List of saints of Scotland

The Monymusk Reliquary, or Brecbennoch, dates from c. 750, and purportedly enclosed bones of Columba

This is a list of saints of Scotland, which includes saints from Scotland, associated with, or particularly venerated in the Kingdom of Scotland.

One of the main features of Medieval Scotland was the Veneration of Saints. Saints of Irish origin who were particularly revered included various figures called St. Fælan and St. Colman, and saints Findbarr and Finan.[1] Columba remained a major figure into the fourteenth century and a new foundation at the site of his bones was endowed by William I (r. 1165–1214) at Arbroath Abbey.[2][3] In Strathclyde the most important saint was St. Kentigern, whose cult (under the pet name St. Mungo) became focused in Glasgow.[4] In Lothian it was St. Cuthbert, whose relics were carried across Northumbria after Lindisfarne was sacked by the Vikings before being installed in Durham Cathedral.[5] After his martyrdom around 1115, a cult emerged in Orkney, Shetland and northern Scotland around Magnus Erlendsson, Earl of Orkney.[6]

  1. ^ G. W. S. Barrow, Kingship and Unity: Scotland 1000–1306 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1989), ISBN 074860104X, p. 64.
  2. ^ M. Lynch, Scotland: A New History (Random House, 2011), ISBN 1446475638, p. 76.
  3. ^ B. Webster, Medieval Scotland: the Making of an Identity (New York City, NY: St. Martin's Press, 1997), ISBN 0333567617, pp. 52–3.
  4. ^ A. Macquarrie, Medieval Scotland: Kinship and Nation (Thrupp: Sutton, 2004), ISBN 0-7509-2977-4, p. 46.
  5. ^ A. Lawrence-Mathers, Manuscripts in Northumbria in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Woodbridge: Brewer, 2003), ISBN 0859917657, p. 137.
  6. ^ H. Antonsson, St. Magnús of Orkney: A Scandinavian Martyr-Cult in Context (Leiden: Brill, 2007), ISBN 9004155805.