The Statutes of Iona: text and context

Abstract

Julian Goodare's article, 'The Statutes of Iona in context', published in the Scottish Historical Review in 1998, 1 provides the starting point for the present investigation.Since 1836 and the publication of the first edition of Donald Gregory's The History of the Western Highlands and Islands of Scotland, 1493-1625AD, generations of teachers and students, with the popular literature in tow, had accepted that the Statutes of Iona represented a landmark and turning point in the history of Gaelic Scotland.Gregory was the first to name them, as 'the Statutes of Icolmkill'; to assert (wrongly, as we shall argue) that they were nine in number; to discuss them; and to attach to them major historical significance. 2His overall thesis gave Gregory good grounds for making much of the Statutes.Central to his history were the feuds among the 'turbulent tribes' of the west highlands and islands, and the unremittingly negative relationship between them and central authority, in the shape of the Stewart dynasty.As his narrative crept past 1600 and he saw no signs of the turbulence abating, Gregory was conscious that on the horizon, just beyond his chosen terminus, were the Civil Wars and Jacobitism: eras in which Scottish Gaels put their bodies on the line for the same dynasty on a regular basis and in substantial numbers.The Statutes were the rabbit he produced from the hat to resolve the looming conundrum:It is a fact which may appear startling to many, but it is not the less evident on that account, that the first traces of that overflowing loyalty to the house of Stewart for which the Highlanders have been so highly lauded, are to be found in that generation of their chiefs whose education was conducted on the 1 J. Goodare, 'The Statutes of Iona in Context', Scottish Historical Review [hereafter SHR] 77 (1998) 31-57.Other modern interpretations of the Statutes considered here are A. I.

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