The Aberdeen Breviary: Origins and Legacy

Abstract

The Aberdeen Breviary is not only Scotland’s first printed book, but one of the most important religious texts to survive from medieval Scotland. It was an ambitious attempt by William Elphinstone, bishop of Aberdeen (1484-1514), in collaboration with James IV (1488-1513), to create a Scottish service book that could be used in churches across the kingdom. The short-term catalyst for the creation of the breviary was a charter issued by James on the 15th of September 1507 that authorised the creation of the first printing press in Scotland. In the charter he stated that, along with chronicles and books of law, it should be used for mess bukis, and portuus efter the use of our Realme, with addiciouns and legendis of Scottis sanctis. It is no surprise that service books (mess bukis), intended for use in the more than a thousand parish, collegiate and monastic churches that existed in Scotland by 1507, were considered a priority for the new press. Along with theological works, these were the most common books of a religious nature that existed in, and have survived from, medieval Scotland. The first such book to be printed by the new Chepman and Myller press in early 1510, was the Brevarium Aberdonense, more commonly known as the Aberdeen Breviary. In the longer term, the new breviary was a result of two trends. Firstly, a growing interest in local and regional saints in Scotland that had developed from the fourteenth century onwards, and secondly the increasingly close relationship between church and crown in late medieval Scotland.