The fame and significance of Dunkeld in the tenth and eleventh centuries

Abstract

The church of Dunkeld was apparently refurbished to house the saint’s relics in the time of Cinaed mac Ailpín (died 858) and modern surveys of the afterlife of St Columba have thus often paid respect to Dunkeld as the ‘Scottish’ capital of the Columban familia that disintegrated after the ‘viking’ disruptions of the ninth century, before itself losing status later in the same century. However, the so-called break-up of that familia in the ninth century is far from obvious in the source material. At the same time, rather than go into decline, several important sources considered here suggest that Dunkeld's significance as well as its famed association with St Columba only grew after c.900, to a height in the early eleventh century when the Columban cult was central to Scottish politics and when the family of a certain Crínán, abbot of Dunkeld, displaced Cinaed mac Ailpín’s dynasty, ruling the expanding kingdom until the later thirteenth century.