Scotland’s Pilgrimage Route That You Might Never Have Heard Of

Susan Brown | Eyes on Scotland

Scotland is home to a pilgrimage route that is up there in terms of importance with the better known routes to the popular disciple destinations of Rome (St Peter) and Santiago de Compostela (St James the Great). Why? Well, the town of Kilrymont, or St Andrews as it was renamed, was home for twelve centuries to some of the relics (bones) of St Andrew, one of the twelve apostles of Jesus and brother of St Peter. In the 11th century, Queen Margaret of Scotland (also later known as Saint Margaret of Scotland, not to be confused with Margaret Tudor, Queen of Scotland 1489-1541) formally established a pilgrims route for devotees to worship where the bones were kept.

Stained-glass depiction of St Andrew with the saltire (X-shaped cross upon which he was crucified).
Image | Lawrence OP, Flickr

The relics—three fingers from his right hand, the upper bone of an arm, one kneecap, and one of his teeth—were brought to Scotland by St Regulus (Rule) when he fled Greece in 345 AD. He had received a vision from an angel in a dream that foretold of Emperor Constantine intending to attack Patras in Greece (where Andrew was martyred and crucified in 60 AD) and abscond with the relics to Constantinople. St. Regulus—along with a bevy of consecrated virgins, including St Triduana—took the bones as far west as they could to protect the holy relics. These relics were venerated in St Andrews until the Reformation of the Church in Scotland in the middle of the 1500s when they were lost.

Margaret was born to the exiled Prince Edward (Edward the Exile) in Hungary in 1046 and as a result of war and a sailing mishap, found herself in Scotland and soon married to King Malcolm III of Scotland. She was a pious queen, and in order to counteract the influence of the Celtic Scottish church, formalised the pilgrimage route to St Andrews in Fife. This wasn’t just a Scottish or British Isles pilgrimage route; it was and important European pilgrimage route and had been in use since at least 965AD.

Margaret established churches, invited Benedictine monks to set up a church in Dunfermline where she lived, and the Augustinian Order monks to St Andrews. In doing so, she effectively pushed out the Celtic Church and established Catholicism in Scotland. Queen Margaret herself died in 1093. Due to her piety and the many miracles attributed to her, she was canonised by Pope Innocent IV in 1250.

St Margaret of Scotland, Edinburgh Castle
Image | Erfuth, German Wikipedia

In 1160, not long after her death, construction began on a cathedral in St Andrews to replace the small church on the site (some of which you can still see). It was designed to be 140m/391ft long but shrunk to 100m after a storm in the late 13th century when part of it blew down. St Andrews Cathedral functionally became headquarters of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland and took over 200 years to finally be completed. 

The ruins of St Andrew’s Cathedral, St Andrews, Scotland
Image | Leonhard Niederwimmer, Pixabay

Back in medieval times, most people stayed local to where they lived, and going further away than the local town was unheard of for most. Some however, set off on pilgrimage to holy sites. Their reasons were varied, though at a time, when they were trying to negate their sins so could enter heaven upon death, many did it for penance, atonement, shortening the amount of time in purgatory, or avoiding eternal damnation altogether. Others did it with the aim of healing an illness they might be suffering from. All levels of society could go on pilgrimage, from royalty all the way down to commoners, although it certainly took adequate financial resources to do so.

The route was facilitated by a ferry that Queen Margaret established (and paid for) across the River Forth from a town now called South Queensferry to North Queensferry. Many of the roads, bridges and routes we have now in Fife can be directly attributable to the pilgrimage route that Queen Margaret set up.

A path along the pilgrimage route to St Andrews Cathedral
Image | Bill Kasman, Wikimedia Commons

A 64 mile / 104km walking route has been established from Culross or North Queensferry to St Andrews through the kingdom of Fife and is called The Fife Pilgrim Way. It follows one of the ancient routes of pilgrimage across inland Fife that was host to a network of hospices and hostels for pilgrims to stay. The provision of such services was considered an act of piety itself back in the day. Today’s route heads through countryside, scouts the industrial landscape, passes 50 historic medieval sites, churches and old medieval buildings, and ends at the ruins of St Andrews Cathedral—all along the way, telling you the story of the pilgrims.

So if you are looking to be a trailblazer and do something before the masses, the Fife Pilgrim Way might be for you !