Early Christianity in Maybole From around 350BC, following the Greek conquest of Jerusalem, the native population, a semitic

tribe with a persistent faith in El Elyon (the one true God; their God), began to believe that the long-
Dr John N Sutherland promised HaMashiax (the anointed one) would arrive imminently to free them from Roman rule
Rúna Rìngan Community and bring in a global age of peace and power, with the world being ruled from Jerusalem.
Isle of Bute
akademos@btinternet.com Many declared themselves to be this guy, but they were each captured and killed by the Roman
runaringan.com occupiers of Jerusalem. Then, about AD28, a wandering rabbi declared himself to be the Anointed
One and claimed equality with El Elyon. He gathered huge crowds of followers and wrecked the
Temple of El Elyon in Jerusalem during a major religious feast attended, it has been estimated, by
Introduction: silences and myth-making over a million people. In AD31 this Yeshua ben Iosef was arrested, tried for heresy and sedition,
and publicly executed. The next week his followers in Jerusalem declared him to be alive again.
In what sense can I be said to know an event which is in principle unobservable, They were fiercely persecuted. The chief prosecutor was a Roman citizen and leading religious
vanished behind the mysterious frontier which divides the present from the past? How scholar called Shaw’ul Paulos Binyamin. In AD35 he made a dramatic volte face, spreading the
can we be sure that anything really happened in the past at all, that the whole story is new cult’s teachings across Asia Minor and into Europe and Rome, where he was finally executed
not an elaborate fabrication, as untrustworthy as a dream or a work of fiction? by imperial decree in AD64 for treason and riot.
Patrick Gardiner1
Partly due to the widespread copying of Paul’s writings the new cult spread rapidly across the
There is great danger of romantic escapism replacing historical scholarship and of our Roman Empire and beyond.
reading into this long distant and legend-encrusted part of our past what we want to
find there. The core Christian beliefs are: there is one god, El Elyon; Yeshua is his Son; Yeshua died and came
Ian Bradley2 back to life; Yeshua now occupies a throne alongside El Elyon; only followers of Yeshua will join
him in heaven; Yeshua will return imminently to judge and rule the world from Jerusalem. (For a
The ‘prehistory’ of Ayrshire winds through some rather tortuous and gloomy choughs … fuller summary see the three ecumenical creeds: Nicene, Apostles and Athanasian5).
I have thought … I have speculated … I have tried to unravel … all this with more than
one glance over my shoulder …
Thorbjorn Campbell 3 Earliest Christianity in Britain

Early Christianity was a different kind of Christianity - earth-cantred, poetic, humorous, The Celtic peoples of Europe were not writers; they were
mystical, egalitarian … perfectly tuned to our age. talkers. Much of what can be gleaned about early first
Robert Van de Weyer4 millennium Christianity in the British Isles is
suppositional. It would be a mistake to fall into one of two
simplistic errors: to believe the mythologies, or, to discard
The Roots of Christianity - one God, one tribe them. Even historians, such as Tacitus, were writing for a
reason; and where mythologies appear to be confirmed by
the historic record, the historians may only have been
citing the same root myth rather than independently
The gold Menorah being looted from the Temple confirming it.
of El Elyon, Jerusalem
Yet, we work with the extant material, read the books and
from The Arch of Titus, Rome consider the interpretations. Its a bit like walking the Carn
Mor Dearg arete in Ben Nevis - keep your eyes focused on
the next step and try not to fall to your death on either side.
This isn’t an exaggeration; there are many historians’ bodies at the bottom on either side! (In
1 Gardiner, P (1952), The Nature of Historical Explanation, London:Oxford University Press. p35. writing this paper I received an admission from a leading Celtic scholar of having himself been
taken in by and then publishing widely a plausible modern myth.)
2 Bradley, I (1993), The Celtic Way. London:Darton, Longman and Todd. p.viii
3 Campbell, T (2003), Ayrshire - a historical guide. Edinburgh:Birlinn. pp x-xi.
4 Van de Weyer, R (1990). Celtic Fire. London:Doubleday. inside cover blurb. 5 see, for example, http://bookofconcord.org/creeds.php

