An Italian at the Court of King James.
Professor Richard Oram.
Nestling amidst trees at the roadside in the East Lothian hamlet of Whitekirk is the wonderfully well-preserved medieval parish church of St Mary of Hamere or Whitekirk as it is now known. It is a remarkable survival and, although heavily restored in the early 20th century after fire-damage said to have been caused by suffragette protesters, is one of Scotland’s finest large, cruciform 15th-century churches to survive outside a major town. Although the building that we see is largely the result of work started in 1439 by Queen Joan’s loyal supporter, Sir Adam Hepburn of Hailes, it stands on the site of a church that is on record in the first half of the 12th century. In the later 14th century, reports of miracles at a holy well dedicated to St Mary, close to the church (its exact position is, remarkably, no longer known), led to a rapidly growing flow of pilgrims to visit what soon became an important shrine to the Virgin Mary. By 1413, annual visitors numbered in the thousands and a supplication to the pope made in the name of King James led to the establishment of hostels and other facilities to accommodate the pilgrims.
Perhaps the most famous of these pilgrims was an Italian cleric, Enea Silvio Bartolomeo Piccolomini, who travelled there in the winter months of 1435. Piccolomini, who was later elected pope as Pius II, left a unique autobiography in which he recorded the circumstances of his visit and his opinions of James I’s Scotland. He was a senior aide of the Carthusian monk and bishop of Bologna, Cardinal Niccolo Albergati, who was legate of Pope Eugenius IV at the reforming Council of Basel. Albergati sent Piccolomini on a secret mission to Scotland, the details of which are reported in obscure terms in his autobiography. The voyage north by sea was so storm-tossed that the terrified Italian swore that he would walk barefoot to the nearest shrine to the Virgin Mary should he make it safely to land. Seemingly miraculously, his ship made it safely to Dunbar and, despite the fact that the winter of 1435 was bitterly cold, he walked the ten miles to Whitekirk through the snow and ice. He sees to have caused himself what may have been frostbite, but certainly circulatory problems in his lower legs and feet that caused him intense pain for the rest of his life.
From Whitekirk, Piccolomini continued to James’s court, where he formed a favourable impression of the king. Indeed, James was later to be depicted as a Solomon-like figure presiding over a court of Classically-dressed nobles in an early Renaissance fresco painted in the chapel which Piccolomini founded in the cathedral at Siena. Although the Italian’s personal view of Scotland more generally was less than flattering, he enjoyed himself enough to father a child on a local woman, but the baby died not long after birth.