Scottish Blog

In our efforts to inform you about various aspects of your Scottish ancestry and Clan history, we at Scottish Heirloom Jewelry recently published an article on St Columba and Iona.

Along the same line of thought, this article is about St Ninian, the first Christian bishop to visit Scotland.
Tradition states that Ninian was born roughly in 360AD in Cumbria. He then traveled to Rome, to learn about Christianity. Once being made a bishop, a mission was given St Ninian to convert the Picts of Scotland to Christianity by St Siricius.

In 367, St Ninnian founded a monastery in Whithorn upon an older Roman site, it came to be known as Candida Casa. St Ninian began to spread Christianity to the locals and further on he traveled to the east coast of Scotland to convert the Picts.

It is said that amongst the missionaries that he created, St Ninian converted the teacher of St Columba, Etchen.

Evidence of an early Christian Church, namely that of St Ninian, is supported by inscribed stones found by archeologists. These inscribed stones bore various Christian inscriptions. Furthermore, inspection of place names bearing “eccles” (meaning church, often implying the site of an early church) combined with the distribution of the stones, would support the idea of the mission of St Ninian.

Although, recently some studies have been done, which attribute the story of St Ninian to an 8th century inscription misspelling of St Finnian, another mentor of St Columba. This does seem likely, although leaves the creator of many early Scottish churches nameless.