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Reformation Scotland -- St. Giles Cathedral

St. Giles' Cathedral represents centuries of Scottish history.  It is an imposing Gothic building with many historic memorials and monuments.
 
There has been a parish church in Edinburgh since around the year 854.  It was linked to Lindisfarne (Holy Isle), where St. Columba's monks had first brought the Gospel from Iona.  In the 12th Century, a church, dedicated to Saint Giles, was built on the present site.  Giles was a popular saint in the Middle Ages.  He was the patron saint of cripples and lepers, and his reputation spread through France and England to Scotland, partly as a result of the Crusades.  In 1385, St. Giles' was burnt during the border quarrels in which much of the Lothians suffered.  The four massive pillars in the center of the church are possibly all that is left of the original scructure.  The church was rebuild and "thekit with stane" (Thatched with stone).  Building work continued almost without a break until the early 16th Century.
 
In 1460 the church was given an armbone of Saint Giles as a relic.  This relic was kept in the church with much honor until the Reformation.  In 1467 a Papal Bull designated St. Giles' as a Collegiate Church.  The enlarging and enriching of the church continued.  Various guilds, such as the masons and hammermen (metalworkers) built and dedicated chapels.  The Hammermen hung the Blue Blanket in their chapel.  It was an old flag (a blue banner) carried inthe Holy Land by Scots Crusaders, and later said to have been carried at Flodden.  The Guilds took it from St. Giles' at the Reformation and keep it still.
 
 

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The first stirrings of the Protestant Church in Scotland were centered on the university town of St. Andrews.  It was there that John Knox first began preaching.  He spent twenty years in exile in England and on the Continent until the Protestant movement gained popular support.  In 1555 Knox returned secretly from Geneva and lodged in High Street.  For nearly a year, he went about Scotland, preaching and giving the Lord's Supper by Common Cup and Common Bread.
 
During the late 1550s popular feeling against the established church grew.  In 1557 a statue of Saint Giles was stolen from the church and never recovered.  Later that year another statue of the saint was mobbed during the annual Saint Giles Day procession.
 
(The statue of John Knox, shown in the picture above, stood outside the church - as shown - for 18 years.  It was taken back inside the church in 1983 when it was realized that the statue was being damaged.  It is now on display at the west end of St. Giles' where it is easily visible to all visitors.)
 

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In 1558, John Knox wrote of petitions then before the Scottish Parliament.
 
In 1559 Knox preached in Perth, and following his sermon the church was stripped in a riot.  A group of Protestant nobles, known as the Lords of the Congregation, rallied around Knox as he travelled towards Edinburgh.  Mary de Guise, Scotland's Queen Regent, agreed to allow him to enter the capital, after the Lords of the Congretation promised that no violence would follow.  On July 1, 1559, Knox preached for the first time in St. Giles', but within a month the Reformers were driven out of St. Giles' and the priests returned and re-consecrated the church.
 

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The last mass was said in St. Giles' on March 31, 1560.  That night the reformers broke into the church and the work of altering the interior began.  It took over a year to remove the altars and change the furnishings.  Internal walls were built, helping to ensure that the congregaton sould see and hear the minister, and allowing parts of the chjurch to be used for community purposes.  The last of these walls was not removed until 1883.  (The window in the nave, shown here, was removed in 1984.)
 

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Mary Queen of Scots returned from France in the summer of 1561.  She never attended worship in St. Giles', but disputed with Knox over matters of faith and government at the Palace of Holyroodhouse.  Knox had an interview with Queen Mary in September 1561 during which he lectured her on religious liberty.  The events of Queen Mary's troubled reign were played out with St. Giles' as a backdrop.  The plans for both her second and third marriages were anounced there, and accusations of Bothwell's involvement in Lord Darnley's murder were pinned to the church door.
 
When Queen Mary abdicated in 1567, James Stewart, the Earl of Moray and her illegitimate half-brother was chosen as Regent for her son James VI.  Moray was one of the Lords of the congregation and a friend of Knox.  Knox had officiated at Moray's wedding in St. Giles' in 1561.  In 1570 Moray was assassinated by a supported of Mary, and Knox preached at the funeral service.  Moray was buried on the south side of the church where a restored version of his tomb still stands.  Her party fought on.  Once cannon were mounted on the roof of St. Giles' to fire on the castle.  Knox was exiled to St. Andrews, but brought back in 1572, a dying man.  He is buried in the graveyard behind St. Giles'.
 
Knox was in poor health by the time of Moray's funeral, and spent most of his time at St. Andrews.  He returned shortly before his death to install his successor and to preach for a final time.  He asked to be buried in an old burial area behind St. Giles'.  This area now forms part of Parliament Close.
 

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As an adult, King James VI became convinced of a monarch's right of authority over the Church.  This belief was not lessened by his accession to the throne of England.  His son, King Charles I, attempted to impose bishops upon Scotland, and gave St. Giles' cathedral status.  The first Episcopalian service was read in St. Giles' in 1637.  Legend has it that in St. Giles' a riot began when a stool was thrown at the Dean by a woman called Jenny Geddes.
 
The National Covenant (1638) was drawn up as a formal rejection of royal interference in the Church.  A copy of the Covenant is displayed in St. Giles' to this day.The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, meeting in a section of St. Giles' in 1643, drew up the Solemn League and Covenant - a more radical alliance with Oliver Cromwell during the religious disputes of the Civil War.  The people of Scotland were of divided sentiments during this time, and St. Giles saw executions from both sides.  The head of the Marquis of Montrose, a Royalist Covenanter, was displayed outside the church for eleven years, from 1650 to 1661, until it was replaced by that of his rival Argyll.  Both men are commemorated in the church today.
 
King Charles II named St. Giles' a cathedral for a second time, and it was not until the reign of William II and Mary III that both the Presbyterian and Episcopalian systems were able to coexist in peace.  (See also King Charles' Episcopacy.)
 

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St. Giles' - The Holy Table in the Thistle Chapel: Scotland's great order of chivalry is the Most Ancient and Most Noble Order of the Thistle.  King James VII (II) revived this order in 1687 and intended to use the Abbey of Holyrood as its chapel.  That chapel was destroyed, and so in the early 20th Century a new chapel was built at St. Giles'.
 

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St. Giles - Thistle Chapel - seats and arms of members of Order of the Thistle: The Sovereign's Stall bears a carving of the Royal Arms.  The Knights' stalls, ranged around the walls, display the arms of past and present members of the order.
 

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St. Giles' - The Armorial Devices (crests) above the Members' Seats in the Thistle Chapel.
 
 

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Many thanks to the Visitor Services at St. Giles', for corrections in fact and for updates to the text based on the results of an archaelogical dig under the church and a re-examination of historical documents which both refuted some long held ideas and changed past understanding of the events relative to the church.

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