See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/273132952

Arma Christi in the tower households of north-eastern Scotland

Chapter · January 2015

CITATIONS READS

0 90

1 author:

Penelope Dransart
University of Aberdeen
65 PUBLICATIONS   253 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

Weather, water and ways of knowing: responses to climate change in Isluga, Northern Chile View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Penelope Dransart on 01 April 2019.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

Towers1B:Charles Holden Architect 9/3/15 17:56 Page 154

Arma Christi in the Tower Households

of North-Eastern Scotland

PENELOPE DRANSART

Gazing on the image of Christ as the Man of Sorrows provided an important context for late
medieval pious practice. Many artists in European countries produced devotional images of
the dead but miraculously still living Christ, displaying his wounds and accompanied by the
symbols of the Passion.1 Sometimes painters, sculptors, weavers and printmakers depicted
the five wounds of Christ as insignia in a quasi-heraldic form called the arma Christi. In this
imagery, the wounds were visualised as the heart, hands and feet of Christ, sometimes
emblazoned on a shield. The instruments of Christ’s Passion might also be given similar
treatment, with these elements forming a non-narrative composition intended to enable the
viewer to achieve a meditative state in the sharing of Christ’s suffering.2
Inmates of monasteries were specialists, of course, in the practices of contemplation and
prayer as well as producers of particularly vivid examples of such imagery – none more so
than those painted by the nuns of the Benedictine abbey dedicated to St Walburg at Eichstätt
in Germany, or the blockbook compiled and painted probably c.1480–90 in a southern
English Carthusian monastery to guide a layperson in his or her spiritual exercises.3 Members
of the laity would have seen related images in churches, as an integral component of the
architecture, carved in stone and wood, or forming part of the rich texture of woven or
embroidered altar hangings, painted on walls or, alternatively, on panels. Ecclesiastical and

1 E. Panofsky, ‘“Imago Pietatis” – Ein Beitrag zur Typengeschichte des “Schmerzensmannes” und
der “Maria Mediatrix”’, Festschrift für Max J. Friedländer zum 60. Geburtstag (Leipzig, 1927),
261–308; C. Eisler, ‘The golden Christ of Cortona and the Man of Sorrows in Italy: part one’, The
Art Bulletin 51(2) (1969), 107–118; C. Eisler, ‘The golden Christ of Cortona and the Man of
Sorrows in Italy: part two’, The Art Bulletin 51(3) (1969), 233–246; J. H. Marrow, Passion
Iconography in Northern European Art of the Late Middle Ages and Early Renaissance: A Study
of the Transformation of Sacred Metaphor into Descriptive Narrative (Kortrijk, 1979); C. W.
Bynum, ‘Violent imagery in late medieval piety (Fifteenth Annual Lecture of the GHI, November
8, 2001)’, GHI Bulletin 30 (2002), 3–36.
2 Marrow, Passion Iconography, 75–6; J. F. Hamburger, Nuns as Artists: The Visual Culture of a
Medieval Convent (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1997), 2; J. Clifton, ‘A fountain filled with blood:
representations of Christ’s blood from the Middle Ages to the eighteenth century’, in J. M.
Bradburne (ed.), Blood: Art, Power, Politics and Pathology (Munich, London and New York,
2002), 64–87, at 81–6; N. Thebaut, ‘Bleeding pages, bleeding bodies: a gendered reading of British
Library Egerton 1821’, Medieval Feminist Forum 45(2) (2009), 175–200, at 177 and 181.
3 For the St Walburg paintings see Hamburger, Nuns as Artists. For the Carthusian blockbook
(British Library MS Egerton 1821) see F. A. Gasquet, ‘An English rosary book of the 15th century’,
Downside Review 12 (1893), 215–28; C. Dodgson, ‘English devotional woodcuts of the late
fifteenth century, with special reference to those in the Bodleian Library’, The Walpole Society 17
(1928), 94–108; Thebaut, ‘Bleeding pages’.

154
Towers1B:Charles Holden Architect 9/3/15 17:56 Page 155

ARMA CHRISTI IN THE TOWER HOUSEHOLDS OF N.E. SCOTLAND

lay patrons commissioned such imagery for more intimate domestic settings, too, and the
popular reach of the imagery was extended in the form of woodcuts.
In eastern Scotland, post-Reformation iconoclasts spared medieval arma Christi carved
on fonts at Kinkell, south of Inverurie, and in Meigle.4 It is probably significant these images
were located on the receptacles used in baptism, the sacrament that gave social recognition
to the child’s entry into the world. After Scotland’s Protestant Reformation of 1560, the
dominant family of North-eastern Scotland, the Gordons of Huntly, their cadet branches and
some families with whom they married continued to use arma Christi imagery as a form of
heraldic device. They placed it on or in their tower residences, often presiding over the
doorway, where it guarded the entrance. Accompanied by the heraldic achievements
associated with the names of the families who resided in the towers, the location of arma
Christi at the castles of Huntly, Craig, Gight, Castle Fraser and Towie Barclay has significance
for understanding how it was used to invoke divine blessing on the members of the household.
Before exploring the significance of the juxtaposition of armorial devices of the mortal
members of families along with quasi-heraldic shields bearing the wounds of Christ and
instruments of his Passion, it is necessary to explore why so many medieval viewers found
arma Christi imagery to be extremely potent. In developing this argument, it is necessary to
consider the design of wall-tabernacles, known as Sacrament houses, in medieval churches.
This background helps explain why potency of arma Christi persisted during the period after
1560, when many people in Scotland rejected the use of religious images (or found it politic
to do so).

The Medieval Matrix

When used in churches, arma Christi contributed to a coherent programme of iconography,
being associated with imagery on altar frontals, carvings in stone and wood and painted
retables. Gerhard Weilandt argued that an ensemble in a chapel in St Sebald, the first parish
church of Nuremberg, conveyed a central Christological- mariological theme visually
supported by attendant saints.5 The altar of the chapel was dedicated to St Peter, and the
theme of its frontal was related to the Sacrament house next to it.6 The tapestry frontal
contained an image of the Trinity, with the Virgin and St John the Evangelist kissing the
wounds of Christ, flanked by two angels carrying the instruments of Christ’s Passion – the
arma Christi. One of the angels bears a heater shaped shield with quartered elements: Judas
kissing Jesus, Christ as the sacrificial lamb, a hammer and tongs and scourge. Weilandt found
the combination of Christ as the Man of Sorrows and the iconography of the Trinity to be
4 The Kinkell font is now in St John’s Episcopal Church, Aberdeen and the Meigle font is in Meigle
Episcopal Church; see W. Kelly, ‘Alexander Galloway, Rector of Kinkell’, in W. D. Simpson (ed.),
William Kelly a Tribute Offered by the University of Aberdeen (Aberdeen, 1949), 19–33 and plates
13–15.
5 G. Weilandt, ‘Part of the whole: medieval textile frontals in their liturgical context’, in E. Wetter
(ed.), Iconography of Liturgical Textiles in the Middle Ages (Riggisberg: Riggisberger Berichte 18,
2010), 33–50, at 39.
6 The frontal is now in the Burrell Collection; W. Wells, Treasures from the Burrell Collection:
Hayward Gallery, London, 18 March – 4 May 1975 (London, 1975), catalogue 66.

