Adrian of May

Saint Adrian of May was a martyr-saint of ancient Scotland, whose cult became popular in the 14th century. He is commemorated on December 3.

Little is known of the life of this Scottish saint and martyr. He is held by some to have been an Irish monk and bishop, with the Gaelic name of Ethernan, who, though he might have been the Bishop of St. Andrews, was drawn to remote locations and had built a series of monasteries and hermitages on the Isle of May (which is five miles out to sea in the Firth of Forth) and along the coast of Fife. Later he withdrew from his see of St. Andrews due to the invading Danes and took refuge on the island. It is also held that he might have been a missionary monk from what is now Hungary, perhaps even a member of the Hungarian royal family.

What is known is that about A.D. 875, marauding Vikings invaded the island of May. They then slaughtered the entire population of the monastery, traditionally numbered at six thousand six hundred. The bodies of Ethernan/Adrian and the other monks were buried in what is now a huge burial cairn, possibly of pre-Christian origin, measuring thirty meters (nearly 100 feet) across and made up of an estimated 1.5 million fist-sized cobblestones. The island was then abandoned for centuries.

In 1145, King David I of Scotland gave the island to Reading Abbey in Berkshire, England, at which point, the island again became a religious centre. The English monks started the erection of a small monastery dedicated to St. Mary the Virgin, with a shrine to St. Ethernan. The monastery housed as many as 13 monks, supported by lands and tithes from the surrounding countryside.

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