Browse Items (658 total)

In the early 1790s the British Parliament decided to resolve the status of Roman Catholics in Scotland. More than a decade after the harshest restrictions had been lifted on Catholics in the rest of the United Kingdom, it was agreed that Roman…

Following the death of Charles Edward Stuart, the leaders of the Scottish Episcopal Church agreed to support George III. After some argument, the British Parliament removed most of the legal restrictions on Episcopalians in Scotland. Episcopal…

Since the Reformation the Scottish government had banned Roman Catholic worship. In 1778 the British Parliament tried to reduce the restrictions on Roman Catholics. The proposed act caused major protests in Scotland. As a result of the popular…

During the 1750s and 1760s a dispute over the appointment of a new minister at Inverkeithing led to another split in the Church of Scotland. A group of ministers who objected to outside interference in parish appointments set up the new Relief…

The new Secession Church had a number of internal divisions which came to a head in the late 1740s. A particular area of disagreement concerned whether Seceders could take an oath to support the religion ‘presently professed in the country’. This…

Following the failed rebellion of 1745 and 1746 checks on Episcopalians increased. Episcopal ministers who failed to take an oath of loyalty were forbidden to lead services for more than four people. Episcopalians were also not allowed to be public…

In August 1745 Charles Edward Stuart (sometimes called the Young Pretender) landed on the West Coast of Scotland. His arrival triggered a far-reaching rebellion in support of the Stuart claim to the throne. In comparison to many other parts of…

Disagreements about the appointment of ministers and the role of powerful landowners as patrons led to a split in the Church of Scotland. A small group of ministers who wished for congregations to have greater control over church appointments broke…

During the 1720s the popular preacher John Glas (a graduate of the University of St Andrews and minister at Tealing near Dundee) put forward a series of radical ideas including condemning the idea of a national church and regarding communion as a…

The placename Eglismartin (the ‘Church of (St) Martin’) in Easter Aberdour was first recorded in the fourteenth century. Names with the Eglis or Eccles element, short for Latin Ecclesiastes or Ecclesia (church), tend to indicate religious…

The parish church of Aberdour first appears in the records in the twelfth century when it was the subject of a dispute between a local lord, William de Mortimer, and the Augustinian canons of Inchcolm. Substantial sections of the current building…

James Douglas, 1st earl of Morton (d.1493) founded St Martha’s hospital in Aberdour in 1474. It was located close to a holy well dedicated to St Fillan whose water was believed to cure nervous ailments, blindness, and deafness. The location of the…

James Douglas, earl of Morton (d.1493) founded St Martha’s hospital in Aberdour in 1474. However, by 1486 this project had not been realised, and the earl granted the lands and building to four Sisters of the Third Order of St Francis, Isobel and…

The location of the church so close to their country seat at Aberdour Castle had been a point of contention for the Douglas family for some time, and in 1790 they successfully closed St Fillan’s and opened a new church in Wester Aberdour. It was…

Shortly after the Great Disruption in 1843, a Free Church congregation was founded in Aberdour. They opened a church, called St Colme’s, in 1845, close to the location of the old parish church. By 1848 it had a congregation of 318. In 1900 it became…

There is some debate as to when the Episcopal Church congregation was founded in Aberdour. In 1845 Hugh Ralph noted that there was one Episcopal family in the parish, but did not mention a church. It was certainly there by 1854 when it appears on an…

In 1845 Hugh Ralph noted that one family in the parish belonged to the Roman Catholic Church, but it was not until 1971 that a RC congregation returned to Aberdour. The church was built in the Hillside area of Aberdour, close to the local school. It…

In 1517 the German academic Martin Luther published a series of criticisms of the Roman Catholic Church. Luther’s protest rapidly developed into an international religious crisis, which would ultimately lead to the creation of the movement we now…

In the spring of 1546 the Roman Catholic archbishop of St Andrews, Cardinal David Beaton, was assassinated by a group of Fife lairds who opposed his religious and political policies. The murderers gained access to Beaton’s residence at St Andrews…

During the 1550s a number of Roman Catholics worked to bring improvements to the Church in Scotland. Fife was at the heart of this movement, which was backed by John Hamilton, the new archbishop of St Andrews. This period saw efforts to improve the…

In the spring and summer of 1559 Protestant activists set out to ‘reform’ Roman Catholic churches. Influenced by strict Calvinist ideas on the wickedness of ‘idols’, they smashed statues, removed altars, and burned religious books. Once churches had…

The Reformation Parliament of 1560 saw Scotland officially declared a Protestant country. However, it took time to establish the structures of a Reformed Church across the nation. Fife was at the forefront of this movement. Local church courts, known…

For many years there were bitter debates about how the new Protestant Church of Scotland should be governed. In the 1560s each region had a superintendent who oversaw religious affairs and reported back to the General Assembly (an annual meeting of…

