king David I, then, comparatively straightforward evidence of "Europeanisation" was produced in Scotland – that adoption of the homogenised political, economic, social and cultural modes of medieval civilisation, suitably modified for the distinctive Scottish milieu, which in tandem with similar adoptions elsewhere led to the creation of "Europe" as an identifiable entity for the first time. This is not to say that the Gaelic matrix into which these additions were disseminated was somehow destroyed or swept away; that was not the way in which the paradigm or "blueprint" of medieval Europe functioned – it was only a guide, one that specialised in amelioration, and not (usually) demolition. European revolution: the Gaelic context Yet, David's life as a "reformer" also has a context in the Gaelic-speaking world. This is particularly true in understanding David's enthusiasm for the Gregorian Reform. The latter was a revolutionary movement within the western church partly pioneered in the papacy of Pope Gregory VII which sought renewed spiritual rigour, ecclesiastical discipline and doctrinal obedience to the papacy and its sponsored theologians. The Normans who came to England adopted this ideology, and soon began attacking the Scottish and Irish Gaelic world as spiritually backward – a mindset which even underlay the hagiography of David's mother Margaret, written by her confessor Thurgot at the instigation of the English royal court. Yet up until this period, Gaelic monks (often called Céli Dé) from Ireland and Scotland had been pioneering their own kind of ascetic reform both in Great Britain and in continental Europe, where they founded many of their own monastic houses. Since the end of the 11th century various Gaelic princes had themselves been attempting to accommodate Gregorian reform, examples being Muirchertach Ua Briain, Toirdelbach Ua Conchobair, and Edgar and Alexander I of Scotland. Benjamin Hudson stresses the cultural unity of Scotland and Ireland in this period, and uses the example of cooperation between David I, the Scottish reformer, and his Irish counterpart St Malachy, to show at least partly that David's actions can be understood in the Gaelic context as much as the Anglo-Norman one. Indeed, the Gaelic world had never been closed off from its neighbours in England or continental Europe. Gaelic warriors and holy men had been travelling regularly through England and the continent for centuries. David's predecessor Macbeth (King, 1040–57) had employed Norman mercenaries even before the conquest of England, and English exiles after the