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A Manager's Guide to PR
Projects

A Practical Approach
 LEA'S COMMUNICATION SERIES
Jennings Bryant/Dolf Zillmann, General Editors

Selected titles in Public Relations (James Grunig, Advisory Editor) include:

Austin / Pinkleton • Strategic Public Relations Management: Planning and Managing Effective
Communication Programs

Culbertson / Chen • International Public Relations: A Comparative Analysis

Dozier / Grunig / Grunig • Manager's Guide to Excellence in Public Relations and Communication
Management

Fearn-Banks • Crisis Communications: A Casebook Approach, Second Edition

Grunig • Excellence in Public Relations and Communication Management

Ledingham / Bruning • Public Relations as Relationship Management: A Relational Approach to

the Study and Practice of Public Relations

Lerbinger • The Crisis Manager: Facing Risk and Responsibility

For a complete list of titles in LEA's Communication Series, please contact Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates, Publishers at www.erlbaum.com
A Manager's Guide to PR
Projects

A Practical Approach

Patricia J. Parsons
Mount Saint Vincent University

LAWRENCE ERLBAUM ASSOCIATES, PUBLISHERS

Mahwah, New Jersey London
 Camera ready copy for this book was provided by the author.

Copyright © 2003 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any
form, by photostat, microform, retrieval system, or any other means,
without prior written permission of the publisher.

Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Publishers

10 Industrial Avenue
Mahwah,NJ 07430

Cover design by Kathryn Houghtaling Lacey

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Parsons, Patricia J.
A manager's guide to PR projects : a practical approach /
by Patricia J. Parsons.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8058-4547-X (pbk.: alk. paper)
1. Public relations—Management. I. Title.
HD59.P355 2003
659.2—dc21 2003040857
CIP

Books published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates are printed on acid-

free paper, and their bindings are chosen for strength and durability.

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
 Contents
Contents
Preface, vii.

Chapter 1 Before We Begin, 1

Defining public relations, 2

Using this book, 3
Defining Management, 3
Defining "projects," 4
Public relations process: A few details, 4
Onward!, 7

Chapter 2 The Research Phase, 9

An everyday process, 10
What research can accomplish, 11
Problem or opportunity?, 12
How research is done, 13
The communication audit, 14
Characterizing relationships with publics, 15
Analyzing the information, 16
Using the worksheets, 19
C] Data Table
CD Problem & Opportunity Analysis
CD Data Analysis Checklist

Chapter 3 The Planning Phase, 21

The plan, 22
Defining publics, 22
Constructing objectives, 24
Relationship objectives, 26
Considering processes, 27
Keying objectives to publics, 27
Developing messages, 28
Choosing public relations vehicles, 28
Rationales for channels and strategies, 29
Using the worksheets, 30
CD Identification & Categorization of Publics
CD Checklist for Outcome Objectives
CD Public Relations Planning Worksheet

v.
Contents
Chapter 4 Managing Implementation, 31
Revisiting management definitions, 32
The historical context, 33
Management and leadership, 33
Budgets as management tools, 34
Deadlines and time management, 36
Controlling quality along the way, 38
People: Working with and through, 40
Using the worksheets, 41
Budgeting Worksheet
Time Management
Quality Control Checklist

Chapter 5 Evaluation, 43

A practical definition, 44
Why evaluate?, 44
What we evaluate, 45
Evaluating relationships, 48
The "benchmark," 49
Using the worksheets, 50
D Media Monitoring Tracking Sheet

Resources, 51

Public Relations Plan:

Sample Format, 56

VI.
 Preface
A Manager s Guide to PR Projects was conceived, gestated, and produced
out of sheer frustration. Perhaps a more academic approach to this explana-
tion would be to say that one university professor experienced considerable
difficulty in acquiring appropriate materials to support a pedagogical ap-
proach involving student participation and hands-on experience. So she
wrote the book herself. But I prefer a less cluttered way of writing and speak-
ing.

For about six years I taught, among other things, a one-semester foundation
course in public relations as a professional discipline for our first-year public
relations majors, and its follow-up course, that focused primarily on an
introduction to the strategic process of public relations planning. Although
there is a wide variety of choice in the area of introductory textbooks, and
each of them has a chapter or three on strategy, there is far less choice in the
search for materials to accompany a first course on communication and
public relations planning. There are some excellent communication planning
textbooks that provide background and theory, and I use these, but I observed
that my students were missing something.

Several years and several hundred student/client public relations plans later, I
also found myself in the position of teaching our senior-level course in public
relations management. A 4000-level course, it still lacked material of a
practical nature for student reading and application. Of course we used
James Grunig's "Excellence Study" as well as a variety of case study books
over the years, but there was still something missing. Consequently, I set
about developing the materials that would be useful for the students. A
Manager s Guide to PR Projects was the result.

This workbook had its first outing in the fall of 1999 in a prepublication
form. I used it for two sections of the 4000-level course, all the while know-
ing that it was really a more rudimentary book. The student feedback was
astoundingly positive and it appeared that they did, indeed, understand the
practicalities of the planning process better than their predecessors, and their
client work showed it. In addition, I sought feedback from several colleagues
and produced the workbook in its final format, which a colleague and I used
for several years with good results in terms of the students' ability to take the
theory about decision-making and planning and to apply that to real client
situations. When the time came for a revised edition, I approached Erlbaum
and this book is the result. A departure for any publisher who currently
provides materials for public relations education at the postsecondary level,
this venture, I believe, shows considerable foresight on the part of this pub-
lisher. No one had ever produced a workbook of this kind for public rela-
tions. But, in my view, workbooks like this can be truly useful tools for
students and practitioners alike.

vii.
Preface
A Manager s Guide to PR Projects: A Practical Approach picks up
where classic public relations textbooks leave off. It provides hands-on
guidance in planning the preliminary research for a public relations
project and creating a plan to achieve specific goals, guiding the reader
through managing the project's implementation. It contains valuable
worksheets that can be used for a visual representation of the planning
process for both student edification and presentation to clients.

This is an easy book to read, however, its usefulness to both the student
as well as the practitioner is in its focus on guiding the reader during the
planning process. This book is a tool: a practical approach.

One caveat: Because this book does provide templates of various kinds,
it is easy for the reader to begin to believe that this is the only approach:
that the templates are to be followed religiously. This is not the case. Be
aware that there are many ways to approach the planning process. This
is my recommendation for the beginning practitioner. As experience and
judgment develop, individualized, creative approaches to specific client
issues will become apparent to the practitioner. Use this workbook as a
starting point from which to develop a proactive planning philosophy for
public relations and corporate communications.

Please let me know how you have been able to use this book. You can
contact me via e-mail at patricia.parsons@msvu.ca.

Patricia J. Parsons APR

viii.
 Before We
Begin

Chapter 1

Before We Begin

Vocabulary

public relations
public relations process

systems

subsystem
subsystem

input

throughput
throughput

output
output

management
management

1
Before We
Begin Public relations has been defined in many ways by many writers and
public relations practitioners over the years. How^ow define public
relations depends on a number of factors including the following:
Defining
public • your type of educational background in thefield(e.g.
journalism, English, marketing, public relations);
relations
• your level of education in PR or related fields (e.g. certifi-
cate, bachelor's degree, master's degree);

• the books, magazines, and journals you have read (e.g. PR

texts versus marketing texts);

• the professional associations to which you belong (e.g. the

International Association of Business Communicators, the
Public Relations Association of America, the American
Academy of Advertising, the Canadian Public Relations
Society) or do not belong;

" your experience in public relations and its related commu-

nication fields (e.g. advertising, marketing, graphic de-
sign).

There are, however, some important commonalities about how profes-

sional public relations in general is defined. This book is based on a
number of commonly held beliefs about the practice of public relations.

D Public relations is a management function that

assists the organization to reach its goals.

D Public relations is a process of research, planning,

implementation and evaluation.

CD Public relations practice requires both managerial

and technical skills, creativity, flexibility and
above all, integrity.

Q Public relations utilizes targeted communications

tools and techniques to help organizations develop
and maintain mutually beneficial relationships.

D Public relations can be practiced in for-profit,

not-for-profit and governmental venues.

These beliefs guide the management of public relations projects.

2
 Before We
This book is designed as a user-friendly guide to take you through the 4-step Begin
public relations planning process from any one of a number of vantage
points. You may be a manager, a public relations student, a PR practitioner
who needs a review, or someone outside the field who has an interest in
public relations planning. Each of you will find something useful and practi- Using this
cal in the pages that follow. It is not intended as a crutch, but rather as a book
learning tool for use both in class and beyond. Its approaches are based on
real experiences in the management of communications projects designed to
meet organizational goals through achieving public relations objectives.

The templates at the end of each chapter are designed to be copied for your
personal use as worksheets, and some are even useful as documents that
might be shared with a client or employer as appendiceal material in a final
written plan.

This workbook presupposes that you are reading, or have read, a variety of
supplementary materials that explain in greater detail some of the terms used.
There is a vocabulary list at the beginning of each section. These are terms
that are used in the text that follows, but that beg fuller explanation toward
which the resource list for each chapter will lead you.

Management as a term is a bit like the term "public relations": there are as Defining
many definitions as there are managers. Most definitions again, however,
have some commonalities. The following are some of those common factors: management
Management is a process of getting things done effi-
ciently and effectively.

Management accomplishes its goals through and with

people and the strategic use of other organizational
resources, including time and money.

There are four fundamental activities that managers

use to accomplish their goals. These are planning,
organizing, leading and controlling.

It's worth noting that these sound a lot like the activities we have already
identified as part of the 4-step public relations process - and they are. Thus,
for our purposes, the public relations process itself is our fundamental man-
agement tool.

Whereas small organizations may have only one main manager, larger organi-
zations - whether for-profit, not-for-profit, or government ventures - tend to
have a number of managers. A public relations manager may have a depart-

3
Before We
Begin ment of one to manage, or a department of many. Every project, how-
ever, whether carried out by one person or many, must be planned and
managed for it to achieve its goals.

Modern public relations is a management function

that uses a process of research, planning,
implementation, and evaluation to help an
organization achieve its communication and
relationship goals.

Defining This book is titled A Manager s Guide to PR Projects. Clearly we need a

"projects" working definition of the term project as we are using it in this context.
Webster's dictionary defines a project as "something proposed or
mapped out in the mind, a course of action; a plan." If we use this
definition, a public relations project can be anything from the develop-
ment of a simple news release (which begins as an idea in someone's
mind, is researched, outlined, written, and, at some point, evaluated) up
to the most complex strategies for solving organizational problems that
stem from external and/or internal relationships. In other words, an
excellent public relations practitioner will use a project planning process
for everything from the largest to the smallest project, rather than flying
by the seat of his or her pants.

As you become more experienced, you begin to realize that you have
internalized this process, and simple projects often no longer require a
formal, written plan. Sometimes, however, seemingly simple challenges
can stump you and you can revert to this useful exercise. More complex
strategies always require a written plan using the 4-step process, modi-
fied and adapted to the situation at a particular point in the organization's
history. This workbook is designed for use in strategic communication
planning to achieve public relations objectives.

Public Systems theory provides a useful paradigm for examining the relation-
ships between an organization and its publics, and for understanding and
relations applying public relations process.
process: A If we consider the notion that an organization exists within an environ-
few details ment that exerts economic, social, and political pressures on it, we can
see that the publics with which that organization interacts are also part of

4
 Before We
Begin
that environment. As such, these publics (whose boundaries the organization
defines) are both subject to these same pressures and capable of being part of
the pressures exerted on the organization.

Figure 1.1 illustrates the organization as part of a larger system. Both the
organization and its publics are interacting units of the system. Also, note
that the arrows from the organization are two-headed, indicating that interac-
tion (communication), in the ideal model, is two-way. This entire workbook
assumes that excellent public relations is based on a two-way communication
model.

When an organization feels pressures from outside its boundaries (and some-
time from inside those same boundaries) it can choose either to maintain the
status quo or to adapt to the pressures. Maintaining the status quo usually
results in an organization that is unable to progress and flourish. Adaptation,
on the other hand, allows the organization to identify and solve its problems
and to capitalize on opportunities (see chapter 2 for more specific definitions
of these terms).

If we take a closer look at the focal organization, we can see another system.
This system comprises the interacting units that make up the organization

5
Before We
Begin itself. The public relations function is one of those units, and it is within
this subsystem that the public relations process is carried out. In systems
terms, within the public relations function itself, input consists of pres-
sures, data, communication from internal or external publics, activities
of publics that bring pressure to bear on the organization, and so on.
Throughput is the public relations process itself (carrying out research,
planning, implementing plans, and evaluating plans), and output com-
prises the messages (and how they are carried) to various publics, both
internal and external (examples of output include newsletters, videos,
events, publicity). Keep in mind that the term "messages" in public
relations can mean messages in the literal sense as illustrated by the
foregoing examples, but they can also be more implied. For example, it
is not just the specific communication activities that make up the organi-
zation's output in the public relations process, but its actions as well. In
addition, the development or adaptation of policies in response to feed-
back from important publics can be significant public relations ap-
proaches whose messages may appear more subliminal, but are just as
key to the development of strong relationships with publics. Thus, two-
way communication and the adaptation of the organization to its publics
and its environment also constitute outputs.

These four steps - research, plan, implement, and evaluate - form the
basis for what we call public relations process (see Fig. 1.2). This proc-
ess is nothing more or less than a systematic way to make well-founded,
strategic decisions. Furthermore, it is not unique to the field of public
relations per se. For example, a medical doctor uses a similar process
when he or she gathers both subjective and objective information about a
6
 Before We
patient's condition, determines a diagnosis, decides on a treatment plan, then Begin
follows up to determine the outcome, changing the approach, if necessary,
based on that outcome. Using that process to deal with the communications
issues within an organization is, however, the purview of the public relations
profession. Let's examine each step a bit more carefully.

Research: During the research phase, the public relations practitioner gath-
ers information from a variety of sources. These could include such second-
ary sources as organizational records, governmental statistics, textbooks, or
journals. Often, data gathering also includes such primary methods as sur-
veys, interviews, and focus groups.

The communication or public relations audit, which includes both primary

and secondary sources for information, is a formalized method of assessing
the communication activities of an organization and thus is also a research
tool.

Also included in the research phase is analysis. It is not enough simply to

gather the information, it must be analyzed so that the problem or opportunity
may be identified (more about problems and opportunities in chapter 2).

Plan: The most important aspect of the planning stage is setting objectives for
the plan. These are the desired outcomes. Once the objectives are developed,
it becomes feasible to look at message development, select channels and
vehicles, and determine how, when, and by whom the plan will be imple-
mented.

Implement: During the implementation phase, the plan is carried out. When
developing a strategy in the first place, however, the strategist needs to deal
with the managing the implementation. How resources will be utilized for
execution of the plan is an important part of examining the implementation
prior to actually putting the plan into effect.

