Jocelin of Glasgow - Abbot of Melrose

Abbot of Melrose

So it was that Prior Jocelin became abbot on 22 April 1170. Jocelin embraced the cult without hesitation. Under the year of his accession, it was reported in the Chronicle of Melrose that:

Promoting saints was something Jocelin would repeat at Glasgow, where he "transferred his enthusiasm to St Kentigern" and commissioned a hagiography of that saint, the saint most venerated by the Celts of the diocese of Glasgow. It is no coincidence that Jocelin of Furness, the man who wrote the Life of St. Waltheof, was the same man later commissioned to write the Life of St. Kentigern.

This kind of literary patronage started while Jocelin was abbot of Melrose. Archie Duncan has shown that it was probably Jocelin who first commissioned the writing of the Chronicle of Melrose. Duncan argued that Jocelin commissioned the entries dealing with the period between 731 and 1170, putting the writing in the hands of a monk named Reinald (who later became Bishop of Ross). This chronicle is one of the few extant chronicles from "Scotland" in this period. G. W. S. Barrow, writing before Duncan advanced these arguments, noted that down to the end of King William's reign "the chronicle of Melrose Abbey ... represents a strongly 'Anglo-Norman' as opposed to a native Scottish point of view". It is thus possible that this anti-Scottish world-view reflected that of Jocelin's, at least before he left the abbey.

After his election to the prestigious bishopric of Glasgow in 1174, Jocelin would continue exerting influence on his home monastery. Jocelin brought one of his monks from the abbey, a man called Michael, who acted as Jocelin's chaplain while Bishop of Glasgow. He did not resign his position as abbot until after his consecration in 1175. Jocelin consecrated his successors as abbot, and continued to spend a great deal of time there. Moreover, he used his position as bishop to offer the monastery patronage and protection.