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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 November 2011
Towards the end of the twelfth century the Carthusian monastery of Lugny or Luvigny, near Langres in Burgundy, contained a lay brother named Viard. In him the fire of religious enthusiasm burned so bright that he obtained leave from his abbot to retire into a cave in the Val des Choux—Vallis Caulium, the ‘Kail Glen’ as we call it in our homely Scottish speech—a sequestered glen amid the neighbouring wooded hills. Here he led a life of such austere devotion that his fame waxed great through the land of Burgundy, and in the end drew to his lonely hermitage Duke Odo III, then about to start on the Fourth Crusade. So impressed was the duke by his interview with the recluse that he vowed, should he return in safety from the Holy Land, to establish a monastery in the Kail Glen, and to place Viard at its head. In this way, shortly before 1200, was founded the monastery of the Val des Choux. Odo's first grant, making over the Kail Glen to the brethren, was made in 1203; and by 1206 the new order of monks—for such it was—had aroused the interest of Pope Innocent III, who by a Bull issued in that year recognized the Valliscaulian Order and confirmed their rule. It was one of exceptional severity. All the brethren, prior included, were to dine in the common frater, sharing the same fare, and abstaining from meat and gravy. They were not allowed to work, save in tending the monastic gardens, and were therefore enjoined to live off their own revenues. They were bound to silence, and prohibited from leaving the cloister save on the business of their Order. They were to wear hair shirts, and to sleep fully clothed and in their shoes, and on beds without a mattress. Small wonder that so drastic a rule was found untenable, and in 1223 a second Bull allowed the monks of the Kail Glen a considerable measure of relaxation.
page 1 note 1 For the Valliscaulian Order in general see de Gray Birch, W., Ordinale Conventus Vallis Caulium (Longmans, Green & Co., 1900)Google Scholar; also The Story of Pluscarden Priory, by a Tertiary of St. Francis [Peter F. Anson], published at the Priory, 1948, especially chap, iii, ‘The Life and Observance of the Valliscaulian Monks’.
page 2 note 1 History of the Church of Scotland, ed. 1668, p. 43.
page 2 note 2 W. J. Watson, Celtic Place-Names of Scotland, pp. 19, 48.
page 2 note 3 Batten, E. Chisholm, The Charters of the Priory of Beauly (Grampian Club), 1877Google Scholar.
page 2 note 4 See Chronicles of the Frasers, ed. W. Mackay (Scot. History Soc).
page 2 note 5 Op. cit., p. 81.
page 2 note 6 Op. cit., p. 97.
page 3 note 1 Batten, op. cit., p. 93.
page 3 note 2 Ibid., p. 105.
page 3 note 3 ‘Anno 1540 aedificavit navem templi a Belloco magnifice ac imbricibus ex quercu paratis magno sumptu. Turrim praeterea campanarum quam decusserat tonitru eleganter restituit.’ Records of the Monastery of Kinloss, p. 58.
page 3 note 4 ‘Anno domini Movcxlj,o et 2o Januarij, grassabatur maximus et vehementissimus ventus, cum ingenti pluvia, qui distruxit campanile de Bewle, et campanas ejusdem.’ Ibid., p. 11.
page 3 note 5 ‘Anno vero 1544 demolitus est illic aedes prioris vetustas simil et rimosas, in quarum locum erexit amplissimam et illustrem domum cum sex in inferiore loco fornicibus.’ Ibid., p. 58.
page 3 note 6 Batten, op. cit., p. 236. There were still the abbot and six monks in residence in 1568 (ibid., p. 256). In 1571 the abbot and four monks remained (ibid., p. 268). They were allowed by the Tutor of Lovat ‘to keep their dormitories within the great house’ (Chronicles of the Frasers, p. 179).
page 3 note 7 Op. cit., pp. 266, 64.
page 3 note 8 Op. cit., pp. 266–7, 259.
page 3 note 9 Highland Papers, ed. J. R. N. Macphail (Scot, Hist. Soc.), vol. i, p. 202.
page 4 note 1 G. Chalmers, Caledonia, vol. ii, p. 596.
page 4 note 2 Journals of the Episcopal Visitations of the Rt. Rev. Robert Forbes, ed. J. B. Craven, p. 222. Much the same account is given by Bishop Pococke, who came to Beauly two years earlier—Tour through Scotland, ed. D.W. Kemp (Scot. Hist. Soc), p. 178.
page 6 note 1 But at Kirkstall, though a Cistercian house, the west processional door is inside the cloister.
page 6 note 2 H. Brakspear, Waverley Abbey, p. 19.
page 7 note 1 The usual arrangement was a central passage with cells on either side.
page 8 note 1 The only Scottish parallel to this pleasing feature which I can quote is in the clerestory windows at Melrose. See the illustration in D. MacGibbon and T. Ross, Eccles. Architecture of Scotland, vol. ii, p. 370. It is more frequent in England, and charming examples of this ‘double-window’ construction may be seen in the eastern transept of Durham Cathedral and at Stone church in County Durham, or at Piddington church, Oxfordshire.
page 11 note 1 ‘St. Kathrins Isle in Beuly Church, within [i.e. behind] the Priors Tomb’—Chronicles of the Frasers, p. 249.
page 14 note 1 See Brakspear, , Waverley Abbey (Surrey Archaeol. Soc., 1905), p. 18Google Scholar, etc.; also his Tintern Abbey (Official Guide, H.M. Ministry of Works, 1929); Hope and Bilson, Kirkstall Abbey (Thoroton Society, 1907), pp. 85–87.
page 14 note 2 See the Official Guide (H.M. Ministry of Works), 1951.
page 16 note 1 Both are found also on the door of the Holy Cross Chapel, which also may therefore owe something to Abbot Reid.
page 17 note 1 See Chronicles of the Frasers, pp. 163,176, 316, 450. It was here that King Alexander I defeated the Men of Ross in 1116. See Wyntoun, Cronykils of Scotland, bk. vii, ch. v, ed. F. J. Amours, vol. iv, p. 371.
page 17 note 2 Origines Parochiales Scotiae, vol. ii, pt. ii, p. 517.
page 17 note 3 Journal of Bishop Forbes, p. 224. A portion of the old market cross still remains at the entrance to the churchyard.
page 18 note 1 C. Cordiner, Antiquities and Scenery of the North of Scotland, 1780, pl. xi; A. de Cardonnel, Picturesque Antiquities of Scotland, pt. i.
page 18 note 2 Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot., vol. viii, p. 464.
page 18 note 3 Ibid., p. 460.
page 18 note 4 Batten, op. cit., p. 272.
page 18 note 5 Chronicles of the Frasers, p. 179.
page 19 note 1 Seamor breac, the dappled chamber.
page 19 note 2 Chronicles of the Frasers, p. 201, cf. p. 224: ‘The house of Beauly then was singular in the north for the accommodation and stowing in its two courts, besides the great building called the Abbot's house.’
page 19 note 3 Records of Kinloss, pp. lii, 60–61.
page 19 note 4 Chronicles of the Frasers, p. 288.