155
Towers1B:Charles Holden Architect 9/3/15 17:56 Page 156

PENELOPE DRANSART
unusual for a chapel where worshippers supplicated Saint Peter.7 The key to the iconographic
programme, he suggested, is provided by the location of St Peter’s altar next to the
fourteenth-century Sacrament house because its iconography includes the image of the
Throne of Grace above the niche for the Holy Sacrament. There are statues of the Virgin and
St John at the side of the niche, on the same level as two angels who, like the angels in the
tapestry, hold arma Christi motifs. Christ as the Man of Sorrows stands to the right of the
ensemble. In the light of these associations, the tapestry frontal served as form of visual
connection between two major foci of attention in the church – the Sacrament house and the
St Peter altar.
The Nuremberg Sacrament house is dated to c.1374.8 By the end of that century versions
of devotions called ‘The Arms of the Passion’ or the ‘Arma Christi’ were circulating in Middle
English, indicating that the symbolism behind the images was widely known in vernacular
contexts. 9 A fifteenth-century roll containing Middle English verse couplets passed into the
archive of the seminary of Blairs College near Aberdeen, raising the possibility that it had been
long kept in the safe-keeping of a Catholic family in north-eastern Scotland. The text includes
three arma Christi devotions, the third beginning with these lines, in red ink:
These armis of crist boþe god & man
Seint petir þe pope descriuid bein …10

In these devotions, Christ’s heart provided a crucial focus for meditation. Medieval
patrons and their artists used several strategies to express this theme visually including
allegory, metaphor, analogy, metonymy and synecdoche. Around 1470, Jean Colombe
painted a manuscript illumination of a penitent soul presenting a crucified heart to Contrition
and the Fear of God, who are personified as women (Fig. 1). This image provides an example
of a synecdoche in which a part, the heart, represents the whole, a soul.11 In Jeffrey
Hamburger’s analysis, it served as an aid for believers whose pious practices led them to
imitate the suffering of Christ and to effect an identification of their own soul with God. Other
levels of meaning were probably available to a believer contemplating this particular image
and it seems that all elements of the composition were significant. In the background, a castle
stands on a prominent rock. Its position to the right of the women in the foreground (on the
viewer’s left) is significant and it may be a Marian image. In an allegory, which can be traced

7 Weilandt, ‘Part of the whole’, 50.

8 Ibid., 49.
9 R. Hope Robbins, ‘The “Arma Christi” rolls’, The Modern Language Review 34(3) (1939)
415–421; C. W. Marx, ‘British Library Harley MS 1740 and popular devotion’, in Nicholas Rogers
(ed.), England in the Fifteenth Century: Proceedings of the 1992 Harlaxton Symposium (Stamford,
1994), 207–22, at 214–15.
10 N. R. Ker, Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries Vol. II (Oxford, 1977), 129. The roll is in the
National Library of Scotland, Deposit 221/9.
11 The illumination is now an excised miniature from René d’Anjou, Le mortifiement de vaine
plaisance, Metz, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 1486e. See F. Avril and N. Reynaud, Les manuscrits
à peintures en France, 1440–1520 (Paris, 1993), 236–7, fig. 128; Hamburger, Nuns as Artists,
116–17, fig. 76.

156
Towers1B:Charles Holden Architect 9/3/15 17:56 Page 157

Figure 1: A penitent soul presents a crucified heart to personifications of the Fear of God and Contrition in a
miniature by Jean Colombe, from René d’Anjou, Le mortifiement de vaine plaisance, MS 1486e.
Photograph by courtesy of Bibliothèques-Médiathèques de Metz / Département Patrimoines.

from at least the thirteenth century, the rock represents the heart of the Virgin, which stands
firm against evil. This illumination, therefore, demonstrates how different visual strategies
might be combined in one image. Images, prayers in Latin (the wounds of Christ featured, in
particular, in Rosary devotions) and verbal exegeses in vernacular languages meant that the
underlying religious content of such imagery still had widespread currency in northern
European countries while many people were accepting the need for Protestant reforms.
Knowledge in Scotland of the relics associated with Christ’s passion can be traced from
at least c.1270, when a thorn detached from a crown of thorns reliquary purchased between

157
Towers1B:Charles Holden Architect 9/3/15 17:56 Page 158

PENELOPE DRANSART
1239 and 1246 by St Louis of France for the Sainte-Chapelle was sent there.12 The relic would
have been an inspiration for the commissioning of images but Flora Lewis argued that devout
people considered arma Christi to be relics, too, and they venerated them in public as well as
in private, as encouraged so to do by indulgenced images.13 It is likely that images of Christ’s
Passion frequently occurred in Scottish churches. One of the most important Scottish images
of Christ as the Man of Sorrows to have survived is the late medieval embroidery that in the
nineteenth century was in the safekeeping of the Leslies of Fetternear and Balquhain. Today
it is known as the Fetternear Banner, but in medieval times it was probably a narrow curtain
used as an altar hanging.14 One of the reasons for its survival is that the embroidery was
unfinished at the time of the Protestant Reformation. Although there were significant acts of
iconoclasm around 1560, much of the destruction of images in Scotland took place during
the Covenanting period. On 5 August 1640, a committee of covenanters gave instructions for
the removal of images from St Machar’s Cathedral in Old Aberdeen, specifically commanding
‘our blessed Lord Jesus’s arms to be hewn out of the front of the pulpit’.15 As will be seen
below, Huntly Castle also suffered a similar desecration.
There is some evidence from the old kirk of St Mary at Auchindoir in west
Aberdeenshire that arma Christi images, like those in St Peter’s chapel in the Nuremberg
parish church, once formed part of a more coherent iconographic programme. Charles Carter
reported that the kirk formerly contained a representation of the instruments of Christ’s
passion carved in stone on a shield, arranged in a manner ‘identical with that on the capital
in the Elgin Chapter House’ (Fig. 2).16 It seems to have been lost,17 but a very finely carved
sacrament house is set into the north wall of the chancel. The Sacrament house takes the form
of a metalwork monstrance or pyx, and its roof is that of a house adorned with pinnacles,
probably based on a visual source shared by an artist who drew a monstrance, supported by
two angels, in an illuminated codex preserved in the Bibliothèque de L’Arsenal (MS 212).18

