Bannatyne Club > Registrum Episcopatus Moraviensis, e pluribus codicibus consarcinatum approximately A.D. MCCCC [i.e. 1400]

them to its allegiance. The precincts of the cathedral became the neutral ground
on which alone the opposite factions of a lawless age could meet in safety, and it
established the influence of a little court in that distant province. The permanence
and stability of its power and property, and the high ofBces of state held by some of
its Bishops, gave the church of Moray more than usual influence in a district liable
to continual revolutions.
The first cathedral, begun probably by Bishop Andrew de Moravia, is said by all
our historians, to have been a very stately fabric, and to have merited the. good old
Bishop's expressions of grief for its destruction. ' Of that which succeeded, enough
yet remains to entitle it to rank as at once the grandest and the most beautiful of our
eathedrals, if not the most superb cdifice of Scotland. m
With the first of a series, and it is to be hoped a considerable series, of the records
of the secular clergy of Scotland, it would be vain to enquire into the peculiarities
of their constitution and customs, which are to be gathered from a comparison of
the whole collected. Although this be not the earliest either in point of date, or of
the transactions recorded, it may be questioned if any other of the Registers of Scot-
tish Bishoprics affords more information regarding the early constitution of the
national church, the commencement of the appropriation of tithes, the erection, divi-
sion, and union of parishes, and the endowment and manner of life of the rural and
cathedral clergy.
1 Ecclesia mea que fuit speciale patrie decus, sion, or some imposing ceremonial of the pic-
regni gloria, et delectatio extraneorum et super- turesqueoldreligion. The town is much changed
/i/n hospitmn, laus et exaltatio laudis in of late. The Church of St Giles of venerable
reijnis extraneis, in multitudine servientium et antiquity, has given way to a gay new edi-
ornatu pulcherrimo, et in qua ut creditur Deus fice. The dwellings of the citizens have put on
recte colebatur ; ut de altis ipsius campanilibus a modern trim look, which does not satisfy the
el de venustissimo ipsius apparatu intrinseco, et eye so well as the sober grey walls of their
jocalibus ipsius innumrris taceam. N. 173. fathers. Numerous hospitals, the fruits of
m Elgin, the seat of the Bishoprie, long re- mixed charity and vanity, surround the town,
tained a strong impress of its ecclesiastical origin. and with their gaudy white domes and porticos,
Withinlbememoryofsomeyetalive, itpresented contrast offensively with the mellow colouring
the appearance of a little Catbedral city very and chaste proportions of the ancient struc-
unusual amoug the burghs of presbyterian Scot- tures. If the present taste continues, there
land. There was an antique fashion of building, will soon be nothing remaining of the reverend
and witbal, a certain solemn, drowsy air about antique town but the ruins of its magnificent
the town and its inhabitants, that almost pre- cathedral.
pared a stranger to meet some church proces-