninian now wanted for the worship of the Britons. A church of wattles had contented him aforetime, but now he had been to Rome, and he must needs frame his worship somewhat more on an Italian model. He had sat at the feet of Pope Damasus; and though he had not changed the substance of his Christianity, he had changed somewhat the outward forms of its expression. His piety bore about it henceforeward a Roman flavour. The experts arrived from Tours in due time, and the building was commenced. It rose at Whithorn, on the north shore of the Solway, on a rocky promontory jutting boldly out into the Irish Sea.[2] It was constructed of white stone; hence its name, Candida Casa, the white house. Martin of Tours died while it was in course of erection, and this fixes its date at the year A.D. 397. [3] It was dedicated to Martin, and is believed to b
e the first edifice of stone which was built for the wors
hip of God in Scotland.
No better site could Ninian have selected as a basis from which to carry on his missionary labours. His field of service lay within the two walls. This was the territory, of all others in Britain, the most exposed to the tempests of invasion and war. Now it was the Picts and Scots who descended upon it from the North to spoil the fair fields of the provincials; and now it was the Romans who hurried up from the South to drive back the plundering hordes and rescue the lives and properties of the helpless natives. It is hard to say whether the spiritless people suffered more from the ravaging Pict, or from their ally the Roman. When battle raged, Ninian could retire to his promontory, and there find sanctuary; and when the storm had passed, he would again come forth and resume his labours. For though the promontory of Galloway formed part of the debatable land, it was really outside of it, so far as concerned the incursions o
f plundering armies. It ran off to the south-west, stretc
hing far into the tides of the Irish Channel, and was surrounded on all sides by the sea, save on the north where it joins the mainland. Its southern and western sides present a wall of precipitous cliffs, inaccessible to the invader, though they open in creeks in which a boat, pressed by the tempest, may find shelter. The remote and difficult character of the locality gave it exemption from the inroads of war, though the echoes of battle sounded almost continually in its solitudes. The Romans in their progress northward passed it by, seeing nothing in the lonely wood-clad projection to make them diverge from their line of march; and when the mountaineers descended to rob the harvests and barnyards of its neighbours, they concluded, doubtless, that there was nothing in the barren promontory to reward a predatory visit, and so they too left it untouched. It was lying in its native ruggedness when Ninian took possession of it. It was covered with thick fo
rests, amid which dwelt a tribe of native Britons, to
which Ptolemy gives the name of Novantes, and which he tells us had built two towns, clearing, doubtless, a space in the forest, and constructing their houses with the timber which had grown on the site. The names of the two towns were Rerigonium and Leucopibia.[4]
http://www.snake.net/people/paul/kells/
Martin of Tours day Nov 11
http://www.electricscotland.com/history/wylie/vol2ch6.htm
Martin, as a matter of course, could communicate his views to Ninian; and Ninian would as naturally defer to the great doctor then in the zenith of his fame. The missionary of Galloway became a convert to monachism as an agency for combating the corruption and dispelling the ignorance of the age. On these lines he would henceforward work on returning to his native land. Accordingly, before leaving Tours he arranged with Martin that masons should follow him into Scotland and build him a sanctuary in which he might celebrate wo
rship with more solemnity than aforetime. Were there no worke
rs in stone in Scotland? Doubtless there were, but they were unskilled in the architecture of such edifices as Ninian now wanted for the worship of the Britons. A church of wattles had contented him aforetime, but now he had been to Rome, and he must needs frame his worship somewhat more on an Italian model. He had sat at the feet of Pope Damasus; and though he had not changed the substance of his Christianity, he had changed somewhat the outward forms of its expression. His piety bore about it henceforeward a Roman flavour. The experts arrived from Tours in due time, and the building was commenced. It rose at Whithorn, on the north shore of the Solway, on a rocky promontory jutting boldly out into the Irish Sea.[2] It was constructed of white stone; hence its name, Candida Casa, the white house. Martin of Tours died while it was in course of erection, and this fixes its date at the year A.D. 397. [3] It was dedicated to Martin, and is believed to b
e the first edifice of stone which was built for the wors
hip of God in Scotland.
No better site could Ninian have selected as a basis from which to carry on his missionary labours. His field of service lay within the two walls. This was the territory, of all others in Britain, the most exposed to the tempests of invasion and war. Now it was the Picts and Scots who descended upon it from the North to spoil the fair fields of the provincials; and now it was the Romans who hurried up from the South to drive back the plundering hordes and rescue the lives and properties of the helpless natives. It is hard to say whether the spiritless people suffered more from the ravaging Pict, or from their ally the Roman. When battle raged, Ninian could retire to his promontory, and there find sanctuary; and when the storm had passed, he would again come forth and resume his labours. For though the promontory of Galloway formed part of the debatable land, it was really outside of it, so far as concerned the incursions o
f plundering armies. It ran off to the south-west, stretc
hing far into the tides of the Irish Channel, and was surrounded on all sides by the sea, save on the north where it joins the mainland. Its southern and western sides present a wall of precipitous cliffs, inaccessible to the invader, though they open in creeks in which a boat, pressed by the tempest, may find shelter. The remote and difficult character of the locality gave it exemption from the inroads of war, though the echoes of battle sounded almost continually in its solitudes. The Romans in their progress northward passed it by, seeing nothing in the lonely wood-clad projection to make them diverge from their line of march; and when the mountaineers descended to rob the harvests and barnyards of its neighbours, they concluded, doubtless, that there was nothing in the barren promontory to reward a predatory visit, and so they too left it untouched. It was lying in its native ruggedness when Ninian took possession of it. It was covered with thick fo
rests, amid which dwelt a tribe of native Britons, to
which Ptolemy gives the name of Novantes, and which he tells us had built two towns, clearing, doubtless, a space in the forest, and constructing their houses with the timber which had grown on the site. The names of the two towns were Rerigonium and Leucopibia.[4]
http://www.snake.net/people/paul/kells/