12 Comte de Riant, ‘Des depouilles religieuses enlevées à Constantinople’, Mémoires de la Société

Nationale des Antiquaires de France, Fourth Series 6 (1875), 1–214, at 183.
13 F. Lewis, ‘Rewarding devotion: indulgences and the promotion of images’, in D. Wood (ed.) The
Church and the Arts (Oxford, 1995) 179–194, at 183. Her argument concerned English devotional
practices.
14 This view differs from that of David McRoberts, who associated it with a Confraternity chapel in
St Giles, Edinburgh; David McRoberts, ‘The Fetternear Banner’, Innes Review 7 (1956), 69–86.
Having re-examined the history of the embroidery, I would suggest that it is more likely to have
been intended for a chapel of one of the castles of the Douglas Earls of Angus than St Giles.
15 William Orem, A Description of the Chanonry, Cathedral, and King’s College of Old Aberdeen,
in the Years 1724 and 1725 (Aberdeen, 1791), 132. Orem thought that this carving was of the arma
Christi.
16 C. Carter, ‘The arma Christi in Scotland’, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 90
(1956/57), 116–29, at 125–6.
17 At the time he wrote his article, Charles Carter knew of the carving through a plaster cast in the
collections of Provost Skene’s House, Aberdeen. Staff at Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museums have
not been able to locate it following an enquiry I made in an effort to trace it. W. D. Simpson, The
Earldom of Mar (Aberdeen, 1949), 84 and figure 28; Carter, ‘Arma Christi in Scotland’, 125.
18 Sacrament houses and monstrances both served to hold the transubstantiated host. The

158
Towers1B:Charles Holden Architect 9/3/15 17:56 Page 159

Figure 2: Arma Christi shield from the Chapter

House, Elgin Cathedral, engraved by Peter
Mazell in Revd. Charles Cordiner of Banff,
Remarkable Ruins, and Romantic Prospects, of
North Britain with Ancient Monuments, and
Singular Subjects of Natural History, Vol. II
(1795). The engraver of this plate
misunderstood some of the symbols, for
instance the hammer and pincers have become
a cross and looped cord. By courtesy of the
Roderic Bowen Library and Archive.

Kathryn Rudy assigned the manuscript to the second half of the fifteenth century from a
scriptorium located in the Rhineland.19 She argued that the codex was a devotional aid that
also served to lead the believer through prayers, which would earn him or her indulgences.20
Significantly, the codex also contained an arma Christi illumination; it seems to have been
inspired by an engraving known to art historians as the Master E.S., c.1455–1460. The
Gordons of Craig worshipped at and were buried in the old kirk of Auchendoir. It is therefore
significant that a carved shield bearing the five wounds of Christ is associated with the groined
vaulting in the entrance vestibule of Craig Castle.
————
illumination is illustrated in K. Rudy, ‘A guide to mental pilgrimage: Paris Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal
Ms. 212’, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 63(4) (2000), 494–515 at figure 18. For the Auchindoir
Sacrament house, see A. Jervise, ‘Notices respecting the Castle of Craig and the old kirk of
Auchindoir, etc., in Aberdeenshire’, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland (1870),
323–30, at 328–9; A. MacPherson, ‘Scottish Sacrament houses’, Proceedings of the Society of
Antiquaries of Scotland 25 (1890/1891), 89–116, at 105–7; and W. D. Simpson, ‘Craig Castle and
the kirk of Auchindoir, Aberdeenshire’, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 64
(1929/1930), 48–96, at 63–7.
19 Rudy, ‘Guide to mental pilgrimage’, 513.
20 Rudy, ‘Guide to mental pilgrimage’, 500. Believers who prayed in front of the arma Christi also

received indulgences; see Lewis, ‘Rewarding devotion’.

159
Towers1B:Charles Holden Architect 9/3/15 17:56 Page 160

PENELOPE DRANSART
Archibald MacPherson pointed out that the very fine example of a Sacrament house in
Deskford church contains a panel of text accompanied by two coats of arms, dedicating the
‘loveable wark of Sacrament house maid to ye honor and loving of God be ane noble man
Alexander Ogilvy of þat ilk, Elizabet Gordon his spous the year of God 1551’.21 This
inscription draws attention to the fact that people called wall-tabernacles Sacrament houses
in the sixteenth century, but it also indicates a Gordon connection.22 They take the form of
a recess set into the wall and were provided with lockable wooden doors contained within an
arch which, more often than not in the surviving Scottish examples, is either ogival in form
or has a depressed ogival arch above a rectangular entrance. Most of the recesses behind the
arch as recorded by MacPherson have a plain rectangular floor plan, but it is worth noting
that the recesses in the Auchindoir and Deskford Sacrament houses have a tripartite
organisation of the interior space.23 It is as if the patrons and masons went beyond the house
metaphor; in these two cases the door into the recess is treated as a proper entrance way and
behind it there is a main space flanked by a recess to both left and right. This tripartite division
of inner space should be borne in mind when the entrance into Gight, Craig and Towie
Barclay castles is discussed below.
Arma Christi images probably migrated from churches to domestic settings before the
sixteenth century, following precedents adopted by religious leaders. A particularly fine arma
Christi panel was carved in wood and came from the Abbot’s House at Arbroath Abbey in
Angus.24 The whole series seems to have been commissioned by David Beaton, who was
Commendator of Arbroath in 1523 and later was provided as Archbishop of St Andrews.
Charles Carter reported a view that the panelling might have been placed in the dais of the
lodging’s refectory.25

The Efficacy of Images

From the evidence presented above, it can be seen that the imagery of the arma Christi was
widespread. It provided the believer with a means for experiencing compassion for Christ’s
suffering and gratitude for the salvific power of his blood. In at least some parts of northern
Europe during the late Middle Ages, viewing instruments of his passion seems to have induced
guilt, too. The Golden Legend, which was as popular in Scotland as in other parts of
Europe,26 taught the message that arma displayed the mercy of Christ, as well as justifying
his anger. Caroline Walker Bynum argues that this sense of reproach was directed against
Jews, heretics and dissidents in northern Germany where instances of miraculous bleeding

21 MacPherson, Scottish Sacrament houses, 111.

22 Elizabeth Gordon is thought to have been the natural daughter of the Dean of Caithness, Adam
Gordon, who was the third son of the first earl of Huntly; see H. Gordon Slade, ‘Beldorney Castle,
Aberdeenshire: an early Z-plan tower house’, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland
105 (1972/1974), 262–80, at 262.
23 MacPherson, ‘Scottish Sacrament houses’, Fig. 11 and Fig. 14.
24 It is now at Newton Don House, Coldstream. National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland, Angels,
Nobles and Unicorns: Art and Patronage in Medieval Scotland (Edinburgh, 1982), 108–9.
25 Carter, ‘Arma Christi in Scotland’, 124–5.
26 G. Donaldson, The Faith of the Scots (London, 1990), 40.

