Tertiaries and the Scottish Observance: St Martha's Hospital in Aberdour and the Institutionalisation of the Franciscan Third Order

Abstract

Using the community of St Martha's Hospital in Aberdour as a case study, this article places the experiences of Scottish tertiary women in the wider European context. In 1488 Pope Innocent VIII confirmed the introduction of the third order of St Francis to Scotland via a small community of women in Aberdour. Although the surviving information regarding this community is both scarce and contradictory, it is compatible with the information that is available for tertiary communities throughout Europe. To understand the complexity of the canonical situation that arose around such communities, this article traces papal proclamations on the subject from 1289 (Supra montem) to 1413 (Personas vacantes). Close examination suggests that Innocent did not bring a new form of life to Scotland but a system of regularisation and identity. Throughout Europe various groups of non-monastic women were given the name ‘tertiary’ or said to ‘join’ the Franciscan third order. Both in Scotland and on the continent, these groups were generally connected with the larger movement of observant reform that took hold from c. 1370–1500. Although tertiary life never became an integral part of the Scottish ecclesiastical climate, the parallels between the ways that communities were regulated sheds additional light on the relationship between religious communities in Scotland and Europe.