It is of no consequence whether the wordCuldee is of Latin or Celtic origin. The name is equally significant and of similar meaning in both languages. It is not precisely ascertained at what time that name was first used. It was unknown to Bede and the biographers of St Columba, but seems to have been established early in the 10th century as the title of an order of ecclesiastics possessing numerous establishments in Scotland and Ireland, and a very few also in England and Wales. The Culdees resided in monasteries, but were not tied down by monastic rules so strict as those of the followers of Columba or Columbanus, or of the Benedictine order and its various branches. Their institute bore some resemblance to the rule of the canons-regular of St Augustine, but still more to that of the secular canons so well known in the history of England during the 10th and 11th centuries. They were not united in one great community like the Columbites and Cistercians, or the orders of the Mendicant Friars, but resided in their separate monasteries or colleges, each of which was governed by its abbot, and was practically independent of the others. The Scottish monasteries are the best known, and it is in connection with them that the history of the order is most important. Their chief houses in that country were St Andrews, which numbered among its superiors King Constantine, who in earlier years had fought against the English sovereign Athelstan at Brunanburh; Dunkeld, of which Crinan, grandfather of Malcolm Canmore, was one of the lay abbots; Lochleven, famous as giving us the oldest of Scottish library catalogues; and Abernethy and Brechin, remembered chiefly in connection with their round towers.

It was long fondly imagined by Protestant writers that the religious belief and worship of the Culdees supplied complete evidence of primitive truth having been preserved free from Roman corruptions in one remote comer of Western Europe. It is now certain that this opinion is entirely opposed to historical evidence. In doctrine, ritual, and government there was no difference between the Culdees and the monastic communities in the Latin Church, except that the former, as was to be expected in a remote and uncivilized country distracted by repeated invasions of the Northmen, and by almost uninterrupted civil dissensions, were more superstitious and corrupt than their brethren on the Continent. In ecclesiastical discipline and morals there was the same inferiority. The “pure Culdees” are familiar in poetry and legend, but are unknown to history. At no time distinguished above their fellows for learning or piety, they gradually became still more remiss. The chief endowments of their monasteries were seized by nobles, who called themselves abbots, but were neither ecclesiastics nor discharged any ecclesiastical functions, and who transmitted their titles and estates to their families in hereditary descent. In one respect these nobles were better than the corresponding class who, as priors of St Andrews and abbots of Arbroath and Paisley, or the like, fought on either side in the civil wars of the 16th century;—they gave up a portion of their revenues to ecclesiastics, who, under the name of priors, discharged the spiritual functions of superiors of the monasteries.

Such a system naturally tended to become more corrupt as time went on. We need not believe all that is told to the prejudice of the Culdees by the chroniclers of a later age; but it is certain that the changes introduced into the Scottish Church by the influence of Queen Margaret and her son King David effected a great and beneficial revolution. The Culdees in general conformed to the stricter discipline enforced by these sovereigns. The lay abbots had to resign their titles if not their estates; the chief houses of the old rule reappeared as Benedictine and Augustinian monasteries; and, in one case at least, that of Brechin, the Culdees became for a time the chapter of the new cathedral The last appearance of the Culdees in Scottish history is in connection with the unsuccessful attempts of the prior and brethren of the order at St Andrews, in the beginning of the 14th century, to maintain their ancient privilege of assisting at the election of a bishop of the primatial see.

The best and fallest account of the Culdees is to be found in Dean Reeves’s Culdees of the British Islands as they appear in History, with an Appendix of Evidences, Dublin, 1864