Evaluate: The final phase is evaluation. The strategist always plans how the
project will be evaluated while preparing the initial plan. The evaluation
phase itself is really ongoing, although it appears to be the last phase. Evalu-
ation strategies are always developed in direct response to the objectives set
for each specific public and the measurement of outcomes is used as research
data for future strategies - thus making this a feedback loop and a circular
rather than linear process.

Now that we have examined the purpose of this workbook and set our frame- Onward!
work for discussing the management of the public relations projects, we'll
begin the real work of strategic public relations - creating the strategy.

7
Before We
Begin The remainder of this workbook is devoted to the four phases of the
public relations process. Each section begins with a listing of important
terminology (which you should look up in several theory books if you
are unfamiliar with any of them), provides brief background on the step
of the process, and then moves quickly to tools that you can use to work
through the strategic process.

This is where the creative fun of professional public relations really lies!

8
 The Research
Phase

Chapter 2

The Research Phase

Vocabulary

applied research

theoretical research

primary research

secondary research

survey

focus group

communication audit

analysis

public relations problem

public relations opportunity

9
The Research
Phase Let's presume for a moment that you are sitting at your desk reading this
chapter. It's 3 o'clock in the afternoon and you've already had a very
busy day. When you got out of bed this morning, you had to get dressed.
An everyday Look down at what you're wearing right now.

process Have you changed your clothes since this morning? If you did, why did
you change? Presume for a moment that you are still wearing the same
clothes you dressed in when you got up. How did you decide what you
would wear today? Getting dressed is an activity that all of us do every
day, but we don't usually wear the same clothes (even people who wear
uniforms usually have the odd day off from it). How, then, did you
decide on the clothes that you now see on yourself?

If you're like most of us, however unconsciously, you gathered a host of

data, analyzed it, then made a decision. Eventually, you will evaluate
that decision, but let's stick to the data-gathering for a moment more.
Here are some of the pieces of data you might have considered before
you got dressed.

What is the weather like?

What clothes are clean?
What do I have to do today?
Who am I likely to see today?
What kind of impression do I want to make?
How do I feel today?

Some of the methods you might use to gather answers to these questions
are the following:

Listening to the weather report on the radio

Looking out the window
Observing the floor and/or the closet
Checking your daily appointment book
Asking a significant other for an opinion

You will analyze all this information, use it to figure out your goal (e.g.
to be comfortable, to get that new job, to impress someone special), and
then you will create a plan of action. And it's likely that your plan of
action will be flawed if you don't gather and analyze this data, resulting
in outcomes that you may not like.

You may not be aware of it, but your actions to collect data and
analyze it constitute research. So, for our purposes in managing the
public relations process, we will use the following definition:

10
 The Research
Phase
Research is a deliberate, planned, and organized process
for collection and analysis of data for the purpose of
determining an organization's public relations problems,
opportunities, and possible solutions.

Let's go back for a moment to your morning decision-making process about What
your daily wardrobe. Consider this scenario: For several weeks, you have
been preparing for a very important job interview that is scheduled for early research
this morning. You wake up late and giving little thought to what you'll be can
wearing, you throw on the first thing you see. You arrive at the interview on
time, but the receptionist takes one look at you and figures that you must be accomplish
in the wrong place. You are wearing a rumpled shirt and jacket and you are
soaking wet. You hadn't realized that it was raining until it was too late. You
have failed to do appropriate and sufficient research, thereby decreasing the
likelihood that you will achieve your ultimate goal.

Conducting research before embarking on any kind of public relations ven-

ture is critical to its success. For example, before you launch a new employee
newsletter to keep them informed, you need to find out what employees need
to know, but you also need to determine what employees believe is the most
effective and credible way to receive information. If you fail to collect and
use this information, you may find yourself with a shiny new newsletter that
no one reads, resulting in your inability to achieve your goals, and that costs
you money.

On a larger scale, research is crucial to the strategic planning process so that

you can answer the following key questions:

• Where are we now?

• Where do we want to go?
• What is likely to be the best route to get there?

Organizations have saved themselves thousands of dollars by conducting

research before launching communication campaigns or determining the best
way to deal with feedback from publics. For example, what would be the
point of trying to change a perceived negative image about your organization
until you know the real perceptions held by your publics?

The bottom line on research is that it affects the bottom line - whatever your
organization's bottom line might be. In the long run it can save you money,
time, resources, and effort.

11
The Research
Phase
Research can accomplish many things. The following are some of the
things it can accomplish for public relations:

1. Determine the type and size of the public relations effort required.
2. Determine the extent to which there is a need for this approach.
3. Provide information to help you determine the precise public
relations problem or opportunity facing your organization.
4. Target your specific public(s). (We'll discuss publics more in a
later chapter.)
5. Describe the specific characteristics of your public(s).
6. Assist in the articulation of your message(s).
7. Identify appropriate and potentially effective vehicles, tactics, and
channels to reach specific publics.
8. Enhance the credibility of the public relations function with top
management.

Problem 0r Being able to recognize a problem or opportunity and to define it

opportunity? succinctly is one of the most important outcomes of the data analysis in
the research phase and no research is complete without it. The following
are useful definitions that will help both you and your client/ employer to
understand the planning process that will follow.

A public relations problem is a relationship or

communication issue that has been identified
as a result of past events, current activities,
and future projections, and which is likely to
impede the organization from reaching its goals.

Thus a problem emanates directly from weaknesses in the relationships

that an organization has with one or more publics. A problem may be a
public's lack of information about the organization, its policies, its
products or services, or issues it represents, for example. It may also be
an attitude or perception issue: One or more publics may hold negative
perceptions about the organization or what it represents. This negative
attitude may or may not have resulted (yet) in the public taking action on
that attitude. This, of course, leads naturally to the final kind of problem,
actions that a public has taken as a result of its unhealthy relationship
with the organization. When determining an organization's public
relations problems, a PR practitioner must consider all of these domains.

An opportunity offers a different perspective.

12
 The Research
Phase
A public relations opportunity is the identification of
a juncture of events and objectives that provides an
optimal window for using communication strategies to
enhance an organization's internal and/or external
relationships and thus further the organization's goals.

An opportunity emerges from an analysis of the organization's strengths in its

relationships and communications activities with its publics (what's working
well) and its responses to its environment. In addition, strengths may be
identified within the organization itself. For example, the appointment of a
new CEO with a fundamental understanding of the value of public relations
as a management function may present a number of opportunities to
strengthen relationships and PR processes within the organization.

Research textbooks discuss two major categories of research. First, aca- How
demic research is conducted, usually by scholars, in an effort to add to the
general body of knowledge in a particular discipline. The practical applica- research
tions may not be immediately apparent. For example, a public relations is done
professor might research public relations ethics to explain how and why PR
practitioners do what they do. Then he or she might develop a theory to
explain the ethical decision-making process.

Applied research, on the other hand, is research that is conducted within a

professional field. Both scholars and practitioners might be engaged in
applied research, but usually for different reasons. In the process of planning
and managing public relations strategies and campaigns, public relations
practitioners are engaged in applied research.

In terms of techniques that public relations practitioners might use to gather

data during the research phase of developing the PR plan, there are two
general categories. Secondary research is the term used to describe the
process of collecting information from sources where the original data have
been accumulated already. Examples of secondary research sources are as
follows:

archival material
governmental statistical compilations
trade organization statistics
library collections
organizational publications and records
online data bases

13
The Research
Phase I
In spite of the monikers "primary" and secondary," secondary research is
usually necessary as a first step before primary research can be planned
and conducted. Once this secondary source material is collected, the
public relations practitioner often needs to conduct primary research.
In other words, you need to gather firsthand information that is not
already available from any other source. The following are examples of
primary public relations research methods:

surveys in general
readership surveys in particular
focus groups
interviews
observation

If you know anything about typical data gathering in public relations

already, you might be wondering where media monitoring fits in. The
information you are collecting is in a secondary source (mass media), but
you are using the information collected in a new and unique way and no
other organization is likely to be using the same framework as you are
for analyzing the information. Thus, for our purposes in public relations,
it is useful to consider media monitoring as part of your primary research
that is conducted on an ongoing basis, not just in preparation for the
development of a program or campaign plan.

The One type of public relations research tool that uses both primary and
secondary methods for data-gathering is the communication audit.
communication The terms communication audit and public relations audit are usually
audit used interchangeably, although some people in the PR field differentiate
between them by suggesting that the public relations audit focuses more
on the communication climate within and outside the organization, on
the quality of the relationships with publics, and on the role of the public
relations function itself. We'll define the communication / public rela-
tions audit as follows:

The communication/public relations audit is a

research tool that examines and assesses all aspects
of an organization's activities, including the internal
communication climate, to diagnose the extent to
which each public is receiving and responding to the
messages targeted toward them and the quality of
the relationships engendered by the organization
through its communication and activities.

14
 The Research
Phase
Whenever a public relations practitioner is faced with a new employer, client,
or industry, it is almost impossible not to do one, at least to answer the ques-
tion: Where are we now?

The data collection carried out in the research phase of the public relations
planning process almost always requires a combination of techniques. Thus,
before you plunge into the archives or the creation of a survey instrument (see
recommended resources for further details), you need to create a plan of how
you are going to research what aspects of the organization and its publics, and
why.

One of the "ends" of the research phase is the ability to assess the quality of Characterizing
the relationships that the organization has developed with its publics as a relationships
result of proactive and reactive communication and organizational activities.
This assessment of the quality of relationships is the first stage of the data with
analysis. publics
The answers to the following questions will help the public relations practi-
tioner to characterize the relationships that the organization has with specific
publics so that these may be created, maintained, or improved as a result of
the subsequent plan.

• What degree of credibility does the organization have in the eyes

of this public?
• To what extent does this public understand (a) our mission; (b)
our values; (c) our policies?
• To what extent do members of this public believe that they
benefit from a relationship with this organization?
• How much conflict has the organization faced with this public
recently? Farther in the past?
• How much conflict is the organization likely to face with this
public in the future?
• How does this public act toward this organization and what do
these actions say about the relationship? (See chapter 3 resource
by Grunig & Hon 1999 for further information).

Data that relate to the answers to these questions will be key in ensuring a
complete analysis - a crucial part of the research process.

15
The Research
Phase
Unlike the process of synthesis, which takes parts of something and
forms them into a logical whole, the process of analysis takes the whole
of something and breaks it down into its parts. The report about that
Analyzing process is also referred to as an analysis (thus, the term analysis is used
the as a part of the plan you will write).
information The analysis is a significant part of the research phase. Without this
process, all you have is a body of information that is both unwieldy and
useless. You have to do something with it!

It is often said that individuals either possess an analytical mind or they

do not. Learning the skills necessary to analyze data is, however, quite
possible. In the practice of public relations, the ability to analyze data
and to determine an organization's strengths, weaknesses, problems and
opportunities comes as a result of not only individual talent, but also
from experience and judgment. Any good public relations practitioner
can develop this talent, and it is a key element of learning to think like a
manager.

As you gather data about the organization and its public relations and
communication activities, you need to have a way of putting that data
into categories and determining the relationships among pieces of data.

If you have survey results, you might use statistics as part of your ana-
lytical process (e.g. averages, standard deviations, chi squares). If you
have a series of organizational print materials, you might use the process
of content analysis. Content analysis can be very informal, or can be a
very formalized process of identification and analysis of specific pieces
of content. Analyzing print materials might also use the application of
any number of available readability indices to determine reading level.

One aspect of analysis that is key to figuring out what to do next is to be

able to answer the following questions:

• What aspects of the organization's external environment are

currently affecting it either positively or negatively?

• What aspects of the organization's external environment are

likely to affect it in the future?

• How would you describe the organization's internal envi-

ronment?

• Who are the organization's publics?

16
 The Research
Phase
• Has the organization accurately identified and described its
publics, both current and future?

• How can these publics be categorized?

• How would you characterize the organization's short and long-

term relationships with each public?

• What messages does the organization convey to each public?

• Are these the messages that the organization intends to convey?

• What vehicles and channels are used to convey these messages

to each public?

• How effectively do these vehicles convey the intended mes-

sages?

• To what extent do they convey unintended messages? How do

they do this (overtly and subliminally)?

• What organizational actions convey intended and unintended

messages to specific publics?

• What are the organization's public relations strengths and weak-

nesses?

• What are the public relations problems?

• What are the public relations opportunities?

The narrative report that discusses all of these questions constitutes what will
become the situational analysis in the public relations plan. It is important
to note that if you are working on a plan that is designed to target one or more
specific publics, the foregoing questions need to focus on that aspect of the
organization and its environment. For example, if you are developing an
internal communications plan, your main focus is on employees and other
internal publics (such as volunteers), and only on other publics and the exter-
nal environment to the extent that these affect your target public.

Using a table as a working tool when you are analyzing the data can be
useful. It might look something like the following.

17
The Research
Phase Figure 2.1
Data Table

Here is what you should do with each of the columns in this table:

Public: This column is the place where you identify the current publics
recognized by the organization. Some of these might include media, the
community, employees, volunteers, Board of Directors, governmental
agencies, members and so on. But each is dealt with separately.

Message(s): This column enables you to identify the messages that are
currently being transmitted to the specific publics you have identified.
This includes both intended and unintended messages transmitted by
either communication or other activities of the organization. Often the
messages that the public actually receives and interprets are not the same
as those intended by the organization. You need to know this. In addi-
tion, it might be time for the intended message to change.

Vehicles: This is where you delineate the communication vehicles that

are currently being used to disseminate messages or create the organiza-
tion's image and reputation. Again, these are categorized according to
the specific public identified, but remember that organizations use some
of their vehicles to reach multiple audiences. Even the process of writ-
ing newsletter, for example, under a series of publics, might suggest that
the organization is trying to accomplish too much with one piece. On
the other hand, it may become apparent that one vehicle is not being
fully utilized.

Assessment: This column is probably the most important part of this

data table. This is where the analysis really begins. In the assessment
column, you make an initial evaluation of the success or failure of the
public/message/vehicle and you begin to discover strengths and weak-
nesses in the public relations activities of the organization. Here are
some questions that you might consider in this column: Does the mes-
sage that is being transmitted seem appropriate? Is the message an
intended one? Is any message being transmitted? Does the vehicle
targeted at a particular public seem appropriate? What is the level of the

18
 The Research
quality? Is there consistency of messages? Are there any other publics with Phase
which the organization ought to have relationships? Is this tool being evalu-
ated at all?

There are two important considerations in using this kind of a tool for data
collection and analysis at this stage. First, it is a reflection of the current
situation not the situation that you intend to exist after the implementation of
a strategic plan. Second, it provides you with only a superficial examination
of the situation at this stage and is not complete enough to examine elaborate
two-way communication efforts on the organization's part. This table is
useful to you both as you collect data - it can allow you to formulate a visual
picture of where you are and what are the relationships among the variables -
and it can also serve later as a way to present the data. The table becomes a
companion to the narrative portion of the analysis.

