This book explores the formative period when Scotland acquired the characteristics that enabled it to enter fully into the comity of medieval Christendom. These included a monarchy of a recognisably continental type, a feudal organisation of aristocratic landholding and military service, national boundaries, and a body of settled law and custom. By the end of the thirteenth century Scotland had a church based on territorial dioceses and parishes, centres of learning including monastic houses representing the main orders of western Europe, and thriving urban communities whose economic power...