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Planning for Pilgrims: St Andrews as the Second Rome

Planning for Pilgrims: St Andrews as the Second Rome

Lecture by Ian Campbell

Delivered at the University of Edinburgh, on May 7, 2012

Professor Ian Campbell, Chair of Architectural History & Theory (ECA) delivers his Inaugural Lecture entitled “Planning for Pilgrims: St Andrews as the Second Rome”.

The burgh of St Andrews was laid out in the mid-twelfth century, on a grandiose scale, and to a different plan from the majority of contemporary burghs in Scotland, including Edinburgh.

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The lecture argues that it was deliberately modelled on the Vatican Borgo, the area between St Peter’s and the Tiber in Rome, which had been fortified in the ninth century AD.

At the time of the laying out of the burgh, the bishops of St Andrews were trying to elevate their status by using the relics of St Andrew, St Peter’s older brother, just as the bishops of Compostela had done earlier in the twelfth century, when they gained the title of ‘apostolic see’ for Santiago, putting it on a par with Jerusalem and Rome.

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Recorded on Monday 7 May 2012 at the Auditorium lecture theatre, Business School, The University of Edinburgh.

See also: Pilgrimage from Rome to Scotland: Did St Andrews cathedral in Scotland try to rival Rome as a place of early Christian pilgrimage?

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