Another key aspect of the data analysis is determining the organization's

strengths and weaknesses in their communication and relationships with their
publics. Finally, from these strengths and weaknesses, the public relations
strategist must determine the organization's problems and opportunities (refer
back to our definitions and descriptions earlier in the chapter).

Writing up your analysis is the final step. You might consider using the
questions posed earlier as a guideline for that written narrative analysis.
Once you have your data analyzed, you are ready to move on to the develop-
ment of your plan.

The following pages provide you with work sheets that you might find help- Using the
fill in organizing both your data and your written analysis.
worksheets
The first is a Data Table as we discussed earlier. Use it as you collect your
data to identify the publics with whom the organization has relationships, the
messages actually communicated and the vehicles and activities used to
communicate those messages. In addition, it provides you the first opportu-
nity to organize your initial assessment of the state of the communication/
public relations activities of the organization.

After you have completed the table this far, examine the data again to figure
out if there are other publics with whom the organization ought to be devel-
oping relationships but is not, and add these to the table. This way of organ-
izing the information will allow you to proceed with the narrative analysis
and the determination of strengths and weaknesses.

This leads us to the Problem <& Opportunity Analysis worksheet. Begin

with a listing of public relations-related strengths and weaknesses in the left-
19
The Research
Phase hand column. On the right-hand side, consider corresponding problems
and opportunities. This final assessment of problems and opportunities
is translated into a narrative description of how you came to determine
each one.

The final worksheet for this chapter is the Data Analysis Check List.
Use it initially to determine if you have collected all necessary data.
Then, when you have completed your written analysis, use it as a check-
list to evaluate the completeness of your narrative report.

20
 The Planning
Phase

Chapter 3

The Planning Phase

Vocabulary

communication framework

communication strategy

goals & objectives

public

message

communication vehicles

21
The Planning
Phase Once the data collection and analysis of the research phase are essen-
tially complete, you have enough information to get you started on the
development of a concrete plan to tackle the identified problem(s) and/or
opportunity(ies). Keep in mind, however, that although we tend to talk
The Plan about the four phases of the process as if they were discrete and as if the
process itself were linear, in fact it is neither. Collecting and analyzing
data may be necessary throughout the process whenever new information
becomes available. This ongoing process enables you to make correc-
tions as you go along.

There are four key elements to the planning phase. These four elements
are as follows:

• defining and describing publics

• constructing the objectives
• articulating the messages
• choosing the medium(a) and tools/ vehicles

Before we examine each of these more closely, however, we need to

describe exactly what it is we will have at the end of this part of the
process. What are these four elements going to describe when they come
together at the end?

One of the ways you might present this at the end of the process is by the
use of a communication/public relations plan framework. Like an
outline of a more detailed report, this framework sets the groundwork for
a more comprehensive strategy. It is a brief glimpse of an organization,
its publics, PR objectives, intended messages, vehicles and approaches,
and an overview of how the plan will be evaluated. Every public rela-
tions practitioner needs to know how to write such a framework.

Public relations managers also need to be confident in their abilities to

put all of this together as a communication/public relations strat-
egy. This presents the thoroughly researched, comprehensive plan that
delineates clearly the analysis, the problem / opportunity, objectives and
communication activities, and evaluation strategies. It involves a de-
tailed analysis of what the organization's relationships are today, where it
wants them to be (in 3 months, 1 year, 5 years, for example), and how it
will get there. This document is actually written during the planning
phase, but considers research, planning, implementation, and evaluation.

Defining During the research phase, the public relations practitioner examines the
place of the organization within its social, political, and economic envi-
publics ronment. At the same time, the publics that have consequences for the

22
 The Planning
organization and for whom the organization has consequences emerge. These Phase
publics are obviously groups of people, but for purposes of planning for the
public relations needs of organizations, you are going to need a more specific
definition.
Over the years, many public relations authors and practitioners have defined
publics (refer to any of the general resources listed for chapter 1 to see exam-
ples of these definitions). In practice, we often hear publics defined as
groups of people who have a shared interest and are aware of that
commonality. On the other hand, it can be argued that members of a public
identified by the organization may not be aware of their shared interest or the
characteristic they have in common. Other approaches to defining publics
could consider geography, socioeconomic status, gender, race, ethnicity,
religion, and any other demographic or psychographic factors.

All of these ways of defining publics are useful to public relations practition-
ers in specific circumstances, but they each have their limitations in practice.
Here is a working definition that is useful

A public is a group of people who share a common

interest, demographic, or psychographic characteristic,
as defined by the public relations function of the
organization, and whose actions are either influenced
by or have an influence on the organization.

When examining this definition, keep in mind that publics can form on their
own in response to organizational activities, policies, or products to pressure
the organization. Unless, however, they are eventually identified in the
public relations process, they cannot be considered in the strategy. Failing to
identify them - either by design or inadvertently - can have major negative
consequences for the organization. For example, when creating a 5-year
strategic public relations plan, you might define your "community" by draw-
ing geographic boundaries: your neighborhood, your city, your region, your
entire country even might be the community within which you function and
with which you must develop a relationship. On the other hand, an activist
group might define itself in response to your organization. They have created
the boundaries, but when developing your PR plan, you, too must define
them.

Publics can be internal or external. Their activities may currently be influ-

encing the organization or that influence may not yet be felt. They may be
ranked in order of priority to the organization (and this is likely to change). If
you're dealing with controversy, they may be categorized as for, against, or
neutral. It is often useful to use the systems diagram that we discussed in

23
The Planning
Phase chapter 1 to plot out the publics and view their relationships with the
organization.

The following is a generic list of some of the most commonly described

publics:

employees
volunteers (in nonprofits)
members (in memberships organizations)
financial donors (usually in nonprofits)
investors (in publicly held corporations)
media (mass and industry-specific)
community
government (various levels)
regulatory bodies
consumers/clients (of goods and/or services)

An astute public relations practitioner will be constantly aware of other

potential groupings of people that might constitute an important public
to the organization at present or in the future. For example, a pharma-
ceutical company that uses animals in drug research must be constantly
aware of animal rights activists in their community. And if there isn't
such a group at present, like-minded people could come together for the
purpose of targeting the organization. The data collected in the research
phase about current publics and the organization's environment provide
clues about who the important publics are or should be.

Constructing construct clear, useful objectives is perhaps the essential

key to being an effective planner. You need to know exactly what you
Objectives intend to accomplish through these activities that will follow.

Although there are many definitions of goals and objectives, let's think
of a goal as a broad, but pointed statement of what this plan is intended
to accomplish. Objectives are the specific outcomes sought for each
public being considered in the plan.

Outcome objectives are specific statements of

destination that assist in the accomplishment of
the stated overall goal. They are clear,
measurable, realistic, and include a time frame.

Clear objectives are stated succinctly, employing language that can be

understood by all those who will be involved in the achievement of the
24
 The Planning
outcomes. There can be no argument about their meaning. Measurable Phase
objectives are stated in such a way that the outcome identified can be
quantified in some way. This is not always easy but must be attempted.
Measurable objectives answer the question: How much of an effect are we
seeking? This will eventually allow the PR practitioner to determine the
degree of intended effect and to identify those unintended effects that might
have resulted from the actions taken. Realistic objectives recognize that
there are limitations to what can reasonably be accomplished given the or-
ganization's resources, environmental situations, and time frames. Finally,
objectives with a time frame indicate when the outcome is to be expected:
They limit the time for implementation of a plan after which time the ap-
proach should be evaluated against the objective itself.

The best way to illustrate outcome objectives is to examine a situation. Con-

sider the case of a not-for-profit membership organization that has been
experiencing a downward trend in its membership over the past four years.
The research indicates that the external image of the organization is dated and
unprofessional, and this is contributing to loss of members and inability to
attract new ones. It seems clear, then, that the objectives of the public rela-
tions strategy might be to improve the organization's image in the eyes of
specific external publics (potential members), and perhaps even with internal
publics (current members). That's a useful overall goal that is likely to shore
up many aspects of the organization's relationships, but it isn't an outcome
objective that meets our criteria. It isn't specific enough and it isn't measur-
able. Here are two outcome objectives that would contribute to meeting the
overall goal of improving or changing the organization's image:

• To increase membership by 30% over the next 8 months.

• To retain current members and have them articulate satisfaction

with the organization by the end of the year.

The first objective is clear, concise, measurable, and understandable and it

includes a time frame for completion. The second one is as well, but it
addresses an issue that you will often face. Exactly how do you measure
some more nebulous public relations effects such as satisfaction, positive
attitude, or image? This objective holds a clue. It indicates that you will
measure not satisfaction itself, but articulation of that satisfaction. This kind
of objective is useful in another way, too. In it lurks a clue about the kind of
tactic or tool you will need to develop. In this case, you will need to devise
an opportunity for the current members to speak about this issue. Sometimes
the outcome is more qualitative than quantitative and you have to deal with
this in as specific a manner as possible.

What is wrong with the following objective?

25
The Planning
Phase
• To improve the organization's external image by 30%.

Not only is this vague (exactly what does an image consist of?), but it is
clearly not rational to consider placing a quantitative value on image. In
itself, it isn't measurable. Here is a better way of stating the kind of
outcome you might be seeking.

• To enhance the organization's image in the community as

evidenced by a 50% increase in positive reporting about
organizational community initiatives in the community
newspaper.

Obviously, this objective presupposes that you have counted both the
amount and direction (positive or negative) of past coverage of events in
this medium.

Relationship Public relations is in the business of developing and maintaining rela-

tionships with important publics, thus it is necessary to consider not only
objectives the communication outcomes but also the relationship outcomes.

Communication outcomes are often framed in terms of knowledge,

attitudes, and behaviors that are desirable from a public relations per-
spective. Obviously, these are important in the development and nurtur-
ing of relationships, but recently, public relations has become more
interested on the actual quality of the relationships themselves. Modern
PR must, as much as possible, try to focus on the kind of relationship
that the organization wants and needs to have with its various publics.
But how can you develop measurable objectives for something as seem-
ingly nebulous as a relationship?
Although there are no hard and fast rules or even guidelines about
this, there are some aspects of relationships that are useful to the public
relations effort of the organization. You might consider some of the
following questions when formulating these objectives:

• To what extent is it important that this public trust the

organization?
• To what extent is it important that this public feel positively
about this organization?
• To what extent is it important that this public feel that this
organization gives as much as it takes from this public?
(See the Institute for Public Relations monograph by
Grunig & Hon listed among the resources.)

26
 The Planning
Clearly, there are many issues to consider when trying to determine the kind Phase
of relationship your organization would like to develop and maintain with
publics. These questions will help you to begin to consider relationship
outcomes and to include such objectives when developing a public relations
plan. If you need further in-depth information on this topic, you can refer to
the resource list later in the workbook.

Often when you are developing objectives, it is easy to forget that what they
really are is an answer to the question: Where do we want to go? Instead,
Considering
you might fall into the trap of considering only processes. These processes processes
are not ends in themselves, rather, they help to guide the selection and devel-
opment of communication vehicles. For example, the following objectives
are more accurately described as process objectives than as outcome
objectives:

• To communicate regularly with members.

• To ensure timeliness in all communication.
• To enhance opportunities for two-way communication.

Although each of these is admirable and may even be a necessary part of the
objectives of the public relations department in your organization, they are
not really strategic. They only speak to the actual process of conducting the
public relations and communication activities. Indeed, they are focused more
on the PR function rather than on the public. They are very useful objectives
if one of the problems you have is the quality of the public relations effort
itself. If that is the first PR problem that you identify, then these objectives
may be useful as a first step toward the focus you will eventually develop on
publics.

The final issue related to objectives is to consider the intended target of each Keying
one. The strongest communication plans key the objectives toward specific
publics. For example, in considering media relations, the objectives would objectives
be directed specifically toward the media. These objectives about what the to publics
public relations planning process aims to achieve are related to what the
organization aims to achieve in community relations, employee relations,
investor relations, relations with activist organizations, and so on.

Keying objectives to specific publics enables a more directed selection of

communication strategies later. Although you might select a particular
strategy or vehicle that can achieve more than one objectives and is directed
toward more than one public, you will eventually need to examine the out-
comes for each public separately.

27
The Planning
Phase Public relations focuses on managing communications between an
organization and its publics for the purpose of developing and maintain-
ing long-term, mutually beneficial relationships with those publics. The
Developing heart of the PR activity is the message or messages that the organization
conveys to its publics in both word and deed. And make no mistake
messages about it, even if the organization does not consciously consider the
messages it sends out or develop them purposefully, publics, both exter-
nal and internal, will see and hear messages all the same and will re-
spond to the organization based on their perception of the messages.

Organizational actions often speak louder than words. It is the responsi-

bility of the public relations function of any organization to ensure that
all messages conveyed to various publics are, indeed, the messages that
are intended. This naturally presupposes that you've given active con-
sideration to what you really intend to say and that the communication
vehicles chosen to convey those messages do so accurately and to the
intended public. Thus, at this point in the planning process, once the
publics have been identified and the specific objectives for this plan have
been set out, the next step is to develop core messages.

A core message is a succinct statement of the

core information that the organization intends
to convey to its publics with the intended tone.

Once you have considered the actual core message that you intend to
convey via both words and actions, it needs to be considered in the
development of every public relations activity that you will develop in an
effort to achieve your objectives. Remember, the message has both overt
and subliminal aspects and both are important in the eventual percep-
tions that arise as a result.

Choosing The final aspect of the planning phase is selecting appropriate public
relations vehicles - the channels and tools that you have reason to be-
public lieve will successfully convey the intended messages and develop the
relations intended relationships with your publics. The information that you have
about your publics - for example, their preferred channels for receiving
vehicles messages, their level of interest in your organization and its mission,
their level of understanding of the issues, their demographics - will help
greatly in selecting channels that are most likely to achieve your objec-
tives.

For example, selecting direct mail to disseminate your community rela-

tions message is probably not going to be as effective as if you involve

28
 The Planning
your organization in a current community activity or develop a new commu- Phase
nity activity. Then your actions and the specific communications surrounding
those actions will disseminate the message and nurture the relationship.

Here are some things to keep in mind when selecting channels and tools or
vehicles:

• This is a creative process. Begin with brainstorming and be

open to new ways of looking at old things.
• The tools must be keyed to specific objectives (although one
tool might be used to achieve more than one objective, or sev-
eral tools might be needed to achieve a single objective).
• The channel or tool must be considered in relation to the spe-
cific target public.
• There must be a rationale for selecting both the channel and the
tool or vehicle.

