Dem Bones, Dem Dry Bones

This past Friday began rather inauspiciously.  I had had a rather disappointing meeting with my supervisor the afternoon before, and while the sun was shining (quite a treat for Scotland in March), my spirits were quite low...

...until around noon, when my officemate Bess burst into the office with some rather interesting news.  For the past few weeks they have been doing some roadworks on Greyfriars Gardens (a street in the centre of town).  

On Friday morning they found a skeleton.

I think our responses to the discovery clearly mark the two of us as historians.  When Bess (whose PhD thesis is on property in late-Medieval and Reformation St Andrews) announced that they had 'found someone', she was giddy with happy excitement. And I, far from expecting recent foul-play, immediately asked (in a rather gleeful tone) if that 'someone' had once belonged to the medieval Franciscan Friary that occupied the site until the 1560s! (Indeed, 'someone' had--but more on that later.)  My housemate, on the other hand (studying International Relations), was rather less excited and considerably more creeped (and grossed) out.  Her response probably has something to do with the fact that I told her over lunch.  Aided by the fact that she is relatively normal...

Bess had come upon the site shortly after the discovery and was full of information.  When the bones were uncovered the crew, taking advantage of their location, asked one of the university's  archaeologist/historians to take a look. Bess happened to be there whilst the professor and another academic were standing over the remains, making their assessment.  They concluded that the bones belonged to a pre-Reformation era teenager, and that the young man had most likely been a novice (a monk in training) in the monastery when he died from a common medieval illness. He was buried in the friary cemetery, lying with his head to the west and his feet pointing east (awaiting the return of Christ and the Resurrection of the Dead.)  


Ah, the joys of living in a 1,300 year-old town. It is not uncommon for British construction crews to come across 'former residents'. Many British communities, like St Andrews, have been around for centuries, if not millennia. Land has always been a precious commodity in the British Isles. Over time, as communities grew in size, building over old cemeteries became common.  In most cases, the dearly departed were exhumed during the building process and removed to another location. 

For centuries St Andrews had been the religious capital of Scotland, as well as a major pilgrimage site for European Christians--the Cathedral claimed to possess the bones of St Andrew, one of the twelve disciples of Jesus.  Many religious orders had churches, monasteries and houses in town. By the sixteenth century, the Franciscans (also known as the Grey Friars, for the grey robes they wore) had one of the largest campuses in town (the walled-in area marked 'Franciscanorum ades' on the map detail below).  The young novice would have been a part of this community within the larger community of St Andrews.

Shortly after 1560, when the Scottish Parliament declared Scotland to be a Protestant kingdom, the Franciscans abandoned their friary in St Andrews and the property was turned over to the town. By the early nineteenth century all the buildings had been removed and the land used as a public park, nostalgically known as Greyfriars Gardens. So when the nineteenth-century city planners decided to put a road through the property, they knew that it would go through a medieval Franciscan cemetery. Most of the former 'residents' of the property were reburied elsewhere.

But it would appear as though they missed one.  

Strange as it may sound, the discovery of this young man's mortal remains greatly brightened my mood.  While he pre-dates my period of research, he reminded me that the men and women I do study were real people, more than just words on paper. They were people who lived and breathed...and died. They had families and friends. Joys and fears. They worked and played. They loved and were loved. They felt pain and gave pain to others.  They had faith and they had doubts. 

I know this is an overly romanticised view, but perhaps it is my responsibility, as a historian, to share their stories. To remember them. And to remind the present and perhaps even the future that, just like this young novice, we are all pilgrims just passing through...

    (St Andrews by J. Geddy, c.1580)