That said, there have remained those places within Christendom that have served as a central place of church leadership, or deeply spiritual locations to the individual believers. Today, one of the few remaining such places is the Vatican, home of Roman Catholic believers; but there were not always so few. In fact, in the middle ages when the Catholic Church was potentially at its most powerful, cathedrals and churches, monasteries, and religious communities throughout Europe were popular and sought after, and flocks of people would make the journey or the pilgrimage to these places at least once in their lifetime.
One such place was St Andrews, Scotland, former home of not only the Bishop, but eventually the Archbishop, dating back at least to 800AD. As it became evident that St Andrews was the most important bishopric in Scotland, the church decided to build what was to become the largest and most majestic cathedral in Scotland, now referred to simply as St Andrews Cathedral.
Work on the cathedral began in approximately 1160AD and was not completed for another 150 years, eventually being consecrated on July 5, 1318 in the presence of Robert the Bruce (remember Braveheart?), King of Scotland.
St Andrews history comes alive only when you place it in the context of the history of the Christian Church.
For a mere 250 years the cathedral was the center of worship in Scotland, the place to which thousands of Christian pilgrims traveled each year. And then came the winds of change, brought on by what we now refer to as the Protestant Reformation, and in places like Scotland, people like John Knox. On June 11, 1559 John Knox preached a famous sermon on the evils of the Roman Catholic Church, which aroused the congregants to immediate judgment to the point that they marched to the cathedral in St Andrews and subsequently destroyed the beautiful furnishings inside.
Within one week of Knox’s sermon, smaller churches had been destroyed, large portions of the cathedral had been destroyed, and many of the Catholic leaders of the day living in St Andrews had been expelled.
Almost overnight, Scotland had turned from a Roman Catholic country to a Protestant country.
By the late 1600’s the cathedral’s sole contribution to the community was as a quarry, filled with beautiful stones by which St Andrews would be developed.
Today there are no more pilgrimages to the cathedral in St Andrews. But there is a living witness to its history and a standing testimony to its glory of the past. I am one of the fortunate ones to be able to gaze and reflect upon this history every single day.
At this point, I will resist the urge to go on writing about how our assumptions and religious convictions and opinions have a substantial and lasting impact on the world around us, or divisions within the Church today, or any other ethical message that would be a natural outflow of understanding the history of St Andrews Cathedral. Instead, I’ll leave you with some pictures that simply don’t do justice to what this place is to the naked eye, but can at least speak to your imagination about its living past.
Above is the east end of the cathedral, seen through the doorway of the west end tower.
Above is also the east end of the cathedral, with St. Rules’ tower to the right.
The western entrance and prominent spire with my study “castle” in the foreground.
The view of the western and eastern ends with the one remaining wall from the top of my “castle” tower! (We aren’t allowed up there, but the door happened to be unlocked one day…) The North Sea is immediately behind the cathedral.
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