Consider first the creative aspect of designing and selecting channels and
vehicles. This means that you need to stop thinking in a linear fashion about
communication/public relations tools and tactics. A kind of initial brain-
storming process allows you to move away from the more familiar strategies
to the more creative - perhaps simply a new way of approaching an old
strategy. For example, developing a new newsletter may not be the best way
to enhance morale among employees. You might consider developing an
award that recognizes employees' volunteer activities. The process of nomi-
nating and selecting is all part of the communication activity and then the
publication of the identity of the winner can even become part of your com-
munity relations program.

Also, your first inclination to use mass media (a channel) might be to look for
a news angle and disseminate a news release (a tool/vehicle). Even if mass
media appear to be the channel of choice in the situation under consideration,
there are other tools that you might consider: querying an editor of a feature-
type magazine, a newspaper feature, a television interview on a news maga-
zine show, or even paid advertising. Creativity in planning requires that you
go beyond your first - and often over-used - inclination.

Communication vehicles that are not keyed to specific objectives run the risk Rationales
of wasting time, money, and effort. Why would you implement a communi-
cation activity that wasn't strategically designed to achieve a specific objec- for
tive? This is tied in with the issue of rationale. What makes you believe that channels
this approach you are proposing is likely to work with this particular public?
Part of your rationale relates to the outcome you're trying to achieve. Can and
this combination of channel and vehicle actually accomplish what you really strategies
29
The Planning
Phase want? Do you have any external basis or past experience on which to
base this decision?

You need a strong basis in communication and audience analysis theories

and you need to keep up with what is going on in the field. The inherent
empirical nature of public relations - in other words, it relies largely on
the extent to which we have experience with a particular approach rather
than on some scholar's theory of what should work - means that you can
learn a lot from case studies presented in both the academic and the
popular literature of the industry. You need to keep current. The devel-
opment of rationales also provides you with a basis on which you can
lean when you're trying to convince employers and/or clients that what
you are proposing actually has some chance of working.

Using the There are three worksheets accompanying this chapter.

worksheets The first is Identification <& Categorization of Publics, which is
designed to help you to identify the publics that you will be focusing on
for this particular plan. The decision about these publics will be drawn
from your research data - considering both the current publics with
whom the organization has relationships as well as those with whom it
should. Sometimes, you may have only one public if this is a small plan
designed to accomplish a very specific, time-limited goal. The systems-
like chart will give you a visual representation of the relationship be-
tween the organization and its relevant publics as well as a chance to
consider environmental pressures and the type of communication.

The second worksheet is a Checklist for Outcome Objectives.

Especially when you first begin to develop objectives, it's useful to have
such a checklist to evaluate their quality before you move on.

The third worksheet pulls all your previous work together as a Public
Relations Plan worksheet. It puts together in chart form the plan that
you are creating. It keys messages to publics, to objectives, to channels
and tactics, to the accomplishment of specific objectives. Use this as a
first step in determining strategic approaches and to visualize the con-
nections between objectives, publics, and approaches to make the best
use of each.

30
 Managing
Implementation

Chapter 4

Managing Implementation

Vocabulary

control

influence

management

leadership

delegation

budget

Gantt chart

flow sheets

31
 Managing
Implementation Implementation of the public relations plan is the third step of the public
relations process. It implies carrying out the activities developed in the
planning step. For the public relations technician, that's all there is to
know. From a technical perspective, it is now time to get to work on
Revisiting carrying out the technical aspects of the plan. But for the public rela-
management tions manager, a crucial part of the management process is just begin-
ning.
definitions
We began our attempt to define management in chapter 1. We discussed
the fact that there are as many definitions of management as there are
people writing about the subject. Now as we move into the practical
application of the concept, the following commonalities of the defini-
tions emerge as key to our understanding.

D Management is a process.

CD Management involves and concentrates on reaching

the organization's goals.

CD Management involves working with and through

people.

CD Management involves working with and through

organizational resources.

We can see from these aspects of management that, in general, managers

are concerned with managing people, financial resources, time, and
quality.

The first aspect of this definition means that management is not a

"thing" and it is not static. It continually changes because it involves a
series of continuing and related activities. Management is clearly not
something that you do once in a while.

Next, management of the organization focuses on reaching organiza-

tional goals. For the public relations function, this means ensuring that
any public relations strategies developed are in line with the overall
goals of the organization. The communication and public relations
activities are not ends in themselves, rather, they contribute to the organi-
zation's bottom line.

Managers must have highly evolved "people" skills. If managing the

public relations process means managing the activities of people, it
means that the manager needs to be able to develop good rapport, assess
the strengths and weakness of the staff, delegate appropriate activities
to appropriate staff members, assess the work accomplished, and en-

32
 Managing
hance the working environment by creating a climate of cooperation and Implementation
collaboration.

Managers also need knowledge and skills in organizing other resources of the
organization. These include, primarily, time, money, and quality. Tools that
managers use to manage these resources include budgets, flow sheets,
and time and activity management charts.

Historically, there have been many disagreements about how best to analyze The
and react to management situations. Early in the 20th century, many of those
studying management as a discipline were focused on the actual activities historical
that the workers performed. Most management theorists focused on the one context
best way to carry out a job, whether it was shoveling coal or laying bricks.
These "management consultants" were quite successful in helping organiza-
tions of various sorts to decrease the number of people required to do this
physical labor and to increase their profit margins. There was little concern,
however, about the people aspect of the job.

Other consultants examined this classical approach to management and

decided that the human factor needed more consideration. These theorists
injected such elements as employee morale and motivation into the manage-
ment systems and came up with ways that organizations could adapt them-
selves to their people. Such work paved the way for systems of reward to be
used to enhance the work an individual was prepared to perform for an em-
ployer.

Other approaches to management include the more recent management

science approach, which borrows from mathematical and scientific tech-
niques that include observation, deduction and testing, and the development
of ways of dealing with contingencies. One approach to management theory
that we have already examined is the systems approach. As this approach
involves examining relationships, it is a very useful framework for applying
to the management of public relations (see chapter 1).

Before we move on to specific aspects of how to manage the implementation

of a project, we need to examine the relationship between management as a
Management
general concept, and the concept of leadership. To the casual observer, they and
may appear to be one and the same - but in fact they are quite different in
both focus and skills required.
leadership

33
 Managing
Implementation
Management ensures the day-to-day accomplish-
ment of organizational activities designed to
move the organization in the direction of its
ultimate goal. Leadership, on the other hand, is
the force that determines that direction and
ultimate goal.

Leaders are those visionaries who can visualize the future and where the
organization should be heading. Great leaders can communicate that
vision to their followers and gain their support and "buy-in." The man-
agers may set the more short-term goals that lead toward the vision, and
are able to communicate those goals to co-workers, gaining their support
and buy-in for the approach to achieving those short-term goals.

In any discussion of leadership and management the question always

arises of whether managers are leaders and whether leaders need to be
managers. There is no universal answer to these questions, but logic
leads us to conclude that managers need not be leaders in the visionary
sense (although it wouldn't hurt), but need to be able to lead people in
day-to-day activities. Any group of people working together needs
working leadership to assign tasks, arbitrate in conflicts, and evaluate
activities. The manager in this position also provides the communication
link between the workers and the leadership of the organization.

On the other hand, a great leader may not be a great manager. This
leader may be completely versed in the issues and trends in the organiza-
tion's external environment, exhibiting all the hallmarks of a true futur-
ist, but be relatively inept at the day-to-day activities required to manage
a project. Would it be useful for a leader to be a good manager? Of
course it would be helpful if this individual had experience in more
junior management positions in an organization, if for no other reason
than to enhance his or her credibility in the eyes of the followers. But
when leaders regularly involve themselves in those day-to-day manage-
ment activities, it can cause problems both for the managers whose jobs
they are intruding on and for the long-term vision of the organization. It's
difficult, if not impossible, for a great leader to be future-focused when
enmeshed in the daily grind of managing projects.

Let's begin our discussion of management tools with an examination of

Budgets as budgeting, as this is likely the first step you will need to take in manag-
management ing the implementation of the public relations plan. More than any other
aspect of managing projects, budgeting seems to frighten public relations
tools practitioners. In reality, though, if you're like the rest of us you've
34
 Managing
probably been acquiring experience with budgeting since you were very Implementation
young.

If your parents provided you with an allowance, you soon recognized that it
would only go so far. If you wanted to buy something special with your
allowance and you didn't have enough money, you had to make a decision.
Either you would wait until you did have enough money, or you allocated
your available resources in a different way. Perhaps you settled for a less
expensive item, or even two less expensive items. In any case, you already
know something about allocating financial resources.

As you got older, your expenses likely grew, but then so did your income.
Thus, even if you believe yourself to be hopeless in sticking to a personal
budget, you've probably had occasion to examine your income on the one
hand versus your expenses on the other. This encompasses the basic concepts
of budgeting.

A budget for a public relations project is a financial

plan for allocating specific sums of money to specific
activities required for the achievement of the objec-
tives.

Thus a budget performs two main functions: It is a control mechanism for the
activities necessary to achieve the objectives, and it is a communication tool
to explain public relations activities and objectives to non-PR managers and
other organizational leaders.

In public relations, there are two general categories of budgets that we deal
with. The first is a program budget or project budget. It is a more
global way to think about the allocation of financial resources in the public
relations activities of an organization. It refers to a specific sum of money
that is allocated to cover a program or project, and considers the public
relations activities in a holistic way. This contrasts with a line item budget
where the public relations function is budgeted by allowing the department
specific sums for items such as printing, design services, postage, couriers,
office supplies, and so on. This is a more piecemeal way to budget for public
relations activities. If, however, your departmental budget is a line item
budget, you have no alternative in project budgeting but to use those same
items and budget them into the project in that way. This approach sometimes
makes it more difficult to include new items that may not be in the depart-
mental item list and to reallocate budgeted proportions for specific items.

When faced with a program budget for public relations activities, the general
approach to budgeting the specific project is to assign a sum of money as a

35
 Managing
Implementation project budget. That sum is then broken down to cover the activities that
are required by the plan you have already developed. It should be clear
at this point that considerations about budgets should also be made
during the planning phase so that you are not now faced with champagne
activities planned on a beer budget, as the saying goes.

The project manager then takes the public relations plan already devel-
oped and breaks it down into specific activities and items that need to be
covered in order to achieve the objectives. Here are some of the things
that you need to consider in the initial development of a realistic, accu-
rate budget.

• Who will be involved in the implementation?

• What tasks will each person be assigned to complete?
• Realistically, how long will it take each person to
complete his or her tasks?
• What materials will be required?
• What outside services will be required (e.g., printers,
couriers, postage, models, actors, studio time, clipping
services, photographers, audio-visual services, room
rentals, equipment rentals)?
• Do you have estimates of costs from all required outside
services?

Once all of these are taken into consideration, you'll need to compare the
grand total to the budgeted amount and revise as necessary. It takes
professional judgment to consider where money can be saved and where
it needs to be maintained to still be able to accomplish the objectives.
Sometimes it is necessary to rethink some aspects of the objectives (are
they still realistic given the resources available?), or the communication
vehicles selected (is there another effective vehicle that we can use and
still stay within budget?).

The manager is also responsible for determining at which points it will

be feasible to reexamine the budget, in process, to ensure that the project
is still on target. This allows the budget to become another control tool.

Deadlines Managing time means managing people s time. It means being able to
schedule activities so that the project comes in not only on budget, as we
and time discussed previously, but on deadline. Public relations practitioners are
management well aware that the ability to meet deadlines is crucial to the successful
practice of PR. As such, individual public relations practitioners may be
fully aware of how long it takes them to carry out specific tasks and thus
meet those deadlines. The public relations manager, on the other hand,
must estimate how long it will take any number of people to carry out
36
 Managing
any number of tasks, and create a schedule that considers both people and Implementation
project requirements. An important project requirement is the prerequisite
nature of some of those activities. In other words, some activities must be
completed, or at least in progress, before others can be started. The manager
needs to juggle all of these.

Public relations managers use a variety of tools to schedule time. The sim-
plest is the one that many people use for personal time management - the to-
do list. These laundry lists of activities are useful but have serious limita-
tions. They don't consider priorities, how long each task will take, or if any
are prerequisites to others. Thus, as a management tool they are only the first
step toward controlling deadlines. What you really need is some kind of
action plan that organizes those activities.

The Gantt chart is one tool that managers in general have been using since
early in the 20th century when management consultant Henry Gantt developed
it. In simple terms, a Gantt chart takes that laundry list of activities and
places them on a chart that has activities down one side and time lapse
across. It then uses bars to plot out the time it will take to complete each
individual task, considering when the activity should be started and how it
may overlap other activities. The chart is a plan for time management and
just as a budget can be used during the course of the project to determine the
extent to which you are likely to stay on budget, the Gantt chart can be used
to determine whether or not you are likely to meet your deadline. One of the
most important aspects of the Gantt chart, however, is that it isn't carved in
stone. If it looks like the plan will not allow you to bring the project to a
conclusion on time, then the schedule must be changed and you need to
update your chart.

Figure 4.1 illustrates what a simple Gantt chart might look like.

Figure 4.1
Simple Gantt Chart

37
 Managing
Implementation This generic example shows that activity #1 begins at the beginning of
week 1 and will be finished by the beginning of week 2. The beginning
of activity #2 overlaps with activity #1 and is complete by the end of
week 2. This completion is necessary before activity #3 can begin.
Activity #3 should be complete by the end of the 4-week project.

As you probably already have figured out, the ability to prepare an

accurate and useful Gantt chart, or any other tool for managing time,
presupposes that you have the ability to estimate how much time it will
take to complete any given task. This is when a manager's previous
experience as a public relations technician is extremely useful. If,
however, you have never actually carried out the task you are assigning
to someone else, you'll need to consult with someone who does have this
experience. It is foolhardy to estimate the time required based on noth-
ing more than your gut feeling.

In addition to this professional experience and judgment, there are actu-

ally mathematical models for estimating time. To use these, however,
requires that you have a sense of both the most optimistic (but realistic)
time projection as well as the most pessimistic (but realistic) time
projection. The math involves calculating just where that most likely
time is: It falls somewhere between the most pessimistic and the most
optimistic.

Controlling Now that we have examined the overall concept of management, and
have considered the planning management of both time and financial
quality along resources, another parameter we need to consider is the management of
the way quality as the project progresses.

There's a lot of talk today about quality assurance, quality control, total
quality management, to mention a few of the buzz words. Overall,
unlike in the days of the so-called Robber Barons of the early 20th cen-
tury when big business cared only for its own estimate of its quality,
most organizations today are committed to the concept of comprehen-
sive, consumer-focused programs of quality management. This is
embodied in the notion of TQM (total quality management), which
provides an organization with a competitive edge. Managing the quality
of a specific public relations project, then, is part of the organization's
overall commitment to quality. As the manager of the public relations
project, it's your responsibility to find a way to monitor and control the
quality.

