Patronage of the Collegiate Church at Cullen

St Mary at Cullen is an often-overlooked medieval church in Banffshire. Elevated to collegiate status in the mid-16th century, it presents in some ways an instructive example, characteristic of late-medieval Scottish secular endowment. However, the idiosyncrasies of the auld kirk at Cullen are many. This paper seeks to re-evaluate its importance, tracing the church from its beginnings, through the patronage of King Robert the Bruce, to its patterns of patronage in the 16th century. The focus of this paper is on the chaplainry foundations in St Anne's aisle c. 1539 and its collegiate foundation c. 1543. St Anne's aisle contains within it a unique survival in Scotland of fulsome inscriptions detailing the endowments, stipulations, and aims of chaplainry foundations at Cullen. The east end of the church, extended at the time of Cullen's erection into a college, presents more unusual medieval features. A figurally carved sacrament house is one of only a few left in Scotland, and the imposing tomb of Alexander Ogilvy is one of the finest extant funerary monuments in Scotland, comprising complex micro-architecture and rare figural sculpture. Patterns of patron age indicating dual concerns for worldly prestige and salvific commemoration are traced in the history of Cullen's successive elaborations.