Abbeys -- Scotland; Cathedrals -- Scotland; Church architecture -- Scotland
Towards the end of the fourth century, St. Ninian, a Christian
missionary trained at Rome in the doctrine and discipline of the Western
Church, is said to have established a religious cell on the banks of the
Molendinar. How long he remained there is uncertain, but his labours are
chiefly centred around the Candida Casa at Whithorn and among the
southern Picts, whose district, according to Bede, he evangelised. With
St. Ninian's departure, the district around the Molendinar relapsed into
barbarism, and the only remaining monument of his work was a cemetery
which he was reputed to have consecrated. The next historical reference
to Glasgow is in connection with St. Kentigern, or, as he was popularly
known, St. Mungo, about the middle of the sixth century. He was of royal
descent, and was born in 518 or 527. His biographer, Joceline, states
that he was adopted and educated by St. Servanus or St. Serf, who lived
at Culross, and by him was named "Munghu," _i.e._ dearest friend. But
this must be a mistake, for Servanus lived two centuries after
Kentigern's time;[47] if it is correct, there must have been an earlier
and a later St. Serf. On attaining his twenty-fifth year, according to
Joceline, he proceeded to Carnock, where lived a holy man named Fergus.
After he reached the abode of Fergus, the good man said his "nunc
dimittis" and died; and Kentigern, placing his body on a wain drawn by
two bulls, took his departure, praying to be guided to the place which
might be appointed for burial. The place where the wain stopped was
Cathures, afterwards called Glasgow, where St. Ninian had consecrated a
cemetery, and here Fergus was buried. Such is Joceline's account of
Kentigern's first connection with Glasgow. The king and people of the
district pressed him to remain as their bishop, and he consented,
establishing his see at Cathures and founding a lay society of the
servants of God, and fixing his own abode on the banks of the
Molendinar. After some years of austerity and beneficence there, he was
driven from his work by the persecutions of an apostate prince and
settled in the vale of Clwyd, North Wales, where he founded a monastery.
After a time he returned to Glasgow, at the solicitation of the King of
Cumbria, and appointed St. Asaph as his successor in Wales. In a
martyrology ascribed to the year 875 Kentigern appears as "bishop of
Glasgow and confessor."[48] While resident at Glasgow, St. Kentigern was
visited by St. Columba, his distinguished contemporary and the apostle
of the Picts, who presented him with a crozier, which, Fordun says, was
afterwards preserved in St. Wilfrid's Church at Ripon. Bishop Forbes
describes the meeting of the two great men "as one of those incidents
which we wish to be true, and which we have no certainty for believing
not to be so."[49] St. Kentigern died in 603 or 614, and was buried in
Glasgow, which is still known as the city of St. Mungo--Mungo being his
name of honour or affection. Everything connected with St.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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