The first step happens during the planning process. As you select and
develop the outcome objectives for the project, you are actually saying
that this is the level of outcome you'll achieve. During the final or evalu-

38
 Managing
ation phase of the project, you'll figure out if you've met those objectives. At Implementation
that point you'll be able to say that you did or did not achieve the kind of
quality outcome you were planning on. As the project progresses, however,
you do need to be aware of the level of quality of the work and the interim
outcomes to avoid any surprises at the end.

Some of the parameters that you might consider as on-going measures of

quality of the public relations output are:

D consistency
CU reliability
CD accuracy
CD congruence
CD honesty

Let's examine each of these parameters to determine the extent to which they
might be useful for you to build into your quality monitoring plan. Keep in
mind that they are specific to the public relations effort of the organization. If
you were monitoring the quality of a manufacturing effort, the quality meas-
ures would be different.

Consistency: One of the most important aspects of any organization's

messages to its publics is that they be consistent. These messages are carried
in both the organization's actions as well as its overt messages. For example,
there is both a conscious and a subliminal message carried in the corporate
identity program. Are these messages consistent? Are these aspects of this
particular project consistent with the organizational norm as well as with one
another? Has the creative impulse led you astray? Do all aspects of this
particular project carry a consistent style and message?

Reliability: This refers to the ability of the organization's public relations

thrust to do what it says it will do. In general, this would refer to the PR
department's ability to achieve its overall objectives. In the case of the
specific public relations project, do the activities continue to move the project
toward successful completion of the objectives set? Are these the kinds of
activities that will actually assist the department in achieving its overall
goals?

Accuracy: This is an extremely important aspect of quality of the public

relations output of any organization. Are all aspects of this project accurate?
Is the information in the brochure accurate? Does the photo selected for the
media kit accurately display the message intended? Has someone checked
all the statistics mentioned in the news release? A public relations project can
succeed or fail on the accuracy of the information presented. There is nothing
worse than finding an error in a brochure after 2,000 have already been
printed, or worse, a member of an external public finding it.

39
 Managing
Implementation Congruence*. This refers to the extent to which all of the aspects of the
program "fit" together. Are the parts harmonious? Do they agree with
one another? The estimate of ongoing congruence may be based on such
concrete aspects as the design parameters (having only one designer can
help with this), or on such esoteric things as your overall professional
judgment.

Honesty: Clearly, honesty is a value that is held in high esteem in

communications professions such as public relations. As a final ongoing
check of the quality of a public relations effort, you need to determine
the extent to which the project is projecting the messages honestly, and
in a way that does not result in misleading the public.

These are overall quality parameters in public relations. For individual

aspects of programs you may be able to develop more specific ones.
This is merely a starting point.

As we began our discussion of management, we defined it partially as

People: working with and through people. The final aspect of managing the
Working with public relations project is managing the people involved. Sometimes,
you are the only person involved. Other times, the other people with
and through whom you will work during the course of a project are outside designers,
printers and others. But frequently, you will have one or more other
public relations people working with you on this project. As the man-
ager of the project, you are responsible for getting the most out of those
people while assisting them to maintain their morale and motivation.

Delegation is one of the most important and most frequently discussed

people skills in managing projects.

Delegation is entrusting another individual with

the authority to make decisions about and carry
out a specific activity. Delegation is usually from
one level on the organizational chart to a lower
one.

Delegation does not mean getting rid of the jobs that you don't want to
do. It means determining the best person for the job and giving that
person the responsibility and authority to do it. Clearly you need to
know the strengths and weaknesses of the people with whom you are
working, and you need to use these to your best advantage. If you are

40
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 472. A.D. 677 Beccan Ruimean quievit in insula Britanniæ.—Tigh.
17th March, Beccan Ruim.—Mart. Don.

473. Abridged from Petrie’s description in his Round Towers, p.

421. See also Proceedings of R. S. A., vol. x. p. 551.

474. Ceile, as a substantive, means literally, ‘socius, maritus,’ but it

has a secondary meaning, ‘servus,’ and as an adverb it means
‘pariter.’ Dr. Reeves, in his work on the British Culdees, adopts the
secondary meaning, and considers that it is simply the Irish
equivalent of Servus Dei, which, he says, was the ordinary
expression for a monk, and hence starts with the assumption that
the Ceile De were simply monks. This is one of the very few
instances in which the author has found himself unable to accept a
dictum of Dr. Reeves. This rendering appears to him objectionable—
first, because no example can be produced in which the term Servus
Dei appears translated by Ceile De; secondly, that the term Ceile De
is applied to a distinct class who were not very numerous in Ireland,
while the term Servus Dei is a general expression applicable to
religious of all classes, and included, as we have seen, the secular
canons as well as the monks. Ebrard rejects the rendering by Servus
Dei, and supposes that it is the Irish equivalent of Vir Dei; but this is
still more objectionable. Vir Dei was a term applied to all saints of
whatever class; and in the Litany of Angus, who himself bore the
name of Ceile De, or the Culdee, it is translated Fer De, but in the
glosses on the Felire of Angus the word Ceile is glossed Carait, or
friend; and the author long ago came to the conclusion that, though
not etymologically identic, it is the Irish equivalent of Deicola, God-
worshipper, in its primary meaning, that is, in the sense of
companionship or near connection with God. The late Dr. Joseph
Robertson, when he was preparing the Introduction to the Statuta,
came by an independent inquiry to the same result (see
Introduction, vol. i. p. ccxii.); and the author cannot help thinking
that, had it not been for the etymological considerations which
weighed with Dr. Reeves, his historical inquiry would have brought
him to the same conclusion.
 475. Colgan, A.SS., p. 454.

476. Leabhar Breac, part ii. p. 261. Dr. Reeves has printed the part
that relates to the Cele De from a different MS., with a translation, in
his British Culdees, p. 82.

477. A.D. 869 Comgan fota Ancorita Tamlachta quievit.—An. Ult. 2

August, Comgan Cele De.—Mart. Tam. A.D. 1031 Cond na mbocht,
cend Celed nDe agus Ancoiri Cluana mic Nois.—An. F. M., vol. ii. p.
525.

478. An. Ult. ad an. 921.

479. Reeves’s British Culdees, Pref. p. ix.

480. Elarius ancorita et scriba Locha Crea.—An. Ult. ad an. 806.

481. Topog. Hib., dist. 2, c. 4.

482. Reeves’s British Culdees, p. 79.

483. Printed with translations in Dr. Reeves’s History of the British

Culdees, p. 84.

484. Compare the rule in page 84 with canons of the Council of

Aix-la-Chapelle.

485. Reeves’s British Culdees, p. 10.

486. This life is printed from the Marsh MS., Dublin, in the
Chronicles of the Picts and Scots, p. 412.

487. Alma ingen rig Cruithnech mathair Sheirb mec Proic rig
Canand Eigeipti acus ise sin in sruith senoir congeb Cuilendros hi
Sraith Hirend hi Comgellgaib itir sliab Nochel acus muir nGiudan.—
Book of Lecan, fol. 43. bb. Reeves’s British Culdees, p. 124. The sea
of Giudan is the Firth of Forth, so called from the city of Giudi, which
Bede says was in the middle of it, and which may be identified with
Inchkeith. It is called in the Latin life Mons Britannorum, a mistake
perhaps for Mare.

488. Brude fitz Dergert, xxx, ane. En quel temps ueint Sains
Seruanus en Fiffe.—Chron. Picts and Scots, p. 201.

489. Registrum Prioratus S. Andreæ, pp. 113-118. Reeves’s British

Culdees, pp. 125, 126.

490. Bishop Forbes’s Lives of S. Ninian and S. Kentigern, p. 66.

491. This legend is printed in the Chronicles of the Picts and Scots,
p. 138.

492. Chron. Picts and Scots, p. 183.

493. Colgan, A.SS., p. 337.

494. Riaguil raith arremsin, i.e. Riagail Muicindsi fa Loch Derc.

495. Thus St. Patrick is commemorated at Auvergne on the 16th

of March, while his day in the Irish Martyrologies is the 17th of that
month.

496. Bædæ epistola ad Ecgberctum antistitem, §§ 6 and 7.

497. 747 Mors Tuathalain Abbas Cindrighmonaigh.—Tigh. Chron.

Picts and Scots, p. 76.

498. Chron. Picts and Scots, p. 387.

499. 732 Acca Episcopus eodem anno de sua sede fugatus est.—
Sim Dun. Hist. Regum.

500. Qua autem urgente necessitate pulsus sit, vel quo diverterit,
scriptum non reperi. Sunt tamen qui dicunt quod eo tempore
episcopalem sedem in Candida inceperit et præperaverit.—Cap. xv.
 501. Quia Candida Casa nondum episcopum proprium habuerat.—
Cap. vi.

502. Brev. Aberd. Pars Hyem. fol. lxx.

503. Mylne, Vitæ Episcoporum Dunkeldensium, p. 4.

504. Wyntoun, Chron., B. vi. c. vii.

 CHAPTER VII.

THE COÄRBS OF COLUMCILLE.

