Marshall, Rosalind K. 2009 “St Giles’, The Dramatic Story of a Great Church and its People” Saint Andrew Press, 240pp, (pb) ISBN 978-0-715208-83-0, rrp £9.99. Reviewed by Rev Gordon A Campbell, Honorary Church of Scotland Chaplain, University of Dundee

“St Giles’, The Dramatic Story

of a Great Church and its People”

The Very Reverend Dr Gilleasburg Macmillan, the minister of St Giles’, says in the Foreword to this handsome volume that, “The ease with which the reader is led through the chequered history of St Giles’ will not prevent the more astute from recognising the scholarly precision with which Dr Marshall has conducted her survey of the available sources relating to the town church of Edinburgh”.   Marshall compresses some 900 years of history into 196 pages of accessible history.    The story of St Giles’ is the story also of a national church, of a city and of a nation – yet Dr Marshall weaves the various threads into a riveting narrative.    This is history brought alive  – not fiction.

Dr Rosalind K Marshall is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland (since 1983) as well as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.  From 1973-1999 she was Head of the Archive at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.   She has contributed more than 50 articles to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (of which she is a research associate) – and has published a biography of John Knox, as well as several books about Mary Queen of Scots.   All this experience is brought together in a complex story told with great clarity.

The foundation date of St Giles’ Cathdedral in Edinburgh is unknown, but the earliest stone church on the site is reckoned to have been built in 1124.   Known in Latin as Aegidius, St Giles lived in the south of France and has no obvious link with Scotland.   Giles is, however, the patron saint of lepers and cripples – and Dr Marshall explains why this new church might have been assigned to his patronage.

The High Kirk of Edinburgh, with its distinctive crown steeple, is such an established part of the Edinburgh streetscape and skyline that it is hard to imagine that when the first church was built, Edinburgh was not yet Scotland’s fixed capital.   Obviously there was no elegant Edinburgh New Town – but the foundation of St Giles’ predates also the Royal Mile with its overcrowded closes.    The first vicar is known to us just as John – because when he was appointed, surnames were not yet in common use!   For most of its history, St Giles’ has not been a cathedral in its strict sense as the seat of a bishop.     Prior to the Reformation, Edinburgh fell within the Diocese of St Andrews – and, thereafter, the national church was Episcopalian but briefly (and not since the 17^thCentury).

Scotland “might lie at the very northern edge of the known world but most of the early altars in St Giles’ were dedicated to saints revered throughout Western Europe”.   Much of the current building dates to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries – but this has not been a static building.   Post-Reformation there was no place for the relic of the arm of St Giles (with its diamond finger ring) – but reformed Presbyterian worship led also to the partitioning of the church into four churches.    The introduction of sermons made seating a pressing requirement.   In the late 19^th century the building was changed again – and again in the 20^th century.

Dr Marshall explains, as you would expect, the impact of famous figures – including two of her biographical subjects – John Knox, and Mary, Queen of Scots.    Jenny Geddes is mentioned too (though Marshall makes clear that there is no evidence that as to her involvement in 1637 – “What matters is that there was a riot … and stools were thrown”).   Other stories will be less well-known outside Edinburgh church circles.     In the 1950s Rev Dr Charles Warr and Rev Dr Harry Whitley found working together so difficult that they finally “signed an agreement specifying their different responsibilities in minute detail … Warr would be responsible for services attended by the Queen” (amongst other duties!).

Services attended by the monarch have not always been easy in the history of St Giles, of course.    The young James VI was reduced to tears by being rebuked during worship for neglecting his duties.

In former days, parish churches were, of course, not just sacred spaces where people came to worship.    They were meeting places for the entire community – people came to gossip, but also to do business.     Those who had mortgaged their land and now wished to redeem it were usually required by the original agreement to count out the money on one of the altars in St Giles’,  this being seen as an insurance against cheating.

One of the delightful things about this book is the way in which Marshall drops in little details which make the past seem less of a distant country.   In April 1557, for example, “two dozen heather besoms were bought to sweep away the ‘mouswabbis’ (cobwebs) on walls and windows all over the kirk”.

Those who know St Giles’ will find much new to ponder in this book.    Those unfamiliar with the building will be awestruck, like the young Australian tourist with whom Marshall begins her account.

David Howarth (1912-1991) was the British naval officer best known for his involvement in the Shetland Bus, the Special Operations Executive operation manned by Norwegians running a clandestine route between Shetland and Norway.    Howarth, in one of his books, recalls sitting in the shade watching people climb up to the Acropolis.     He was particularly amused at one tourist earnestly asking “But what’s it for?”

Marshall’s book lives up to its title.    This is a dramatic story – and being guided by Marshall through what St Giles’ has been, may help us rediscover what St Giles is for.   Only in the last hundred years or so, has St Giles’ been maintained by its “members”.   The minister asks in the Foreword whether “we should be slower to assume that that is the only right, Christian way for support to be given”.    After 13 exciting chapters see whether your views have changed.