Commontide
Proper 18
Liturgical Color: White/Gold
The 14th Sunday after Trinity
O Lord God, grant your people grace to withstand the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil, and with pure hearts and minds to follow you, the only God; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Most liturgical texts are from the Book of Common Prayer (2019) of the Anglican Church in North America.
The New Coverdale Psalter, © 2019 by the Anglican Church in North America. Used by permission.
Bishop and Missionary to the Picts
Anglican Commemoration
The earliest named Christian missionary to what is now Scotland. Bede tells us, in a single spare paragraph, of a British bishop trained at Rome who built a white stone church at Whithorn called Candida Casa and preached to the southern Picts. Almost everything else about Ninian is legend layered over that one notice. But the spade has confirmed an early Christian settlement at Whithorn, and the place has drawn pilgrims for fifteen hundred years.
Bede, writing in the early eighth century (Ecclesiastical History III.4), provides the only early testimony to Ninian: 'The southern Picts, who dwell on this side of those mountains, had long before, as is reported, forsaken the errors of idolatry and embraced the true faith, by the preaching of Bishop Ninian, 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; whose episcopal see, named after St. Martin the bishop, and famous for a stately church, is still in existence among the English nation. The place belongs to the province of the Bernicians and is commonly called the White House, because he there built a church of stone, which was not usual among the Britons.'
From this spare account we learn: Ninian was a Briton (not Irish or Roman), educated at Rome, built a stone church at Whithorn dedicated to Martin of Tours, and evangelized the southern Picts. Bede wrote this more than three hundred years after Ninian's supposed floruit, and his source is unclear — possibly oral tradition, possibly written records now lost.
An eighth-century poem, the Miracula Nynie Episcopi, adds miracle stories but little historical substance. Aelred of Rievaulx produced a full Life of Ninian in the twelfth century, but it is largely imaginative — adding a journey to Ireland, meetings with other saints, and numerous miracles.
Archaeological work at Whithorn has confirmed the existence of an early Christian site from at least the fifth century, including a chi-rho inscribed stone (the 'Latinus stone'), one of the earliest Christian inscriptions in Scotland. This confirms that Christianity was present in Galloway at the period Bede assigns to Ninian, but does not prove that Ninian was the founder.
Traditionally, Ninian studied at Rome and visited Martin of Tours on his way home, dedicating his church at Whithorn to Martin. This connection is plausible — Whithorn is contemporary with Martin's cult — but cannot be confirmed independently. Aelred of Rievaulx's twelfth-century Life adds a journey to Ireland, meetings with other saints, and numerous miracles. Later tradition developed Ninian into the patron saint of Scotland.