Portal:Scotland/Selected article/Week 17, 2010

Dunfermline Abbey is a large Benedictine abbey in Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland. It was administered by the Abbot of Dunfermline. The abbey was founded in 1128 by King David I of Scotland, but the monastic establishment was based on an earlier foundation dating back to the reign of King Máel Coluim mac Donnchada (i.e. "Malcolm III" or "Malcolm Canmore", r. 1058-93). Its first abbot was Geoffrey of Canterbury, former prior of Christ Church, Canterbury, the Kent religious house that probably supplied Dunfermline's first Benedictine monks. At the peak of its power it controlled four burghs, three courts of regality and a large portfolio of lands from Moray in the north down into Berwickshire.

In the decades after its foundation the abbey gained power and wealth with the dedication of 26 altars gifted by individuals and guilds and was a lucrative centre of pilgrimage after Dunfermline became a centre for the well-promoted cult of St Margaret (Malcolm's wife and David's mother), from whom the monastery later claimed foundation and for which an earlier foundation charter was fabricated.