HE possessed a large estate, which he distributed among the poor; and
seeing that agriculture is an employment best suiting a life of
contemplation, he made this an exercise of penance, joining with the
same assiduous prayer. He was a proficient in profane and sacred
learning, and being made bishop, (to which dignity he was raised by the
pope, in a journey of devotion which he made to Rome,) he continued to
employ his revenues in charities as before, living himself in great
austerity by the labor of his hands, and at the same time preaching the
gospel to the people. By his means Scotland was preserved from the
Pelagian heresy. He was one of the apostles of that country, and died in
452. He resided at Tullicht, now in the diocese of Aberdeen, and built
the churches of Tullicht Bothelim, and of the Hill; in the former of
these he was buried, and it long continued famous for miracles wrought
by his relics, which were preserved there till the change of religion.
See King, the Chronicles of Dumferling, and the lessons of the Aberdeen
Breviary on this day. The see of Aberdeen was {114} not then regularly
established; it was first erected at Murthlac by St. Bean, in the
beginning of the eleventh century, and translated thence to Aberdeen by
Nectan, the fourth bishop, in the reign of king David.[2] See Hector
Boetius in the lives of the bishops of Aberdeen,[3] and Spotswood, b. 2,
p. 101.
Footnotes:
1. The Aberdeen Breviary resembles that called _of Sarum_, and contains
the feasts of many French saints. It was printed at Edinburg, by
Walter Chapman, in 1509.
2. Few authentic memoirs of the ancient Scotch church, or history, have
been handed down to us, except those of certain noble families. A
catalogue of the bishops of Galloway, from St. Ninianus, in 450; of
the archbishops of Glascow, from St. Kentigern; of St. Andrew's,
from the year 840; and of the bishops of the other sees, from the
twelfth century, is printed at the end of an old edition of
Spotsword in 166{} and reprinted by bishop Burnet, in an appendix to
his memoirs of the house of Hamilton.
3. De vitis episcopor. Aberd. Praelo. Afrensiano, anno 1522.