Vita Sancti Niniani

Vita Sancti Niniani
"The Life of Saint Ninian"
Author(s)	Ailred of Rievaulx
Patron	Perhaps a Bishop of Galloway
Language	medieval Latin
Date	composed mid-1100s
Authenticity	authentic
Principal manuscript(s)	1) British Library Cotton Tiberius D iii 2) Bodleian Library Laud Miscellaneous 668
First printed edition	John Pinkerton, 1789
Genre	prose hagiography
Subject	Saint Ninian
Setting	Anglo-Saxon Whithorn and neighbourhood
Period covered	unclear, early middle ages
Sources	1) Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum 2) Liber de Vita et Miraculis (lost)

The Vita Sancti Niniani ("Life of Saint Ninian") or simply Vita Niniani ("Life of Ninian") is a Latin language Christian hagiography written in northern England in the mid-12th century. Using two earlier Anglo-Latin sources, it was written by Ailred of Rievaulx seemingly at the request of a Bishop of Galloway. It is loosely based on the career of the early British churchman Uinniau or Finnian, whose name through textual misreadings was rendered "Ninian" by high medieval English and Anglo-Norman writers, subsequently producing a distinct cult. Saint Ninian was thus an "unhistorical doppelganger" of someone else. The Vita tells "Ninian's" life-story, and relates ten miracles, six during the saint's lifetime and four posthumous.

The author was almost certainly Ailred of Rievaulx. Historian John MacQueen raised doubts about this authorship in 1990, pointing out that Ailred's biographer Walter Daniel did not list it among the works of Ailred. Ailred's authorship is still accepted by most historians however, on the basis that Ailred is identified as the author in one of the two manuscripts, while in the other manuscript the Vita forms part of a collection of Ailred's works. It is thought to have been Ailred's first work of hagiography.

It survives in two manuscripts, the British Library Cotton Tiberius D iii, and Bodleian Library Laud Miscellaneous 668. Apparently other versions may have previously existed. It was first printed in 1789, when John Pinkerton published an edition based on the Bodleian manuscript. The Latin text was printed in the following works:

Translations have been made by Forbes, and subsequently by John and Winifred MacQueen (1961, reprinted 1990 and 2005) and Jane Patricia Freeland (2006). According to Archbishop Usher, there was an Irish vita of Ninian, apparently slightly different from Ailred's; this is now lost.

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