HISTORY OF THE CATHOLIC CHUR,CH OF SCOTLAND.*

IT is odd—or is it a proof of the magnificent " thoroughness " of the tyranny of Presbyterian Protestantism in the North ?— that Dr. Bellesheim, a German scholar, should be found writing, and Messrs. Blackwood should be found publishing a translation of, a History of the Catholic Church in Scotland, for the benefit of English and Scotch readers. Until Dr. Bellesheim's work is complete, it would obviously be. unfair to say whether it will really be a superior book to Mr. James Walsh's History of the Catholic Church in Scotland, front the Introduction of Christianity to the Present Time, which was published in 1874. But it is essentially a much more literary and scholarly work ; and Father Hunter Blair, who translates it, says emphatically that it is such a picture of "the progress and development of the Catholic religion in Scotland" as "has not yet been presented in its entirety before the eyes of our countrymen." There can be no doubt what- ever as to Dr. Bellesheim's capacity for research, his fair- mindedness, or his enthusiasm for his subject. As an evidence that he possesses the first and the third of these requisites of the trustworthy historian, we may mention the fact that he had independently found his way to (if not unearthed) the remarkable Catechism of 1551, issued by order of Archbishop Hamilton, of St. Andrews, which he regards as "an authentic monument of the ancient faith of Scotland," and an edition of which was issued from the Clarendon Press in 1884, with a preface by Mr. Gladstone. Dr. Bellesheim has necessarily had to depend largely on historical material in existence when he began his work ; thus, as regards Celtic Scotland, it would scarcely be unjust to him to say that he is Skene at prxterea nihil. But he has disentangled what concerns his special purpose from the essentially secular histories of Scotland with skill and success. These are days when side-lights on the Reformation period in, and still more on the pre- Reformation history of, Scotland—such as Mr. Skelton's Maitland of Leth,ingtcm—are eagerly welcomed, and the two volumes of Dr. Bellesheim's History supply such aide-lights. Father Blair cherishes a hope, or dreams a dream, that Scot- land will yet return to the Catholic faith. Whether he is in the right or in the wrong, there are evidences that the Roman Catholic Church cannot be altogether left out of consideration by any one engaged in reckoning up the spiritual and social forces that, for good or evil, will make the Scotland of the future. Whoever wishes to understand the Catholic Church of Scotland should (or, rather, must) consult Dr. Bellesheim's work. •

In Father Hunter Blair, Dr. Rellesheim has found a pains- taking translator and editor, who has done his best, and not without success, to render his German into idiomatic English.

• History of the Catholic Church of Scotland, from the Introduction of Christianity to the Present Day. By Alphona Bellesheim, D.D. Translated, with Notes and Additions, by D. Oswald Hunter Blair, 0.8.B., Monk of Fort Augni-tus. Vob. I. and ILL Edinburgh and London : William Blackwood and SOB& 1888.

Sometimes, indeed, Father Blair's notes supply valuable additions to Dr. Bellesheim's text. Thus, in Vol. II., p. 218, he decidedly turns the tables on Mr. Gladstone, who, in his prefatory note to the Clarendon Press edition of the Hamilton Catechism of 1551, already alluded to, emphasises the absence from its pages of any instructions as to the authority of the Pope, and implies that the Scottish Church of that period was not indisposed to dispense with him. Father Blair takes a totally different and, as it seems to us, a more natural and reasonable view of this absence of any reference to the Pope's spiritual jurisdiction. "If it is not insisted upon in the Catechism," he says, "it could only be because no one dreamed of disputing it." Sometimes, however, Father Blair allows blunders to pass him. Thus, at Vol. I., p. 161, speaking of St. Cuthbert's life near the village of Dull, in Atholl, Dr. Bellesheim says :—"At the foot of this hill, soon after St. Cuthbert's death, Adamnan built a monastery, around which rose in later ages the town and University of St. Andrews." It is possible that

Adamnan's monastery may have been, in Montalembert's lan- guage, "the cradle of the University of St. Andrews ;" but, as the most careless reader will at once perceive, it is quite impossible that the town of that name can have sprung'

from such a monastery. Then, again, there are probably many Catholics who will object to Dr. Bellesheim's accept- ance to an almost complete extent, and with what may be called Father Blak's connivance, of Skene's views of the Celtic Church. Moreover, Dr. Bellesheim, referring to Servanus, or St. Serf, and his connection with the still more famous Kentigern, or St. Mungo, who is said to have been born in Culross and educated by St. Serf, says :—" This connection between Kentigern, whose life extended into the seventh century, and Servanus, whom Palladius was said to have found in Scotland in 430, might be admitted as possible, supposing that both lived to a great age. There is extant, however, a very ancient Life of Servanus, which says nothing of the saint having been the disciple of Palladino and the teacher of Kentigern, but brings him into connection with Adamnan, the famous Abbot of Iona, and authentic biographer of St. Columba. According to this Life, Servanus founded the Church of Culross in the reign of Brude, King of the Picts." And here Dr. Bellesheinx quotes Skene, who says :—" It is obvious that there is a great anachronism in placing this Servanus as the instructor of Kentigern, and that he in reality belongs to the century after his death." It is rather a pity that in this connection Father

