The elusive monastery is associated with the Book of Deer, which contains the oldest-surviving examples of Scottish Gaelic writing.
Intriguingly, the pottery fragments date between 1276 and 1395, when the monastery was likely still in use. The charcoal dates between 1147 and 1260.
Author: Richard
I grew up in Philadelphia where I graduated from La Salle University in 1968, the "Year of Revolting Students." I had changed my major from Philosophy to German to, finally, English (special interest: 1870-1914).
Having made solemn monastic vows as a Benedictine monk at Saint John's Abbey, I earned in Iowa City a masters of arts degree in Library and Information Science, 1974. A few years later I served as an intern in Special Collections at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, UK, 1979-80.
For almost five years I oversaw the microfilming of medieval manuscripts in Durham, UK, and several sites in Germany for the abbey's Hill Museum and Manuscript Library (www.hmml.org).
In August 2016 I completed seven years with the Conference of Major Superiors of Men, Silver Spring, MD. I returned to the monastery in central Minnesota in a red 2007 Toyota Corolla from the abbey fleet.
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