160
Towers1B:Charles Holden Architect 9/3/15 17:56 Page 161

ARMA CHRISTI IN THE TOWER HOUSEHOLDS OF N.E. SCOTLAND

hosts attracted large crowds of pilgrims.27 She explains that the arma were weapons
(armoury) and insignia (armorials); not only did they serve to shield sinners against the devil,
they also were weapons against the people who crucified Christ. The arma Christi were
instrumental in demonstrating the transformative power of Christ’s voluntary sacrifice while
also making guilt-ridden accusations against payment in blood.
Jeffrey Hamburger noted that certain aspects of pre-Reformation salvific imagery were
adapted for use in Lutheran religious contexts. He noted that Luther would have objected to
Catholic concepts concerning the imitation of Christ, which led the believer to identify with
Christ’s suffering, and the pursuit of the virtues that enabled the ascent of the soul to form a
union with God.28 Images of a fountain of life-giving blood, however, featured in both
Catholic and Protestant iconography.29
The enlarged heart becomes almost a homology for the heater-shaped shield of the arma
Christi. Over the course of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the period during which
arma Christi imagery was gaining in popularity, regulations concerning the use of heraldic
devices were becoming more strongly codified. Michael Michael suggested that heraldry
served more than just to identify family membership and that, when used in ecclesiastical
settings and in books of private devotion, heraldic displays formed part of ritual observances
connected with commemoration. In this argument, the juxtaposition of armorial blazons in
an illuminated manuscript or within a particularly sacred area of a church carried an
eschatological meaning. Placed in such a holy context, the individuals who commissioned the
art endeavoured to secure for their family members an equivalent position that they held on
earth for eternity in heaven.30
In the light of this argument, it can be seen that the Ogilvy-Gordon dedication to God
of the Deskford Sacrament house went beyond mere commemoration. Some of these
associations were transferred to the residences of branches of the Gordon family as well as
those families into which they married or with whom they were otherwise associated. During
the sixteenth century, when the occupants of the Aberdeenshire towers discussed below
borrowed the imagery of Christ’s wounds and the instruments of his Passion, they
commissioned sculptors to place the heraldic devices above people’s heads – in shields on
capitals, as roof bosses or in a panel above a doorway, accompanied by their own family
armorials. If believers thought the pre-Reformation use of heraldry was ‘efficacious’ in
effecting the transition of deceased family members into an afterlife, the placement of
quasi-heraldic arma Christi in tower architecture at a time of Protestant ascendancy, when

27 C. W. Bynum, Wonderful Blood: Theology and Practice in Late Medieval Northern Germany and
Beyond (Philadelphia, 2007), 201.
28 Hamburger, Nuns as Artists, 114. Hamburger sees Lucas Cranach the Younger’s Altarpiece of the
Incarnation and Passion (1584), which has the form of a heart, as being based on Luther’s
reworking of medieval themes as the birth of God in the soul – a spiritual pregnancy followed by
a spiritual rebirth (Nuns as Artists, 171–3).
29 Clifton, ‘Fountain filled with blood’, 76–81.
30 M. Michael, ‘The privilege of “proximity”: towards a re-definition of the function of armorials’,
Journal of Medieval History 23(1) (1997), 55–74, at 73.

161
Towers1B:Charles Holden Architect 9/3/15 17:56 Page 162

PENELOPE DRANSART
religious images were likely to have been viewed with intense suspicion, seems to have been
an audacious act.
In a deeply thought-provoking book, David Freedberg investigated the powerful
qualities of imagery, not on the basis of whether it was ‘high’ or ‘low’ art or of its specific
function, but on ‘the integration of feeling into cognition’.31 One of the themes he tackled
concerned the character of divinity present in the images and, consequently, the miraculous
powers attributed to them. Freedberg questioned whether imagery was religiously efficacious
and attractive to believers because divine images were brought to life as a consequence of
human action, either through the placement of relics in the image or through acts of
consecration, or, alternatively, whether people thought that certain images possessed the
essence of a divine presence. He recognised that these responses ‘are not mutually exclusive’
but he commented that neither consecration nor the insertion of relics were always necessary
for images to become religiously efficacious.32 Freedberg regarded the function of religious
images to be signifying as well as significative in the connection between the divinity and its
image through a powerful process of mimesis. The work of images, he argued, takes place
‘because they are consecrated, but at the same time they work before they are consecrated’.33
In response to this reasoning, Alfred Gell thought that Freedberg had given too much
attention to representations and the intrinsic character they possess in their signifying-
functions as work.34 Gell emphasised instead human acts of consecration, just as a priest
vested for mass serves in the image of Christ, becoming Christ for the duration of the mass.
This ‘becoming’ is paralleled in other religious contexts in which human beings enact the role
of a divinity or are possessed temporarily by a deity. Such people are ‘incarnate as a human
being rather than a manufactured artefact’. Of interest in relation to this debate, however, is
that in post-Reformation Scotland relics and images had been destroyed or removed to other
countries for their protection and that, in the late sixteenth century, Catholic households’
priests were often imprisoned. There were few opportunities for the celebration of mass and
if images survived, the coherence of their context would have been fractured. How, then, did
the carved arma Christi placed on towers retain their efficacity?

The Niche with an Ogival Arch

One way of addressing the question of how arma Christi imagery retained its potency at least
for some people in post-Reformation Scotland is to examine the locations on towers in which
it is found in association with the heraldic devices of the owners. This section enquires more
deeply into visual associations connected with the ogival arch. In Gight and Craig castles,

31 D. Freedberg, The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response (Chicago and
London, 1989), 433.
32 Ibid., 95–6.
33 Ibid., 98. Original emphasis.
34 A. Gell, Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory (Oxford, 1998), 150-153. For Gell’s study of
the efficacity of painted images in the Trobriand Islands, see A. Gell, ‘The technology of
enchantment and the enchantment of technology’, in J. Coote and A. Shelton (eds), Anthropology,
Art and Aesthetics (Oxford, 1992), 40–67.

