Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Ninian
NINIAN or NINIAS, Saint (d. 432?), apostle of Christianity in North Britain, was sometimes also referred to in Irish hagiology under the names Mancennus, Mansenus, Monennus, or Moinennus. According to Bæda, who gives the earliest extant account of him, he was a Briton by birth, and made a pilgrimage to Rome, where he received a regular training in ‘the facts and mysteries of the truth.’ He was consecrated a bishop, and established his episcopal seat on the present site of Whithorn, on the northern shore of the Solway. It was here that he built a church of stone, instead of wood, as was ‘customary among the Britons,’ and dedicated it to St. Martin of Tours. He worked successfully in evangelising the southern Picts, who inhabited the country south of the Grampians. In his church, commonly called Candida Casa, he was buried, and there also several of his coadjutors found their last resting-place (Eccles. Hist. iii. 4).
Meagre as are these details, they may be regarded as forming a trustworthy tradition of the outstanding facts of Ninian's career. Although they were recorded by one who lived two and a half centuries after the period of the saint, the testimony of Alcuin, in a letter to the brethren serving God at Candida Casa, confirms that of Bæda, and shows that Ninian's memory formed the theme of monkish panegyric a century afterwards.
The later lives add little to our scanty knowledge. A ‘Life’ written by an Irish monk is now lost. It was known to Ussher and the Bollandists, but, to judge from the extracts preserved by them, was of no historic value. Another, in metrical form, and ascribed with but small probability to the poet Barbour, is important merely as furnishing an account of what was believed regarding him in the fourteenth century, when Candida Casa had become a favourite resort of pilgrims. A third biography, by Ailred, abbot of Rievaulx, in Yorkshire (1143–1166), professes to give a detailed history, founded on an earlier ‘Book of his Life and Miracles,’ written in a barbaric speech (sermo barbaricus). It is merely a diffuse amplification of the paragraph in Bæda. It was composed at the request of Christianus, the then bishop of Candida Casa, and its author might at all events claim to have an intimate acquaintance with the local tradition of his time, since he was educated at the court of King David and paid a visit to the south-west of Scotland. His work is extremely vague, however, and even the miracles, which he revels in, are devoid of historic colouring. Posterity is indebted to him, however, for one fact, which is important as fixing approximately the chronology of St. Ninian's life. He asserts that, while engaged in building his church at Whithorn, the bishop heard of the death of St. Martin, and dedicated his church to him as a tribute to his memory. If, on the authority of Bæda, we accept as historic his visit to Rome, which is conjectured to have taken place during the pontificate of Damasus or Siricius, the tradition of his intimate intercourse with St. Martin of Tours, mentioned by Ailred, is very probably authentic. St. Martin's death occurred, according to Tillemont, about 397, so that the mission of Ninian was begun in the last decade of the fourth century, and might have extended over the first third of the fifth. Another circumstance, noticed by Ailred, relating to Ninian's intercourse with the Bishop of Tours, also bears the aspect of fact. St. Martin, we are told, at Ninian's request, supplied him with masons to build his church. Though Roman Britain could not have been destitute of stone churches or skilled artisans, this was not a solitary example, as we learn from the pages of Bæda at a later time, of recourse being had to the superior workmen of Gaul for purposes of church building and decoration.
It is highly probable that, in addition to building a mission church, Ninian founded a monastic establishment at Candida Casa, on the model of the community at Marmoutier, over which Martin presided. It is certain, at any rate, that Candida Casa appears within a century after his death as a celebrated training school of the monastic life, at which several of the more celebrated Irish saints were educated. The ‘Acts’ of Tighernach, Eugenius, Endeus, and Finan, state expressly that these saints, whose reputation as founders of monasteries in their native Scotia (Ireland) is celebrated by the old annalists, had recourse as students to the monastery of Rosnat, or the Great Monastery (Magnum Monasterium), as Candida Casa was called. Several of these early Irish missionaries are, in fact, mentioned as the disciples of Ninian [see art. Mo-nennius]. This statement, though involving an anachronism, may be regarded as accentuating the fact that they were taught in the celebrated institution which owed its discipline and educational character to the apostle of the southern Picts.
While the missionary and monastic establishment at Candida Casa thus retained its fame and vigour for at least a century after its founder's death, his mission among the inhabitants of Galloway and the district between the Forth and the Mounth appears to have borne very temporary fruits. St. Patrick in his ‘Epistle to Coroticus’ speaks of the ‘apostate Picts,’ and the lives of Kentigern and Columba contain frequent lamentation over the relapsed condition of the Pictish inhabitants of the district evangelised by Ninian. The influences of the age were, in fact, adverse to the permanent development of such a movement as his. The period of Ninian's activity is coincident with the fall of the Roman empire in Britain, and the repeated incursions of Saxon, Scotic, and Pictish invaders. The assertion of Bæda that the southern Picts renounced idolatry and accepted the faith through his preaching is thus only relatively accurate. Their conversion was neither so effective as adequately to maintain itself in an epoch of disorganisation, nor was it so thorough as to amount, according to Ailred, to a complete organisation of the church into dioceses and parishes. Bæda's assumption involves an anachronism of several centuries. Ninian was not the founder of the mediæval ecclesiastical system of Scotland; he was simply the first missionary and monastic bishop of North Britain.
[An exhaustive examination of St. Ninian's life and age will be found in a monograph in German by James MacKinnon, Ph.D., entitled Ninian und sein Einfluss auf die Ausbreitung des Christenthums in Nord-Britannien. See also the same author's Culture in Early Scotland, bk. ii. ch. iii.; Vita Niniani Pictorum Australium Apostoli, Auctore Ailredo Revallensi, ed. A. P. Forbes (in vol. v. Historians of Scotland); Tillemont's Mémoires, tom. x. p. 340; Ussher's Works, vi. 209, 565; Bollandist Acta SS., ed. Ebrington, v. 321; Colgan, Acta SS. Hib. p. 438; Skene's Celtic Scotland, and Dict. of Christian Biography.]