In AD43 the Emperor Claudius decreed the invasion of Britain. Tacitus6 tells us that soon after this The People of SW Scotland
a scandal arose concerning a Roman matron. General Plautius had returned from Britain in AD45
and his wife, Pomponia, was accused of a ‘foreign superstition’. She was formally tried on this
capital charge by her husband and acquitted. However, there was a lingering suspicion that they
were both Christians. She lived the rest of her life in sackcloth and ashes for a friend who had been
executed on a similar charge.

Brittonic accounts state that she was the daughter of the defeated Brittonic king, Caratacos. These
have been further linked to St Paul’s7 Rome-based coterie of ‘members of Ceasar’s household’.
Brittonic accounts also state she sent copies of Paul’s letters back to Britain, and that the Jerusalem-
based Christian leaders were encouraged, perhaps by Paul, to expedite missionaries (‘apostles’) to
Britain. Another later Brittonic source states that from the time of Tiberius (that is, when Rabbi
Yeshua was executed) until the persecutions of Diocletian in AD290 the Christian message spread
widely in Roman Britain8 9. By AD180 there were Roman villas in Britain with Christian A Genetic-Historic Map of
symbolism10 . the British Isles14

By the third century British Christians were being executed by imperial order 11 . Significant early
British theologians include Iranaeus (cAD120-200) and Pelagius (AD360-418)12. British bishops
and priests attended church councils in Arles (AD314), Nicea (AD323), Sardica (AD342-3) and
Rimini (AD359).

The Christian story took an important Brythonic bent in July AD306 when Constantine was
declared emperor in Eboracum (York). In AD313 he legalised Christianity. In AD323 he chaired
the church session which established the Nicene Creed. His mother, Helena, was a Christian. He
also began the significant process of amalgamating the Christian faith with the secular power
structures of Rome13.

There has long been debate on how far the Roman Empire spread beyond the current Scottish-
English border. In the time of early Christianity in and around Maybole, the place names, genetics
and history concur that the native Britons occupied the land south of the Forth-Clyde line. That is
not to assume that Roman control effectively ever ran that far, but that the same tribal groups
occupied the areas indicated by the recent Oxford University study (see map above). The study
found little genetic difference between Scots and English in general, but significant differences
between the Welsh (Brythonic) peoples and the other modern natives of Great Britain.

The Brythonic tribal term ‘cymru’ (Wales) repeats in ‘Cumbria’ (the ancient Brythonic name for the
lands from the Clyde south as far as Brittany) and the ‘Isle of Cumbrae’ (which is Viking Nord for
6 Annals 13,32 ‘isle of the cymru’). Prominent other Brythonic place names include ‘clyde’, ‘paisley’, ’glasgow’,
7 ‘carlisle’, ‘lanark’, etc.
Epistle to the Philippians 4:22
8 https://www.biblicalcyclopedia.com/P/pomponia-graecina.html Although the Roman Empire effectively (was!) stopped at Hadrian’s Wall on the Solway-Tyne
9 Davis, J (1835), A History of the Welsh Baptists from AD63 to 1770. Sourced from archive.org isthmus, the Brythonic kingdom of Cumbria continued in SW Scotland until the close of the first
millennium with the departure of their chiefs to Wales following a devastating Viking defeat in
10 Van de Weyer, op cit, p7. AD870. Their descendants continue to be identifiable by such Scottish names as MacArthur (‘son
11 Latourette, KS (1937), A History of Christianity vol.1. London:Eyre & Spottiswoode of Arthur’), Galbraith (‘foreign British’), Gilchrist (‘servant of Christ’) and Wallace (‘Welshman’).
12He was a British-born theologian who is credited with the very sticky ‘British heresy’ of respectability.
The idea that you can by living a good and upright life earn your way into God’s good books by being
socially acceptable. Some say it remains a core principle of British establishment Christianity to this day!
14http://theconversation.com/who-do-you-think-you-are-most-detailed-genetic-map-of-the-british-isles-
13 McManners, J (ed.) (1990). The Oxford Illustrated History of Christianity. Oxford:OUP. pp55-6 reveals-all-38936
The Roman presence between the two walls was extensive and generally military. There were The 3rd century was a time of peace for the lands between the walls. Two usurping emperors,
apparently more military roads and forts in this disputed land than anywhere else in the empire, Maximus (AD383-8) and Constantine III (AD407-10) had previously been based at the southern
where repeated Pictish raids from north of the Antonine Wall to the lands south of Hadrian’s Wall wall, and they were Christians. During the 4th century soldiers in the army had been encouraged to
had cost one Roman general, he claimed, 50,000 men. The Romans replied with occasional ethnic convert to Christianity18. It can be assumed that, at least, the patricians of Brythonic society were in
cleansing reprisals of the lands beyond the northern wall. some way Christian post-Constantine, but, as ever, the position of the plebs is less documented.