By the 1570s the Church of Scotland was adopting an increasingly hard line on religious festivals. In particular there was a campaign against celebrating Christmas (or Yule as it was often known in Scotland). At the beginning of 1574 the St Andrews…

The later decades of the sixteenth century saw ongoing tensions about how radical the Church of Scotland should be. Many of these arguments became focused around the question of church government. In 1592 the Scottish Parliament abolished the role of…

Reading the Bible formed a vital part of Protestant religious activity. In particular Protestants believed that people should have access to the Bible in their native language. Yet there were significant problems with many of the early translations…

As he grew older King James VI became opposed to the relatively democratic government of the Church of Scotland. He had bitter disputes with what he termed the ‘fiery ministers’ of the General Assembly. The king believed that Presbyterianism led to…

The 1630s saw growing tensions about religion in Scotland. At this time King Charles I tried to bring the Church of Scotland more in line with English practices. Charles firmly supported the role of bishops and wanted more elaborate services. In 1637…

In 1639 Scotland slipped into religious war. Supporters of the National Covenant (sometimes known as Covenanters) took up arms in defence of their beliefs. The response of Charles I to this crisis led to civil war across his three kingdoms – namely…

In 1660 the English invited Charles II to return as king. Shortly afterwards Charles set about overturning the religious changes of the previous decades. In 1661 the Scottish Parliament passed the Rescissory Act which got rid of all the laws passed…

Archbishop James Sharp was a divisive religious leader. Many Presbyterians felt that he had sold out the Church of Scotland by agreeing to become archbishop of St Andrews. Sharp rigorously enforced the religious changes imposed by Charles II and…

In 1689 King James VII was replaced as ruler of Scotland by his daughter Mary and her husband William of Orange. Soon afterwards the Scottish Parliament (which had backed William and Mary) passed an act abolishing the authority of bishops. In 1690…

Many of Fife’s Episcopal clergymen were removed from their parishes by the restoration of Presbyterianism. In 1695 the Scottish Parliament passed a law forbidding displaced Episcopal clergy from performing marriages or baptisms under pain of…

After much debate, the parliaments of Scotland and England passed legislation to create a new Kingdom of Great Britain. The Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh closed. Until the twentieth century legislation on Scottish religious affairs became the…

Lobbying from Scottish aristocrats led to the passing of the Church Patronage Act. This stated that the old patrons of Scottish parishes (typically large landowners) could influence the appointment of Church of Scotland ministers. The move was deeply…

The British government was initially more tolerant of Episcopalians than the Scottish Parliament had been. In 1711 the laws against Episcopal marriages and baptisms were removed and new legislation ordered that Episcopalians were not to be disturbed…

When Presbyterianism was re-established in 1690 the Scottish Parliament also passed legislation banning Christmas. In 1712 this ban was lifted and the British Parliament legalised keeping Christmas in Scotland. However, most Presbyterians remained…

The accession of George I to the British throne was soon followed by a rebellion backing James Francis Edward Stuart’s claim to be king instead. James (also known as the Old Pretender) was a Roman Catholic, but he received support from many Scottish…

After the Jacobite rising of 1715 the British government became increasingly suspicious of Scottish Episcopalians. Ministers in the Scottish Episcopal Church were required to take an oath renouncing the Stuart claim to the throne and promising to…

Although Culross only enters the written record in the 1200s, it is clear from archaeological evidence that a community had existed there long before that date. The burgh’s early religious history is associated with St Serf, an important local saint…

The Abbey of Culross was founded in 1217 by Maol Choluim I, Earl of Fife (1204–1228), who was himself buried in the church in 1228x1229. Dedicated to St Mary and St Serf, it housed monks of the Cistercian order, a reformed order founded in the late…

The old parish church of Culross lies around 800 metres to the north west of the burgh. It was first recorded in 1217 when it was gifted to the monks at the newly founded abbey in Culross. Most of the structure was built in the twelfth or thirteenth…

The chapel of St Kentigern in Culross was founded in 1503 by Robert Blacadder, Archbishop of Glasgow (1484-1508). Kentigern, or Mungo as he is commonly known, was believed to have been born in Culross. According to the Vita St Kentigerni (composed in…

Shortly after the Reformation, the presbytery, transepts choir and tower of the Abbey were converted into the parish church of Culross. This situation was formerly recognised by an Act of Parliament in 1633. In 1642 the church received a significant…

The Free Church in Culross was formed in 1846, and in the following year, with the support Mr Cunninghame of Balgownie, a church was built on the Low Causeway in the west of the town. A renewal of mining operations in the area around Culross in the…

St Serf’s Roman Catholic Church was built in 1922 after the opening of new pits at Valleyfield and Blairhall in the early twentieth century saw a large increase in the population of Culross and the surrounding villages. It was located in High…