Charles Arbuthnot (abbot)

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Charles Arbuthnot (born 22 February 1737 OS; died 19 April 1820) was a Scottish Benedictine abbot at the Scots Monastery in Regensburg and a respected mathematician, natural philosopher and chemist. He was born in Rora, Aberdeenshire, to James Arbuthnot and Margaret Gordon, raised Catholic, and sent to Germany for education at age 11. In 1757 he joined the Benedictine Order at the Monastery of St James (the Scots College) in Regensburg, taking the name Benedict, and spent most of his life there, except for a brief visit to Scotland in 1772. His father died in 1770 and Arbuthnot refused his inheritance. He became abbot on 4 June 1776 and was widely admired for his piety and learning.

In 1802, during Napoleon’s rule, church lands were secularized, but the Scots Monastery was exempted from dissolution and remained under Rome’s authority, though it could not take new novices. In 1814 it came under the authority of the Bishop of Regensburg, but it was not dissolved because Arbuthnot had invested much of its fortune in an Austrian bank. After his death the monastery declined to a priory due to staff shortages, and in 1862 the Bavarian government bought the premises. His tombstone at Regensburg notes that he was born in Rora, professed on 21 November 1756, and became a priest on 14 February 1761.