In each regular establishment of the Culdees, it would appear that there were twelve brethren, with one who presided over them. Their ecclesiastical government has been viewed as materially the same with the Presbyterian. Their president, or abbot, was not a bishop, but a presbyter; to whose authority, as we learn from Bede, even the bishops of the district were subject. In their meetings, all matters were settled by plurality of voices. The members of this council had the general designation of _seniores_, or elders. To them, collectively, belonged the trial of the gifts of those who had been educated in their seminaries, when they were to be employed in the public ministry; from them they received ordination and mission, and to them they were amenable in the discharge of their office. Those whom they thus employed are, by ancient writers, often denominated bishops. But that they attached to this designation no dignity superior to that of presbyter, appears incontrovertible from their being afterward called to account, and sometimes censured by the fraternity. It has been asserted by the friends of diocesan episcopacy, that a bishop _must_ always have resided at Iona for the purpose of conferring ordination. But there is not the slightest evidence of this. The contrary appears from all the records of these early ages. We learn from the Saxon Chronicle, that “there was always an abbot at Hii, but no bishop.” It is a singular fact, that those who were first acknowledged as bishops in the northern parts of England, and were indeed instrumental in the introduction of Christianity there, were not only trained up at Iona, but received all their authority from the council of seniors in that island. This was the case with respect to Corman, the bishop of the Northumbrians, as well as Aidan, Finan, and Colman, who succeeded each other in this mission. From the testimony of Bede, it is evident that by means of Scottish missionaries, or of those whom they had instructed and ordained, not only the Northumbrians, but the Middle-Angles, the Mercians and East-Saxons, all the way to the river Thames, that is, the inhabitants of by far the greatest part of the country now called England, were converted to Christianity; and for some time acknowledged subjection to the ecclesiastical government of the Scots. The latter lost their influence merely because their missionaries chose rather to give up their charges than to submit to the prevailing influence of the church of Rome, to which the Saxons of the west and of Kent had subjected themselves.

Their doctrines were not less unpalatable than their mode of government to the friends of the church of Rome. In England, in a very early period, the adherents of the Popish missionary Augustine were viewed by the delegates from Iona in the light of heretics. They accordingly refused to hold communion with them. Matters were carried so high in support of the Roman authority in the synod of Stroneschalch, now Whitby, in England, A. D. 662, that Colman, the Scottish bishop of Lindisfarne, left his bishopric, and with his adherents returned to Scotland. Thus, as Bede informs us, “the Catholic institution daily increasing, all the Scots who resided among the Angles, either conformed to them or returned to their own country.” It was decreed in the council of Cealhythe, A. D. 816, that no Scottish priest should be allowed to perform any duty of his function in England. But in Scotland the Culdean doctrine had taken deeper root; and, although equally offensive to the votaries of Rome, kept its ground for several centuries. The Popish writers themselves celebrate the piety, the purity, the humility, and even the learning, of the Culdees; but while they were displeased with the simplicity, or what they deemed the barbarism, of their worship, they charged them with various deviations from the faith of the Catholic church. It was not the least of these, that they did not observe Easter at the proper time. They did not acknowledge auricular confession; they rejected penance and authoritative absolution; they made no use of chrism in baptism; confirmation was unknown; they opposed the doctrine of the real presence; they withstood the idolatrous worship of saints and angels, dedicating all their churches to the Holy Trinity; they denied the doctrine of works of supererogation; they were enemies to the celibacy of the clergy, themselves living in the married state. One sweeping charge brought against them is, that they preferred their own opinions to “the statutes of the holy fathers.”

The Scots, having received the Christian faith by the labours of the Culdees, long withstood the errors and usurpations of Rome. It was not till the twelfth century that their influence began to decline. The difference between the lower classes of society in England and those of the same description in Scotland, both with respect to religious knowledge and moral conduct, is generally considered to be very striking. Some writers, whose attention has been arrested by this singular circumstance, and who could not be influenced by local attachments, have ascribed the disparity to the relative influence, however remote it may seem, of the doctrine and example of the Culdees. Notwithstanding their great disinterestedness and diligence in propagating the Gospel in England, these good men, it has been remarked, within thirty years after the commencement of their mission, were obliged to give way to the adherents of Rome; whereas the Scots, it is certainly known, enjoyed the benefit of their labours for more than seven centuries, and seem to have still retained their predilection for the doctrines and modes which they so early received.