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Scotland's Earliest
Missionary.
Ninian was born—so the
legend runs—about A.D. 360, on the Cumberland shore of the Solway —his
father, a British prince—his mother, a devout Christian. His birthplace
was not wholly barbarous. Lying at the west end of the Wall of Severus,
but a little way from the great Roman road from York to Carlisle, and on
through Annandale, the native Cumbrians had caught, no doubt, some
tincture of Roman civilisation. The boy was of a pure and holy temper even
from his cradle, silent, thoughtful, of sweet manners, strong in love
towards his comrades, full of devotion, and much interested in churches.
Even when a youth, he devoted himself to the study of the Scriptures, and
soon made himself master of whatever learning, on this and other matters,
his country could supply : for South Britain had early received the faith,
even during the second and third centuries; and had produced saints, as St
Alban and St Helena—was now producing heretics too, if, as many think,
Cœlestius and Pelagius were both Britons. The heresy which took its name
from the latter was at this time spreading in Britain ; and it was partly
to know the truth on this important subject, as well as to obtain better
general learning, that St Ninian, while still a young man, made a journey
to Home. [So hints Ælred, by an anachronism, as has been shewn, if by
error he refers to Pelagianism, for this was not condemned till a.d. 412.]
"He longed," says Ælred, "for purer and more perfect light. And where was
that to be had, if not at the grave and see of the chief of the apostles?"
A strange sight it must have been for that simple British youth, as, fresh
from Solway side and Cumberland moors, he gazed from the descent of the
Janiculum on the world's capital. True, it had ceased to be that; for the
seat o£ empire ere this had been transferred to the Bosphorus. And, twenty
years before Ninian came to Italy, the eastern and western empires had
been finally divided; and Rome was no longer the residence even of the
Emperor of the West. Still, there lay 'before the stranger's eyes its
temples, palaces, Coliseum, and basilicas, the gathered magnificence of a
thousand years, all waiting for Alaric and his destroying Goths. Whatever
was pagan and imperial was on the eve of destruction; but the hierarchical
and sacerdotal power was still fresh with youth. The two pontificates
during which Ninian was at Rome, those of Damasus and Siricius, saw the
last struggles and final extinction of Roman paganism. Year by year the
old basilicas were being changed into Christian temples, and new churches
were rising oyer the martyrs' tombs. The Roman ritual was swelling into
pomp, and the higher priesthood were beginning to fatten on riches
showered on them by ardent devotees, especially of the female sort.
Damasus, the present Pope, had, after a fierce contest with a rival,
climbed to the pontifical chair over slaughtered enemies—an ambitious and
luxurious prelate, under whom, as Gibbon remarks, the Church had reached
the half-way point between the humble poverty of the apostolic fishermen
and the royal state of a Hildebrand or Innocent III. But bad as this was
for the Church, and big with evil for the future, it probably did no harm
to the simple youth from Cumberland. The pure in heart like him have a
strange art—"to see, and not to see; to know, and not to know ; to live in
the midst of evil, and take no part in it." And there were those at Rome
who might well command his reverence and kindle his heart to heroic
devotion.
There, at the close of the
fourth century, he probably saw, may have even conversed with the three
great fathers of Latin Christianity—Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine. The fiery
Jerome, translator of the Scriptures into the Latin Vulgate, the zealous
advocate and guardian of young monasti-cism. The intrepid Ambrose of
Milan, champion of sacerdotal authority, who had just humbled the proudest
sovereign of the age, and made the imperial diadem bow before the
episcopal mitre. The profound Augustine, in the first fervour of his
conversion, he who "gave system to Latin theology; wrought Christianity
into the minds and hearts of men by his impassioned autobiography; and,
finally, under the name of 'the city of God,' established that new and
undefined kingdom of which the bishop of Home was hereafter to be the
sovereign."
