Scottish Catholic Observer

On October 25, 1514, Bishop William Elphinstone of Aberdeen died. It is unusual for the Church, let alone a university, to mark the anniversary of the death of a medieval bishop, unless of course he was a saint, or as in the case of Bishop Elphinstone an outstanding bishop, sometime chancellor of Scotland, counselor to the King, a reformer of his Diocese within the kingdom, the promoter of the recently invented printing press and founder of Aberdeen University, Scotland’s third University.

At the university’s celebration one of its historians suggested that had it not been for the turmoil of the Protestant Reformation he might well have been canonised. It has also been said that had Scotland’s other late medieval bishops been of the calibre of William Elphinstone the Reformation might have taken a different course, one more in harmony with the reform which was taking place elsewhere in Europe, leading to the great Council of Trent under the leadership of reforming Popes.

Bishop Elphinstone saw the need for a sound education of priests and other leaders in the community in the field of law and philosophy, of medicine, and the arts. He envisaged a reform in the Liturgy and set about printing the Aberdeen Breviary, one of the first fruits of the new printing press, and adapted it to the liturgical needs of the local Church including a whole list of Scottish saints.

In pursuit of this programme, he went to Rome in 1495 and remained at the Papal Court until he obtained from Pope Alexander VI the necessary Bull for the erection of the University, naming it after King James IV, Scotland’s first Renaissance prince, and inaugurating it by the building of King’s College Chapel dedicated to Our Lady ‘in her Nativity,’ the most marvelous relic of the medieval Church, and happily in full use for its initial purpose as the spiritual heart of the University (though for years in the post-Reformation period it was given up to other purposes, but perhaps out of regard for the saintly bishop never fully abandoned).

Bishop Hugh Gilbert, Bishop Elphinstone’s present successor, was joined by two of his immediate predecessors, Bishop Peter Moran, Bishop emeritus of Aberdeen, and Archbishop Mario Conti, Archbishop emeritus of Glasgow, of which Church Bishop Elphinstone was a son, and prior to his appointment to Aberdeen the Officialis, the canonical iuridical vicar of the Archbishop. These two bishops were joined also by Bishop Stephen Robson, Bishop of Dunkeld (another medieval Diocese), and chaplains, both Catholic and Reformed, as Bishop Gilbert presided at Vespers in the Chapel in the presence of a large congregation of invited representatives of the University and the City, including the Principal of the University, Sir Ian Diamond, the pro-Chancellor, the Very Rev Ian Torrance who preached, and the city’s deputy provost.

Earlier in the afternoon another such member, Professor Peter Davidson, gave a lecture on the life and influence of Bishop Elphinstone, illustrating it from contemporary accounts and art work, some of which, on display in the dedicated exhibition space of the new University Library, came from the Blairs Museum, the Blairs Library and the historic Archive of the Catholic Church in Scotland, all of which are located again in the Aberdeen area where they were gathered in the post-Reformation survival period of the Catholic Church, prior to the Restoration of the Hierarchy in 1878 which marked its revival.

The day which had started with a concelebrated Mass for Bishop Elphinstone in the Oratory of the present Bishop’s House concluded with a Reception in the Elphinstone Hall of the University, Church and Civic Society in ‘buon accord!

—Read the full version of this story in November 14 edition of the SCO in parishes from Friday.