Crail Parish Church

Crail Parish Church

The parish church at Crail has been a place of worship since at least the twelfth century. During the reign of Malcolm IV (who died in 1165) revenues from the parish of Crail were given to the Cistercian nunnery at Haddington. The nuns at Haddington retained significant rights concerning Crail into the sixteenth century. Around 1517 Crail became a collegiate church – in other words it was served by a largely self-governing community of priests. Before the Reformation Crail parish church was lavishly furnished with statues, satin altar hangings, silver and gold crosses, and collections of religious books – all recorded in a surviving inventory. Meanwhile a famous cross known as the Rood of Crail was the focus of pilgrimage. Most of these items were destroyed in the summer of 1559 when John Knox and other Protestant activists descended on Crail. From this point onwards the parish church became the scene of Protestant worship. However, the religious changes were not embraced by everyone. In the 1560s John Melville, the new Protestant minister of Crail, faced considerable disruption to services in the parish church, with members of the congregation threatening to drag him from the pulpit by his ears. Religious controversy continued in Crail throughout the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, although disagreements became increasingly focused on which type of Protestantism should be adopted. In 1648 James Sharp was appointed minister of Crail – he would go on to become archbishop of St Andrews before being murdered by religious opponents. By the early 1800s much of the parish church was in poor repair and the east end had largely fallen out of use. Major rebuilding work took place in the nineteenth century, and further alterations were undertaken in the 1960s. However, significant sections of the medieval church survive, with parts of the tower probably dating from around 1200.

sacredlandscapesoffife

Bess Rhodes

Site

207

06/10/2021

(1) Charles Rogers, ed., Register of the Collegiate Church of Crail (1877). (2) Simon Taylor and Gilbert Márkus, The Place-Names of Fife (5 vols, Donington, 2006-2012), vol. 3, pp. 181-183. (3) Walter Wood, The East Neuk of Fife: Its History and Antiquities (1887), pp 420-421. (4) Corpus of Scottish Medieval Parish Churches, entry for Crail / Crelyn Collegiate Church: https://arts.st-andrews.ac.uk/corpusofscottishchurches/site.php?id=158486 [Accessed 22 September 2021].

cm x cm x cm

current,56.26270393560999,-2.6255456636419416;

Crail Parish Church

TEXT

Building

440

1

Catholic,Church of Scotland

true