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Of the thirteen dioceses in Scotland, that of Dunblane was the smallest. In its Parochiale, or list of parishes, were 43 entries; but 3 of these were not parishes at all, but prebends, representing respectively the Abbots of Cambuskenneth, Arbroath, and Inchaffray. Of the churches and parishes proper that constituted the diocese, no fewer than 18 are now included in the Presbytery of Auchterarder; while 12 constitute the Presbytery of Dunblane, and 6 are in the Presbytery of Perth. Thus quite one half of the old diocese finds its corporate representative in Auchterarder, while the other half is subdivided between Perth and Dunblane.

Dunblane was formed into a bishopric by David I. out of the old Pictish Bishopric of Abernethy, which in the division was allotted as a parish to Dunblane. The date of erection was previous to 1150—some say 1140. Dunblane was already a Columban, and (notwithstanding Dr. Skene's argument to the contrary[1]) also a Culdee settlement. The church dates back to the seventh century, and was an offshoot of the Church of Kingarth, in Bute, for its founder was St. Blane. He was of the race of the Irish Picts, and nephew of that Bishop Cathan who founded Kingarth; he was himself bishop of that church, and his mother was a daughter of King Aidan of Dalriada. Dunblane and its church were burnt under Kenneth MacAlpin (844–860) by the Britons of Strathclyde, and in 912 were ravaged by Danish pirates, headed by Rognwald.

"At Dunblane," says Goodall,[2] "the Culdees continued near a hundred years longer than at Dunkeld. Cormac Malpol, their prior, with Michael, parson of Mothil, and Macbeath, his chaplain, are witnesses to a confirmation by William, bishop of Dunblane (1210——), of a gift of the Church of Kincardine to the monks of Cambuskenneth, to be seen in their chartulary, fol. 80; and Malpol, the prior, and Michael and Malcolm, Culdees, are witnesses to a charter by Simon, bishop of Dunblane (1170——), one of William's predecessors.[3]

"At last, in the year 1240, the election of the bishop of that See was devolved upon canons-regular, by a mandate of Pope Gregory IX., which was obtained in this manner: Clement, bishop of Dunblane, went to Rome, and represented to that Pope, how of old time his bishopric had been vacant upwards of a hundred years, during which period almost all the revenues were seized by the seculars; and although in process of time there had been several bishops instituted, yet, by their simplicity or negligence, the former dilapidations were not recovered, but, on the contrary, the remainder was almost quite alienated; so that, for near ten years, a proper person could not be found to accept of the charge; that the case having been laid before the Pope, he had committed the trust of supplying that vacancy to the bishops of St. Andrews, Dunkeld, and Brechin, who made choice of this Clement; but he found his church so desolate that he had not where to lay his head in his cathedral: there was no college there, only a rural chaplain performed divine service in the church that had its roof uncovered; and the revenues of the See were so small that they could hardly afford him maintenance for one half of the year.

"To remedy these evils, the Pope appointed William and Geoffry, the bishops of Glasgow and Dunkeld, to visit the Church of Dunblane; and if they should find these things to be as represented, he authorised them to cause the fourth part of the tithes of all the parish churches within that diocy to be assigned to the bishop thereof; who, after reserving out of these tithes so much as should be proper for his own sustenance, was, by the advice of these two bishops and other expert persons, to assign the rest to a dean and canons, whom the Pope enjoined to be settled there, if these matters could be brought about without great offence; or, if otherwise, he ordered that the fourth of the tithes of all such churches of the diocy as were in the hands of seculars should be assigned to the bishop, and that the bishop's seat should be translated to St. John's monastery of canons-regular (i.e., Inchaffray) within that diocy, and appointed that these canons should have the election of the bishop when a vacancy should happen thereafter."

As the bishop's seat was not transferred from Dunblane to Inchaffray, we may infer that the former part of the alternative was carried out—viz., that dean and canons were found for Dunblane, and the bishop also provided for out of the fourth of the tithes of all churches in the diocese. The decay of clerics at Dunblane in Bishop Clement's time (1233–1258) may as well have applied to Keledei declining there, and does not imply that they never were there, but existed only at Muthill (13 miles to the north), and that the Culdees of Muthill, being in the diocese of Dunblane, were called Culdees of Dunblane. "We find," says Skene,[4] "the Keledei with their prior at Muthill from 1178 to 1214,[5] when they disappear from the records, and Muthill becomes the seat of the dean of Dunblane, who had already taken precedence of the prior of the Keledei. It is probable that, under the growing importance of Dunblane as a cathedral establishment, the possessions of the Keledei had fallen into secular hands." This would be the more easy, as the monastery of the Culdees was a distinct institution about a mile south of the church and village of Muthill.

