Scotland’s Mysterious Rosslyn Chapel

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‘I had a recent e-mail from Mary Magdalene, Stuart Beattie told me. I wasn’t terribly surprised. Beattie, after all, is the project director for the Rosslyn Chapel Trust, and the chapel, just south of Edinburgh, has long provided a focus for all sorts of esoteric lore and the occasional eccentrics who pursue it. The chapel also plays a pivotal role in The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown’s international best-selling novel about Christianity’s secret past. An e-mail from Mary Magdalene? It’s all in a day’s work at Rosslyn Chapel.

Beattie also told me about a dowser who informed him that 46 documents were hidden beneath one of the chapel’s pillars. How he can determine there are actually 46 intrigues me, said Beattie, a pleasant and low-key man with a dry sense of humor about the rumors that swirl around Rosslyn. But you can’t get too uptight about these things. You just enjoy them and accept them as part of Rosslyn’s baggage. Rosslyn brings out a lot of emotions.

Indeed it does. Rosslyn Chapel has been linked to everything from the Knights Templar to the lost ark of the covenant and the Holy Grail. I approached its legends with some skepticism. I was even more dubious after reading Rosslyn: Guardian of the Secrets of the Holy Grail, by Tim Wallace-Murphy and Marilyn Hopkins. My baloney detector went off by page 14, when the authors posed a million-dollar question: Had the chapel’s founder, Sir William St. Clair, gained the spiritual ability to look backwards and forwards through time and foresee the dramatic change in human consciousness, when human thinking would gain a new objective: to gain mastery over nature itself? I did want to heed the book’s warning against contempt prior to investigation. But, really now.

So what exactly do we know about Rosslyn Chapel? The chapel is in the town of Roslin, about seven miles south of Edinburgh. It was founded in 1446 by Sir William St. Clair, the third and final St. Clair Prince of Orkney. The St. Clairs (later Sinclairs) had a long history in Scotland, with roots in the Orkney Islands and Norway. One William St. Clair fought at the Battle of Hastings alongside his cousin, William the Conqueror, and later gained the barony of Rosslyn from King Malcolm Canmore of Scotland. Another William St. Clair was one of the lords assigned to bring Robert the Bruce’s heart to the Holy Land, but he was killed in Spain en route.

The William St. Clair who built Rosslyn Chapel had grandiose plans. He intended to create the Collegiate Chapel of St. Matthew, the centerpiece of an educational institution. He founded the town of Rosslyn (now Roslin) to house his workers, hired master masons at a salary of £40 a year and oversaw the creation of a beautiful gothic building with a profusion of carving. Work on the chapel continued for nearly 40 years.

But in 1484 Sir William died. When he was interred at Rosslyn his ambitious plans were buried with him. More than five centuries later the chapel remains unfinished. Even so, the building contains a breathtaking repository of stonework, from the rows of objects on the beautiful arched roof of the choir, to the odd and sometimes mysterious figures that populate the building. Stone angels play instruments, more than a hundred pagan Green Men peer from the walls and the seven deadly sins dance across an arch. Devils, dragons, animals, knights, ladies and, of course, Jesus and other religious imagery make their appearances in stone. One carving is supposed to represent the death mask of Robert the Bruce.

The chapel’s most famous work is the elaborate column called the Apprentice Pillar. According to legend, the master mason’s apprentice carved the pillar while his master was away on a long journey. When the master returned and saw the fine work, he killed the apprentice in a fit of jealous rage. A true story? No one knows, but carved faces elsewhere in the chapel are supposed to represent the enraged master, the murdered apprentice and the apprentice’s grieving mother. It’s worth noting that the so-called Master’s Pillar, although beautiful, is no match for the Apprentice Pillar.Unfinished though it may be, Rosslyn Chapel has inspired many artists and writers. In his poem Rosabelle, Sir Walter Scott wrote about the legend that the chapel appeared to be ablaze whenever a St. Clair died:

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