162
Towers1B:Charles Holden Architect 9/3/15 17:56 Page 163

ARMA CHRISTI IN THE TOWER HOUSEHOLDS OF N.E. SCOTLAND

where shields bearing the five wounds of Christ have survived, the arma Christi were located
on a boss or capital in an entrance lobby inside the doorway of the tower. On the outside,
immediately above the door, coats of arms were placed in niches characterized by a flattened
ogival arch.
The recess in the Deskford wall-tabernacle is contained within a moulding with a
depressed ogee arch at top and it is placed above two coats of arms accompanying the
inscription, as mentioned above. Two angels hold a monstrance above the doorway and a
running vine surrounds the whole panel. In another Sacrament house, at Fowlis Easter church
in south-east Perthshire, the recess not only has a depressed ogee arch at top, but it is also
surmounted by the carving of a half-length figure of Christ as St Salvator, the Holy Saviour,
between two angels carrying the instruments of the Passion.35 From either the old kirk of St
Medan or the old chapel of Baikie, both in Angus, yet another Sacrament house was carved
with the five wounds in one spandrel above the ogee arch and a cross with a crown of thorns,
placed over the intersection, in the other.36 These Sacrament houses therefore combine
specific visual elements: the ogival niche, the five wounds and instruments of Christ’s passion
and the coats of arms of mortal family members, with the ogival arch serving as an ‘entrance’
into the recess. When used in tower residences, however, these elements were reconfigured
and the niche was usually placed above the doorway where it housed the escutcheons of the
family members.
Of the castles considered here, Gight, Craig and Towie Barclay have been recognised as
belonging to a group, along with Delgaty, perhaps designed by the same master mason.37
Harry Gordon Slade cited James Skene’s comment made in the 1830s that Tillycairn counted
amongst ‘other little bantam cocks’ of tower architecture, an epithet that might also be
applied to these three towers.38 At the risk of over-extending the metaphor, the ‘mother hen’
of the L-plan layout might be said to be David’s Tower at Edinburgh Castle or Craigmillar,
near Edinburgh. Sir Simon Preston purchased the latter in 1374.39 His coat of arms appears
in a rectangular panel above the arched doorway, which is located in the re-entrant angle
between the two parts of the L-plan. The panel is slightly off-centre and it was evidently an
35 MacPherson, Scottish Sacrament houses, Fig. 3; D. McRoberts, ‘The fifteenth-century altarpiece of
Fowlis Easter church’, in A. O’Connor and D. V. Clarke (eds), From the Stone Age to the
‘Forty-Five: Studies Presented to R. B. K. Stevenson, Former Keeper National Museum of
Antiquities of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1983), 384–98, at Figure 161.
36 It is now built into Airlie Church, in Angus, where a stone carved with the five wounds and
instruments of the Passion has been inserted in walling of a burial aisle situated in the churchyard;
whether or not this second stone formed part of the Sacrament house is discussed by MacPherson,
‘Scottish Sacrament houses’, 96–9; and Carter, ‘Arma Christi in Scotland’, 123.
37 Simpson, ‘Craig Castle and the kirk of Auchindoir’, 80–81; C. A. McKean, The Scottish Chateau:
the country house of Renaissance Scotland (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 2001), 145–7.
38 H. Gordon Slade, ‘Tillycairn Castle’, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 112
(1982), 497–517, at 499 and 513.
39 D. MacGibbon and T. Ross, The Castellated and Domestic Architecture of Scotland from the
Twelfth to the Eighteenth Century, Vol. I (Edinburgh, 1887), 190. It is perhaps worth mentioning
that the ebullient Gordon earls of Huntly were Cocks of the North; see I. Shepherd, Gordon: An
Illustrated Architectural Guide (Edinburgh, 1994), 11.

163
Towers1B:Charles Holden Architect 9/3/15 17:56 Page 164

Figure 3: Gight Castle, showing the ogival niche above the door. Photograph by P. Dransart.

addition to an already existing building. This choice of location for the entrance and the use
of heraldry not only to impress but also to control visitor access to the castle forms part of
my contextualisation of how arma Christi imagery was deployed at Gight, Craig and Towie
Barclay castles as well as at Castle Fraser and in the grand palace-block of Huntly Castle.
Gight
The main element of the castle is an L-plan tower with a southerly facing door situated a short
distance to the right of the re-entrant angle. Above the door is a niche for a now missing
heraldic panel with a depressed ogival moulded arch (Fig. 3). One enters into a small vaulted
vestibule. Heraldic-like devices were placed at the point from which the ribs of the groined
vaulting spring and at the intersection.40 There is a boss at the centre, with the heart of Christ
in a cable-like Crown of Thorns on the underside, and the hands and feet in alternation with
instruments of the Passion, including ladder, column surmounted by the cockerel, hammer
and nails, and reed and spear, on the sides of the boss.41
Once in the vestibule, the visitor would have been faced with three possible routes.
Turning right, he or she would soon come to a dead end, in what Simpson described as a
40 Simpson, ‘Craig Castle’, 81.
41 Carter, ‘Arma Christi in Scotland’, 120.

164
Towers1B:Charles Holden Architect 9/3/15 17:56 Page 165

ARMA CHRISTI IN THE TOWER HOUSEHOLDS OF N.E. SCOTLAND

‘dog-legged chamber’.42 It is inserted in the thickness of the walls that meet at the south-east
corner. Straight on leads into a barrel vaulted chamber, which an oven set into the thickness
of the wall suggests was a bakehouse. The doorway on the left admitted the visitor to a
passage, which is deflected at the re-entrant angle between the two parts of the L-plan; it leads
to a newel stair, which provides the main access to the first floor. MacGibbon and Ross
remarked that this passage runs ‘right through the building to the staircase, which is in the
centre of the back wall’.43 Only then would the visitor be allowed to ascend to the first floor
hall.
The roofline of Gight bore another religious motif, making the Catholic allegiance of
the household outwardly visible. A pedimented dormer carried the sacred monogram of the
Virgin Mary, in the letters MAR, which stand for Maria Angelorum Regina.44

