St Andrews Cathedral, St Andrews

St Andrews Cathedral, St Andrews

Sacred Landscapes of Fife

St Andrews Cathedral was once the most important church in Scotland. It was the base for the country’s senior bishopric and housed the relics of Jesus’s disciple Andrew (the nation’s patron saint). The origins of St Andrews Cathedral stretch back into the Early Middle Ages when there was a Celtic monastery in this area. In the twelfth century religious life in St Andrews underwent major changes, and a priory of Augustinian canons took over care of the church and shrine. During the 1160s work began on a vast new Cathedral, which was eventually consecrated (in other words officially blessed and opened for worship) in 1318 in the presence of King Robert the Bruce. The completed Cathedral was the largest building constructed in Scotland before the nineteenth century. It was a centre of pilgrimage, learning, power, and law. Indeed, the church courts in St Andrews were among the busiest in the kingdom. However, in 1559 the Protestant Reformers tore apart this Catholic power base. The Cathedral was stripped of furnishings, altars and statues were smashed, and wooden images and Catholic mass-books were burnt. The vast church rapidly fell into ruin, and orchards, gardens, and houses took over much of the wider Cathedral site. Today the core of the former religious buildings are cared for by Historic Environment Scotland, whilst much of the wider site is occupied by St Leonard’s School.

sacredlandscapesoffife

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Bess Rhodes

Site

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18/05/2021

10/08/2023 09:27:03 am

(1) David McRoberts, ed., The Medieval Church of St Andrews (Glasgow, 1976). (2) Bess Rhodes, Riches and Reform: Ecclesiastical Wealth in St Andrews, c.1520-1580 (Leiden, 2019).

cm x cm x cm

current,56.34002134612851,-2.7871681004216957;

St Andrews Cathedral, St Andrews

https://www.historicenvironment.scot/visit-a-place/places/st-andrews-cathedral/

TEXT

Building

110

1560

Catholic

St Andrews and St Leonards