St Giles’ Cathedral is a parish church of the Church of Scotland in the Old Town of Edinburgh. The current building was begun in the 14th century and extended until the early 16th century; significant alterations were undertaken in the 19th and 20th centuries, including the addition of the Thistle Chapel. St Giles’ is closely associated with many events and figures in Scottish history, including John Knox, who served as the church's minister after the Scottish Reformation.
St. Giles was in the news recently, as the body of
Queen Elizabeth II lay in state there before
proceeding to London. Mourners were invited to enter and pay
respects.
The Queen passed away in Scotland, at Balmoral Castle.
Edinburgh is one of several stops on the journey to
back to Windsor Castle in London.
Saint Giles is the patron saint of lepers. Though chiefly associated with the Abbey of Saint-Gilles in modern-day France, he was a popular saint in medieval Great Britain. The church was first possessed by the monks of the Order of St Lazarus, who ministered among lepers; if David I or Alexander I is the church's founder, the dedication may be connected to their sister Matilda, who founded St Giles in the Fields.
Prior to the Reformation, St Giles’ was the only parish church in Edinburgh and some contemporary writers, such as Jean Froissart, refer simply to the “church of Edinburgh”. From its elevation to collegiate status in 1467 until the Reformation, the church's full title was “the Collegiate Church of St Giles of Edinburgh”. Even after the Reformation, the church is attested as “the college kirk of Sanct Geill”. The charter of 1633 raising St Giles’ to a cathedral records its common name as “Saint Giles’ Kirk”.
At the beginning of 1559, with the Scottish Reformation
gaining ground, the town council hired soldiers to
defend St Giles' from the Reformers; the council also
distributed the church's treasures among trusted
townsmen for safekeeping. At 3 pm on 29 June 1559
the army of the Lords of the Congregation entered
Edinburgh unopposed and, that afternoon, John Knox, the
foremost figure of the Reformation in Scotland, first
preached in St Giles'. The following week, Knox
was elected minister of St Giles' and, the week after
that, the purging of the church's Roman Catholic
furnishings began.
Mary of Guise (who was then ruling as regent for her daughter Mary) offered Holyrood Abbey as a place of worship for those who wished to remain in the Roman Catholic faith while St Giles' served Edinburgh's Protestants. Mary of Guise also offered the Lords of the Congregation that the parish church of Edinburgh would, after 10 January 1560, remain in whichever confession proved the most popular among the burgh's inhabitants. These proposals, however, came to nothing and the Lords of the Congregation signed a truce with the Roman Catholic forces and vacated Edinburgh. Knox, fearing for his life, left the city on 24 July 1559. St Giles', however, remained in Protestant hands. Knox's depute, John Willock, continued to preach even as French soldiers disrupted his sermons and ladders, to be used in the Siege of Leith, were constructed in the church.
The events of the Scottish Reformation thereafter briefly turned in favor of the Roman Catholic party: they retook Edinburgh and the French agent Nicolas de Pellevé, Bishop of Amiens, reconsecrated St Giles' as a Roman Catholic church on 9 November 1559. After the Treaty of Berwick secured the intervention of Elizabeth I of England on the side of the Reformers, they retook Edinburgh. St Giles' once again became a Protestant church on 1 April 1560 and Knox returned to Edinburgh on 23 April 1560. The Parliament of Scotland legislated that, from 24 August 1560, the Pope had no authority in Scotland.
With much borrowing from the Wikipedia.