Ecclesiastical and Monastic Associations 49Culdeens officiating as the clergy of Saint Peter's Cathedral. He asked
that they pray for his victory and consequently, on his return from a vic-
torious campaign, gave them a special donation or tithe on wheat
throughout the entire diocese to aid them in their pious and charitable
works.
Their history also tells how Edwin, Athelstan's son, gave York a
masonic charter in 926. This Celtic or Scottish (in the broad sense) Rite,
pronounced by the Synod of Cashel, persisted until 1172, the date when
Henry II had gained enough power to enforce its condemnation.
Certainly the contributions of Celtic Christians were significant.
Historians have often stressed the importance of Celtic art in the early
Middle Ages. Architecture, carving, and the application of metals onto
objects of worship were among the practices at that time. Because they
are so widely reproduced, the best-known Celtic works of the time
remain the illuminated manuscripts that traveling Irish monks, the
peregrini Scoti, transported throughout Europe.^10
With respect to architecture specifically, Dom Fernand Cabrol, in
his Dictionnaire d'archeologie chretienne (Paris: Letouzy, 1924), in the
article entitled "Art celtique," provides a thorough list of the buildings
constructed by the disciples of Saint Columban, such as the first abbeys
of Jumieges and Saint Wandrille. In general, however, this aspect of
Celtic art, far from denoting progress, seems instead to represent a
backward or decadent technique. Culdeen architecture testifies to the
inadequate mastery of Roman traditions by the Celts. The particularly
local character of these structures may be seen as evidence of an incom-
plete science. For a long time the Culdees built only in wood. They
decried the use of stone in construction as being Gallic or Roman,
though this disdain of stone may have had no other cause than their
own inability to utilize it competently. In addition to the divergence of
the Culdeen and Roman rites, lack of skill with stone was very likely
the reason that compelled seventh-century missionaries to select the
Roman scholoe as their source for qualified workers.
In the eighth century, the Venerable Bede recorded in his Historia
Ecclesiastica that Nectan, king of the Picts, who had converted to the
Roman rite, no longer wanted wooden churches like those built by
Celtic architects. He asked the abbot Geolfrid (an Anglo-Saxon who