'The saints of the Scottish country will fight today': Robert the Bruce’s alliance with the saints at Bannockburn

Authors

  • Mairi Cowan University of Toronto

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21083/irss.v40i0.3108

Abstract

In Walter Bower's Scotichronicon, Robert the Bruce speaks confidently about saintly help for the Scottish forces at the Battle of Bannockburn. Based on which saints are depicted elsewhere in the Scotichronicon as being helpful to Scots, which were favoured by Robert the Bruce personally, and which were popular among Scots more broadly, this paper makes an informed conjecture about how Saints Andrew, Thomas, Columba, Ninian, Margaret, Kentigern, and Fillan might have been among the saints that King Robert and his subjects were thinking about when they looked to the saints at the Battle of Bannockburn.

Author Biography

Mairi Cowan, University of Toronto

Mairi Cowan is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Historical Studies, University of Toronto. Her research focuses on late medieval and early modern Scotland and the Atlantic world. She is the author of the book Death, Life, and Religious Change in Scottish Towns c. 1350-1560 (Manchester University Press, 2012), several articles on medieval and early modern Scotland, and a variety of pedagogical resources for the teaching of world history and Canadian history at the elementary, secondary, and post-secondary levels.

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Published

2015-07-29

Issue

Vol. 40 (2015)

Section

Bannockburn Special Issue

License

Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal. IRSS is an open access journal which does not charge authors article processing charges, submission fees, or any other kind of fee.