Was Macbeth the last pagan king to rule Scotland? Was Malcolm Christian?
Macbeth wasn’t pagan. Scotland and its preceding kingdoms had been Christian for about 500 years at that point.
FYI, the last Pagan King in England was Arwald of Wight.
In August 1040, he killed the ruling king, Duncan I, in battle near Elgin, Morayshire. Macbeth became king. His marriage to Kenneth III’s granddaughter Gruoch strengthened his claim to the throne. In 1045, Macbeth defeated and killed Duncan I’s father Crinan at Dunkeld.
For 14 years, Macbeth seems to have ruled equably, imposing law and order and encouraging Christianity. In 1050, he is known to have travelled to Rome for a papal jubilee. He was also a brave leader and made successful forays over the border into Northumbria, England.
Almost certainly he was Christian, unless he was practicing a secret religion unknown to the broader public. Simple reason–Scotland (or the extant Kingdoms of the time that now comprise Scotland), had been Christian for several hundred years at the least by the time Macbeth was King of Alba (in the middle 11th century.) It is believed most of Scotland was primarily Christian by the 700s at some point, the details are not incredibly clear. Some parts of the area likely was Christianized twice.
Essentially the Kingdom of Strathclyde, which existed as an independent entity from the time of the Roman collapse until it was merged into the Kingdom of Scotland not long before Macbeth’s reign, comprised Southwestern Scotland and was a Brittonic successor state to the Roman Empire and remained Christian throughout. The Kingdom of Bernicia which was Southeastern Scotland and conquered by Anglo-Saxon pagans at some point during the A-S conquest of England, was pagan ruled for at least some period of time, eventually merged into the Kingdom of Northumbria, but the A-S Christianized probably no later than the 600s. The rump of Northumbria that remained after a series of wars with Danes a few hundred years later became known as Lothian, and was vassalized and integrated into Scotland by the late 900s. That covers Scotland south of the Firth of Forth–Strathclyde was essentially continually Christian back to Roman times, Lothian/Bernicia may have gone back to Paganism at least among its ruling class and such for a few hundred years.
North of the Firth of Forth aka Pictland it is a little less clear, but no later than the mid-700s the Picts too were Christianized.
The only real remaining portions of modern-day Scotland that did not practice Christianity after that were the islands controlled by the Norse–the Hebrides, some of the Scottish coasts near the Hebrides (the so called “Kingdom of the Isles”, lead for much of its existence by a Danish Norse Lord of the Isles), and the Orkney and Shetland Islands.
It isn’t quite clear when these regions became Christian, we know by the early 11th century Christian Bishops were appointed to the last of those regions so some time before then. There are sagas which claim King Olaf I of Norway, who was suzerain over the “Northern Isles” (Orkney / Shetlands) basically summoned the jarl of that region and told him in 995 he was to Christianize all of his lands or be put to the sword, he reportedly complied. [As part of a saga we have no real idea if this happened.]
The Hebrides are even less documented with no dramatic known moment of Christianization, but there were appointed Christian bishops whose territory covered the region by the early 1000s.
If there were any pagans left in Scotland by Macbeth’s time they likely would have been in isolated communities in the Hebrides but they would have been low in number.
Macbeth and his people lived in a part of Scotland where Christianity had been the religion for many hundreds of years, so he certainly was not a pagan unless he converted in secret and practiced in secret–no pagan would have been permitted to hold the title “King of Alba” by the 1040s, all of the local nobility would have put him to death.
This is true but as a point of clarification remember the first English Kings (or Kings of English kingdoms) to practice Christianity date back to the collapse of the Roman Empire. England was largely Christianized in Roman times, and the Briton successor Kingdoms were Christian until a couple of hundred years later when the Anglo-Saxon conquests and invasions began, which likely did not displace the native Britons but instead just saw their leadership become Germanic pagan and a long period of intermixing began. The A-S pagans then converted to Christianity over a 100-200 year period.
So the Anglo-Saxon pagan rulers in the early days of the Anglo-Saxon era were a bit of a “blip” on the radar in terms of the region’s Christianization, they likely never converted the native Briton population to paganism, and more likely their Germanic paganism was replaced by Christianity.
And the occasional Norse pagan ruler too.
But yeah, mostly blips. Big discussion was Catholic or Celtic, not Pagan or Christian.