Ninian19 enters the scene around the time the Roman armies leave. He was born cAD400 north of
Ninian: apostle to the Picts the Solway Firth to a nominally-Christian Brythonic noble family, but most of the Britons between
the walls had, it appeared, lapsed from the faith. Bede, writing 300 years later, relates that Ninian
trained for the the priesthood in Rome, was commissioned by the Pope, and, significantly, he
attended the monastic settlement in Celtic Gaul of Martin of Tours, who had died recently. The
Gaulish Celtic religious settlements were extraordinarily effective and Martin’s legacy continues to
this day.

Ninian returned to his home see of Northumbria and was sent out as an apostle (missionary). He
was specifically sent to the ‘Southern Picts’, but the etymological evidence (see maps, above)
strongly suggests that he and his followers evangelised much of the area of northern Britain, with
the exception of the lands beyond the Mounth now held by the recent Scoto-Irish invaders. The
maps indicate the extent of this evangelisation, the ethnic basis of the evangelical work in the native
population, and the persistency of the Christianity Ninian established. This avoidance by the
Britons of converting pagan invaders was to persist.

Exceptionally, Ninian is said to have sent for stonemasons from Rome to build his chapel at
Whithorn. Early Celtic people did not build widely in this material, but in wattle and daub. The
sites of their ancient chapels does not mark a church as we would know it today, but perhaps a place
of prayer and preparation for monks before emerging to preach and evangelise; a practice evident in
the Gaulic Celtic followers of Martin of Tours20. In a recent restoration at St Ninian’s ancient stone
chapel ruins on Bute, archaeologists described the chapel as 5th/6th century21 ; this is highly
improbable.

Ninian, by this name, disappears from view, but there continues to be extensive debate about him.
One is that his deeds were recorded at Cloncurry, Co.Kildare in Ireland as ‘Monenna’, who shares
the same saint’s day, 16th September. These list his travels from the south west to north of the Tay
to establish monastic settlements at, “Chilnecase in Galloway, Dundeuenel, Dunbreton, Strivelin,
Places and Churches dedicated to Ninian15 16 Place names containing the Brythonic
Dunedene, Dunpeleder, Saint Andrew, Aleethe, Lonfortin … where [he] breathed forth [his]
‘eggles’ (Greek for ‘church’) 17
spirit”22. Dundeuenel being Dundonald just south of Irvine. A rare outing for an early Ayrshire
locality, but a perfectly-located place which went on to become a major centre for such as the
Many of the Britons who lived between the walls were at least nominally Christian. Religion was
tribal: convert the chief and the people followed. There was an overall church structure centred on
the See of Rome, but this was loosely controlled. The see for these most northerly Brythonic lands,
from the Humber north to beyond the Roman Empire proper, was based in Northumbria, later to 18Macquarrie A (2006). Early Christianity in Scotland. in, Scottish Life and Society, Edinburgh:John Donald.
pass to York. pp15-41.
19 MacQueen, J (1990), op. cit.
20Martin was fabled for taking his Roman officer’s cape off, cutting it in two, and giving half to a naked
beggar. His followers called their houses of prayer capellas after the Latin for ‘little cape’, from which we
15 image source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninian get the word ‘chapel’.
16 image source: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=0K8uAAAAMAAJ&pg=PR13 (adapted) 21 see https://youtu.be/oXKNFiSI--k
17 MacQueen, J (1990). St Nynia. Edinburgh:John Donald. p.vi. 22 Macqueen, J (1990), op. cit., p138-9.

