Overview
Ethernan
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(?9th century),
saint of Scotland, who is said to have studied in Ireland and acted as a missionary in the Fife area. His shrine church on the Isle of May, a small square building with dry stone foundations, similar to others in the western islands of Scotland and in Ireland, has recently been discovered and identified. Apparently this became a place of pilgrimage. It gives new meaning to the donation of May by David I of Scotland (d. 1153) to Reading Abbey and to subsequent endowments to the priory of May. It may be thought that this island site suggests a hermitage rather than the centre of an apostolate: there are certainly plenty of examples of island hermitages off the coasts of Northern Britain and Ireland. Feast: 3 December.
Benedictines of Ramsgate, The Book of Saints (1989), p. 192;B. R. Kemp, Reading Abbey Cartularies (2 vols., 1986–7).
