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An Eighth-century Poem on St. Ninian

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Wilhelm Levison
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Extract

Whithorn in Galloway and Kirkmadrine nearby are famous to the archaeologist and historian as the homes of the oldest Christian monuments in Scotland, namely the memorial stones still to be found there. They were erected in a district where the church history of Scotland originated through the efforts of St. Ninian. A few lines in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, III, 4, contain the earliest traditions about him which have come down to us. According to this late record, ‘Nynia’ was a British bishop who brought the Christian faith to the southern Picts (australes Picti). He had got his spiritual instruction in Rome, and had his episcopal see and his last resting-place amidst other saints-at Whithorn, Ad Candidam Casam, so called after the church dedicated to St. Martin which he built of stone, a fashion unusual to the Britons. As to his age, Bede merely says that he was at work a long time before St. Columba came to the northern Picts in 565. The intercourse with Rome can hardly have been later than the fifth century; a dedication to St. Martin who probably died in 397, cannot have been made before the same century. When Bede finished his History in 731, Whithorn was under Northumbrian rule, belonging to the northern ‘province’ of Bernicia. An English episcopal seat had been erected there shortly before, having Pecthelm as first bishop (Hist. eccl v, 23); he had been a long time deacon and monk in Wessex with Aldhelm, the abbot of Malmesbury and bishop of Sherborne, famous for his writings, who died in 709. Pecthelm was one of Bede’s authorities (ib., v. 13, 18); so it has been suggested that the latter was indebted to Pecthelm for his knowledge of Ninian. Pecthelm was one of the correspondents of St. Boniface who also came from Wessex, and who wrote him a letter on a question of canonical law shortly before he (Pecthelm) died in 735. It must also be noted that Bede distinguishes clearly between Whithorn, situated amongst the British, and the Pictish country, the scene of Ninian’s missionary efforts.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 14 , Issue 55 , September 1940 , pp. 280 - 291
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1940

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References

1 Die Briefe des heil. Bonifatius und Lullus, ed. M. Tangl (in Mon. Germ, hist., Epistolae selectae, 1), 1916, p. 55, no. 32.

2 The first certain date is given by the mandate of Pope Honoriuss II (Jaffé, Regesta pontif. Rom. I2, no 7225. Raine, The Historians of the Church of York III, p. 48; it belongs to the year 1128 (not 1125) according to W. Holtzmann, Papsturkunden in England II (=Abhandlungen der Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, Philol. hist. Klasse, 1935 3d Series No. 14, p. 105, (cf. 147).

3 F. M. Powicke, Ailred of Reivaulx and his biographer Walter Daniel, in Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, Manchester, 1921-22, VI, 480. The Vita Niniani was edited by A. P. Forbes, Lives of S. Ninian and S. Kentigern (=The Historians of Scotland v), Edinburgh 1874, 137-57, and by W.M.Metcalfe, Pinkerton’s Lives of the Scottish Saints (Paisley 1889), 1, 9-39.

4 A short mention of Strecker’s essay and edition (see below) has been made by J. F. Kenney, The sources for the early history of Ireland, New York 1929, 1, 159, n. 9 ; of the essay, by L. Gougaud, Christianity in Celtic Lands, London 1932, p. XLIX. The text has been used by J. D. A. Ogilvy, Books known to Anglo-Latin writers from Aldhelm to Alcuin (=The Mediaeval Academy of America, Studies and Documents, no. 2), Cambridge (Mass.) 1936, pp. XIV, 33, 36, 79.

5 Alcuin, Epist. no. 273, ed. Dümmler, Mon. Germ., Epist. IV, p. 431. William of Malmesbury has inserted the relevant part of the letter in his Gesta pontificum Anglorum in, § 118 (ed. Hamilton, p. 256).

6 loc. cit., p. 72, no. 31.

7 W. Jaager also has shown the dependence of the Miracula Nynie on Bede’s poem in the notes of his edition of the latter : Bedas metrische Vita sancti Cuthberti (=Palaestra 198), Berlin 1935 (cf. p. 8).

8 Cf. Peter Browe, Die eucharistischen Wunder des Mittelalters (=Breslauer Studien zur historischen Theologie, New Series IV), Breslau 1938.

9 The same name is found in the anonymous Life of St. Cuthbert 11, 3 (ed. Colgrave, p. 78), and in the Liber Vitae of Durham.

10 Caesarius of Heisterbach in his Expositio sequentiae ‘Ave praeclara maris stella’ borrowed the story from Radbert; see A. Hilka, Die Wundergeschichten des Caesarius von Heisterbach 1 (=Publikationen der Gesellschaft für Rheinische Geschichtskunde XLIII, vol. I, p. 177), Bonn 1933.

11 So v. 104, Thuvahel in the title of ch. 5 of the poem; Tuduvallus, that is Tudwallus, Ailred ch. 4. The name occurs as Tothail in Adamnan’s Vita Columbae; as Tutagual in the Welsh Genealogies of the tenth century, etc.

12 Better Pehtgils, that is, Pectgils, as the name appears several times in the Liber Vitae of Durham.

13 W.J.Watson, History of the Celtic place-names of Scotland, Edinburgh 1926, p. 293.

14 Two Lives of Saint Cuthbert, Cambridge 1940.

15 Patrick’s letter against Coroticus making mention Pictorum apostatarum does not help here, though the historians may be right in connecting them with the Picts converted by Ninian ; see e.g. J. B. Bury, Life of St. Patrick and his place in history, London 1905, p. 313 ; Gougaud, loc. cit. p. 26 ; J. A. Duke, History of the Church of Scotland to the Reformation, Edinburgh 1937, p. 9.

16 Perhaps the name may be connected with Latin plebs (Welsh plwyf, having the sense of ‘parish’) cf. Gougaud, loc. cit. p. 119.

17 See Ch. Plummer, Baedae Opera historica (Oxford 1896), I, XLV, and my remark in Bede, his Life, Times, and Writings (ed. A. Hamilton Thompson), Oxford 1935, p. 140; see also C. E. Wright, The Cultivation of Saga in Anglo-Saxon England, Edinburgh 1939, pp. 39 ff., 246 f.

18 Both seemed to have disappeared ; so the latest editors of Alcuin’s poem, Raine (1879) and Dümmler (1881), had to recur to a transcript (now at Cambridge) sent to Gale by Mabillon. But the Codex S. Theodorici was found in the meantime, a MS. of the ninth century, now no. 426 of the public library at Reims ; see Strecker, loc. cit. p. 1128.

19 See N. R. Ker, Medium Aevum (1939), VIII, 40 ff : but also R. Brotanek, Anglia, 1940, LXIV, 162 f.

20 See Mon. Germ., Scriptores rer. Merov (1920), VII, 666 on Vaticanus Reginae Christinae Lat. 497 (with earlier literature). Ampler knowledge may be expected with the progress of Dom Wilmart’s Codices Reginenses Latini.