Craig
At this L-plan tower, the door is near the re-entrant angle and it looks in an easterly direction.
Above the drop arch of the door are three heraldic panels, the central one bearing the royal
arms of Scotland (Fig. 4). The two other panels, in niches with a depressed ogival top, contain
the arms of the first three lairds quartered with those of their respective spouses. The arms in
the panel on the viewer’s left record the marriages of Patrick Gordon, the first laird of Craig,
to Rachel Barclay of Towie and that of his son, the second laird, William Gordon, to Elizabeth
Stewart of Laithers. In the panel on the viewer’s right, there is a record of the marriages of
Patrick Gordon, younger of Craig (who lost his life at the Battle of Pinkie) to a Leslie of
Wardes and William Gordon, the third laird, to Clara Cheyne of Straloch. This panel is dated
in a combination of Roman and Arabic numerals to 1548, but Simpson reasoned that was
the date of William and Clara’s marriage rather than the date when the tower was built.45
On entering the castle one has to negotiate a hefty oak door and an iron yett.46 Then the
visitor passes into the vestibule, which is a groin-vaulted chamber with ribs rising from large
corbel-caps meeting in a boss decorated with a shield bearing another royal coat of arms. The
corbel-cap at the southwest corner bears a shield displaying the five wounds of Christ (Fig.
5). A shield on the northwest corbel is that of the Gordons: three boars’ heads with two
initials, the second of which – G – has survived, now restored as V.G. for William Gordon.47
On entering the vestibule, the visitor is faced with three doorways. One of them
originally came to a dead end, as at Gight, but it is on the left hand side of the vestibule and
it also contains an inner chamber. Straight forward leads into a cellar and a sharp right turn

42 Simpson, ‘Craig Castle’, 81.

43 MacGibbon and Ross, Castellated and Domestic Architecture, Vol. I, 323.
44 This pediment is no longer evident; see MacGibbon and Ross, Castellated and Domestic
Architecture, Vol. I, 323.
45 Simpson, ‘Craig Castle’, 71–72 and 86; J. M. Bulloch, ‘The Gordons of Craig’, Proceedings of the
Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 1929/1930, 96–106, at 99–100. It should be noted that these
coats of arms were weathered at the time of Simpson’s visit; subsequently they were restored and
tinctured.
46 Jervise, ‘Craig and the old kirk of Auchindoir’, 324; Simpson, ‘Craig Castle, 74.
47 Jervise, ‘Craig and the old kirk of Auchindoir’, 323.

165
Towers1B:Charles Holden Architect 9/3/15 17:56 Page 166

Figure 4: Entrance to Craig Castle and heraldic panels above Figure 5: Arma Christi corbel in the vestibule of Craig
the door (detail of the heraldry below). Castle. Photograph by P. Dransart.
Photograph by P. Dransart.

166
Towers1B:Charles Holden Architect 9/3/15 17:56 Page 167

ARMA CHRISTI IN THE TOWER HOUSEHOLDS OF N.E. SCOTLAND

takes one into a passageway leading up three steps to a newel stair.48 MacGibbon and Ross
observed that this passage was like that of Gight in that it ‘goes right through the building’.49

Towie Barclay
Also built on an L-plan on a similar principle to Gight and Craig, the entrance of Towie
Barclay faces east and the visitor arrives to be confronted by three different directions in
which to go. The main newel stair is at the end of the passage. Like Craig, one has to ascend
three steps to reach the newel stair, but to reach this long passageway one has to turn left as
at Gight. In addition, as found at Craig, there is a loop in the re-entrant angle of the L-plan
on the outside of the building, at the point where the interior passage is deflected at a slight
angle.50 The person who had been admitted would then be able to go up to the first floor hall,
which is impressively vaulted in two compartments, with ribbed and diagonally ridged groins
rising from corbels, decorated with foliage. There are octagonal bosses at the intersections of
the ribbing; they bear heraldic escutcheons. A flight of stairs in the thickness of the wall at
the south-western corner of the hall leads up to mural gallery. There is also a gallery at this
higher level at Craig, but at Towie Barclay it is richly embellished and its ribbed vaulting rises
from corbels with shields containing images of the Four Evangelists.51 A boss at the
intersection of the ribs displays the five wounds of Christ with a crown of thorns round the
heart. There is an inscription round the edge of the octagonal boss, possibly reading: ‘Pite Pet
domo dominus domo oracionis’.52
Towie Barclay differs from Gight and Craig in that the arma Christi are inside the
building, in the chapel or oratory. Instead of presenting the visitor with a forbidding phalanx
of heraldry, a window with a wrought-iron grille and wide- mouthed shot holes, all of which
are features found at Craig, someone arriving at Towie Barclay might look at the wide shot
hole to the left then look up above the round-headed door to read a panel, dated 1593, which
seems to admonish the visitor: ‘In tim of Valth al men semis friendly and tru frindis not knauin
but in adversity’.53

Castle Fraser
In its present enlarged state, Castle Fraser is built on a Z-plan,54 with an east-facing entrance
at the re-entrant angle of the main block where it joins with the northwest tower, which is
built on a square ground plan.55 On being admitted through the door, the visitor can ascend

48 Simpson, ‘Craig Castle’, 70.

49 MacGibbon and Ross, Castellated and Domestic Architecture Vol. I, 327.
50 Simpson, ‘Craig Castle’, 84.
51 A more full description is offered in Simpson, ‘Craig Castle’, 85.
52 Carter, ‘Arma Christi in Scotland’, 120.
53 ‘In prosperous times everyone seems friendly, but true friends are only known in adversity’; N.
Tranter, The Fortified House in Scotland, Vol. 4 (Edinburgh, 1966), 87; R. Fawcett and A.
Rutherford, Renewed Life for Scottish Castles (York, 2011), 117.
54 For discussion of this building, see Addyman and Fraser, this volume.
55 The castle is thought originally to have been constructed on an L-plan; MacGibbon and Ross,
Castellated and Domestic Architecture, Vol. II, 229.

167
Towers1B:Charles Holden Architect 9/3/15 17:56 Page 168

Figure 6: The arma Christi panel at Castle Fraser. Photograph by P. Dransart.

the main newel stair without having to make a decision about which direction to take. The
plan, therefore, is different from that of Gight, Craig and Towie Barclay. There is, however,
an arma Christi panel on the exterior wall above the door (Fig. 6). The symbols on the shield
are very similar to those on the boss in the chapel at Towie Barclay, but the inscription differs.
At Castle Fraser a scroll underneath the shield is inscribed ‘Arma Chr’. Here, one angel
supports the shield rather than two as on some of the Sacrament houses. On stylistic grounds,
Charles McKean attributed the construction of the northwest tower to the master mason
Thomas Leiper, who also seems to have worked in the 1580s at Huntly Castle on a building
that had become known as the Palace.56

Huntly
If Castle Fraser is built on a grander scale than the bantam cockerels of Gight, Craig and
Towie Barclay, Huntly displays still more architectural magnificence. Like Castle Fraser, it
replaced a late fourteenth- or early fifteenth-century L-plan tower which, in its turn, had
replaced a motte and bailey castle. Only the foundations survive of that former tower, on the
north side of an inner courtyard, and MacGibbon and Ross did not know of them because
56 McKean, Scottish Chateau, 218.