The youth from Cumberland
may have seen these worthies, even heard them preach, and no doubt heard
much talk of their doings. In time he found access to Pope Damasus, now
aged eighty years. The old man, ambitious and luxurious though he had
been, received the youth kindly, even embraced him, it is said; and,
entering warmly into the object for which Ninian had come, placed him
under teachers who taught him the true faith and right meaning of
Scripture. From these he discovered that it was many ways faulty, even
seriously erroneous, what he had learnt in his own country. This means,
perhaps, that it was Pelagian error, perhaps that it was only some way
behind the latest developments of Lome's theology. During all this time,
Ninian lodged, like enough, in one of the monasteries, springing up
everywhere in Lome during these days, thanks to the vehement proselytism
of Jerome.
After fifteen years, they
say, spent in study and preparation, the time was come when he must quit
Rome. Pope Siricius, successor of Damasus, had heard with concern that of
the Britons some had fallen into error, others were still pagans. To
reclaim the former, to convert the latter, he sent for this Cumberland
stranger, whom he had heard of, consecrated him, with his own hands, a
missionary bishop, and, blessing him, sent him forth to be the apostle of
his countrymen. This fell in 397, A.D. On his way through France, Ninian
stopped at Tours, to see Martin, the saint of that place, famous in his
day for his asceticism and reputed miracles, whom we still commemorate
unconsciously in our word Martinmas—the mass of St Martin. After much
converse on divine things, says our biographer, Ninian, ere he departed,
asked St Martin for masons who could build churches of stone, that as he
was bearing to Britain the Romish doctrine, so he might bear with him the
Romish manner of churches and church services. Stone-masons he brought
from Tours, doctrines and discipline from Rome. Three latest
characteristics of Rome, we may be sure he brought,—the adoption of the
monastic life, stern enforcement of celibacy on the clergy, and the
Vulgate or Latin version of the Scriptures, which, but lately completed by
Jerome, put out the Greek and Hebrew original, and became, till the
Reformation, the only Bible of Western Europe.
It was a dark time when
Ninian returned to his country. The Romans were beginning to fall back
from the northern province of Clydesdale and Lothian, within the
Northumbrian wall. As fast as they withdrew, savage Picts rushed in behind
them, to slaughter and burn. A time when the poor distracted Britons much
needed consolation, yet were perhaps little likely to listen to it.
Annandale and Clydesdale, the high road of contending armies, full of
battle and bloodshed, would be no fit abode for this messenger of peace.
It may have been for this reason that he turned aside to fix his own
dwelling and Scotland's first church in remote Galloway. It may be that
Criffel and the blue hills beyond Solway had dwelt bright in his memory
ever since the time when, as a child, he had watched across the Frith the
sun go down among the Galloway mountains. The sunset land of childhood, it
has a strange interest for all;, perhaps even St Ninian may not have been
indifferent to it. However this may have been, on a bleak promontory, one
of the westmost of Galloway, nearly the most southern point in Scotland,
he fixed his abode, and built a stone church with the masons he had
brought from Tours. The spot, three miles from the end of the headland,
and surrounded by sea on all but its northern side, was called by the
Saxons, Whithern, (or White House,) a name it still bears. And the church,
as far as we know, was the earliest Christian church in Scotland, and
perhaps the first in Britain—built of stone, not of wattles, as the.
British churches were for many years afterwards. Ninian dedicated it to St
Martin of Tours, the news of whose death reached him while it was
a-building. This must have been about A.D. 400. Beside his church, it
would seem that he raised a monastery, ordered, no doubt, after the
example he had seen at Tours and Rome, in which the clergy might dwell,
where they might be trained for their missionary work, whence they might
go forth to preach to the people of Galloway and Strathclyde, whither they
might return when they needed repose.
In this monastery the monks
lived in the simplest way, on vegetables chiefly—leeks are mentioned—and
other produce of their own garden. For these monks he would lay down a
rule, stated hours for prayer, for study, for labour in the garden and
fields. Himself he opened a Christian school, in which he taught many
children of the chiefs and richer sort. The good man loved the children,
and was loved by them. But one day he was about to punish a young
barbarian who had been unruly, with what weapon, 'taws' or stick,
tradition notes not. Naturally enough, the wild lad, for fear of taws, as
boys will do, is off to the shore, bearing with him the bishop's best
staff', a memorial of the old man he loved. So says simple Ælred,—perhaps
rather a truant boy's trick to spite his intending scourger. However this
may be, the young Galwegian takes a boat, puts to sea, and is like to
sink; but using the bishop's staff for sail, helm, and anchor, he is
miraculously brought safe to land. The boy planted it on the shore, and in
time the staff became a wide-spreading tree, and at that tree's roots they
say there burst forth a spring whose waters long afterwards healed the
sick.
