Church of St Mary on the Rock

[1] Although not founded as a collegiate church until the 1240s, Scotland's first, it represented a corporate continuation of the association of clergy known as the Culdees or Céli Dé, "vassals of God".

The church lasted for several centuries, but did not long outlast the Scottish Reformation, and today little of the original structure has survived.

St Mary's Collegiate Church has its origins in Kilrymont monastery and its group of canons called "Culdees" or Céli Dé ("Vassals of God").

This is not what happened, and although another papal bull of 1147 ordered that upon the death of each Céle Dé an Augustinian should take his place, they were still there in 1199 when the priory recognised their holdings to be permanent.

[5] In 1163, Archbishop Lorcán Ua Tuathail had converted his diocesan canons into the Augustinian Cathedral of the Holy Trinity.

[6] The Céli Dé are found in close association with, in fact allied to, the bishop, from Beaumont's episcopate onwards, and the two frequently occur together in disputes with the prior of St Andrews.

For instance, sometime between 1202 and 1216, Bishop William de Malveisin absolved the sentence of excommunication which had been imposed by the prior (obviously as part of a dispute), and again, in 1220, the papal legate "Master James" was commissioned by the Pope Honorius III to resolve a dispute between the Augustinians and their prior with Bishop William and "certain clergy of St Andrews commonly called Céli Dé" (quosdam clericos de S. Andrea, qui Keledei vugariter appellantur).

[10] For some of the above reasons, it was G. W. S. Barrow's contention that the Gaelic-speaking Céli Dé were gradually replaced by the clerks and personal dependents of the early thirteenth-century bishops, most of whom came from France or England.

At the petition of king Robert, the pope hereby constitutes as a secular dignity with cure of the cathedral of St Andrews, that dignity of the Chapel Royal of St Andrews, immediately subject to the Apostolic See, which is commonly known as the provostship of St Andrews, assigning to the provost and his successors a stall in the choir and a place in the chapter, with a voice in the election of the bishop, or of any other office, and in all capitular acts and negotiations, and the said provost nevertheless remaining subject to the bishop, who has the power to correct him, and if necessary even deprive him of office.

These were probably "Cairns and Cameron", "Kinglassie and Kingask", Lambieletham, "Durie and Rumgally", Kinkell, Kinaldy, Fetteresso, and Strathbrock.

[22] There are burials in the vicinity of Kirkheugh that pre-date the alleged eighth-century foundation of the monastery, and point to a small religious community from the sixth-century.