Appendix 2 - The Augustinian' Account

Summary

THE Augustinian's Account (AA) is a unique document, containing as it does an eye-witness account of the coming of the Augustinians to St Andrews in 1140, their relationship with the existing ecclesiastical establishment, and the delicate and difficult business of creating a viable community of religious. It was originally envisaged as the second part of a longer text, the first part of which is now known as St Andrews Foundation Account B (FAB), the translation of which is given in Appendix 1. As with FAB, AA was first fully edited and translated in 2012, in PNF, iii, pp. 600–6 (text) and pp. 606–15 (translation with notes).What follows is a slightly revised and updated version of that translation with notes.

The manuscript details of AA are discussed in the opening section of Appendix 1. Unlike the longer Foundation Account (FAB), AA exists in only one manuscript, an early eighteenth-century copy made of material from the lost St Andrews Register (British Museum, Harleian MS 4628, fos 230v–238r). Together FAB and AA occupy fos 224v–238r (H). The text of AA is printed in Skene's Chronicles of the Picts: Chronicles of the Scots (Edinburgh, 1867), no. XXXI (pp. 188–93) (S).

Modern punctuation and capitalisation are used throughout. Square brackets denote words or letters not in H (or not legible in H), but which have been added or changed to improve the sense. Section-numbers are not original, but have been added for editorial purposes.

Note also that some of the text has been used by Walter Bower in Scotichronicon, iii, bk 6, ch. 24.

Translation of the Augustinian's Account

§1. These things, as we have said before, we have transcribed just as we found written in old books of the Picts. Most Scots affirm that the blessed Apostle Andrew was here alive in the flesh; taking as proof of their assertion the fact that he got as his lot the land of the Picts, that is Scythia,3 to preach in; and for this reason he held this place dear above all places; and what he did not fulfil while alive, he might fulfil after he had been released from the flesh. Because we have not found this written down,4 we are strongly inclined neither to deny or to affirm it.