114 Transactions. 



and his College of Cardinals. The Regular clergy were those 

 who from the 2nd century downwards came under Monastic rules 

 and vows under the authority of the Superior of the particulur 

 Order to which they attached themselves. 



In short, the Secular clergy were those who officiated in 

 spiritual matters as the clergy of a district (called some time in the 

 12th century " parishes") under a Bishop; and the Regular clergy 

 were those who ignored Episcopal jurisdiction and the parochial 

 clergy. The Seculars seem to have been so called, says Sir W. 

 Scott, " because they lived after the fashion of the seculum or age, 

 unbound by those ties which sequestrate from the world." Each 

 thought their system to be based upon the strongest featurs of 

 primitive Christianity ; but as they differed regarding the import- 

 ance of the Monastic or ascetic life, a bitter rivalry ensued, and it 

 was not until the loth century (when all religious Orders were 

 trying to reform themselves) that by the erection of Collegiate 

 institutions a sort of compromise was effected. 



The Collegiate institutions were clerical corporations founded 

 by generous landowners, untrammelled by Monastic vows, inde- 

 pendent of Episcopal jurisdiction, and so, like the large Monasteries, 

 free from ecclesiastical interference and taxation, but open to the 

 spiritual services of the parish priest. They were under a Provost 

 or Dean, who, Avith .a number of Prebendiaries or Canons, consti- 

 tuted the supreme authority of the Chapter. These had their stalls 

 in the choir, their common seal, and possessed lands and endow- 

 ments. At the Reformation there were 38 of these institutions in 

 Scotland from Tain in the north to Liucluden in the south. There 

 would be a Chantry-priest, or it might be the curate of the parish, 

 to say prayers aud chant prescribed services with special refer- 

 ence to the founder and his family. The Chantry was either a 

 small enclosure within a church or a small chapel by itself, in 

 which the priest resided. He was a humble functionary, and his 

 ordinary dress was a long frieze cassock with a leathern girdle. 

 Outside of the old town wall of Dumfries, on that hillock where 

 St. Mary's Church now stands, was a Chantry Chapel to the 

 ■memory of Sir Christopher Seton, described in the Transactions of 

 this Society for session 1801. 



The bitter jealousy which so long prevailed between the 

 Secular and the Regular clergy may be still seen represented in 

 the sarcastic, grotesque, and often coarse caricatures of each other 



