St Giles' Cathedral United Kingdom
A 900-year-old church at the center of Scotland's religious and political turning points.
Photo by Gary Campbell-Hall
Legend has it that in 1637, a woman named Jenny Geddes threw her wooden stool at the minister's head inside this church. That single act of defiance would help bring down a king. But we'll get to that.
St Giles' Cathedral stands at the heart of Edinburgh's Royal Mile, and it's been here longer than most of the city around it. King David I founded the church in 1124, back when Edinburgh was little more than a castle on a rock and a few houses clustered nearby.
English armies burned the building down twice, once in 1322 under Edward II and again in 1385 under Richard II. Each time, the Scots rebuilt it bigger and grander than before. You could still see black scorch marks on the stone pillars until Victorian restorers scrubbed them away in the 1800s.
The church played a starring role in Scotland's dramatic break from the Catholic Church. In 1559, fiery preacher John Knox became the minister here and used his pulpit to attack Scotland's Catholic queen, Mary Queen of Scots.
He stripped the church of all its Catholic decorations and transformed it into the headquarters of Scottish Protestantism. Knox was so influential that St Giles' is still called "the Mother Church of World Presbyterianism."
Which brings us to that flying stool. When King Charles I tried to force a new Anglican prayer book on Scotland's Protestants in 1637, Jenny Geddes wasn't having it. Her stool-throwing sparked a riot that spread across the city.
The following year, Scottish leaders gathered at nearby Greyfriars Kirk to sign the National Covenant, demanding religious freedom from the crown. Charles refused to back down. The result: civil war across Britain, and eventually the king lost his head on the executioner's block.
Look up when you visit and you'll spot the crown-shaped spire, modeled after the actual Crown of Scotland you can see at Edinburgh Castle. Inside, don't miss the Thistle Chapel, added in 1911 for Scotland's most elite knights, the Order of the Thistle.
Hunt for the carved angel playing bagpipes on the wooden ceiling. You can see an original copy of that famous National Covenant, and wander through memorials to famous Scots, including the legendary Jenny Geddes herself.
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