Holyrood

Holyrood is an anglicisation of the Scots haly ruid (holy cross). It may refer to:

Scotland

Canada

Holyrood (cross)

The Holyrood or Holy Rood is a Christian relic considered to be part of the True Cross on which Jesus died. The word derives from the Old English rood, meaning a cross, or from the Scots haly ruid ("holy cross"). Several relics venerated as part of the True Cross are known by this name, in England, Ireland and Scotland.

Black Rood of Scotland

Saint Margaret (c.1045–1093), a Saxon Princess of England, was born in Hungary. Following the conquest of England by the Normans in 1066, she fled to Scotland, where she married Malcolm III Canmore, King of Scotland. She is said to have brought the "Holy Rood", a fragment of Christ's cross, from Hungary or England to Scotland with her. It was known as the Black Rood of Scotland.

The Catholic Encyclopedia reports that Saint Margaret brought the cross from Waltham Abbey, after which it was kept in Holyrood Abbey, which her son erected in Edinburgh.

The relic was removed from Scotland by Edward I of England in 1296, along with the Stone of Scone and other treasures, but the Black Rood was returned in 1328. It was lost to the English again following the battle of Neville's Cross in 1346, after which it was held in Durham Cathedral until the Reformation of 1540, when it was presumably destroyed.

Holyrood, Edinburgh

Holyrood (/ˈhɒliˌruːd/; Scots: HalyruidScottish Gaelic: Taigh an Ròid) is an area in Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland. Lying east of the city centre, at the end of the Royal Mile, Holyrood was once in the separate burgh of Canongate before the expansion of Edinburgh in 1856. It had several breweries and a flint glassworks in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The westerly parts of Holyrood, excluding Holyrood Park, are roughly synonymous with the Canongate and Dumbiedykes areas.

Holyrood includes the following sites:

References