Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/St Ninian

NINIAN (Ninianus or Nynias), St, was, according to the earliest account of him we possess, that of Bede (H. E., iii. 4), a bishop of the nation of the Britons who had been trained at Rome in the doctrine and discipline of the Western Church, and who built at Leukopibia (a town of Ptolemy’s Novantae, on the west side of Wigtown Bay, the modern Whithorn) a stone church, called Candida Casa, dedicated to St Martin of Tours. He is said to have converted the Picts to the south of the Grampians. An old Irish account mentions that he spent his last years in Ireland, where he founded a church in Leinster called Cluain Conaire; he was afterwards commemorated there under the name of Monenn (“Nenn” being simply “Ninian” with the Irish mo, or “my,” prefixed). There is some evidence that the founding of Candida Casa took place in the year of the death of Martin of Tours (397). The date of Ninian’s own death is unknown; he is commemorated in the Roman martyrology on September 16. See Skene, Celtic Scotland, vol. ii. A Life of St Ninian, compiled in the 12th century by St Ailred of Rievaux, and edited by the late Bishop Forbes, is given in the fifth volume of The Historians of Scotland, Edinburgh, 1874.