85 CHAPTER VI. INTRODUCTION OF CHRISTIANITY: ST NINIAN THE FOUNDER OF ABERNETHY CHURCH. We now know something about the people in this district-of their race, language, social conditions, and religious beliefs-and it was amid the circumstances just described that the Gospel was preached and the Christian Church was planted. It is not improbable, and certainly not impossible, that the Gospel may first have been made known here through Roman soldiers,1 who, having heard it at Rome, and felt its spiritual power, would seek to communicate it to others. Such efforts, however, as far as we have any information about them, did not lead to any permanent result, and the first great Christian missionary in Scotland of whom we know anything is St Ninian. Ninian was of the Britons and had been educated at Rome. He dedicated a church called Candida Casa at Whithorn to St Martin of Tours.2 This is the record of the first Christian church in Scotland, and it is the work of St Ninian. It is said that he also penetrated into Ireland and founded a church in Leinster called Cluain Conaire, and it is certain that he was commemorated there on the 16th of September under the name of Monenn.3 The historian Bede preserves information for us which is in 1 6 Christianity as well as civilisation became conterminous with the Roman empire." -The Holy Roman Empire, by James Bryce, D.C.L., p. 13. 2 Life of Ninian, by Ailred of Rievaux, chap. iii. 3 Celtic Scotland, vol. ii. c. i. teresting in relation to the country of which Abernethy was the capital. He speaks of the provinces which St Columba and St Ninian evangelised respectively: "For, in the year of the Lord's incarnation 565, when, after Justinianus, Justinus the younger received the government of the Roman empire, a presbyter and abbot, by name Columba, remarkable for his monastic habit and life, came from Ireland to Britain to preach the Word of God to the provinces of the Northern Picts-that is, to those who are separated by lofty and jagged ranges of mountains from the southern regions. For the Southern Picts, who have their abodes on this. side the same mountains, had long before, as they say, relinquished the error of idolatry and received the true faith by the preaching of the Word to them by Bishop Nynias, a most reverend and holy man of the nation of the Britons." This statement is very explicit, and extends St Ninian's labours far beyond the district of the Candida Casa. It represents him as journeying northward, and preaching the Gospel among the Picts who lived south of the Grampians. In those days the quickest way to get the ear of the nation was first of all to get the ear of the king, and if Bede's statement is historical, there can be no reasonable doubt that St Ninian preached the Gospel in the ancient Pictish capital, and that the first church here may have been the result of his labours. It is a view which has evidence to commend it. We know that St Ninian consecrated a place of Christian burial at Glasgow, and it is not unlikely that the same may have been done at Abernethy, and thus there may be considerable force in the view of Mr Ferguson that the absence of tumuli in Abernethy and Brechin is to be accounted for by the fact that the kings of these provinces were at an early date converted to Christianity.2 The missionary labours of St Ninian were not confined to Scotland, but were carried to Ireland. The line of the ecclesiastical development followed, or rather was parallel to, that of the ethno1 Ecclesiastical Hist., bk. iii. chap. iv. 2 Rude Stone Monuments, p. 271. logical development already pointed out. It is unquestionable that the Scots gradually but progressively acquired a predominant influence over the Picts, yet it is equally certain that the Candida Casa in Galloway, and perhaps the early monastic settlement in Abernethy, had much to do in the development of the monastic system in the north of Ireland, and so the Picts may have helped the Scots. The influence of Bretagne and Wales cannot be overlooked, but the strongest and the initial power in the building up of the early Irish monasteries was St Ninian, and his monastery at Whithorn was called the "Great Monastery" ("Magnum Monasterium"). Says Bellesheim : He ordained bishops and priests, and divided the country into districts, to each of which he appointed missionaries. . . . His monastery in course of time developed into a celebrated training-school of monks and missionaries. It was from hence that St Cairnach, "Bishop and Abbot of the House of Martin," crossed over into Ulster, shortly before Finnian of Clonard, from St David's in Wales, introduced monasticism in the south of Ireland. The seed was thus sown which was destined to spring up a century later in the person of the renowned Columba, apostle of the Northern Picts. Whithorn was visited by innumerable pilgrims from Ireland, many of whom made it for a considerable time their home. Among them are mentioned St Finnian of Moville, who devoted himself there to the study of the Sacred Scriptures and to the rules of the monastic life; St Enda, famous for his island school at Arann; and St Rioch, a relative of St Patrick. St Manchan, patron of Limerick, and one of the brightest ornaments of the Irish Church, was also a monk in St Ninian's monastery; and St Mugint composed there his sublime penitential prayer, which was used for centuries in the Irish Church, and is preserved in the Book of Hymns.2 An old church hymn said of St Ninian, and his early influence proves it to be true "In Paradiso Ecclesiæ, Virtutum ex dulcedine, p. 438. 1 Celtic Scotland, vol. i. pp. 46, 49; Colgan Acta SS., The Candida Casa will always be associated with his name, but it seems open to no manner of reasonable doubt that a district so outstanding in early Scotland as Abernethy, through its civil and royal importance, must have acquired also a religious importance because of its connection with St Ninian. If the annals of its first monastery had been written by eyewitnesses, we would not unlikely find that at the end of the Roman Period in Scotland (410 A.D.) it was surrounded with much the same sanctity as the Candida Casa, and exercised the same influence in the central and northern districts as Whithorn did in the southern. 89 CHAPTER VII. ST TERNAN AND ST SERVANUS AT ABERNETHY. "Colligite Fragmenta ne Pereant." BETWEEN the death of St Ninian (432 A.D.) and the arrival of St Columba in 563 A.D. there occurs a period of historical silence that is only broken by scanty information, which we acquire from Fordun and the Pictish Chronicle: the former tells us of an early bishop, who not unlikely had the centre of his labours at Abernethy, and the latter gives us an account of a gift of land and the dedication of the Church of Abernethy to St Bride of Kildare. Both speak of the close connection between the two races, and are on the line of the development already indicated. The latter will be considered in the next chapter, and it is with the statement of Fordun that we have now to deal: In the year 430 St Palladius was ordained by Pope Celestinus and sent into Scotia as the first bishop therein. It is therefore fitting that the Scots should diligently keep his festival and Church commemorations; for, by his word and example, he with anxious care taught their nation—that of the Scots, to wit-the orthodox faith, although they had for a long time previously believed in Christ. Before his arrival, the Scots had, as teachers of the faith and administrators of the sacraments, priests only or monks, following the rite of the primitive Church. So he arrived in Scotland with a great company of clergy, in the eleventh year of the reign of King Eugenius; and the king freely gave him a place of abode where he wanted one. Moreover, Palladius had as his fellow-worker in preaching and ad |