A.D.717-772. ‘It appears to have been a wonderful

Schism still exists dispensation of the Divine goodness, that the
in Iona. same nation which had wittingly and without
envy communicated to the people of the Angles the knowledge of
the true Deity, should afterwards, by means of the nation of the
Angles, be brought, in those points on which they were defective, to
the rule of life;’ such is the reflection of the Venerable Bede when
contemplating the change which had taken place in the Columban
Church in the beginning of the eighth century, which he thus
expresses: ‘The monks of Hii, or Iona, by the instruction of Ecgberct,
adopted the Catholic rites under Abbot Dunchad, about eighty years
after they had sent Bishop Aidan to preach to the nation of the
Angles.’[505] He had previously stated that, not long after the year
710, ‘those monks also of the Scottish nation who lived in the island
of Hii, with the other monasteries that were subject to them, were,
by the procurement of our Lord, brought to the canonical
observance of Easter and the right mode of tonsure;[506] and this had
been effected by the most reverend and holy father and priest
Ecgberct, of the nation of the Angles, who had long lived in
banishment in Ireland for the sake of Christ, and was most learned
in the Scriptures and distinguished for the perfection of a long life,
and who came among them, corrected their error, and changed
them to the true and canonical day of Easter.’[507] Bede implies that
this took place in the year 716; but the change was not so general
or so instantaneous as might be inferred from this statement. The
monks of Iona, or a part of them at least, had certainly in that year
adopted the Catholic Easter;[508] but it is not till two years after that
date, and a year after the death of Abbot Dunchad, that they
adopted the coronal tonsure. The expression of the Irish annalist
who records the event rather implies that it had been forced upon
an unwilling community;[509] and, so far from the other monasteries
that were subject to them having generally submitted to the change
in 716, the resistance of those within the territories of the Pictish
king to the royal edict commanding the adoption of the Catholic
Easter and the coronal tonsure throughout all the provinces of the
Picts led to the expulsion of ‘the family of Iona’—by which
expression the Columban monks are meant—from the Pictish
kingdom in 717. This conflict then appears to have led to two
results. In the first place, it separated the churches of the eastern
districts from Iona, broke up the unity of the Columban Church, and
terminated the supremacy of the parent monastery of Iona over the
churches in the Pictish kingdom, which had been subject to them;
and, in the second place, it seems undoubtedly to have caused a
schism in the community on the island, as such innovations usually
do when the attempt to force upon an entire body the views of a
majority is sure to be met by a resisting minority.
Two parties with There were thus at this time two parties
rival abbots. among the brethren in Iona. One party, who had
reluctantly given way on some points, but in the main adhered to
the customs of their fathers, and clung with tenacity to the monastic
system hallowed by their veneration for the founder Columba; the
other, and probably the larger and more influential, conforming in
everything to the Roman party, and leaning towards a modification
of their monastic institution by the introduction of a secular clergy—
each party putting up a rival abbot as soon as they found
themselves sufficiently powerful to do so. By the death of Dunchad,
in 717, Faelchu was left for the time sole abbot of Iona. He was of
the race of Conall Gulban, and the legitimate successor of the old
abbots according to the law which regulated the succession to the
abbacy in the Monastic Church; and his party would be strengthened
by those of the refugee monks from the monasteries in King
Nectan’s dominions who took shelter in Iona. Of the monks who had
been driven out of the Pictish kingdom, some would merely pass
over the Drumalban range into the territory of the Scottish kings of
Dalriada, or seek a farther home among the Columban monasteries
in Ireland; but many would no doubt be drawn to the parent
monastery in Iona, which was beyond King Nectan’s power, and add
numbers and force to what might be termed the Conservative party
in the island. On the other hand, Ecgberct was still alive and resident
in Iona, and would naturally be at the head of what may be called
the Reforming party, and use all his influence in promoting and
extending their authority in the island. The account Bede gives of his
life there shows that his efforts were not so immediately and entirely
successful as one would infer from his other statements, and that his
progress was slow. He says, ‘This man of God, Ecgberct, remained
thirteen years in the aforesaid island which he had thus consecrated
again to Christ, by kindling in it a new ray of divine grace, and
restoring it to ecclesiastical unity and peace. In the year of our
Lord’s incarnation 729, in which the Easter of our Lord was
celebrated on the eighth day before the kalends of May—that is, on
the 24th April—when he had performed the solemnity of the mass in
memory of the same resurrection of our Lord, on that same day he
departed to the Lord; and thus finished, or rather never ceases to
celebrate, with our Lord, the apostles and the other citizens of
heaven, the joy of that greatest festival, which he had begun with
the brethren whom he had converted to the grace of unity. But it
was a wonderful provision of the divine dispensation that the
venerable man not only passed out of this world to the Father at
Easter, but also when Easter was celebrated on that day on which it
had never been wont to be kept in these parts. The brethren,
therefore, rejoiced in the certain and Catholic knowledge of the time
of Easter, and rejoiced in the protection of their father, departed to
our Lord, by whom they had been corrected. He also rejoiced that
he had been continued in the flesh till he saw his followers admit
and celebrate with him as Easter that day which they had ever
before avoided. Thus the most reverend father, being assured of
their correction, rejoiced to see the day of our Lord; and he saw it,
and was glad.’[510] These expressions are hardly consistent with the
statement that he had brought the entire community over to the
adoption of the Catholic customs thirteen years before, in 716; and
we find that during his life, after Faelchu had been left in sole
possession of the abbacy, it was not till he had possessed it for five
years that a rival abbot, Feidhlimidh, is put forward in the year 722,
who is recorded as holding the abbacy in that year,[511] though
Faelchu was still in life. His pedigree is not recorded, and he could
have had no claim as belonging to the tribe of the saint, to whom
the succession belonged. Again, when Faelchu dies in 724, we find
that a certain Cillene Fada, or the Long, succeeds Faelchu in the
abbacy,[512] and on his death, in 726, another, Cilline, surnamed
Droichteach,[513] appears as abbot, though during the whole of this
time Feidhlimidh also is abbot of Iona. Ecgberct did not, therefore,
see entire conformity during his life, and the schism was in full
vigour up to the day of his death.
Two We must place probably at this time and in
missionaries, St. connection with these events two missionaries,
Modan and St. who likewise appear to have proceeded from the
Ronan, in
connection with south towards the western districts and the Isles.
Roman party. These are Modan and Ronan. Modan appears in
the Scotch Calendars as an abbot on the 4th
February, and as a bishop on the 14th November; but the
dedications to him are so much mixed up together that it is probable
that the same Modan is meant in both. Ronan appears as bishop on
the 7th of February. The dedications to them are usually found so
close together as to show that they both belonged to the same
mission. We first find Modan at Dryburgh, on the south bank of the
Tweed, and then at the church called by the Celtic people
Eaglaisbreac, and by the Anglic population Fahkirk, now called
Falkirk, both meaning ‘the speckled church.’ We then find him at
Rosneath, in the district of Lennox, and near it is the church of
Kilmaronok dedicated to St. Ronan.[514] They appear to have
proceeded to Lorn, where Balimhaodan, or ‘St. Modan’s town,’ is the
old name of Ardchattan, and where on the opposite side of Loch
Etive, is again Kilmaronog. Ronan appears then to have carried his
mission to the Isles. He has left his trace in Iona, where one of the
harbours is Port Ronan. The church, afterwards the parish church,
was dedicated to him, and is called Teampull Ronaig, and its
burying-ground Cladh Ronan. Then we find him at Rona, in the
Sound of Skye, and another Rona off the coast of Lewis; and finally
his death is recorded in 737 as Ronan, abbot of Cinngaradh, or
Kingarth, in Bute.[515] The church, too, in the island of Eigg again
appears about this time, when we hear in 725 of the death of Oan,
superior of Ego.[516]
A.D. 726. A new element seems now to have been
An anchorite introduced into the controversies at Iona, and
becomes abbot of probably still further complicated the state of
Iona.
parties there. This was the appearance, after the
death of Cillene the Long, but while Feidlimidh, the rival abbot, was
still alive, of an anchorite as abbot of Iona. Tighernac tells us that in
727, the year after Cillene’s death, the relics of St. Adamnan were
carried to Ireland and his law renewed,[517] that is, what was called
the law of the innocents, which exempted women from the burden
of hosting. An ancient document, however, in one of the Brussels
MSS. explains this to mean not that the bones of Adamnan had been
enshrined and carried to Ireland, but other relics which had been
collected by him. The passage is this: ‘Illustrious was this Adamnan.
It was by him was gathered the great collection of the relics (martra)
of the saints into one shrine; and that was the shrine which Cilline
Droichteach, son of Dicolla, brought to Erin, to make peace and
friendship between the Cinel Conaill and the Cinel Eoghain.’[518]
Cilline Droichteach, however, appears in the Martyrology of Tallaght
as ‘Abb Iae,’ or abbot of Iona; and the Martyrology of Marian
expressly says, ‘Abbot of la Cholumcille was this Cilline
Droichteach;’[519] while his death is recorded by Tighernac in 752 as
‘anchorite of Iona.’[520] Here then we have an anchorite who was
abbot from 727 to 752 during the tenure of the same office by
Feidhlimidh. Cilline was not of the race of Conall Gulban, and
therefore not of the line of legitimate successors to the abbacy, but
belonged to the southern Hy Neill. The collecting of the relics of the
saints by Adamnan is clearly characteristic of that period in his
history when he had conformed to Rome; and Cilline’s bearing the
shrine as a symbol of his authority in renewing Adamnan’s law
connects him also with the same party. The results then of the
controversy at Iona correspond with those which we have already
found among the Picts after the expulsion of the Columban monks—
that, besides the secular clergy who made their appearance in
connection with the Roman party, there likewise came clergy
belonging to the more ascetic order of the anchorites; and they now
appear as forming one of the parties in Iona. The epithet of
Droichteach means literally bridger, or bridgemaker, a name
apparently little appropriate in an island where there are no streams
large enough to render bridges necessary; but behind the vallum of
the monastery, and extending from the mill-stream to the hill called
Dunii, was a shallow lake, occupying several acres, which fed the
stream, and which was probably partly natural and partly artificial.
Through the centre of this lake, which is now drained, there runs a
raised way pointing to the hills. It is a broad and elevated causeway
constructed of earth and stones, and is now called Iomaire an
tachair, or ‘the ridge of the way.’ It is 220 yards long and about 22
feet wide.[521] In a hollow among the hillocks to which it points, and
at some little distance, is the foundation of a small oval house
measuring about 18 feet long by 14 broad, outside measure, now
called Cabhan Cuildeach; and from the door of the house proceeds a
small avenue of stones, which grows wider as it ascends to a hillock;
and there are traces of walls which appear to have enclosed it. It is
difficult to avoid the conjecture that it was the construction of this
causeway which gave to Cillene, the anchorite abbot, his epithet of
Bridgemaker, more especially as it points towards what appears to
have been an anchorite’s cell, to which it was probably designed to
give ready access across the lake; and, if he constructed it, we have
only to look to an old anchorite establishment in Ireland to find what
afforded him his pattern. In the island of Ardoilen, on the west coast
of Ireland, already referred to as affording an example of an early
anchorite establishment, we find that ‘on the south side of the
enclosure there is a small lake, apparently artificial, from which an
artificial outlet is formed, which turned a small mill; and along the
west side of this lake there is an artificial stone path or causeway,
220 yards in length, which leads to another stone cell or house, of
an oval form, at the south side of the valley in which the monastery
is situated. This house is eighteen feet long and nine wide, and
there is a small walled enclosure joined to it, which was probably a
garden. There is also, adjoining to it, a stone altar surmounted by a
cross, and a small lake which, like that already noticed, seems to
have been formed by art.’[522] There is no appearance of a stone altar
near the cell in Iona. In other respects the resemblance seems too
striking to be accidental.
The term It is during this period, while Feidhlimidh and
Comhorba, or Cilline the anchorite appear as rival abbots, that a
Coärb, applied to catastrophe is recorded by Tighernac in 737,[523]
abbots of
Columban in which Failbe, son of Guaire, the heir of
monasteries. Maelruba of Apuorcrosan, was drowned in the
deep sea with twenty-two of his sailors. The
monastery founded by Maelruba at Apuorcrosan, now Applecross,
had therefore remained intact. The word ‘hæres,’ or heir, is here the
equivalent of the Irish word Comharba, pronounced coärb, signifying
co-heir or inheritor,[524] which occasionally appears as applied to the
heads of religious houses in Ireland during the preceding century, in
connection with the name of its founder, and which now makes its
first appearance in Scotland. In the Monastic Church in Ireland,
when land was given by the chief or head of a family, it was held to
be a personal grant to the saint or missionary himself and to his
heirs, according to the ecclesiastical law of succession. Heirs of his
body such a founder of a monastery, who was himself under the
monastic rule, of course could not have; but, as we have seen, when
the tribe of the land and the tribe of the patron saint were the same,
the former supplied the abbacy with a person qualified to occupy the
position; and, when they were different, the abbot was taken from
the tribe to which the patron saint belonged. These were his
ecclesiastical successors and co-heirs. As such they inherited the
land or territory which had been granted to the original founder of
the church or monastery, and as such they inherited, as coärbs, or
co-heirs, his ecclesiastical as well as his temporal rights.[525] When
the integrity of the monastic institutions in Ireland began to be
impaired in the seventh century under the influence of the party who
had conformed to Rome, the heads of the religious houses found it
necessary to fall back more upon the rights and privileges inherited
from the founders; and hence in this century the term of Coärb, in
connection with the name of some eminent saint, came to designate
the bishops or abbots who were the successors of his spiritual and
temporal privileges, and eventually the possessor of the land,
bearing the name of abbot, whether he were a layman or a cleric.
Thus, at A.D. 590, the annals record the appointment of Gregory the
Great to be coärb of Peter the Apostle, that is, bishop of Rome. At
606 we have the death of Sillan, son of Caimin, abbot of Bangor and
‘coärb of Comgall,’ who was its founder. In 654 we find the superior
of the church of Aranmore called ‘coärb of Enda’ its founder; and in
680 the superior of the monastery at Cork is termed coärb of St.
Barry, who founded it.[526] Here in 737 the abbot of the monastery at
Apuorcrosan is termed the heir, that is coärb, of Maelruba, who
founded it; and, as we shall see, the abbots of Iona became known
under the designation of coärbs of Columcille. Twelve years
afterwards a similar catastrophe befell the family of Iona, who were
drowned in a great storm in the year 749,[527] a not unnatural
occurrence if they were caught in their curach between Iona and
Colonsay in a southwesterly gale; but which party suffered by this
loss we do not know—probably that which supported Cilline the
anchorite, as, on his death in 752, we find the abbacy assumed by
Slebhine, son of Congal, who was of the race of Conall Gulban, and
therefore belonged to what may be termed the Columban party. In
the same year Tighernac records the death of Slebhine’s brother
Cilline in Iona, and of Cuimine, grandson or descendant of Becc the
religious of Ego, or the island of Eigg.[528] Slebhine, the Columban
abbot, appears to have endeavoured to get his authority as the
legitimate successor of Columba recognised by the Columban
monasteries in Ireland; for we find him going to Ireland in 754, and
enforcing the law of Columcille three years after, when he seems to
have returned to Iona, but again went to Ireland in the following
year.[529] Feidhlimidh, the rival abbot, dies in the year 759, having
completed the eighty-seventh year of his age.[530] But this did not
terminate the schism: for we find a Suibhne, abbot of Iona, who
goes to Ireland in the year 765,[531] apparently for the purpose of
endeavouring to win the Columban monasteries there; but the death
of Slebhine two years after[532] leaves him sole abbot for five years,
when, on his own death in the year 772,[533] he is succeeded by
Breasal, son of Seghine, whose pedigree is unknown; and in him the
schism seems to have come to an end. Slebhine appears to have
been the last of the abbots who at this time were of the race of
Conall Gulban and had thus a hereditary claim to the abbacy; and
more than a hundred years elapsed before another of the race
obtained the abbacy. The fall of the Scottish kingdom of Dalriada
about this time may have contributed to this suspension of the rights
of the tribe of the patron saint. But all opposition to the entire
conformity of the whole family of Iona to the Roman Church appears
now to have ceased, and there is no indication of any further
division among them.[534]
A.D. 772-801. Breasal appears to have held the abbacy
Breasal, son of without challenge for nearly thirty years; and,
Seghine, sole five years after his accession, he seems to have
abbot of Iona.
been fully recognised by the Columban
monasteries in Ireland, as we find that the law of Columcille was
enforced in 778 by Donnchadh, king of Ireland, and head of the
Northern Hy Neill, and by him as abbot of Iona.[535] In 782 we have
the first notice of a new functionary in Iona, in the death in that year
of Muredach son of Huairgaile, steward of Iona.[536] His functions
were probably connected with the law of Columcille, which involved
the collection of tribute. We find, too, during this period, some
incidental notices of two of the other foundations in the Isles. In 775
dies Conall of Maigh Lunge,[537] the monastery founded by Columba
in Tyree. In 776 the death of Maelemanach, abbot of Kingarth[538] in
Bute, and in 790 that of Noe, abbot of the same monastery, are
recorded.[539] We learn, too, that while Breasal was abbot two Irish
monarchs retired to Iona and died there. Niall Frosach, formerly king
of all Ireland, died there in 778.[540] Airtgaile, son of Cathail, king of
Connaught, assumed the pilgrim’s staff in 782, and in the following
year retired to Iona, and died there after eight years spent in
seclusion.[541] The last connection of the Scots, too, with Dalriada
was severed for the time by the removal of the relics of the three
sons of Erc, the founders of the colony, who had been buried in
Iona, to the great cemetery of Tailten in Ireland.[542]
A.D. 794. Breasal’s tenure of the abbacy, however, was to
First appearance be characterised by a greater event, which was
of Danish pirates, to exercise a fatal influence on the fortunes of
and Iona
repeatedly the Scottish monasteries for many a long and
ravaged by them. dreary year. This was the appearance in the Isles,
in 794, of a host of sea pirates from the northern
kingdom of Denmark, who were to render the name of Dane
equivalent in the ears of the Columban monks to the spoliation of
their monasteries and the slaughter of their inmates. In 794 there
appears in the Irish Annals the ominous entry of the devastation of
all the islands of Britain by the Gentiles, as they were at first called,
followed, in 795, by the spoliation of Iae Columcille, or Iona, by
them. Again, three years after, the spoliation of the islands of the
sea between Erin and Alban by the Gentiles.[543] The Danes soon
discovered that the richest spoil was to be found in the monasteries,
and directed their destructive attacks against them. Breasal,
however, though doomed to witness these acts of spoliation, was
spared the sight of the total destruction of his monastery; for in 801
he died, in the thirty-first year of his tenure of the abbacy.[544]
A.D. 801-802. In the following year the monastery of Iona
Connachtach, was burnt down by the Danes, and the Annals of
abbot of Iona. the Four Masters place in the same year the
death of Connachtach, a select scribe and abbot of Iona; and four
years afterwards the community of Iona, then consisting of only
A.D. 802-814. sixty-eight members, were slain by the Danes,[545]
Cellach, son of Cellach, son of Conghaile, the abbot who
Congal, abbot of succeeded Connachtach, having apparently taken
Iona.
refuge in Ireland. The monastic buildings thus
destroyed belonged, no doubt, to the original monastery, which, as
we have seen, had been originally constructed of wood, and
repaired by Adamnan. Hitherto there had been no feeling of
insecurity in connection with such wooden buildings, but since the
ravages of the Danes began there is abundant evidence of the
frequent destruction of such buildings by fire; and in the present
instance there seems to have been not only the entire destruction of
the monastery, but also the slaughter of those of the community
who remained behind. So complete was the ruin, and so exposed
had the island become to the ravages of the Danes, that the abbot
Cellach appears to have resolved to remove the chief seat of the
Columban order from Iona to Kells in Meath, of which he had
obtained a grant two years previously. The Irish Annals record, in
the year following the slaughter of the community, the building of a
new Columban house at Kells; and we are told that in 814 Cellach,
abbot of Iona, having finished the building of the church at Kells,
resigns the abbacy, and Diarmicius, disciple of Daigri, is ordained in
his place.[546] This monastery at Kells, which thus took seven years to
build, was constructed of stone,[547] which now began universally to
supersede wood in the construction of ecclesiastical buildings, as
less likely to suffer total destruction from the firebrand of the Danes.
A.D. 802-807. At this time, too, the remains of St. Columba
Remains of St. seem to have been raised from the stone coffin
Columba which enclosed them, and carried to Ireland,
enshrined.
where they were enshrined. We know from
Adamnan that the body of the saint had been placed in a grave
prepared for it, and apparently enclosed in a stone coffin, and that
the place in which it lay was perfectly well known in his day. We also
know that, at the time Bede wrote his History in 735, his remains
were still undisturbed; but, at the time the Book of Armagh was
compiled, that is, in 807, they were enshrined and preserved at the
church of Saul Patrick on the shore of Strangford Lough in the
county of Down in Ireland.[548] It is therefore between these dates,
735 and 807, that they must have been removed.
Among the customs which sprang up in the Irish Church after she
had been brought into contact and more frequent correspondence
with the Roman Church, and had, to some extent, adopted her
customs, was that of disinterring the remains of their saints and
enclosing them in shrines which could be moved from place to place,
and which were frequently used as a warrant for enforcing the
privileges of the monasteries of which the saint was the founder.
Notices of such enshrining of their relics first appear in the Irish
Annals towards the middle of the eighth century. Thus we read, in
733, of the enshrining of the relics of St. Peter, St. Paul and St.
Patrick for enforcing his law;[549] in 743, of the enshrining of the
relics of St. Treno of Celle Delgon, and in 776, of those of St. Erc of
Slane and St. Finnian of Clonard;[550] in 784, of the relics of St. Ultan;
in 789, of those of St. Coemgin and St. Mochua.[551] Then, in 799,
we have the placing of the relics of Conlaid, who was the first bishop
of Kildare, and, in 800, of those of Ronan, son of Berich, in shrines
of gold and silver.[552]
We have already seen that the remains of St. Cuthbert were
enshrined eleven years after his death; and the circumstances are
given in so much detail by Bede, who is a contemporary authority,
that the proceedings of the Lindisfarne monks will throw light upon
those of the monks of Iona. St. Cuthbert had wished to be buried in
a stone coffin which had been given him by the abbot Cudda, and
was placed under ground on the north side of his oratory in the
island of Farne, but which he wished to be placed in his cell on the
south side of his oratory opposite the east side of the holy cross
which he had erected there.[553] However, he accedes to the request
of the Lindisfarne monks that they should bury him in their church at
Lindisfarne. Accordingly, after his death his body was taken to
Lindisfarne and deposited in a stone coffin in the church on the right
side, that is, the south side, of the altar.[554] Eleven years later the
Lindisfarne monks resolved to enclose his remains in a light shrine,
and, for the sake of decent veneration, to deposit them in the same
place, but above, instead of below, the pavement.[555] On opening
his sepulchre they find the body entire, and they laid it in a light
chest and deposited it upon the pavement of the sanctuary.[556]
Bishop Eadberct, St. Cuthbert’s successor, then died, and they
deposited his body in the tomb of St. Cuthbert, and placed above it
the shrine which contained the relics of the latter saint.[557]
We see then that at this time, and in a church which derived its
origin from Iona and preserved many of its Scottish customs, the
place where the patron saint was buried was on the right, or south,
side of the altar, and that when his remains were enshrined the
shrine was placed in the same situation, but above the pavement of
the church, instead of being sunk beneath it, that they might more
readily be made the object of veneration. As the saint’s body was
said to have been found entire, the light chest or shrine must have
been large enough to contain it. We know from Simeon of Durham’s
History of the Church of Durham that, when, owing to the cruel
ravagings of the Danes, the monks resolved to abandon Lindisfarne,
they took this shrine with them, and that it was finally deposited at
Durham. He then tells us that in the year 1104 ‘the body of St.
Cuthbert was disinterred, on account of the incredulity of certain
persons, and was exhibited, in the episcopate of Bishop Ralph, in the
presence of Earl Alexander, who afterwards became King of Scots,
and many others. Ralph, abbot of Seez, afterwards bishop of
Rochester, and ultimately archbishop of Canterbury, and the brethren
of the church of Durham, having examined it closely, discovered that
it was uncorrupted, and so flexible in its joints that it seemed more
like a man asleep than one dead; and this occurred four hundred
and eighteen years, five months and twelve days after his burial.’[558]
The description here given of the state of the body of St. Cuthbert is
a verbatim repetition of that given by Bede when his tomb was