168
Towers1B:Charles Holden Architect 9/3/15 17:56 Page 169

Figure 7: Defaced arma Christi and Resurrection panel in the frontispiece of Huntly Castle.
Photograph by P. Dransart.

they were not excavated until the twentieth century.57 The structure called the Palace, on the
courtyard’s south side, is located on sharply terraced ground. It was originally built as a tower
c.1460, and in c.1550 it was largely rebuilt.58 In the Palace in 1556, George, the fourth earl
of Huntly, entertained the Queen Regent, Mary of Guise, widow of James V. This visit
reportedly took place in such an extravagant manner that the French ambassador advised the
Queen Regent to ‘clip his wings’.59 It was her daughter, Mary Queen of Scots, however, who
was forced to take such an action. The events following the Battle of Corrichie (1562)
included the death of the Earl, the execution of his second son in the presence of Queen Mary
at Aberdeen and the sacking of Huntly Castle, giving rise to further rebuilding. The sixth earl
of Huntly retained his Catholic faith following his rebellious participation at the Battle of
Glenlivet (1594), even though he was forced to make penance to the kirk.60 After Glenlivet,
57 MacGibbon and Ross, Castellated and Domestic Architecture, 277–82.
58 It was called the Palace of Strathbogie in 1544; see W. D. Simpson, ‘Further notes on Huntly Castle’,
Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 67 (1932/1933), 137–60, at 139.
59 W. D. Simpson, ‘The architectural history of Huntly Castle’, Proceedings of the Society of
Antiquaries of Scotland 56 (1921/1922), 134–63, at 156.
60 McKean, Scottish Chateau, 214.

169
Towers1B:Charles Holden Architect 9/3/15 17:56 Page 170

PENELOPE DRANSART
James VI instructed William Schaw to slight Huntly Castle. It appears that he removed vaults
and floors in the L-plan medieval tower on the north side of the inner court, the gate-house
on its east side, and he damaged the masonry of the Palace in its north-eastern corner, making
yet more refurbishment necessary. George Gordon, the sixth earl, was made the first marquis
of Huntly in 1599 and in the years around 1600, he commissioned some magnificent
embellishment, which, in the words of Charles McKean, resulted in Huntly becoming ‘the
architectural showpiece of the north’.61
It is possible to read the inscription above the door of Towie Barclay with a half
defensive, half defiant tone in one’s voice but, in contrast, the iconographic programme
surrounding and soaring above the doorway of Huntly Castle is ostentatious. Charles
McKean, however, observed that the great glory of Huntly was its south façade, which
proclaimed the prowess of the castle’s occupants to the outside world – the burgh of Huntly
itself. He commented that they made a declaration of their Catholic faith above the doorway
within the relative privacy of the inner courtyard.62
Since at least the 1640s, this doorway seems to have been called ‘the frontispiece’.63 Its
uppermost panel was placed in an ogival arch containing a raised disc with a representation
of Christ’s head in a sunburst of rays (Fig. 7).64 An inscription round the top of the disc read:
DIVINA VIRTUTE RESURGO (‘I rise again with divine power’). This oval panel rests on a
rectangular band with a text from Galatians vi. 14: ABSIT NOBIS GLORIARI NISI IN
CRUCE DOMINI JESU CHRISTI (‘God forbid that I should glory save in the Cross of our
Lord Jesus Christ’). It, in turn, is above a square panel enclosing the arma Christi in which
the wounds of Christ and the instruments of the Passion are disposed around a cross. Christ’s
seamless tunic is depicted around the lower limb of the cross. The royal motto IN DEFENS
is carved into the border beneath this panel. Below these panels with religious iconography
are stacked the armorial achievements of mortal beings: James VI and Anne of Denmark
above those of George Gordon, the first marquis, and Henrietta Stewart, the first
marchioness. The lintel of the square-headed doorway bears the shield of Huntly, monograms
of the Marquis and the Marchioness and the shield of Henrietta Stewart’s father, the earl of
Lennox.65 The doorway provided access to a newel staircase to the two main floors and
thence to the lord’s and lady’s chambers.
As at Castle Fraser, access to the newel stair was directly behind the entrance. On
passing through the door, however, the visitor to Huntly could continue in one of three
directions. She or he descended a few steps into the vaulted cellars and kitchen, or descended

61 Ibid., 216.
62 Ibid., 217.
63 The term was used by the Parson of Rothiemay; see Simpson, ‘Architectural history of Huntly
Castle’, 162.
64 Although carved early in the 1600s, this depiction of the Resurrection is related to one dated to the
late fourteenth century, placed at the back of reliquary containing a Holy Thorn, now in the
collections of the British Museum. See Eisler, ‘Golden Christ of Cortona part one’, fig. 9, and J.
Cherry, The Holy Thorn Reliquary (London, 2010), 13–14.
65 Shepherd, Gordon, 10–11.

170
Towers1B:Charles Holden Architect 9/3/15 17:56 Page 171

ARMA CHRISTI IN THE TOWER HOUSEHOLDS OF N.E. SCOTLAND

further into the basement, which is, in part, underground. Alternatively the visitor might
ascend the newel stair, the so-called ‘turne graice’, into the hall and the private chambers
above. The tripartite arrangement here is organised on a vertical principle rather than being
laid out more horizontally as at Gight, Craig and Towie Barclay.
The household’s ‘frontispiece’ was partially defaced after a Major-General and an army
Covenanters occupied the castle in the 1640s. The Parson of Rothiemay said that most of it
was saved, ‘except some emblems and imagerye, which looked somewhat popish and
superstitiouse lycke; and therefor, by the industry of one captain James Wallace (one of
Munroes foote captaines) wer hewd and brocke doune off the frontispiece of the house; but
all the rest of the frontispeece, containing Huntly’s scutcheon, etc., was left untwoched, as it
standes to this day’.66

