Saint Ninian

The earliest account of Ninian is in Bede's Ecclesiastical History, and the encyclopedia quotes it in full. ¹ The southern Picts, Bede says, "received the true faith by the preaching of Bishop Ninias, a most reverend and holy man of the British nation, who had been regularly instructed at Rome in the faith and mysteries of the truth." ¹

Bede goes on: Ninian's see was named after Saint Martin and famous for a church dedicated to him, "wherein Ninias himself and many other saints rest in the body." ¹ The place "is commonly called the White House [Candida Casa], because he there built a church of stone, which was not usual amongst the Britons." ¹

The encyclopedia is blunt about how far this goes. "The facts given in this passage," it says, "form practically all we know of St. Ninian's life and work." ¹

In the twelfth century Saint Aelred wrote a much fuller life. ¹ He claimed to draw on Bede and on an older book about Ninian's life and miracles "barbarice scriptus," written in a rough style, but the encyclopedia says "the legendary element is largely evident." ¹

One detail from Aelred matters for dating. He says that while Ninian was building his church he heard of the death of Saint Martin of Tours and decided to dedicate it to him. ¹ Martin died about 397, so the encyclopedia reasons that the mission must have begun toward the end of the fourth century. ¹ The article on the Diocese of Galloway gives the founding of the see in 397 and his death about 432, "on the authority of the majority of Scottish writers." ²

Some of the outline differs from source to source. The Galloway article calls him "a Briton, born on the Solway shore," and says Pope Siricius consecrated him bishop. ² The Archdiocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh calls him the "son of a Roman chieftain" who "was ordained bishop in Rome and returned to proclaim the Gospel in south west Scotland around 397." ⁴ The Galloway article adds that he evangelized the country "as far north as the Grampian mountains." ²

The Diocese of Galloway, in its own history, starts somewhere else. "The earliest genuine evidence we have for Christianity in our diocese is archaeological," it says, and the earliest identifiable Christian artifacts from Whithorn and nearby sites date, by "common academic opinion," from the middle of the fifth century. ³ That is a generation or two later than the traditional date of 397. ²³

The same history takes particular pleasure in being able to name other Christians from that early period alongside Ninian: Latinus, Ides, Viventius, Mavorius and Ventidius, known from carved stones. ³ It says that "under St Ninian's leadership Whithorn became a great centre of learning and evangelisation," and quotes a scholar who remarked that in Irish lives of the saints it became a convention to claim a Whithorn education for them. ³

Ninian founded a monastery at Whithorn which, the encyclopedia says, "became famous as a school of monasticism within a century of his death." ¹ His work among the Picts fared worse. The encyclopedia says it "seems to have had but a short lived success," pointing out that Saint Patrick, in his letter to Coroticus, called the Picts "apostates," and that the lives of Columba and Kentigern refer to Ninian's converts falling away. ¹

By the late seventh century, the Diocese of Galloway says, the old British diocese was in decline and was taken into the Northumbrian Church under its first Anglian bishop, Pechthelm. ³ The see kept the name of Ninian's church: its original title was "Whitherne," the encyclopedia says, more often latinized as "Candida Casa." ²

He was buried in his church, as Bede says, but the encyclopedia records that "no relics are now known to exist." ¹ What survives is a bell. The "Clogrinny," or bell of Saint Ringan, "of very rough workmanship," was in the Antiquarian Museum at Edinburgh when the encyclopedia was written. ¹

The Archdiocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh says there was "a strong tradition of pilgrimage to the burial place of St Ninian in Whithorn before the Reformation," and that it was not until 1924 that the pilgrimage was resumed in its modern form. ⁴ On the last Sunday of August the Diocese of Galloway goes to St Ninian's Cave, where Mass is said on the shore of Port Castle Bay, the place where, the archdiocese says, Ninian "is said to have retreated for prayer." ⁴ The walk runs about a mile through a glen to the shore. ⁴ In 2025 the principal celebrant was Bishop Frank Dougan, whom the archdiocese calls "Saint Ninian's successor." ⁴

None of the sources used for this page names a patronage for Saint Ninian, and this page does not supply one. ¹²³⁴⁵ The Diocese of Galloway calls itself "the See of Ninian." ³ Benedict XVI, in Glasgow, named Mungo as the city's patron and placed Ninian at the head of the line of saints who handed the faith down in Scotland, followed by Mungo, Columba and Margaret. ⁵

Saint Ninian's feast is September 16. Benedict XVI, celebrating Mass at Bellahouston Park, Glasgow, on September 16, 2010, spoke of "Saint Ninian, whose feast we celebrate today." ⁵

Very little is known about him, and the sources say so. ¹ What there is comes down to a few facts: a man of the British people, taught at Rome, who built a church of stone, which the Britons did not usually do, and who preached to the southern Picts. ¹²

Benedict XVI chose to say that he "was himself unafraid to be a lone voice." ⁵ That is a fair reading of a bishop who went north to the Picts. ¹ It is also fair to remember, with the encyclopedia, that many of his converts did not stay. ¹ He did the work anyway, and others came after.

The Pope drew that line from Ninian to Mungo, Columba, Margaret and the "many men and women" who "have laboured over many centuries to hand down the faith." ⁵ Ninian's part was the beginning, which is usually the part that gets forgotten.

His church at Whithorn was called the White House because it was built of stone. ¹² People still walk to his cave on the shore each August to pray where he is said to have prayed. ⁴