The chief opposer of
Ninian's work was a king or chief of Galloway, Tudoval. After long
resisting and thwarting him, this man fell blind and miserable.
Conscience-stricken, he sent for the saint, and asked his forgiveness. The
saint not only forgave him, but came to him and comforted him, and, the
legend says, laying his hands on him, prayed and healed his blindness.
But not in Galloway only
did he labour. He had all Scotland this side the Forth to preach in and
convert; the other side of it, too, if he chose to essay it. Of his
wanderings in Strathclyde, Ælred gives us nothing; and tradition is
equally silent. One only footprint of his is visible—the old cemetery
which he consecrated near the Clyde, which Kentigern, a century and a half
afterwards, found still held in reverence there, with its circle of old
trees, the spot on which Glasgow Cathedral now stands, is the only record
of his doings in Strathclyde. But he had work to do beyond the Friths.
Bede calls him the Apostle of the Southern Picts, and distinctly asserts
that he was the first messenger of Christ who ever visited them.
Ælred, in his rhetorical
way—the kind of rhetoric which was the common stock in trade of all those
monkish biographers—speaks of his going forth against this stronghold of
Satan, (South Pict-land,) begirt with his army of holy men, preaching the
Word of God, and working many miracles. "They rush," says he, "to the font
of baptism, rich and poor, young men and maidens, old men and boys,
mothers and children, and denouncing Satan and his works, are united to
the company of the faithful." Then he ordained pastors and clergy among
them, consecrated bishops, and portioned out Pictland into districts for
their ministrations. Having confirmed them in the faith, and arranged all
things as seemed best for God's honour and the good of men, he bids them
farewell, and returns to Whithern. In his seclusion there, when not
engaged in preaching near his monastery, or teaching within it, he wrote
commentaries on parts of Scripture, meditations on the Psalms, a
collection of sentences from the fathers for the youth and clergy of
Whithern. His old age was spent in the quiet monastery, and he died in
September, 432. His monks laid him in the church of St Martin, which
himself had built, in a stone coffin hard by the altar, the clergy and
people standing by, and lifting up their hymns with heart and voice,
mingled with sighs and tears. "There," as one writes, "in that white
house, which from its bold promontory looks upon the shores of Cumberland
and the distant peaks of Man, St Ninian had his rest with the bodies of
many other saints. For ages the place continued to be famous, not only in
Scotland, but throughout the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, and among the races of
Ireland. Even from Gaul came letters in the ninth century to the Brethren
of St Ninian at Whithern, written by the most accomplished scholar and
divine of his age, Alcuin, the counsellor and confidant of Charlemagne."
The ancient shrine in time fell to decay; but in the twelfth century was
renewed by King David, and became renowned through all the Middle Ages as
" a pilgrimage, whither kings and princes, churchmen and warriors, with
people from many realms, came by sea and land to make their devotions." Of
these once-honoured buildings, all that now remains is a roofless and
ruined chancel, grass upon its pavement, ivy on its walls. [One
interesting relic of the saint is still preserved in Ireland—the Clogrinny
bell of St Ninian, a primitive square bell, said to be the identical one
which summoned the first converts of the wild Galwegian tribes to the
preaching of the first missionary bishop in his church at Whithern.—
Wilson, Pre-Hist. Arm. 600.]
But Ninian has, whether
remembered or forgotten, a better than any outward memorial. It was not to
win man's praise that he lived and laboured. He attained all he sought.
The truths he spoke laid some hold of men's hearts, and through
innumerable changes have never died out. To some, through every generation
since, we may believe the seed he sowed has been a seed of heavenly life.
To all it was the first power of order out of barbaric chaos, the first
faint dawn of that pure social life, which has been growing and expanding
amongst us ever since. |