Probably a little more likely Norwegian in origin (and the kings of Norway starting with Harold Fairhair were certainly more active in the area). Comes down to whether one subscribes to the theory that the Uí Ímair Kings of the Isles descended from Ivar the Boneless or not. Also granted it is a little academic as the distinction didn’t mean a great dealt early on.
Macbeth’s very name is basically “righteous man”.
Thanks Martin_Hyde. Would Macbeth have been Cumbrid-speaking or Gaelic-speaking?
Gaelic - his father was Mormaer of Moray, an area which would have been thoroughly Gaelicized by then. Strathclyde was probably still largely Cumbric-speaking as it had only recently been incorporated a little before Macbeth’s time. But Gaelic was definitely the language of the elite in the 11th century.
Thanks Tamerlane. That much is consistent with most websites I’ve read. Based on the above postings It’s shocking how much misinformation is out there on 11th century Scotland. So it was well Christianized by Macbeth’s time and he was most certainly Christian, rather than pagan.
Not well documented? Quite the contrary. Christianity arrived in the Hebrides about five hundred years earlier, when the Irish abbot Colmcille established a Culdee monastery on the Inner Hebridean island of Iona in 563 C.E. He came from a noble Ulster family, which granted him access to the rulers of the Gaelic kingdom in Scotland, and became known as the “Apostle to the Gaels and Picts”; as well as a diplomat between Gaelic and Pictish kingdoms. His monastery at Iona became an intellectual and spiritual center for western Scotland and northern England - the creation of the Book of Kells might have started there, and Columban monks were central to the conversion of Northumbria - and is the burial site of many early Scottish kings. The abbots of Iona were the principle defenders of the Celtic position in the dispute over the tonsure and the dating of Easter, that was settled at the Synod of Whitby in 664 C.E. Columba and the monks who followed him were hugely influential in evangelizing the Highlands and Islands of western Scotland.
Um, no. There are many stories (often times of unclear historicity) of Irish Christians proselytizing in Scotland, and they may even have founded monasteries and missions in the Hebrides, and St. Columba (who is largely attested by a single work) could be real. But that isn’t the same thing as knowing when the Hebrides region Christianized, that just is not how Christianization worked really. There’s evidence as late as the 10th century of non-Christian religious practice in the region. There were usually hundreds of years of co-existence between Christians and Pagans in most regions of Northern Europe before full conversion was attained. We have very few church records in the Hebrides prior to the 11th century.
Not being snarky, but do you have a cite? I looked up Columba in Wikipedia, but I deliberately chose to cite the Encyclopedia Britannica instead, because, well, Wikipedia. Adomnán’s Vita Columbae is the primary source for Colmcille’s life, but Bede references him visiting the Pictish king Bridei.The existing Benedictine abbey buildings on Iona obviously don’t date from the 6th c, but archaeologists from the University of Glasgow claim they’ve found evidence of a building dating from the sixth century that is exactly where Adomnán wrote that the saint had his cell.
You’re right, of course, that the presence of Culdee monks in the Hebrides doesn’t necessarily mean that they were fully Christianized. However, it does establish that Christian missionaries were present well before the tenth century; one of the sources Wikipedia cited ( G. Markus, “Conversion to Christianity”, in M. Lynch, ed., The Oxford Companion to Scottish History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), ISBN 0-19-211696-7, pp. 78–9.) said that it was likely Christianity had already spread to Argyll and the Islands via the Irish-Scottish kingdom of Dál Riata, before Columcille arrived in Scotland.
The paucity of church records from the Hebrides prior I don’t think is necessarily indictative - “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”. Looking on Google, it appears the earliest Christian buildings appear to date from the eighth to tenth centuries C.E.. And we do know that the Celtic church was monastic, with primacy given to abbots, as opposed to the episcopal structure of the continental “Roman” church, which might explain why we have no notice of bishops in the Hebrides until the 11th c.
I meant to say, do you have a cite for Columba being a mythical figure?
Bede was born over 70 years after St. Columba is purported to have died, they were not contemporary. Whatever Bede wrote about him would have been derived from knowledge passed on from others.
The Britannica article appears to be attributed to an EB editor, not someone presented as a subject matter expert, with no citations or attestations at all.
