Who was Bishop John Geddes?

Fr. Michael Briody

Bishop Geddes was born in 1735 in the Enzie, the area around Buckie, which remained tenaciously loyal to the Catholic Faith through two and a half centuries of persecution.

According to his “Autobiographical Notes” he learned to read when he was four; to write when he was six; and to begin the study of Latin when he was seven. There was no schooling when he was ten because of “the confusion of the winter”, which was his description of the 1745 Jacobite Uprising. The Geddes Family lived about fifty miles from Culloden and were witnesses to the consequences: death, destruction and persecution against Catholicism renewed with vigour. In later life he wrote down some reminiscences of how Mass was celebrated in those difficult times:

The priest “said Mass in various places, commonly in barns, and always in the night-time. Towards the end of the week, he bespoke some barn that happened to be empty, in a place proper for the meeting of the people in the night, between the approaching Saturday and Sunday; and some trusty persons were sent to acquaint the heads of the Catholic families of this determination. On Saturday, when it was late at night, the Catholics convened at the appointed place; after midnight a sermon was made, Mass was said, and all endeavoured to get home before daybreak. These meetings were often very inconvenient, from the badness of the weather and of the roads, and from the people being crowded together without seats; but all was borne with great alacrity and cheerfulness. They seemed to be glad to have something to suffer for their God and for the profession of his holy religion.”

About this time, his father died.

At the age of fourteen, he set out for Rome, by sea, a journey of four months, accompanied by William Guthrie, twenty years old, both starting their preparation for the priesthood.

About two years later, George Hay arrived in the college, beginning a friendship of two very different people which was to be invaluable for the Church in Scotland and was to last almost fifty years.

While he was still in Rome, his mother died. He was eighteen years old. In 1759 he was ordained, and he returned to Scotland, with George Hay and William Guthrie. The winds in the Firth of Forth forced the ship into Buckhaven instead of Leith, which was fortunate because security at Buckhaven was less stringent than at Leith where there was always the danger of being unmasked as Catholic Priests.

They walked to Edinburgh and visited Bishop Alexander Smith to receive their appointments. John Geddes was given the Cabrach, an exposed upland moor between Tomintoul and Huntly, well known for its severe weather. He was to discover that he had to share his house at Shenval with Bishop Hugh MacDonald, a great figure in the story of Scottish Catholicism. He had been put on trial at Edinburgh for being a Catholic Priest present in Scotland, although his real crime was blessing the Jacobite Standard at Glenfinnan in 1745. He was banished from the kingdom, under pain of death if he returned, but he had managed to slip back to the north to continue to serve his people.

After three years John Geddes was appointed rector of Scalan, the clandestine seminary in the Braes of Glenlivet. It had gone through a difficult period. He established it as a centre of excellence in terms of spiritual, academic and human formation. The very building which was constructed under his supervision has been discovered by modern experts to be of the highest quality for the time. He even brought in the most up-to-date agricultural methods, because Scalan was part of a “fermtoun”.

After five years he moved to Preshome, both a missionary post and administrative centre for the Church, one of the places used by the bishops for their meetings. He was there when they gathered to discuss the Scotch College in Madrid, Spain. It had fallen on hard times and was in danger of being lost altogether. Two priests had already been asked to to go to find out what the situation was but had not shown sufficient enthusiasm for the task. It sounded as if the bishops were going to ask the English rector in Valladolid, Philip Perry, to speak on our behalf to the Spanish Authorities. John Geddes insisted with Bishop James Grant that a Scot had to go out to speak for us. Bishop Grant asked: “So you would abandon souls in Scotland to seek gold in Spain?” John Geddes retorted: “I have not the slightest desire to go to Spain, but someone ought to seek gold in Spain in order to help souls in Scotland!” Not much later he was taking to road to Madrid, where he rescued the college and re-established it in the northern city of Valladolid in 1771, where it was to serve the Church in Scotland well over the next 200 years. He was a man of wide interests well beyond the theological and encouraged his students to be likewise. He was greatly interested in the new developments of his times particularly in science and economics. He translated Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations” for Pedro Rodriguez de Campomanes, one of the chief ministers of the King of Spain.

He returned to Scotland in 1781. He was now forty-five years old. He had been consecrated bishop in Spain to come home to be coadjutor to Bishop George Hay. He was based in Edinburgh, where part of his pastoral plan was to mix with the influential citizens, those who were the opinion-formers of the day. This was the time when Edinburgh was gaining its reputation as “The Athens of the North” in the days of the Enlightenment. He met Robert Burns in this period and from correspondence between them it is clear that Bishop Geddes was not wasting his time at the dinner parties. “Not the least precious among many rare gifts with which nature had endowed Bishop Geddes, and which he had carefully cultivated was his power of attracting the goodwill of everyone with whom he happened to have any connection” – such was the opinion of the Abbé Paul Macpherson, one of our other great names in the story of Scottish Catholicism. Bishop Geddes gained great respect, and consequently there was a better attitude towards the Catholic Community generally. From Edinburgh he went to Glasgow every couple of months to attend to the sixty Catholics there, and other places in between, and once he went to the Orkneys. These journeys were largely done on foot. “Ambula coram Deo et esto perfectus” (Walk in the presence of the Lord and be perfect) was his episcopal motto.

He died on 11 February 1799, at the age of sixty-three. For the last five years he was not able to celebrate Mass because of paralysis and later he lost the power of speech. One can only imagine his spiritual and mental suffering, not to mention the physical. During this period he was cared for at St. Peter’s, Aberdeen, by his two priest-nephews, John and Charles Gordon. Charles was to become the legendary “Priest Gordon”. Both are buried with him within the remains of the pre-Reformation church of Our Lady of the Snows, in the grounds of the University of Aberdeen. The professors of King’s College waived the usual fees for a burial, considering it a privilege to have buried on their property the body of such “a great and good man”.