Stewarts and Cochranes23 24. Other Ayrshire echoes of Ninian’s work remain in Constantine imposed in merging the Empire with the Church - creating a chimera or hybrid28. Nor
‘Nineyards’ (Ninian’s yards) in Saltcoats and Kilrenzie (‘church of Ninian’) near Ballantrae 25 26. was it the much much later Roman Catholic or Presbyterian churches of Scotland. These appeared
long after the influential lives of Anthony and Martin.. In looking for the roots of the early
Christianity of Maybole, Scotland and the British Isles, we should be considering Gaul and Syria
The Celtic Churches rather than Rome or Canterbury.

The noted English historian, Simon Schama, When we consider the works and life of the Apostle John a deep mysticism quickly is revealed,
catches the problem of the kind of maze we are
about to enter, one where, In the beginning was the Word

“… mere fact is overwhelmed by inspired, God is light - whoever loves lives in the light
symbolically loaded invention … [and]
unapologetic hyperbole …”27 A great and mysterious sight appeared -
a huge red dragon with seven heads and ten horns
We are so easily drawn into the world of
ancient and modern fiction. This is not the practical Hebraic theology of Paul or the simple realism of James (Jesus’ brother). It
reveals the man who was intimate with Jesus, who rested his head at the Last Supper on Jesus’
The Anglo-Saxon Roman Catholic world of chest, who described himself as the man who Jesus loved. The only apostle who died peacefully,
Bede strangely glosses over Ninian and rants following decades of solitary contemplative living: “reading St John is like visiting a fascinating
against Columba and the Scoto-Irish revival of foreign country, and feeling at home.”29
Europe. The 20th century Iona Community
made suppositions which have now become This is first millennium mysticism which, if it has a modern-day presence, remains in Eastern
accepted facts; George McLeod apparently Orthodoxy rather than any Western ‘churchianity’. The directly Gaulic-inspired Celtic churches
made up the myth of the Holy Spirit being viewed as a wild goose by ancient Celts. This is a world across the Roman Empire were named using the Greek word ‘ekklesia’ (the called out)30. Examples
of myths and legends, some very old, and some very new. in Brythonic Scotland include Ecclefechan (‘little church’), Gleneagles (‘church in the valley’) and
Eaglesham (‘settlement near the church’). The johannine roots of Celtic Christianity may also
Yet, there are facts and probabilities that we can use. If you will allow an image: if the Celtic explain the eventual clash at Whitby in AD664 with the pauline Roman Church and the growing
Church in SW Scotland was a limb of a tree, then perhaps we should spend less effort examining power of the Anglians that overwhelmed the two Celtic churches - Brythonic and Scoto-Irish31.
the recent leaves and more time considering the ancient roots, for here the ground (sic) is perhaps
safer. We can more easily say what the Celtic Church of SW Scotland was not. There are no records from
this time of priests, churches, cathedrals, diocese or diocesan bishops. There were bishops, but
Where did the early Church in the British Isles come from? This can be know with some assurance. these were overseers32, perhaps acting as ministers over single churches. They tended to keep the
Both Patrick (the British patrician, perhaps born in Dumbarton, who converted the Scoto-Irish) and Jewish shabbat (Saturday) day of rest and used the Jerusalem-based approach of keeping the first
Ninian (who did the same for the native Brythonic Picts) spent time in Gaul under the considerable day of the week (Sunday) for communal worship. They also kept to the Hebrew reckoning for
influence of Martin of Tours. He, in turn had been influenced by Anthony, who goes back by a pesach (Easter). All-in-all, they persisted long after this had been discarded in mainland Europe in
short and direct line to Polycarp and then to his mentor, the Apostle John. being more messianic (Jewish-Christian) than Rome decreed. Perhaps this was assisted by the
isolation caused by the barbarian invasions of Gaul together with the retention of active sea-trading
And here we begin to reveal the recognisable roots of Celtic - that is Gaulish then Brythonic then links with the eastern Mediterranean.
Scoto-Irish then Anglian - Christianity. This was not the later centralised structures which

