Such being
the regard in the middle ages for churches and their burying-grounds,
it is easy to understand why fountains in their immediate neighbourhood
were also reverenced. Several sanctuaries north of the Tweed were
specially famous. In his "Scotland in the Middle Ages," Professor
Cosmo Innes remarks, "Though all were equally sacred by the canon,
it would seem that the superior sanctity of some churches, from
the relics presented there, or the reverence of their patron saints,
afforded a surer asylum, and thus attracted fugitives to their shrines
rather than to the altars of common parish churches." The churches of
Stow, Innerleithen, and Tyningham were asylums at one time specially
favoured. The church on St. Charmaig's Island, in the Sound of
Jura--styled also Eilean Mòr or the Great Island--was formerly a noted
place of refuge among the Inner Hebrides. So much sanctity attached to
the church of Applecross that the privileged ground around it extended
six miles in every direction. In connection with his visit to Arran,
Martin thus describes what had once been a sanctuary in that island:
"There is an eminence of about a thousand paces in compass on the
sea-coast in Druim-cruey village, and it is fenced about with a stone
wall; of old it was a sanctuary, and whatever number of men or cattle
could get within it were secured from the assaults of their enemies,
the place being privileged by universal consent." The enclosure was
probably an ancient burying-ground.
The Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, otherwise known as the Knights
of Rhodes, and also as the Hospitallers, received recognition in
Scotland as an Order about the middle of the twelfth century. They
had possessions in almost every county, but their chief seat was at
Torphichen, in Linlithgowshire, where the ruins of their preceptory
can still be seen. This preceptory formed the heart of the famous
sanctuary of Torphichen. In the graveyard stands a stone, resembling
an ordinary milestone with a Maltese cross carved on its top. All the
ground enclosed in a circle, having a radius of one mile from this
stone, formed a sanctuary for criminals and debtors. Other four stones
placed at the cardinal points showed the limits of the sanctuary on
their respective sides. At some distance to the east of the preceptory
is St. John's Well, "to which," the writer of the article in the
"New Statistical Account of Scotland" says, "the Knights of St. John
used to go in days of yore for a morning draught;" and he adds,
"whether its virtues were medicinal or of a more hallowed character
tradition can not exactly inform us, but still its waters are thought
to possess peculiar healing powers, if not still rarer qualities which
operate in various cases as a charm." Perhaps no Scottish sanctuary
has been more talked about than the one at Holyrood Abbey, intended
originally for law-breakers in general, but latterly for debtors
only. De Quincey found a temporary home within its precincts. Through
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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