Sometimes one must take the bull by the horns, which I did today. With the cruise ship offering the obvious Loch Ness excursion where one is guaranteed not to see Nessie, or the trips to the nearby castles, which all start to look the same after a while, I had to craft our own bespoke excursion.
I did this with no little help from Chatgpt, which I have found incredibly useful on this trip. Granted, it sometimes makes mistakes and must be fact-checked, but on tasks like, “Prepare an itinerary for a 4-hour car tour leaving from and returning to Invergordon, Scotland that includes sites relevant to early Christian history,” it shines.
We thought we were just hiring a car and driver, and instead got a true Scotsman in a kilt and a large, black Mercedes. He was also an experienced and knowledgeable tour guide, who added some Scottish humor and local charm at the appropriate time.
He met us at the pier and drove us first to St. Duthus Church in Tain. Duthus (also Duthac) lived from 1000 A.D. to 1065 A.D., and was Bishop of Ross, the area of Scotland we were in today. He died in Tain, where the church we visited was raised in his honor.
The church is now only used as a meeting venue or concert hall. On the inside it looks more like a storage shed with stained glass. Oh, and there is a thirteenth century baptistry sitting in the corner, like a discarded wash bucket. In fact, it had a broom and dust pan sitting in it. In a country with so much history, such things can seem common place.
Also at a St. Duthus was a pre-Christian Celtic stone. We were told theories on its possible uses, given the numerous concave indentions ground into it. I thought mine the most credible: a board game.
From St. Duthus Church we drove 15 minutes to the Tarbat Discovery Center, in Portmahomack. This was the location where a 8th century Pictish monastery was discovered. It has a very good collection of pre-Christian and Christian Pictish stone carvings.
The monastery also housed a scriptorium, where copies of the Bible and other books were made. We were told of a new theory that the Book of Kells was created here, instead of Iona, based in part on the fact the Book of Kells incorporates some of the Pictish symbols and art found on stones here. The GSB team thinks it more likely Columba and/or his disciples visited this area evangelizing the Picts and took back what they saw to Iona where it was incorporated into the Book of Kells, but who knows?
The most important thing was that we were standing in place that was populated with Picts who became Christians likely through the work of Columba and his disciples, and then became a base for reaching others with the gospel.
Our last stop was in Dornoch, where our driver insisted we see the place of execution of Janet Horne, purportedly the last person in Scotland executed for being a witch. The spot is marked by a grave stone in a yard within a about a 5-iron of Royal Dornach Golf Club. I’m convinced moderns like such stories because it gives them a feeling of intellectual superiority over people from from the past.
Almost on cue, our driver scoffed at the ignorance of a people who would believe such things. So, I told him about Cotton Mather, a scientist and intellectual, who wrote a book around the same time, The Wonders of the Invisible World, that cited eye-witness accounts of the supernatural manifestations of demonic activity. I mentioned this to suggest to him that while Ms. Horne may have been falsely accused that does not mean there is not a spirit world. He did not seem convinced.
Last was a stop at Dornoch Cathedral, established by Gilbert of Moray, a/k/a St. Gilbert in 1224 A.D. Gilbert served as the Bishop of this area of Scotland, beginning in 1222 A.D.
There was not much to see inside the church except some nice stained glass and the sarcophagus of Gilbert’s brother, who died fighting the invading Danes in the Battle of Embo in the 1260s. Supposedly, he killed the Danish leader with leg of a horse, which is pretty resourceful.
The highlight of the day though, horse-leg combat aside, was finding the Pictish monastery at Portmahomack. Perhaps it is just anecdotal, but it seems from what we’ve seen that the early Christians in Great Britain and Ireland from the 4th to the 8th century were evangelistic. Compare that with the 11th through the 15th century stuff we’ve seen, which seems to be about bishops building cathedrals and living in palaces. If there was evangelism or missions, that certainly did not seem to be the emphasis.
Jesus’ last recorded words to His disciples are an important reminder of what we are to be constantly about, whether it is on a mission in a different country, or more likely, in our own neighborhood:
And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. 19 “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo I am with you always, even to the end of the age.
Matthew 28:18-20 (NASB)
Until tomorrow. GS