Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 13.djvu/698

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SCOTS


632


SCOTT


himself, and placed by him under the care of his nephew Drostan. preserved its original and Celtic character for fifty years beyond the reign of David I, who granted it a new charter, and showed it special favour. Early in the thirteenth century, however, it was extinguished like the rest, the monastery being made over to the Cistercian monks, who held it un- til the Reformation. The building, however, seems to have preserved something of the primitive sim- plicity of the Columban foundations; for one of the Cistercian abbots is recorded to have resigned his office and returned to the stately abbey of Melrose, which he preferred to what he called "that poor cottage of the monks of Deir". To-day a certain number of place-names up and down the country, the patronal saints of a certain number of Scottish parishes, and a few grass-covered earthen mounds or fragments of walls, are all that is left to recall the numerous houses of the muiiilir loe, the cradle ot Scottish Christianity thirteen centuries ago.

Skene, Celiic Scotlanti. II (Edinburgh, 1S77) ; Chronicles of the Picts and Scots (Edinburgh, 1861); Adamnan, Life of St. Columba, ed. Reeves, Historians of Scotland, VI (Edinburgh, 1874) ; Allen, The Early Christian Monuments of Scotlarid (Edinburgh, 190.3); Trexholme, The Story of lona (Edinburgh, 1909); Origines Parochiales Scotioe (Edinburgh, 18.50-5); Belle- 8HEIM, Hist, of Cath. Church of Scotland, I (Edinburgh, 1SS7), 33-109; DowDEX, The Celtic Church in Scotland (London, 1894) ; The Book of Deer, ed. Stuart for Spalding Club (Edin- burgh, 1869).

D. O. Hunter-Blair.

Scots College, The. — Clement VIII gave Scot- land its college at Rome. The Bull of foundation, dated 5 December, 1600, conferred on the college all the privileges already enjoyed by the Greek, Ger- man, and Enghsh colleges. The pope also be- stowed on the infant college various endowments, in- cluding the revenue of an abbey in the Neapolitan kingdom and a monthly pension from the revenues of the Dataria. Later, when the old Scotch Hospice, which had stood for centuries where now .stands the Church of S. Andrea delle Fratte, was clo.sed, its rev- enues were transferred to the Scots College.

The first students arrived in 1602, and for two years lived in the Via Tritone, but the site and build- ings were unsuitable, and in 1604 they moved to the present admirable position in Via Quattro Fontane, close to the Quirinal Palace. The original buildings architecturally had little to commend them, but the handsome and commodious college which Poletti, the architect of St. Paul-without-the- Walls, erected on an extended site nearly half a century ago, is much ad- mired for its graceful architecture. Attached to the college is an elegant little church built in 1645, and dedicatcfl to St. Andrew, Patron of Scotland. The first superior of the new institution was Mgr. Paohni, but in 1614 the Jesuits took charge, and the first of this line of rectors was Father Anderson, nephew of Mary Stu- art's faithful friend, Leslie, Bishf)p of Ro.ss. To him the college owes its rules and constitutions. During the Jesuit regime there was consirlerable trouble in the Scots as well as in the other pontifical colleges; many students were entering the Society, and the authori- ties at home accused the Jesuits of tampering with the young men's vocations. Even the stringent ap- plication of the Mission Oath prescribed by Alex- ander VII flifl not end the friction. When the So- ciety was suppressed (1773) the bi.shops in Scotland were asked to send a secular priest to be the new su- perior; but in an evil hour they urged that they had no one to spare. They lived to rue their refusal, for under the rule of Il:iiian seeular priests, finances, dis- cipline, studies, piefy, vocations, all suffered, and it was not altogether an urif|ualified misfortune when in 170H, owing to the ftecupation of Home by the soldiers of the French lievolution, the college; w;is forcibly closed, and the few remaining students returned toScfttland. In 1820 it wafi reopened through the indefatigable ex- ertions of the Sc<^)tB agent, Paul MacPhcrson, who


succeeded in recovering the dilapidated college build- ings along with the depleted revenues, and who be- came the first rector from the Scots secular clergy.

Gradually the college has bettered its status, and now (1911)' with thirty-eight students to represent the half milhon of Scots Catholics it is proportion- ately the best attended of the colleges of Rome. The students have always frequented the Gregorian Uni- versity. Among the benefactors of the college are Father Wilham Thompson, the first Marchioness of Huntly, Cardinals Spinelli and Sacripanti, Henry Car- dinal Duke of York, Mgr.Lennon, and Mgr. Taggart. A large proportion of the bishops who have ruled the Church in Scotland — to-day five out of six — have been Roman students, and all along a succession of pious, learned, and devoted missionaries from Rome has done much to keep ahve and extend the Faith. Bishop Hay, whose centenary has been kept this year (1911) with special celebrations at Fort Au- gustus and Edinburgh, by his doctrinal and devo- tional works has laid the English-speaking Catholic world under a deep debt. Archbishop William Smith's work on the Pentateuch attracted much at- tention more than forty years ago among Biblical scholars as an answer to Colenso, and was pro- nounced by so great an authority as Comely as the best work on the subject from any Cathohc writer. The college has had its country house, where the stu- dents spend the summer recess, for nearly three cen- turies near Grottaferrata on the Alban Hills, in the midst of vineyards where the country is as health-giv- ing and picturesque as it is full of legendary, histori- cal, and antiquarian interest. The Scots College, like other pontifical colleges, is immediately subject to the Holy See, which now exercises its jurisdiction partly by a cardinal protector, and partly by the Sacred Consistorial Congregation. Previous to 1908 the papal authority was exercised through the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda, and the students were ordained with dimissorial letters issued by the cardi- nal protector. By a recent disposition the student's ordinary must declare in scriptis that he has no objec- tion to offer against his subject's promotion to Orders.

Bellesheim, Hist, of Cath. Church in Scotland, tr. Hunter- Blair (London, 1889), III. 386-7; IV, passim; Strothert. Life of Bishop Hay in the Journal and appendix to the Scotichronicon, 26 and passim.

Robert Fraser.

Scott, MoNTFORD, Venerable, English martyr, b. in Norfolk, England ; martyred at Fleet Street, London, on 2 July, 1591. He went to Douai College in 1574, being one of the earliest students at that seminary, and studied theology. The next year he was made subdeacon, and accompanied Dominic Vaughan to England. In Essex they fell into the hands of the Government, Dec, 1576, and under examination, Vaughan was weak enough to betray the names of Catholics both in London and Es.sex. They were then given over by the Privy Council to the Arch- bishop of Canterbury for further examination, but nothing more was elicited, and they were afterwards set at liberty. Scott returned to Douai on 22 May, 1577, and having been ordained priest at Brussels set out for the English mission on 17 Jime. The vessel in which he crossed tf) England was attacked by pirates, but h(; escaped with some lo.ss of hia goofls. He is mention('d as having laboured in Kent (1580), Norfolk, Suffolk (1.583), Lincolnshire and Yorkshire (1.584). On 24 April, l.'")S4. John Nedeham and others were indicted at Norwich for having on 1 June, 1582, received blessed beads from him. In 1.584 he w;i.s captureil at ^'ork and brought to Lon- don, where he remained a |)risoner for Hev(;n years. His relea.s(^ was procured by a money payment of one Baker, on condition of his leaving the country, but Topcliffc immediately procured his re-arrest. Meantime he had visited the confessors in Wisbeach