Nechtan, high king of Picts

January 2002

Marion Youngblood

If Pictish sagas could be unearthed from the oblivion into which they descended after ‘union’ with the Scots, Nechtan highking of Picts, the last in the Heroic Age of Pictish warriors, anointed leader of his people, evangelising monarch, would top the bill. Within less than 30 years (706-729) he brought deliverance to his land from Dark Age beliefs and petty rivalries and united them in church, wealth and nationalism. He was one of few Pictish royals to die in his bed (732).

These stone churches were to become the first network of Peterkirks throughout Pictland: from St Peter’s at Restenneth in Forfarshire through the Mearns (Meigle, Tealing); over the Mounth into Mar and Buchan, foundations to Peter were placed at Glenbuchat, Peterculter, Aberdeen (Spittal), Fyvie, Peterugie (Peterhead), Deer, Rathven-in-Enzie (now at Buckie), Bellie, Essil-Dipple, Duffus, Drumdelgie and Inveravon. Because they were made of stone, rather than earlier turf cells, they were in the later vernacular called ‘fite kirks’ (white, as gleaming stone) and two of these survive – albeit altered – at Tyrie in Buchan and Rayne in the Garioch.

Fortunately church historian Bede was writing a contemporary account during Nechtan’s reign (he died within three years of the great king); coincidentally Annals being written at Iona are particularly detailed and accurate at that time; so our sources do not draw a complete blank. Bede was a meticulous researcher, particularly in ecclesiastical matters, and Nechtan was considered both spiritually and socially enlightened.

In the last quarter of the seventh century, the two most powerful northern nations had fought a battle which was to be a cultural watershed: Nechtansmere (685) was fought on Dunnichen Moss near Forfar in southern Pictish heartland; a Pictish victory and death of Anglian king Ecgfrith put an end to Northumbrian interference in Pictish affairs. A small outpost of Anglian religious education at Abercorn-on-Forth retreated to Northumbria and the two nations returned to relatively amicable relations until the end of the century. Six years later Nechtan was to take the throne.

He came from impeccable matrilineal succession of the Royal house connected to Bridei son of Beli (c.672-93) who had fought ‘for the inheritance of his (maternal) grandfather’ at Dunnichen when Nechtan himself was an impressionable child at court; so the cataclysmic turnaround of affairs which resulted, of great Northumbria having to hand back part of conquered Pictland to the Picts, must have made a deep impression on him. When he came to the throne in 706, following his brother Bridei son of Derile (697-706), Nechtan son of Derile was well versed in power, knew ecclesiastical ropes and how to wield them and understood the importance of allying himself with Rome against the rustic, colonial Celtic church of Columba’s followers centred on Iona.

While not available to us until recopied in the 12th century, the ancient origin legend of the kingdom of the Picts is preserved in the Irish quatrain:

‘Morsheimer do Cruithne clainn
raindset Albain i secht raind;
Cait, Cé, Cirig, cétach clann
Fib Fidach, Fotla, Fortrenn
Ocus is o ainm gach fir dib fil for a fearand.’

‘Seven of Cruithne’s children divided Alba into seven divisions; the portion of Cat, of Cé, of Cirig a warlike clan, the kingdoms of Fife, Fidach, Fotla and Fortriu; and the name of each of them remains upon his land.’

These were the sub-kingdoms of his realm: in the north, Cat (Caithness), Cé (Mar and Buchan) and Fidach (Moray and inland Banff); south of the Mounth: Cirig became Magh Circenn, the plain of the Mearns; Fib (Fife), Fotla (Atholl) and centre of the court, Fortriu (present Forteviot). By contemporary standards, it was a massive kingdom to administer and rule.

Throughout his childhood, Nechtan was educated in the highest monasteries of the day, fluent in all northern British dialects and Gaelic learned on visits to Iona, maintained through contact with a Columban ‘familia’ of monks who attended Nechtan’s brother, Bridei’s court. The little enclave persisted from the time the Anglian mission had returned south of what became the permanent border. Good relations were maintained with the Anglian church through contact with Jarrow – a clever device which allowed the Pictish court to be fully informed on church doctrine via both outlets: Iona providing a ‘celtic’ connection with the Irish church, and Northumberland providing a direct line to Rome.

Within five years of his accession, Nechtan had decided to ask his powerful Northumbrian neighbours – descendants of those who had fought and lost in 685 – for advice on how to go about building stone churches throughout his kingdom, along the lines of those already spreading in Anglia, ‘in the manner of Rome’; he knew not only that this request would be fulfilled, but that by spiritually kneeling before Rome, he was joining a European alliance of wealthy and powerful nations. Bede’s superior, Abbot Ceolfrith of the Jarrow monastery, responded volubly, subsequently apparently sending architects to Nechtan to assist in his nationwide reform.