You can read this analysis of Adomnan’s Vitae Columbae here: Stansbury.Composition.of.the.VC.pdf (foundationsirishculture.ie)
As it notes–this work followed a then common style, a religious community has a patron saint or holy man who was famous and associated with their community, they need a literary work to then encapsulate everything about that person and increase his fame.
This was actually a very important thing for monasteries and monastic life in general. While there is often a perception that people never traveled in these eras, they actually traveled more than is commonly thought. It was actually religious sites that would be their planned destination, and the more famous and more prestigious a site, the more money that would flow to it. Local patrons also were more likely to hand money over if a site had more fame.
For this reason, these literary works about these holy men often followed a very similar form, with somewhat copied storytelling elements. I think the literal word “hagiography” came from these types of stories.
I don’t think that St Columba is fictional or didn’t exist, but I do suspect he had significant myth, quite deliberately, laid over his life. That’s somewhat tangential to the core discussion here, though. The main reason I doubt that he is invented out of whole cloth is Adomnan and his monastery certainly had some sort of prior master / leader, and that would have been the obvious choice to make such a work about. There is no reason to invent someone when a person would exist–what there is a need to invent is fantastical stories about piety and quasi-mythical behaviors that likely aren’t true (some of them are in the literal same vein as George Washington and the Cherry Tree in terms of how overdone they are.)
I also don’t doubt there was a Christian monastery in the Hebrides back to that era–in fact we know that Christians had spread all throughout everywhere both that was part of the Roman Empire or that bordered it probably as early as 200 years prior to Adomnan’s life.
I don’t see where anyone had said there were no Christians present in a certain place prior to a certain time. We know fairly well just from what we know of Roman settlement in the Strathclyde area and the extensive trading relationships on the Roman frontiers with the Picts etc (which we know about from a combination of archaeology and various records), that there likely was some level of Christian presence all throughout this region back before the Western Roman Empire even fell.
Appearance of a Christian, or even Christian settlements, in a region is not analogous to Christianization anywhere for which we have extensive records, so it is safe to assume it was not so for places where we lack such records. We have a known history of Christian activity in Scandinavia for example back to the early 700s–but no one seriously purports large portions of that region were meaningfully Christianized until the 900s–and there was probably upwards of a 200 year period where you could find Christian Churches and priests, and communities, active in Scandinavia while significant portions of the populace followed either a pure form of their old religion or one of the common “syncretic” styles that often emerged in these situations (the famous archaeological finds of people both a metal cross and a metal Thor’s hammer.)
Absence of evidence is though, evidence of there not being evidence. I have not said definitively when the Hebrides became fully Christian, what I have said is that we don’t have clear records it occurred until the 10th century, and that it is possible there was some level of continuing practice of paganism until as late as that. It is entirely possible it completely died out prior to that, which would also not be inconsistent with what we know–which is that we don’t have firm evidence until around the 10th century.
Individual monasteries existing on specific islands doesn’t materially change that without some more comprehensive information.
Records of bishops being ordained and appointed to areas often are an important record for this sort of thing because over the course of the Christianization of Northern Europe, this generally did not occur in a region until a certain critical mass of churches and Christians were present to justify a bishopric and formal creation of a diocese. For example, Denmark saw the creation of a Bishop in Ribe under the Archdiocese of Hamburger-Bremen only in the mid-10th century, even though there had been active Christianization, church building, and missionary work back to the 8th century.
Another issue that often muddies the water is “relict Pagans” had a habit of becoming something of boogeymen in Christian communities. Often times it may be the case that they had long since died out, and their legend remained, before that too largely faded away.
FWIW I am not hostile to the information about St. Columba or Adomnan, both appear quite interesting and Adomnan’s work about Columba seems to be considered an extremely important bit of literary history for the area / Gaelic peoples in general. Issue is, when I researched this question two weeks ago when this thread was active, there was solid evidence that the Hebrides was a bit of an area where we lack tons of information on the prevalence of Christianity until the 11th century, and the story of a single monastery on a single island doesn’t dramatically change that. Especially because this is from the 6th century, we know that there were several hundred years after this where different overlords of this region were sometimes vassals of Scandinavian Norse rulers–and as best we can tell were Norse themselves, it seems highly unlikely that paganism was extinguished around the 550s if you had many hundreds of years following where there were pagan rulers of the region.