Inchcolm Abbey's "Warming Room"

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The mural inscription beside the fireplace in the chamber above the chapter house.

Historic Scotland's plaque for the inscription (photo from 2016)

John R. Davies, Richard Sharpe & Simon Taylor, "Comforting Sentences from the Warming Room at Inchcolm Abbey," Innes Review 63.2 (2012), pp.260-6.

Stultum est timere quod uitari non potest.
Tutissima res est nil timere preter deum.
Timidum non facit animum nisi reprehensibilis uite conscientia mala.

Superet conscientia quicquid mali finxerit lingua.

N.B.: Most of the third sentence (indicated by italics) is illegible.

"Ascending to the SCRIPTORIUM, or chamber over the Chapter House, we examine it with a renewal of interest and curiosity. Here, as has been repeatedly affirmed, Abbot Bower penned his continuation of Fordun's Scotichronicon; and if we could but be certain of that fact, we might safely feel that now we stand in one of the most famous places of Scotland. Certain it is that Bower wrote his history somewhere in these buildings, and where more probably than in this pleasant room? Doubtless this was the Library and Muniment room of the Abbey; it was free to the Abbot alone; it was isolated, quiet, and in every respect suitable for his literary pursuits. From its window the view is inspiring and magnificent. Standing a few feet from it, you can frame Edinburgh and the Forth like a glorious picture within its arched embrasure. One feels disposed to cling to the tradition, and to venerate this Scriptorium as a veritable birthplace of our national records."

Alan Reid,
Inchcolme Abbey: A Notable Fifeshire Ruin (Dunfermline, 1901), pp.72-3; as quoted in Davies, Sharpe & Taylor, "Comforting sentences," (pp.261-2), who dismissed this interpretation as a "fanciful notion".