The foundation of the present cathedral is attributed to Bishop Clement, originally a monk, who received the tonsure from St. Dominic himself. The cathedral which he has left has since his day been extended both to east and westward; and what he built he joined on to the more ancient square and perpendicular tower. The cathedral consists of an aisled, eight-bayed nave (130 by 58 feet, and 50 feet high), an aisleless choir (80 by 30 feet), with a chapter-house, sacristy, or lady chapel, to the north. The nave is almost entirely pure first-pointed. In the clerestory the windows are of two lights, with a foiled circle set over them, plainly treated outside, but elaborated by a range of shafted arches running continuously in front of the windows within, so much apart from them as to leave a narrow passage round the building in the thickness of the wall. The east window is a peculiar triplicate, with the centre light much taller and wider than the others. The west front has over the doorway and its blind arch on either side three very long and narrow two-light windows of equal height, with a cinquefoil in the head of the central window and a quatrefoil in the head of the side windows; whilst above is a vesica, set within a bevelled fringe of bay-leaves, arranged zigzag-wise, with their points in contact—the last the subject of a well-known rhapsody by Ruskin. The root of the cathedral history in this case lies in the tower. It stands awkwardly a little out of line in the south aisle of the nave, an evident remnant of an older church, exactly like the similar tower in Muthill, of the eleventh century, retained in a church built c. 1430. A tower, almost exactly similar, but more ornate, probably twenty or thirty years later in date, exists at Dunning, in the same diocese, and also a Celtic Church settlement associated with St. Serf. The old Culdee Church of Markinch has a tower of the same peculiar style, originally with a square, upright, saddle-backed roof, and crow-stepped gables. Some vestiges remain of the bishop's palace, overlooking the Allan on the south-west of the cathedral; and the triangular space in front of the south side of the cathedral, and forming the end of the High Street, has some old houses which are believed to have been canons' manses.

The chapter consisted of—Dean (Muthill), praecentor, chancellor, treasurer, archdeacon; Prebendaries—Abbot of Cambuskenneth in 1298, Abbot of Arbroath for Abernethy from 1240; Crieff primo (probably parish of), Crieff secundo (probably St. Thomas at Milnab), Logie, Fordishall, Kinkell, Kippen, Monzie, Comrie. Eighteen finely carved oak stalls of the dignitaries and canons belonging to the sixteenth century still survive. Other carved work was destroyed in 1559 by the Prior of St. Andrews and the Earl of Argyll. The line of bishops ended with three of the neighbouring family of Chisholm of Cromlix. Bishop James Chisholm was eldest son of Edmund Chisholm, and was a good administrator. Bishop William Chisholm, his half-brother, was an ecclesiastic of the worst possible type for fornication, church robbery, and persecution of so-called heretics. Bishop William Chisholm, nephew of the robber-bishop, became, after the Reformation, a Carthusian monk at Lyons. He is supposed to have taken with him the writs of the See, which have been lost. Marshall[6] gives an account of this branch of Chisholms. The same writer says[7]: "Among the sepulchral monuments in the cathedral is that of Malise, eighth Earl of Strathearn, and his countess. It is in the vestry of the choir, and is a flat block of gritstone, having on it full-sized figures of the Earl and Countess. When discovered in the choir, the block was above a coffin of lead with date 1271. In the centre of the choir is the dust of Lady Margaret Drummond, mistress (but probably privately married) of James IV., and her sisters the Ladies Euphemia and Sybilla, daughters of Lord Drummond, who were poisoned (apparently to clear the way for the King's marriage to the Princess Mary of England in 1503). Their remains were deposited here by permission of their uncle, Sir William Drummond, then Dean of Dunblane. Three blue slabs covered and marked their resting-place. The recumbent figure attired in pontifical vestments and mitre, and which is in a niche of the wall under a window of the choir, on the right of the pulpit, is supposed to represent Bishop Finlay Dermock, and to be his sepulchral monument. The other recumbent figure under one of the windows of the nave represents Bishop Michael Ochiltree, who greatly added to the rich adornments of the cathedral."