Most Holy Father and Lord, we know, and from the chronicles and books of the ancients we find that among other famous nations, our own, the Scots, has been graced with widespread renown. They journeyed from Greater Scythia by way of the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Pillars of Hercules, and dwelt for a long course of time in Spain among the most savage tribes, but nowhere could they be subdued by any race, however barbarous. Thence they came, twelve hundred years after the children of Israel crossed the Red Sea, to their home in the West where they still live today… In their kingdom there have reigned one hundred thirteen kings of their own royal stock, the line unbroken by a single foreigner… The high qualities and deserts of these people, were they not otherwise manifest, gain glory enough from this: that the King of kings and the Lord of lords, our Lord Jesus Christ, after His Passion and Resurrection, called them, even though settled in the uttermost parts of the earth, almost the first to His most holy faith. Nor would He have confirmed them in that faith by merely anyone but by the first of His Apostles by calling--though second or third in rank--the most gentle Saint Andrew, the Blessed Peter's brother, and desired him to keep them under his protection as their patron forever.