28 Bercot, D.W. (2003). The Kingdom That Turned The World Upside Down. Amberson:Scroll. p181.
23 Barrow GWS (2003). Kingdom of the Scots. Edinburgh:Edinburgh University Press. p347
29 Temple, W. (1955). Readings in St John’s Gospel. London:Macmillan. p.vi.
24 Robertson, W (1908). Ayrshire, its History and Historic Families. Sourced from archive.org
30 see the map entitled Place names containing the Brythonic term ‘eglis’ above.
25 Campbell, T (2003), Ayrshire - A Historical Guide. Edinburgh:Berlinn. p30.
31 Campbell, T. op cit p33
26 ibid. p34.
32the Greek ‘episkopos’ (which means ‘overseer’) became the Anglo-Saxon ‘bishop’ (hint: say ‘ep-is-kop’
27 Schama, S (1991). Dead Certainties. London:Granta. p28. quickly!)
At the core were the monasteries and monks33, but not in the later familiar Benedictine model; We are left with a legacy of Celtic Christianity that is illustrative of a different - and highly
indeed, Benedict in his Rule decries34 the lack of organisational structures of these non-Roman attractive to the modern ear - legacy and ways of thinking:
‘others’. Celtic monasteries began as a single hermit in his lonely cell, other cells gathered around
the hermit, and soon there would be a bustling civitas. Then more individuals would leave for this A road to life art thou, not Life … And there is no man makes his dwelling on this road,
‘green martyrdom’, settle elsewhere, and the cycle would continue. Three lay people would but walks there: and those who fare along the road have their dwelling in the Father’s
constitute a ‘church’. There may have been Roman-appointed personnel too, but it was the severely land. So, you art nought, O mortal life, but a road, a fleeting ghost, an emptiness, a
ascetic and hyper-active messenger monks and their abbots who effectively ran the show. Some - cloud uncertain and frail, a shadow and a dream …38
like Columba - opted for a ‘white martyrdom’ of eternal exile, ever seeking their ‘resurrection
place’ - their final place to stay, pray and die. I need books to read, to learn the hidden truths of God. But the blackbird who shares my
simple meals needs no written texts: he can read the love of God in every leaf and
The Brythonic church of SW Scotland cannot simply be assumed to be the same as the newer flower.39
Scoto-Irish (Columban) church. Ninian’s and Columba’s monks agreed not to tread in each other’s
areas for new missionary work. It has been said that the Romanised Christian Britons despised the In the middle of the night the monastery bell awakes me to prayer, its sound carried in
newly post-pagan Scoto-Irish Christians35 due to their lack of Roman civilisation and centuries of the cold wind. I would rather follow its call into church than spend the night with a sexy
inter-ethnic violence and invasion. woman.40

