The decision to move the books and archival material once at Blairs back to the north-east was made in principle a decade ago, and made public in 2008 ("Academics condemn plan to split Catholic archives", The Herald, May 18 and Letters, May 18, 19 & 21).
I do not entirely understand why it has become contentious, since interested parties have had four years in which to express an opinion. It will put the surviving books, manuscripts and papers of the former Scots Colleges under the same roof for the first time since 1958, and mark a reunification of the most important evidence for the Scottish Catholic Church before Catholic emancipation, preserved and collected in the Scots colleges abroad and brought back to the north-east in the early 19th century.
The Roman Catholic Church in Scotland between 1560 and the restoration of the Hierarchy was (with the exception of a very few households in the Lowlands) almost exclusively northern. Scottish Catholicism under penalty was centred in the north-east, just as English recusant Catholicism was centred in Lancashire. The men of the Scots colleges abroad, who created these collections, were primarily north-easterners.
The continuity of the Catholic Church in Scotland runs through north-eastern centres of teaching and preaching.
Rich object and picture collections are still housed at Blairs, and there are many paintings in the university collections by the Catholic Alexander dynasty of Aberdeen. All this adds up to a rich totality of objects and places of memory of Scottish Catholicism under penalty, many of them visitable, rooted in the area which constituted the Catholic heartlands of Scotland in the post-Reformation centuries.
There is every reason to think it appropriate that the Blairs Library, illuminated manuscripts and historical archive should return to the north-east from whence they came, to be reunited (within half an hour's travel) with the museum collections which has never left Blairs. Many scholars have moved on from considering "an archive" in isolation. There are major existing holdings at Aberdeen University which are complementary to this archive. Scholars of Catholicism under penalty, and of Scottish Catholic culture, should pause before they dispute the reuniting of these objects of Scottish Catholic memory with the physical and built memorials of Scottish Catholicism. Their remoteness from metropolitan centres are an intrinsic part of the story they have to tell.
Jane Stevenson,
Regius Professor of Humanity in the University of Aberdeen,
King's College, Aberdeen.
We have been given to understand that the Catholic Bishops of Scotland have decided to move the 100,000 documents of the historic archives from Edinburgh to Aberdeen.
The only reason they can give for this dramatic and game-changing decision is that Columba House in Edinburgh is said to be not fit for purpose.
In fact, the only improvement needed for the facilities at Columba House is to upgrade the shelving system in order to further increase the capacity of the building.
It is my understanding that the Columba Trust, set up by Lord Colum Crichton-Stuart in 1949 to deliver a number of benefits to the Catholic community in Scotland, is willing and able to fund such improvements to the facilities at Columba House but that the Bishops have repeatedly rejected their offers of financial assistance.
I believe the Scottish Catholic Heritage Commission has its first meeting this year at Columba House, 16 Drummond Place, Edinburgh on May 29.
Let us hope that by the Feast of St Columba (June 9) this sorry episode, which does no credit to the Scottish Catholic community, will reach a sensible and practical conclusion that is acceptable to all parties concerned.
Michael T R B Turnbull,
5 Orchard Court, Longniddry, East Lothian.
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