This saint was the fourteenth Abbot of Iona. The old church of
Laggan, near Loch Laggan, Inverness-shire, was dedicated to St.
Killen. {102}
4—St. Marianus Scotus, Abbot, A.D. 1088.
The monastery of St. James, Ratisbon, owes its first beginnings to this saint. Most historians are now agreed in maintaining that Marianus was a native of Ireland, which for many centuries bore the designation of Scotia. The holy man with several companions entered a Benedictine monastery at Bamberg. Some time afterwards, when on a pilgrimage to Rome, they passed through Ratisbon. A holy hermit who was living there persuaded Marianus to forego his visit to Rome and take up his abode in Ratisbon. He obeyed the injunction, and founded a monastery in connection with the Church of St. Peter, which the nuns to whom it belonged made over to him.
After the death of Marianus a larger abbey was built in honour of St. James and St. Gertrude which eventually became peopled by Scotsmen, and became, after the Reformation, an important seminary for the education of clergy for mission work in Scotland. This venerable abbey was appropriated by the Bavarian Government about the middle of the nineteenth century, a compensation of L10,000 being paid to the Scots College in Rome. {103}
A valuable MS. consisting of selections from the homilies of the Fathers of the Church, in the actual handwriting of St. Marianus himself, was presented to the Benedictine Abbey, Fort-Augustus, by the last survivor of the community of the Scots Monastery, Ratisbon, and is one of the greatest treasures of the Fort-Augustus library.
6—St. Modenna, or Medana, Virgin, A.D. 518.
This saint was an Irish virgin, who received the monastic habit from St. Patrick himself, and was a dear friend of St. Bridget. She took up her abode in Scotland, where she founded many monasteries for women. Some of these foundations were in Strathclyde, but the greatest of them was in Galloway, at the place now styled Kirkmaiden (formerly Kirkmedan), where St. Medan's Well and Cave may still be seen.
St. Modenna is said to have lived to the age of 130 years and to have died at Longforgan, near Dundee, after having made during the course of her long life three pilgrimages to Rome, barefoot and clad in hair-cloth.
Edinburgh probably takes its name from Medana. Her sanctuary, marking, it was said, {104} one of her monastic foundations, and known as "St. Edana's," was a place of pilgrimage long before the time of King Edwin who was once supposed to have given the city its designation. The discovery of the foundations of a much more ancient building under St. Margaret's Chapel in Edinburgh Castle, in 1918, seems to corroborate the statement in an ancient Latin life of this Saint of the erection by her of a church on the top of Edinburgh Rock, while it strengthens the tradition of the origin of the name, Edana's Burgh. Maiden Castle is really Medan's (or Medana's) Castle. A new Catholic church, situated in St. Meddan's Street, Troon, was erected in 1911 and dedicated to this saint in conjunction with Our Lady.
7—St. Palladius, Bishop, A.D. (about) 430.