The Aberdeen Breviary will be referred to during the course of these articles. It is important to describe what this is. A Breviary contains the set of prayers that every priest is obliged to say at various times of day throughout the year. What makes the Aberdeen Breviary different is that it includes text to celebrate Scottish Saints who would not be included in Breviaries printed elsewhere. It was compiled by Bishop Elphinstone of Aberdeen, and became the first major book to be printed in Scotland in 1509. The information on the Saints was compiled by a team of clerics who toured Scotland visiting each parish and recording what evidence was available about the local Saint or Saints. This team is thought to have included Alexander Galloway sometime Parson of Kinkell near Inverurie and latterly a Canon of St Machars Cathedral and one of the foremost scholars of his day. Nevertheless, however good the scholarship and intentions, the team could do no more than collect the information supplied to them by the parishes however accurate or inaccurate that may be. But it is a starting point from which other research has evolved.

Let us therefore start by seeing what The Breviary says about Erchard. In the first place it calls him M’erchard which is a term of affection meaning Mo or My Erchard. He is described as a native of Kincardine o’Neil who became a zealous Christian in his early youth and was ordained a priest by Ternan. While working with Ternan, he visited Glenmoriston. Later he went to Rome and was consecrated bishop by Pope Gregory. On his return journey he visited the Picts of Pictavia, now Poitou in France, and brought back to the truth such as had lapsed to paganism. Falling sick, he prayed to God that he might not see death till he arrived in his own country, and hastened northward through France and England. He reached Kincardine o’Neil to be honourably received by his people, and then died. According to his own instructions, his body was placed on a cart drawn by two horses, which were allowed to go forth where they listed. He was buried where they first stopped, and a church was built over his grave. That place was the site of the now ruined medieval church in Kincardine o’Neil.

There are certain problems with this account. Gregory lived from 540 to 604 and was Pope from 590. If I am right in dating Ternan and Erchard into the 7th century, then it is not possible for Erchard to have lived to what appears to be a good age before Gregory’s death in 604. Here we are again up against Douglas Simpson’s “stormy waters of controversy”. It is a dispute between the adherents of the old Celtic church who claim that it was independent of Rome, and the Roman Church itself, who they claim invented visits by our Saints to Rome to demonstrate that the Celtic Church was really a loyal adherent of the Pope. No one can prove whether Erchard went to Rome or not so I will steer round that whirlpool of controversy.