Cult and culture in a medieval community: Ayton and Coldingham, 1188–1376

Abstract

It was assumed only recently that there was little to be said about popular religious culture in Scotland, below the level of rural gentry or the urban classes, for any period much before 1400. Charters and account rolls do exist however which, read with synodal statutes and liturgical texts, reveal such features of cultural life as the churching of women, marriage settlements, widowhood, the neighbourly pax, blessed bread or the commemoration of the dead, all in a rural parish. The cult was appropriate to an illiterate society, deploying ceremony, drama, art, music, textiles and architecture. Foreign evidence, English and continental, provides comparison – as do aspects of Orthodox religious practice. The texts studied for Ayton and Coldingham reveal both parochial benefactions and popular religious objectives, while the archival context identifies grants to the parish church. A calendar is being prepared, but in the meantime outline lists are given here. Coinciding with the launch of a database of the ‘People of Medieval Scotland’ (PoMS), this paper suggests that we can develop the study of that people's religious culture in ways well beyond those imagined as recently as 2008.