Concluding Discussion
This chapter has considered the medieval use of arma Christi imagery in churches during the
late medieval period and its migration into Scottish tower households after the Protestant
Reformation of 1560. The ecclesiastical contexts discussed here included fonts, which gave
social recognition to an infant’s entry into the world because they are associated with the
sacrament of baptism, and Sacrament houses, in which the reserved host was protected by a
lockable door. Arma Christi were also placed high above the worshipper’s head. In the
chapter house of Elgin cathedral two shields bearing the five wounds and two bearing the
instruments of the Passion were placed on the capital of the central pillar, which supports the
roof.67 These examples probably date from 1482–1501, during the bishopric of Andrew
Stewart, who dedicated the chapter house to the Passion and whose escutcheon also appears
on the capital. Arma Christi were, in addition, placed on corbels and it is possible that the
now missing shield from St Mary’s Church, Auchindoir, formed such a function. Charles
Carter compared a plaster cast of it with the Elgin shields bearing the instruments of the
Passion. He suggested that the Auchindoir arma Christi was carved around 1513–14, when
the church became a prebend of King’s College, Aberdeen and that the Sacrament house
would have been commissioned at the same time.68
This paper traced the post-Reformation use of arma Christi imagery in certain tower
households where some of the families were Gordons or had Gordon connections. Craig,
Gight and Towie Barclay belong to a group of towers, which probably were built under the
instructions of one master-mason; W. Douglas Simpson assigned these structures to the third
quarter of the sixteenth century.69 It has been argued that the 1593 date stone at Towie
Barclay is an insertion, but it is possible that these towers were built over a period of time. In
a study of architectural features in Scottish towers of the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries,
Joachim Zeune dated crosslet keyhole loops at Towie Barclay to before 1553.70 Gight’s

66 Simpson, ‘Architectural history of Huntly Castle’, 162.

67 Carter, ‘Arma Christi in Scotland’, 122 and Plates XI(d), XII(b) and XIII(a).
68 Carter, ‘Arma Christi in Scotland, 125–6.
69 Simpson, ‘Craig Castle’, 86–7.
70 J. Zeune, The Last Scottish Castles, Investigations with Particular Reference to Domestic

171
Towers1B:Charles Holden Architect 9/3/15 17:56 Page 172

PENELOPE DRANSART
crosslet keyhole loop is dated prior to 1556, and the dumb-bell loops in the extension to
c.1580–1610.71 At Craig the crosslet keyhole loops are dated to about 1548.72 The
interpretation of the evidence suggests that the castles were being planned around the time of
the Reformation and it is possible that the arma Christi imagery was inserted not long after
the first reformed parliament had met in Scotland, at a time when distrust and, at times,
outright hostility for sacred images had been swirling round the countries of northern Europe
for several decades.
That some families continued to regard the arma Christi as being efficacious is suggested
by the panel at Castle Fraser, which perhaps was inserted during rebuilding in the 1580s.
Huntly’s frontispiece, dating from first few years of the seventeenth century, provides the
most dramatic example of taking the medieval devotion, ‘These armis of crist boþe god &
man’, to an extent in which the dual nature of Christ, both divine and human, could be
situated at the apex of an ascending hierarchy of human armorials in a tower residence. The
frontispiece elaborated some of the features that were observed in the medieval Sacrament
houses: the ogival niche, the five wounds and instruments of Christ’s Passion as well as an
entrance through a lockable door into an interior space, the Palace itself, arranged vertically
over several floors. In a hierarchical society, Huntly ought to have inspired the occupants of
Gight, Craig and Towie Barclay to seek to place their bantam cockerels under divine
protection through the use of arma Christi. Although the evidence has not survived, it is
possible that the demolished medieval tower on the north side of the inner castle displayed
panels bearing the wounds and instruments of Christ’s Passion.
A striking feature of these bantams is that the arma Christi imagery is combined with
some defensive features such as wrought iron grilles covering windows, a yett behind the door
and wide-mouthed shot holes. Stewart Cruden thought that the wide-mouthed gun port at
Towie Barclay lacked seriousness because there was a contradiction in terms with its tall and
open-looking windows.73 The evidence for the arrangement of such features has survived best
at Craig, where the concept of defence that was being deployed comes across most clearly.
Householders who could display royal blazons alongside their own were making an assertion
of their loyalty, although at Huntly the relationship between the Earls and the reigning
monarch was clearly often strained to breaking point. More than simply declaring their
Catholic faith against the odds in the political and religious climate of the sixteenth and early
seventeenth centuries, the owners of these towers were seeking divine blessing and protection
as well as asserting their connections with the crown. The material presence of divine images
in exalted positions above the viewer’s head bolstered the defensive impact on any person
who might try to intrude into the household. The very design of the tripartite exit points from
the vestibules of Gight, Craig and Towie Barclay was intended to baffle the unwary caller and

————
Architecture from the 15th to the 17th Century, translated by Silke Böger (Buch am Erlbach, 1992),
75, table 8.
71 Zeune, Last Scottish Castles, 74, table 7.
72 Zeune, Last Scottish Castles, 75, table 8.
73 S. Cruden, The Scottish Castle (Edinburgh, 1963), 167.

172
Towers1B:Charles Holden Architect 9/3/15 17:56 Page 173

ARMA CHRISTI IN THE TOWER HOUSEHOLDS OF N.E. SCOTLAND

to control access into the tower. It is possible, too, that a member of the household staff would
have been there to oversee who entered and who left the building. These arrangements suggest
that the occupants of the towers were endeavouring to leave nothing to chance.
While certain Gordon families and their consociates were emboldened, under the
patronage of the Earls of Huntly and their own networks of connections, to use arma Christi
imagery at least semi-openly, it is possible that many more families placed such devices in or
on their residences but they have not survived. A particularly late example occurs painted on
the ceiling of Provost Skene’s house, Aberdeen.74 Not only is there no obvious connection
between this painting and the examples discussed here, the persistence in the use of arma
Christi imagery in itself demonstrates the perceived effectiveness of its powers. In medieval
times there had been detractors in various countries who argued against the use of such
devices in art because they considered arma Christi did not provide direct access to divine
presence in material form – they were, after all, images.75 In post-Reformation Scotland,
however, they acquired the status of reliquiae – they could stand for remnants of the Old
Religion. When placed above the heads of people going in and out of tower households they
signalled the special route that the occupants had in communicating with the divine.

Acknowledgements
I wish to thank the late Charles McKean and Richard Oram for inviting me to The Tower
and Household Conference in 2011, Mr Barlas for granting permission to view Craig Castle
and my colleagues Janet Burton and William Marx for assisting me with some items of
bibliography.

74 Carter, ‘Arma Christi in Scotland’, 123–4; M. Bath, Renaissance Decorative Painting in Scotland
(Edinburgh, 2003), 125–6 and 223.
75 C. W. Bynum, ‘The sacrality of things: an inquiry into divine materiality in the Christian middle
ages’, Irish Theological Quarterly 78(3) (2013), 3–18.

173

View publication stats