Fascinating and informative though the works of Ian Bradley and Van de Weyer are, there was I am the wind that breathes upon the sea,
probably no single Celtic Christianity in these islands. The later Scoto-Irish influenced Columban I am the wave on the ocean,
practices can only be assumed to exist with certainty for the beyond-Rome areas of Ireland, NW I am the murmur of leaves rustling,
Scotland, and the later Anglian England and eastern Scotland. The older, Roman-birthed Brythonic I am the rays of the sun,
Church, as documented in the Welsh annals, reached north from Brittany through Cornwall, Wales, I am the beam of the moon and the stars,
NW England, Southern and Eastern Scotland, and the Northern Isles. I am the power of trees growing,
I am the bud breaking into blossom,
Were there liturgies? Probably, as within the New Testament and beyond there are records of I am the movement of the salmon swimming,
regularly sung songs and credos. Weyer cited a purported catechism of St Ninian36 and there are I am the courage of the wild boar fighting,
rumours of the Brythonic Church using a liturgy from Ephesus in Asia Minor. I am the speed of the stag running,
I am the strength of the ox pulling the plough,
Question: And what is the fruit of study? I am the size of the mighty oak tree,
Answer: To perceive the eternal Word of God reflected in every plant and insect, every bird I am the thoughts of all people who praise My beauty and My grace. 41
and animal, and every man and woman.37

What can be surmised? It is important, I suggest, to keep a firm grip on factuality over fictionality;
to imply from reasonable exegesis rather than by fanciful eisegesis. The tale of the Christ-child
visiting Somerset with his uncle, Joseph of Arimathea, is extraordinary; yet it is evident that these
islands were well-connected by sea to Roman Europe and the Mediterranean trade. The tale that
Patrick was descended from Jerusalemites who fled after the destruction of the city in AD70 to the
northern Brythonic capital, Alt Cluith (Dumbarton), is unprovable; but that city’s mainly-Christian
population did flee by sea and land across the empire in AD70; and the name Patrick may be
derived from the Latin patricius (‘nobleman’) implying his family may have been more Roman than
Brythonic. Britain and Ireland has never existed in a vacuum of peoples and ideas.

33 Bradley, I op cit. pp70ff

34 Rule of St Benedict, Chapter 1, “On the kinds or the lives of monks” 38 Mackey, J. (1989). An Introduction to Celtic Christianity. Edinburgh:Clark. p12.
35 Cahill, T. (1995), op.cit., p112ff 39 Van de Weyer. op cit. p129
36 Van de Weyer, R. (1991). Celtic Fire. Penguin Books. 40 ibid. p130
37 ibid. 41 from The Black Book of Carmarthen

The Synod of Whitby AD664

The end of Celtic Christianity in the British Isles

began with an event, the Synod of Whitby, which
effectively withdrew the powerful Anglian
church, founded by Scoto-Irish missionaries, from
Iona’s control. What became of the Brythonic
church of SW Scotland, Wales, Cornwall and
Brittany?

The British Kingdom of Strathclyde persisted

stubbornly from cAD400 until the Vikings of
Dublin destroyed and occupied Dumbarton in
AD870. The detailed kings list then lasts until
David 1, the last to inherit the realm of
Strathclyde (“Prince of the Cumbrians”) through
tanistry before becoming King of Scots in 112442.
His davidian revolution effectively ended all pre-
Norman structures and ensured regularity of the
Scottish church with Rome.43

The discovery of early Irish writings opened up

opportunities for wider scholarship into the
Scoto-Irish Celtic church in Scotland. Only
recently has the range of Welsh and early
Brythonic-language writings about ‘the old north’ (Scottish Cumbria) become more available and of
greater interest in Scotland.

Somewhere in these ancient Celtic histories, possibly hidden beneath recent and ancient patinas of
later myths and modern prejudices, there is a greater tale of the first millennium Brythonic church
in SW Scotland waiting to be explored.

42 Campbell, T. op cit. pp.256-261

43Echoes of Cumbric southern Scotland persisted until the late 14th century as evidenced by the edict of
Edward 1 ‘The Hammer’ outlawing in 1305 ‘The Laws of the Britons and Scots’, and Alexander III’s royal
seal as ‘King of the Scots and Cumbrians’.