Bishops and the Border

chapter 4 Bishops and the Border

In the summer of 1426, Thomas Tulloch, bishop of Orkney, travelled to Bergen to take part in a diplomatic summit aimed at reiterating the intentions and conditions of peace first launched between the kingdoms of Norway and Scot- land in 1266. In the preceding years, the bishop and most of his flock in Orkney had suffered under the tyranny of David Menzies of Weem, a much-maligned Scottish nobleman with a penchant for employing other unwelcome Scots in Orcadian affairs. However, tensions between local and foreign men in Orkney were not on the docket in Bergen; rather, it was the Scottish crown’s failure to make good on its promise of annual payments to Norway that drew diplo- mats to the bustling Norwegian town. Together with his ecclesiastic cohorts from Bergen, Oslo and Hamar, as well as several members of the knightly class, Bishop Thomas greeted the delegates of King James i of Scotland in late July, and together they substantiated the goodwill of Norwegian-Scottish affairs by renewing the terms of the Treaty of Perth for the second time.1 While this fell within the ambit of macro-level politics between monarchical states, Bishop Thomas must have recognized its implications for peace along the frontier and for the prosperity of the Orkney community. Thus, in fulfilling his duties as a royal representative, the Orkney prelate was also tending to grassroots inter- ests along the frontier. The participation of Orkney’s bishops in Norwegian-Scottish affairs was both an asset and a risk. Their familiarity with Scottish society meant that they were ideally placed to facilitate amicable and fluid interaction with Scotland’s monarchs and their various secular and ecclesiastical agents. However, Nor- way’s kings were not always inclined to delegate solemn diplomatic duties to frontier prelates, some of whom racked up dubious records of loyalty to the Norwegian crown at the local communal level. In examining their participation in the administration of frontier governance, on the one hand, and their negotiation of Norwegian-Scottish affairs, on the other, it is important to de- termine why Norway’s rulers at times relied on these clerics, and at other times marginalized them from the political ambit. Munch proposed that endemic tensions between Norwegian secular authorities and Scottish clerics uncov- ered bishops’ preference for Scottish practices of ecclesiastic management and true allegiance to Scotland and the Scottish people. While Munch’s charged

1 dn 8, no. 276.

Bishops and the Border 135 rhetoric has been tempered in recent studies, the theory that bishops acceler- ated Orkney’s supposed ‘Scottification’ is still central in surveys of the frontier’s late medieval development. Just as the pillars of the theory have been questioned with respect to secular civic administration, so too should we re- address the theme in regard to the frontier’s other great edifice of political authority: the bishopric.

4.1 Integration and Mobilization

The bishopric of Orkney played a crucial role in the early political development of the Northern Isles and the promotion of Orkney as a renowned prin- cipality.2 Prior to the mid-thirteenth century, the link between secular and ecclesiastical authority was strongest at a local level where earls and bishops cooperated to promote the church as an autonomous symbol of power.3 This is most evident during Earl Rognvald Kali Kolsson’s and Bishop William gamli’s collaborative efforts to canonize the late Earl Magnus i and erect a grand cathedral – St. Magnus Cathedral – in his honour in the 1130s.4 It is described by Crawford as ‘a monument to the power, prestige, piety – and wealth – of the medieval earldom’.5 These efforts went a long way toward establishing the earldom as a regional powerhouse in its own right, an aim that was shared by contemporary rulers across Northern Europe.6 While incorporation of the bishopric into the Norwegian province of Nidaros was in some respects a natural step in the consolidation of Norse ecclesiastical authority in the mid-twelfth century, it has also been regarded as a concerted effort to stymie competing attempts to bring it within the Scottish

2 Although not regarded as a Norse metropolitan until its incorporation into the newly estab- lished archbishopric of Nidaros in 1151/52, it began to fall into the Norwegian ambit while still a suffrage of the archbishopric of York around 1100, when King Magnus iii pushed for the in- stallation of a bishop, William gamli, presumably a Norwegian nominee, during his western campaign of 1102 (Crawford 2003, 144). 3 Ibid., 145. 4 For the establishment and growth of the St. Magnus cult, see especially Haki Antonsson, St. Magnús of Orkney. A Scandinavian Martyr-Cult in Context, Leiden 2007; Crawford 2013, 202–12. 5 Idem 2003, 145. 6 Haki Antonsson says that in ‘personally associating their authority with a saintly relative these rulers strengthened their own claim to power. The cults were thus princely in every sense of the word’ (Haki Antonsson, 2007, 2).