The mission of St. Ninian was the first in order of time. The son of a petty prince of Cumberland, he travelled to Rome for the purpose of study, about the year 380, and being introduced to the notice of Pope Damasus, was placed by him under the care of teachers, and in all probability received into the school of the Patriarchium. There he was thoroughly instructed, _regulariter edoctus_, in all the mysteries of the faith, and after spending fifteen years in Rome he at last received consecration from the hands of Pope St. Siricius, by whom he was sent back to exercise the episcopal functions in his own country. The fifth century, which was then just opening, was precisely that in which the discipline of the Church received its fullest development. Ninian, who had so long studied the ecclesiastical system at its fountain-head, and who on his homeward journey had visited Tours, and conversed with St. Martin, then drawing near his end, was fully prepared to introduce into his northern diocese the rule and manner of life which he had seen carried out in the churches of Italy and Gaul. At Whitherne in Galloway, where he fixed his see, he built a stone church, after the Roman fashion, and lived in a house adjoining it, together with his cathedral clergy, in strict observance of the ecclesiastical canons. In this episcopal college the younger clerics followed their ecclesiastical studies, whilst a school was likewise opened for the children of the neighbourhood, as appears from the anecdote related by St. Ælred of one little rebel who ran away to escape a flogging, and was nearly drowned when attempting to put to sea in a coracle, or wicker boat, which chanced to be without its usual covering of hides.[38] The great school, as St. Ninian’s seminary is often styled, was resorted to both by British and Irish scholars, and among the works left written by the founder was a Book of Sentences, or selections from the Fathers, which seems to have been intended for the use of his students.