Blair did not give prominence to the theory which has been advanced to explain this confusion (it will be found given at length in so very modern a work as that excellent local history, The History of Culross and Tulliallan, by Mr. David Beveridge) to the effect that there were two St. Serfs, the one of Scottish, the other of Oriental origin, that it was the elder who founded a religious community at Cuirass in the fifth century, was visited by Palladino, educated St. Mungo, and died at an advanced age ; while the younger, leaving Rome, came to

Scotland to be received by St. Adamnan He probably founded the priory of St. Serf on an island in Loch Leven, and it is not impossible that, in his later years, he too may have had some interest in Culross, which was only twenty miles off. But we mention this simply as an example of the sort of elucidation or amplification which Father Blair might have given of Dr.

Bellesheim's narrative.

The first of the two volumes of Dr. Bellesheim's work which are now before us, deals with the history of the Catholic Church in Scotland from the introduction of Christianity to

the death of Alexander III. in 1286; the second brings us down to the suppression of the Church at the Reformation in 1560. In the former, the old story of Columba and of the life in Iona is told in great detail,—although, by-the-way, we have never read anything on this subject more graceful or more sympathetic than an essay by the late Principal Shairp, which we are glad to see included by Professor Witch in the volume of the Principal's fugitive prose writings that has recently been published. In the latter, the narrative of the decline

and fall of the Church is given. Devout Catholic though he is, Dr. Bellesheim, when dealing with the question how far the Church contributed to bring about her own fall, does n ot hesitate to speak out candidly

It cannot be denied," he says, "that the rulers of the Church, although it would be unjust to charge them with having betrayed their sacred trust, were nevertheless partly responsible for the circumstances which had facilitated the ultimate triumph of the Protestant cause. They had at least tacitly sanctioned the iniquitous system by which some of the wealthiest benefices and most important ecclesiastical dignities were in the hands of laymen, who, when it suited their own interests, deliberately ranged themselves on the side of the Church's bitterest enemies, and threw themselves into the arms of heresy. Not virtue nor learning, but kinship to some noble house was too often con- sidered the best qualification for high offices of the Church ; nor, as we have seen, was the stain of illegitimate birth deemed any bar to ecclesiastical advancement. Even among the higher clergy, too many were more than suspected of leading lives the reverse of edifying ; while the inferior ecclesiastics were lamentably deficient in that trained theological learning which alone could meet and overcome the dominant errors of the time."

Dr. Bellesheim picks his way with great care and circum- spection among the not yet cold ashes of the controversies of which the names of Wishart, Knox, and Beaton are the centres. He is not more anxious than most Roman Catholics to believe anything disparaging to the personal character of the great Reformer, although he is perhaps too willing to believe him to have been to some extent a coward. On one point Dr. Belles- heirs, following Tytler, is, we fear, altogether in the right. It must be allowed that Henry VIII. and English statesmen of his time, like Hertford and Sir Ralph Sadler, were accomplices in, if not the instigators of, the murder of Beaton. Wishart, too, seems to have been cognisant of the plot against his arch- enemy ; for Burton—(by-the-way, Father Blair might have quoted Burton against Mr. Grub, who in his Ecclesiastical

History tries to exculpate Wishart on the ground of his

"stainless character ")—admits "that the ugly revelations of the State papers show us one fallen star." Dr. Bellesheim errs, however, in his estimate of the intellectual capacity of Beaton. He may not have been "the monstrous Cardinal Beaton" that Carlyle depicts him. But if he had been endowed with the " sagacity " which Dr. Bellesheina claims for him, he would have fought the Scotch Reformers with other weapons than he did. In conclusion, we may say that the final chapter in Dr. Bellesheim's second volume, treating of "Education and Art in Scotland," though not original in the proper sense of the word, is a good condensation of what had previously been written on the subject. How singular it is to find—or even to be reminded—that compulsory education was introduced into Scotland in 1496 by the Catholic clergy, who succeeded in having an Act of Parliament passed pro- viding that all barons and freeholders should, under a penalty of twenty pounds, send their sons at the age of eight or nine years to the schools, to remain there until they had acquired a competent knowledge of Latin !