The Scottish Church, at the commencement of the twelfth century, must have presented many similar features to those which met the eyes of the English prelates in Ireland, towards the close of the same period. The whole of ancient Alban had once been subject to the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Abbots of Iona, until the dispute between the members of that community and the Pictish king Nechtan appears to have resulted in transferring the supremacy to the Superior of Abernethy; who, in turn, yielded the predominance to the abbot or bishop of Dunkeld, after the establishment of that monastery by Constantine Mac Fergus. The primacy was eventually transferred during the reign of Cyric, from the foundation of Constantine to the establishment endowed by his brother Angus; and, from that period, the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of St. Andrews extended in exact proportion with the temporal authority of the kings of Scotland.[358] Each of the provinces that were originally independent must, at one time, have possessed its own monastery and bishop; but as the district kings sunk under the dominion of the supreme sovereign, the bishops either disappeared altogether, or became subordinate to, and dependant on, the Bishop of St. Andrews; so that only three or, at most, four sees existed in Scotland when David ascended the throne.[359] One of these must have been the bishopric of Glasgow, created, or revived, by the king during the lifetime of his predecessor Alexander; whilst the three remaining sees were St. Andrews, Dunkeld, and Moray.[360] In two of the latter the old abbacies had become hereditary appanages of the reigning family, and the jurisdiction of the sees of St. Andrews and Dunkeld embraced the whole of Scotland immediately dependant upon the royal authority; whilst the North remained under the superiority of the monastery, whichever that may have been, in which the earlier Bishops of Moray were accustomed to fix their residence; thus demonstrating how completely the two great provinces of _Scotia_ and _Moravia_ must at one period have been divided between the rival families of Atholl and Moray.