Caledonian craftsmanship

The Scottish Latin tradition

David Howlett

In Caledonian Craftsmanship: The Scottish Latin tradition David Howlett presents a documented account of the origins of a brilliant Scottish Latin literature from the end of the 11th century and the 12th. Editions of thirty texts from original manuscripts – liturgical, diplomatic, poetic, hagiographic, historical, genealogical, and theological – many translated here for the first time, illustrate both links with earlier English, Irish, and Welsh Latin traditions and links within the emerging class of Scottish Latin writers. One purpose of this literature was to provide in a common acquired language cultural monuments for a ‘Regnum Scottorum’, a kingdom of the Scots, embracing Gaels, Britons, Picts, Norsemen, Englishmen, and Normans, independent of both Anglo-Norman kings and English archbishops, in a stylish act of self-definition that has few parallels in European history.

David Howlett, Bodleian Library Oxford, is editor of the British Academy’s Dictionary of Medieval Latin from Celtic Sources and a member of the Comité de Rédaction of the Novum Glossarium Mediae Latinitatis of the Institut de France.