opened eleven years after his death, and must be taken as having
no other foundation; but we have from Reginald of Durham what is
more material, an exact description of the shrine which enclosed it.
He says—‘We have hitherto treated of the manner in which St.
Cuthberct, the glorious bishop of Christ, was placed in his sepulchre;
we will now give a description of the inner shrine (theca) itself. In
this inner shrine he was first placed in the island of Lindisfarne,
when he was raised from his grave; and in this his incorruptible body
has been hitherto always preserved. It is quadrangular, like a chest
(archa), and its lid is not elevated in the middle, but flat, so that its
summit, whether of lid or sides, is all along level and even. The lid is
like the lid of a box, broad and flat. The lid itself is a tablet of wood,
serving for an opening, and the whole of it is made to be lifted up by
means of two circles, or rings, which are fixed mid-way in its
breadth, the one towards his feet and the other towards his head.
By these rings the lid is elevated and let down, and there is no lock
or fastening whatever to attach it to the shrine. The shrine is made
entirely of black oak, and it may be doubted whether it has
contracted that colour of blackness from old age, from some device,
or from nature. The whole of it is externally carved with very
admirable engraving, of such minute and most delicate work that the
beholder, instead of admiring the skill or prowess of the carver, is
lost in amazement. The compartments are very circumscribed and
small, and they are occupied by divers beasts, flowers, and images,
which seem to be inserted, engraved, or furrowed out in the wood.
This shrine is enclosed in another outer one, which is entirely
covered by hides, and is surrounded and firmly bound by iron rails
and bandages. The third, however, which is decorated with gold and
precious stones, is placed above these, and, by means of indented
flutings projecting from the second, for which, in due order, similar
projections are fabricated in this, is closely attached and fastened to
it by long iron nails. This cannot possibly be separated from the rest,
because these nails can by no device be drawn out without
fracture.’[559]
The Irish shrine was probably not so elaborate, but it too, as we
have seen, was decorated with silver and gold; and in the Life of St.
Bridget, written probably in the first half of the ninth century, and
attributed to Cogitosus, an account is given us of the shrines in the
church of Kildare. We have seen that the remains of Conlaid, the
first bishop of Kildare, were disinterred and enshrined in the year
799; and Cogitosus, in his description of the church of St. Bridget,
says, ‘in which the glorious bodies both of Bishop Conleath and of
this virgin St. Bridget repose on the right and left sides of the altar,
placed in ornamented shrines decorated with various devices of gold
and silver and gems and precious stones, with crowns of gold and
silver hanging above them.’[560] If we are to look, then, to the period
between the years 735 and 807 for the circumstances which led to
the remains of St. Columba being disinterred, taken over to Ireland,
and enshrined at the church of Saul Patrick, one of the nearest
churches to Iona on the Irish coast, the most natural inference
certainly is that they were connected with the piratical incursions of
the Danes and the destruction of the original monastery by fire in
802.
A.D. 814-831. In the year 818, Diarmaid, abbot of Iona,
Diarmaid abbot returned to the island, bringing with him the
of Iona. shrine of St. Columba.[561] This implies that there
Monastery rebuilt
with stone. had been by this time a reconstruction of the
monastery at Iona. The same causes which led to
the new foundation at Kells being constructed of stone applied with
equal force at Iona; and, looking to the time which was spent in
erecting the buildings at Kells, which required seven years to
complete them, and that four years had elapsed before Diarmaid
could bring the shrine to Iona, there can be little doubt that the new
monastery there was now likewise constructed of stone. The site,
however, was changed. The position of the original wooden
monastery was, we have seen, in the centre of the open level
ground which extends between the mill-stream on the south and the
rocky hillocks which project from the east side of Dunii on the north,
and about a quarter of a mile to the north of the present ruins; but
of this no vestiges now remain, save the western vallum, or
embankment, which can still be traced, and the burying-ground near
the shore, marked by two pillar-stones about five feet high and three
feet apart, across the top of which a third stone lay, forming a rude
entrance or gateway.[562] This monastery had never before been
exposed to any hostile attack; but, now that it had become the
object of the plundering and ravaging incursions of the Danes, it was
discovered to be in a very exposed situation. In front was the sea,
and behind it, on the west, from which it was separated by the
vallum, was the lake extending from the mill-stream to the base of
Dunii. The ground south of the mill-burn presented a much more
secure site, for here it was bounded on the west by a series of rocky
heights which could be fortified; and here, where the present ruins
of a late Benedictine monastery are situated, can be discovered the
traces of older stone buildings, which must have belonged to an
earlier monastery.[563] These no doubt may not be part of a stone
monastery erected so long ago as the beginning of the ninth
century, but the monastery then erected would merely be repaired,
and such parts as entirely gave way rebuilt from time to time; and it
may be assumed that, when the monastic buildings were once
constructed of stone, the monastery would always be preserved in
the same place. Here, then, the new stone monastery was probably
constructed, consisting of an oratory or church, a refectory, the cells
of the brethren and an abbot’s house. Behind the latter is a small
rocky hillock called Torrabb, or the abbot’s mount, in which is still to
be found the pedestal of a stone cross; and on a higher rocky
eminence on the west, which overhangs the monastery, are still to
be seen the remains of entrenchments and outworks by which it
appears to have been strongly fortified.[564]
Shrine of St. Here the brethren were reassembled, and
Columba placed hither was brought the shrine containing the
in stone relics of St. Columba, which, according to what
monastery.
we have seen was the usage of the time, would
be placed on the right, or south, side of the altar in the church, so
as to be exposed for the veneration of the inmates of the monastery.
It might be supposed that the monks of Iona would have felt a
reluctance to leave a site hallowed by the memories of their
venerated patron saint, even though the new site may have
promised greater security; but it must be recollected that it is the
presence of the saint’s body that hallows the site of the monastery
he has founded, and confers upon it the privileges of an Annoid, or
mother church. Any spot to which his relics might be taken would be
equally sacred in the eyes of the community, and the new monastery
equally endowed with the privileges connected with them. It was so
with the monks of Lindisfarne, whose veneration accompanied the
body of St. Cuthbert when forced to retreat from their monastery
under very similar circumstances; and it hallowed every spot in
which it was deposited, till it finally invested the church at Durham,
which held his shrine, with the same feeling of devotion and
reverence which had attached to their first seat in the island of
Lindisfarne.
A.D. 825. Whether the new stone monastery in Iona was
Martyrdom of St. to afford them better security against their pagan
Blathmac plunderers the Danes was now to be tested, as
protecting the seven years had not elapsed before they
shrine. renewed their attack; and we now get a glimpse
into the state of the monastery at this time from a contemporary, in
the metrical life of St. Blathmac, written by Walafrid Strabo, who
himself died only in the year 849.[565] He tells us that Blathmac was
of royal descent, heir of a throne in that rich Ireland which had given
birth to him as her future king; that, renouncing all secular
prospects, he resolved to lead a religious life and do honour to his
name, which signifies in Latin ‘pulcher natus;’[566] that he
surreptitiously joined a certain monastery, which his biographer does
not name, but which was in his father’s principality, and finally, as
abbot, ruled a venerable body of monks; that he finally, in order to
attain the height of perfection, coveted the crown of martyrdom,
and, in order to attain his desire, thought he could not do better
than go to ‘a certain island on the shores of the Picts placed in the
wave-tossed brine, called Eo,’ or Iona, ‘where Columba, the saint of
the Lord, rests in the flesh. This island he sought under his vow to
suffer the marks of Christ, for here the frequent hordes of pagan
Danes were wont to come armed with malignant furies.’ He seems to
have had the care of the monastery intrusted to him, and had not
long to wait, ‘for the time soon came when the great mercy of God
decreed to associate his servant with his glorious hosts above the
stars, and confer a sure crown,’ viz. that of martyrdom, ‘upon the
pious victor.’ He became aware that an attack on the island was
about to be made by the Danes, and he thus addressed the
brethren:—‘“Ye, O companions, seek within your own minds whether
it be your determination to endure with me the coming fate, for the
name of Christ. Whoever of you can face it, I pray you arm
yourselves with courage; but those who are weak at heart and
panic-struck should hasten their flight, that they may avoid the
obvious danger, arming their hands for better vows. Before us stands
the imminent trial of certain death. May a firm faith keep us
prepared for future events; may the careful guardian of the flying
protect those less strong.” The community, touched by these words,
determined to act according to their strength. Some, with a brave
heart resolved to face the sacrilegious bands, and rejoiced to have to
submit their heads to the raging sword; but others, whom the
confidence of mind had not yet persuaded to this, hasten their flight
to known places of refuge.’
Blathmac was aware that in attacking the monasteries the great
object of desire to the Danes was the shrines enriched with precious
metals; and therefore the monks ‘took the shrine from its place,’
which was, no doubt, on the right side of the altar, and ‘deposited it
in the earth in a hollowed tumulus, or grave, and covered it with
sods.’[567] The fatal day is then ushered in rather poetically, showing
how thoroughly the narrator realised the scene. ‘The golden aurora,’
he says, ‘dispelling the dewy darkness, dawned, and the glittering
sun shone again with glorious orb, when this pious cleric stood
before the holy altar, celebrating the holy offices of the mass,
himself a victim acceptable to God to be offered up to the
threatening sword. The rest of the brethren lay commending their
souls with prayers and tears, when, behold, the cursed bands rushed
raging through the unprotected houses, threatening death to those
blessed men, and, furious with rage, the rest of the brethren being
slain, came to the holy father, urging him to give up the precious
metals which enclosed the sacred bones of Saint Columba,’—a
description which shows that there was a church or oratory, with an
altar—that the services of the church were again observed, and that
there were houses or cells for the monks. ‘This booty,’ he proceeds,
‘the Danes coveted; but the holy man stood firm with unarmed
hand, by a stern determination of the mind taught to resist battle
and to challenge encounter, unaccustomed to yield. He then poured
out in the barbarous tongue—that is, in Danish—the following
words: “I know not truly what gold ye seek, where it may be placed
in the ground, and in what recesses it may be hid; but, if it were
permitted me to know, Christ permitting, never would these lips tell
this to your ears.[568] Savagely bring your swords, seize their hilts
and kill. O God, I commend my humble self to Thy protection.”
Hereupon the pious victim is cut in pieces with severed limbs, and
what the fierce soldier could not compensate with a price he began
to search for by wounds in the stiffened entrails. Nor is it a wonder,
for there always were and always will arise those whom evil rage will
excite against the servants of the Lord.’ And so Blathmac attained his
desire, and was made ‘a martyr for the name of Christ.’ This event,
so graphically described by the abbot of Augiadives, or Reichenau,
took place in the year 825.[569]
Four years after the martyrdom of Blathmac, we find Diarmaid,
the abbot of Iona of whose presence in Iona while the Danes
attacked the monastery in 825 we saw no trace, coming to Scotland
with the Mionna of Coluimcille.[570] The word Mionna, as Dr. Reeves
has pointed out, ‘signifies articles of veneration, such as the crozier,
books, or vestments of a saint, upon which oaths used in after-times
to be administered,’ in contradistinction to the word Martra, denoting
the bones or remains of the body of the saint. Thus we find
Adamnan mentioning the brethren endeavouring to avert the effects
of a drought by walking round a field, with the white tunic of St.
Columba and some book written in his own hand.[571] By this time,
then, the brethren who had escaped were reassembled at Iona
under their abbot; and to this period we may assign the
construction, over the spot where the shrine had been concealed, of
a small oratory for its reception. At the west end of the present ruins
of the abbey church, and attached to the west wall of the cloister,
are the foundations of a small quadrangular cell which goes by the
name of St. Columba’s tomb. The walls are about three and a half
feet high, but it has been partly excavated, as the interior floor is
somewhat below the surface of the surrounding ground. It has at
the west end a regularly formed entrance, and within it—at the east
end—are two stone cists placed along the north and south walls,
with the space of a few feet between them. That this so-called cell
is, in fact, the remains of a small oratory, is at once evident when we
compare these remains of the building with oratories of this
description in Ireland; and of one of these, which is more entire, it
seems to be almost a reproduction. In the parish of Templemolaga
and county of Cork there are the remains of some ecclesiastical
buildings. They consist of a central or enclosing wall, within which
are the remains of a church about twenty-five feet long by twelve
feet broad inside measure, and on the north side of this, at a little
distance, is a small oratory, which goes by the name of Leaba
Molaga, or St. Molaga’s bed. It measures internally ten feet by seven
feet two inches clear of walls, which are two feet nine inches thick.
The cell at Iona measures internally ten feet five inches by seven
feet, and the walls are about two feet thick. The west gable of St.
Molaga’s bed is partly preserved, and shows in the centre a doorway
formed of two upright stones for jambs, which support a massive
horizontal lintel. It is five feet six inches in height and two feet four
inches in width. The entrance to the cell at Iona is in the same place
and of the same width. This kind of oratory in Ireland has one
peculiarity, and that is a prolongation of the side walls beyond either
gable to the extent of from eighteen inches to two feet, which is
carried up the gables on a line with the stone roof, forming a species
of pilaster. These exist in Leaba Molaga, being about two feet three
inches wide and one foot four inches deep; and the same peculiar
feature is seen in the cell at Iona. At the east end of Leaba Molaga
there were a small window and an altar of stone on which were
preserved two stones believed to have been candlesticks; and on the
south side of the altar, and along the south wall of the oratory, was a
stone cist, or tomb, which measures five feet six inches in height,
one foot eight inches in width, and one foot in depth. Within the cell
at Iona there are two stone cists, one lying along the south wall of
the oratory, and the other along the north wall, with the space of a
few feet between them. The cist on the south wall is eight feet ten
inches in length, and that on the north wall six feet nine inches, and
both cists are also one foot eight inches broad. The east end of the
cell now forms the wall of the cloister, and, if a window existed, it
has been built up, but the resemblance between the two buildings is
so striking, that we can hardly doubt that it was an oratory of the
same kind, and that the space between the two cists was once filled,
at the east end, by a stone altar.[572] The stone cist on the right, or
south, side of the altar would, according to custom, contain the
shrine of St. Columba, the patron saint; that on the north side
probably the remains of St. Blathmac, who died a martyr in
protecting it from the Danes and who, we are told by his biographer,
‘reposes in the same place, where, for his holy merits, many miracles
are displayed.’[573]
A.D.831-854. Abbot Diarmaid did not remain long in Iona, for
Innrechtach ua we find him in the year 831 returning to Ireland
Finachta, abbot with the Mionna,[574] and we hear no more of
of Iona.
him. In 849 Innrechtach, abbot of Iona, is said to
have gone to Ireland with the Mionna of Columcille, from which we
may infer that they had been restored to Iona, and that some time
between the year 831 and 849 Innrechtach had become abbot. We
know nothing of his race except that his surname was Ua Finachta,
and nothing of his history except that he was slain by the Saxons
when on a journey to Rome in the year 854, and that he is then
called heir, or coärb, of Columcille.[575] In the meantime that great
revolution had been effected which placed a Scottish dynasty on the
throne of the Picts. This is the most obscure portion of the history of
Scotland, and it is now hardly possible to trace the circumstances
which combined to elevate a Scot, in the person of Kenneth mac
Alpin, to a position of so much power, or to ascertain to what extent
the ecclesiastical element entered into this revolution; but we can
gather that it led to the reintroduction of the Scottish clergy into the
eastern districts thus added to Kenneth’s kingdom, and to an
attempt to reclaim for them these monasteries from which they had
been expelled in the preceding century. And this appears to have
extended even to the Scottish foundations in Lothian; for Kenneth,
we are told, invaded Saxonia, as the country south of the Firth of
Forth was still termed, six times, and burnt Dunbarre and Mailros,
which had been usurped. In whatever sense Dunbarre was held to
be usurped, or whether this epithet was intended to apply to it as
well as to Mailros, the latter was unquestionably founded by the
Scottish missionaries from Iona, who were, as we know, expelled
from the monasteries they had founded, if they would not conform
to Rome; and it is possible that Dunbar may also have been a Scotch
foundation. It was undoubtedly in the possession of the Angles of
Northumbria; but Melrose appears to have been transferred to the
Britons of Strathclyde, as we find it afterwards in the diocese of
Glasgow; and it was probably in retaliation that the Britons burnt
Dunblane.[576] Be this as it may, Kenneth certainly resolved to re-
establish the Columban Church within the territories of the southern
Picts, which now formed the heart of his kingdom, on a different
basis; and, for this purpose, selected Dunkeld, where Constantine,
king of the Picts, had founded a church, probably as being the
nearest of the Pictish churches to the former Scottish kingdom of
Dalriada, and the most central for the whole kingdom.
A.D. 850-865. Here, we are told, he built a church, and
Tuathal, son of removed to it the relics of St. Columba—that is,
Artguso, first probably, only a part of them—in the seventh
bishop of
Fortrenn and year of his reign,[577] which corresponds with the
abbot of Dunkeld. year 850, the year after Innrechtach had
Cellach, son of departed to Ireland with the Mionna. Iona, as we
Aillelo, abbot of have seen, had already lost her primacy over the
Kildare and of Columban monasteries in Ireland, which, in
Iona.
consequence of the destruction of her monastery
by the Danes, was transferred to Kells; and, in taking the relics to
Dunkeld, Kenneth constituted it too as an Annoid, or mother church,
over the Columbans in Scotland, and seems to have resolved to
place the abbot of his new monastery of Dunkeld as bishop over the
church in the territories of the southern Picts which had now come
under his rule, with a view to the more ready reorganisation of
Scottish monasteries within them, so that it should form one
diocese, as it were, under one bishop. Accordingly, five years after
Kenneth’s death, we find recorded the death of Tuathal mac Artguso,
abbot of Dunkeld and first bishop of Fortrenn, as the kingdom of the
southern Picts was then called.[578] As abbot of Dunkeld, a church
dedicated to St. Columba and possessing part of his relics, he thus
occupied towards the Columban monasteries in Scotland the same
position as had belonged to Iona, and would be regarded by them
as coärb of Columcille. As bishop of Fortrenn he was the recognised
head of the Pictish church.[579]
The same year in which the death of the first bishop of Fortrenn is
recorded contains also the record of the death in the territory of the
Picts of Cellach son of Aillel, abbot of Kildare, and abbot of Iona.[580]
Nothing can better show how completely Iona had lost her position
for the time, and how difficult it now was to find a person to occupy
the post of danger, than the abbacy falling to an abbot of Kildare;
but, though he is said to have been also abbot of Iona, he did not
die either there or in his own monastery of Kildare, but in the
country of the Picts. He had probably been driven from his own
monastery in the province of Leinster by its exposure to the attacks
of the Danes, by whom it was plundered and its church burnt in the
year 836; and in 845 its vice-abbot was slain,[581] a title which seems
to indicate the absence of the abbot. Kildare was, as we know,
dedicated to the great virgin saint of Ireland, St. Bridget, or St.
Bride, and was the mother church of all her foundations; but there
was within the country of the Picts one church in especial which was
also dedicated to St. Bride, and was held to be in a manner affiliated
to that of Kildare, and that was the church of Abernethy; and when
we find an abbot of Kildare seeking refuge in the Pictish kingdom
and dying peacefully within its bounds, it could hardly be elsewhere
than in this church of Abernethy that he took refuge; and he
appears, when Innrechtach had left his monastery of Iona and been
slain on his way to Rome in 854, to have been appointed abbot of
Iona. Abernethy thus comes again into view for the first time since it
was refounded by St. Columba at the end of the sixth century. The
Columban monks were, no doubt, expelled from it in the beginning
of the eighth century, but now, in the reign of Kenneth mac Alpin, it
was once again occupied by Irish clergy. It is at this time probably
that we may place the erection of the round tower there, which
could only have been the work of Irish clergy; and this is the more
probable as it is undoubtedly of an older type than the round tower
at Brechin, the date of the building of which can be placed with
some degree of certainty late in the succeeding century, and as a
round tower had been erected at Kildare, which Dr. Petrie places at
the close of the preceding century.[582]
A.D. 865-908. The year 865, which saw the deaths both of
Primacy the first bishop of Fortrenn and of the abbot of
transferred to Kildare, corresponds with the second year of the
Abernethy, where
three elections of reign of Constantine, the son of Kenneth; and he
bishops take seems to have transferred the bishopric from
place. Dunkeld to Abernethy, for we find the next abbot
of Dunkeld, who died during this reign, called
simply superior of Dunkeld, while the title of bishop of Fortrenn is
dropped;[583] and Bower, the abbot of Inchcolm, tells us of Abernethy
that ‘in that church there had been three elections of bishops when
there was but one sole bishop in Scotland; and at that time it was
the principal royal and episcopal seat, for some time, of the whole
kingdom of the Picts.’[584] He is surely here reporting a genuine
tradition, and the statement as to the three elections during the time
when there was one sole bishop is so specifically made that it must
have been derived from some authentic record. But the time when
there was one sole bishop cannot have been before the nomination
of the abbot of Dunkeld as first bishop of Fortrenn. It must, however,
have been before the bishops of St. Andrews appear as sole bishops
in the succeeding century. We are driven, therefore, to place it in
this interval between the death of Tuathal, first bishop of the Picts,
in the year 865, and the first appearance of that position being
occupied by a bishop of St. Andrews, which, as we shall see, was in
the year 908. We have no record of the three bishops elected at
Abernethy during this interval; but we may possibly find the name of
one of them in the dedication of a neighbouring parish. The church
of Lathrisk, now Kettle, was dedicated to St. Ethernascus, whose day
in the Scotch Calendar is the 22d December; and we find on the
same day in the Irish Calendar Saints Ultan, Tua and Iotharnaisc, at
Claonadh, now Clane, in the county of Kildare, which too connects
him with the mother church of St. Bridget of Kildare.[585]
Legend of St. There is a legend which seems intimately
Adrian. connected with the events of this very obscure
portion of Scottish history. It is the legend of St. Adrian, and, like all
such legends, possesses some features which may be considered
historical. It is thus told in the Aberdeen Breviary at 4th March, the
day of St. Adrian:—Adrian, a distinguished soldier of Christ, derived
his origin from the province of Pannonia, a part of the region of
Hungary. He was, as usual, of royal descent, and, from his
transcendent merits, was early raised to the episcopate; and a large
number of clerics and laymen can testify to his labours among them.
Desirous of extending them to other countries, and inflamed with
zeal for the Christian religion, he took with him a venerable company
and set out for the central parts of Scotia, which were then occupied
by the Picts, and landed there, having with him confessors, clerics,
and common people to the number of six thousand and six, among
whom the most notable were Glodianus, who was crowned with
martyrdom, Gayus and Monanus, white-robed confessors,
Stobrandus and other chief priests adorned with the mitre. These
men with their bishop Adrian, the Pictish kingdom being destroyed,
did many signs and wonders among the people, but afterwards
desired to have a habitation of their own on the Isle of May, at the
entrance of the Firth of Forth. But the Danes, who then devastated
the whole of Britain, came to the isle and there slew them. In this
island of May there was anciently a monastery founded, built of fair-
coursed masonry in honour of God and of his martyred saints, which
was afterwards destroyed by the nation of the Angles; but there still
remains a church often frequented by the faithful people on account
of their merits. There is also a celebrated cemetery where the bodies
of the martyrs repose.[586] At 1st March, on which day St. Monanus
was celebrated, the Breviary legend further tells us that ‘Monanus,
born in Pannonia, a province of the region of Hungary, belonged to
that company who, with the blessed Adrian, came from the pagan
inhabitants of Noricum to the Isle of May, where they were crowned
with martyrdom. But, before that the aforesaid company was
destroyed by the fury of the Danes, blessed Monanus preached the
Gospel to the people on the mainland and in a place called Inverry in
Fyf. There his relics rest. Many miracles of healing were performed
there.’[587] The only other version we have of this legend is that given
by Wyntoun, who was prior of Lochleven and there composed his
Chronicle, and possessed no doubt sources of information as to
church legends now lost to us. He thus in his quaint verse tells the
tale in connection with Constantin, son of Kenneth, who reigned
from 863 to 876:—