Along with the request for physical assistance, Nechtan asked for guidance in the correct calculation and maintaining of Easter Tables: this had been a stigma among northern kings since the religious controversy at the 664 Whitby synod nearly 50 years before. Columban Iona had continued to calculate by the antiquated calendar, a lumbering process which sometimes had them celebrating on wildly differing dates, while Anglian Northumbria was more modern, calculating according to tables approved by popes in Rome.

Essentially papal calendars were never going to celebrate alongside the Jews: Easter had to be after spring equinox, but separate from Passover. Easter for the Picts was obviously a festival which was going to catch on, accustomed as they were to sacred seasonal celebrations. The wave spread like wildfire through a nation only recently converted in pockets by wandering monks.

The northern world did not have to wait long for Iona to ‘convert’ officially in 716, but by then Nechtan had already decided: he had accepted Roman tables, had begun building stone churches nationwide in the name of Peter; his monks now wore the ‘Roman’ tonsure; all he had to do was to thank his southern neighbours politely for assistance and equally politely, ask the Columban monks at court to leave.

In his first decade as king he had consolidated a strong alliance, formed the matrix of a new religion for all his peoples, and, because with religion came learning, had initiated a process which was to educate at least the Pictish upper classes, thereby making his kingdom a superior Christian power. If he had retained the Columban ‘familia’ at court, its monastic simplicity would have continued to relate religious matters to ‘conversations with God’.

By introducing both the building programme, Latin instruction through the church and the correct way to celebrate the highest festival of that Church, he was to elevate his nation into the light, but a light which he controlled. It was a brilliant concept by a northern king to spread religion by secular means. Significantly, 175 years later, the then Scots ruling dynasty was still struggling with this power of lord over church, when before 889 king Giric made history by ‘liberating’ the Church which was ‘under servitude up to that time, after the fashion of the Picts’.

Nechtan’s new wave relied heavily on his nobility for its introduction: in his scattered nation where there was a lordly stronghold, there would be a private chapel; if no foundation already existed dedicated to British wandering holy men of the previous wave a century before, a stone church would appear in Peter’s name – the new fashion. Copying out Easter tables and sacred Latin texts became the norm for the educated. A Latin chronicle appeared. Previously the sole domain of Irish, and Welsh monasteries, it contained a Pictish king-list celebrating and chronicling Nechtan’s royal line which Anglian, Welsh and Irish chroniclers were quick to copy. But, with the new wave came something Picts across the land understood: the message was carved in stone.

A number of Pictish holy men play a rôle in Nechtan’s great plan. After all, Latin was not exactly a language the countryman was going to pick up spontaneously. Bede says Nechtan had promised to introduce Latin usage for his people ‘insofar as their remoteness from the Roman language would allow.’ So it was essential his bishops – already fluent in Latin – were completely familiar with Pictish patterns of speech. Gone were the days before 585 when Irish Columba had needed an interpreter to speak to king Bridei son of Maelcon at the Pictish court in Inverness. Nechtan used Picts to speak to Picts. One of them, Bishop Fergus, attended Rome in 721 to sign the decrees, presumably on his king’s behalf. This saint features both south and north of the Mounth: as patron of Glamis at the centre of cross slab carving in Forfarshire; but, as we know him, patron of Moy in Moray, St Fergus in Buchan and, most significantly, Dyce which has one of the few magnificent cross slabs in Aberdeenshire. Cé was conservative, not pagan. The simple cross was already understood.

Class II cross-slabs date from Nechtan’s reform: mounted warriors conversing with angels, or the cross carefully fused with pre-Christian symbols which were familiar, the message was clear: landed Pictish aristocrats are following in the ways of Christian heroes – and you can too!

In Nechtan’s second decade as king, centres for carving the sophisticated new imagery seemed to spring up everywhere; in Angus there is a cluster of class II stones (Meigle, Aberlemno, Brechin); the new religion took hold at centres around the Moray Firth: at Rosemarkie – a former Peterkirk – and at Kineddar-Spynie near the great stronghold of Duffus with its Peterkirk where at least 26 fragmentary slabs have been found; at least as many have been found at Tarbat-on-Beauly within monastic walls. Conservative Cé, the provinces of Mar and Buchan, seem to have held out the longest: with only the merest scattering of cross slabs within a huge proliferation of (class I) pre-Christian symbol stones. However at Deer monks produced the exquisite calf-vellum sacred pocket gospel called the Book of Deer.

Nechtan’s Golden Age had begun and it seemed as if it might go on forever.

Marian Youngblood returns as a contributor to Leopard after 25 years. A North-east native,

she is an honorary lecturer for University of Aberdeen’s Key Learning programme, currently in its City series.

This is an article from the January 2002 edition of Leopard Magazine. To read much more like this every month, subscribe to Leopard Magazine.