The retirement by William the Lyon in 1211 of an old Celtic reliquary associated with St Columba

What is it about?

In his Rhind Lectures of 1879 archaeologist Joseph Anderson argued for identifying the Monymusk Reliquary, now in the National Museum of Scotland, with the Brecc Bennach, something whose custody was granted to Arbroath abbey by King William in 1211. In 2001 David H. Caldwell called this into question with good reason. Part of the argument relied on different interpretations of the word uexillum, `banner', taken for a portable shrine by William Reeves and for a reliquary used as battle-standard by Anderson. It is argued here that none of this is relevant to the question. The Brecc Bennach is called a banner only as a guess at its long-forgotten nature in two fifteenth-century deeds. The word brecc, however, is used in the name of an extant reliquary, Brecc Máedóc, first mentioned in one of the Irish deeds copied in the Book of Kells, and Anderson was correct to think this provided a clue to the real nature of the Brecc Bennach. It was almost certainly a portable reliquary, of unknown provenance but associated with St Columba. The king granted custody to the monks of Arbroath at a time when he was facing a rebellion in Ross, posing intriguing questions about his intentions towards this old Gaelic object of veneration.

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Why is it important?

The paper uses historical semantics in Latin and Irish to interpret the limited documentary evidence provided by Scottish royal charters and private deeds in connexion with the custody of the reliquary known as the Brecc Bennach. It has been identified with the Monymusk Reliquary, something that cannot be proven, but it is likely that as a *brecc* the object was decorated in metalwork. An example of interdisciplinary skill, using language to connect archaeology and history.