This Constantyne than regnand

Oure the Scottis in Scotland,
Saynt Adriane wyth hys cumpany
Come off the land off Hyrkany,
 And arryẅed into Fyffe,
Quhare that thai chesyd to led thar lyff.
At the king than askyd thai
Leve to preche the Crystyn fay.
That he grantyd wyth gud will,
And thaire lykyng to fullfille,
And to duell in to his land,
Quhare thai couth ches it mayst plesand.
Than Adriane wyth hys cumpany
Togydder come tyl Caplawchy.
Thare sum in to the Ile off May
Chesyd to byde to thare enday.
And sum of thame chesyd be northe
In steddis sere the Wattyr off Forth.
In Invery Saynct Monane,
That off that cumpany wes ane,
Chesyd hym sa nere the sé
Till lede hys lyff: thare endyt he.
Hwb, Haldane, and Hyngare
Off Denmark this tym cummyn ware
In Scotland wyth gret multitude,
And wyth thare powere it oure-yhude.
In hethynness all lyvyd thai;
And in dispyte off Crystyn fay
In to the land thai slwe mony,
And put to dede by martyry.
And upon Haly Thurysday
Saynt Adriane thai slwe in May
Wyth mony off hys cumpany:
In to that haly Ile thai ly.[588]

The chronology of this tale is quite clear. They came just at the
time when the so-called destruction of the Picts by Kenneth mac
Alpin took place; and they themselves perished by the Danes in the
reign of his son Constantin. Of so remarkable an event, however, as
the invasion of Fife by a body of six thousand and six Hungarians