Saint Monan
A bishop martyred in Scotland, who later healed their king.
Monan, or Moinenn as he was called in his native Celtic language, was a 7th-century bishop of St. Andrew’s who preached to the Scots in Fife, and nobody knows much else. After his death, a modest shrine housed his bones until a much greater monument was built 500 years later by a wounded king.
During the battle of Neville’s Cross, a failed Scottish invasion into northern England, the Scots’ King David II was shot with many arrows, including one in the face that nobody could seem to take out. After spending a decade as a prisoner of war, he made a pilgrimage to Monan’s shrine, and the arrow leapt from the wound.
Today, the castle he erected in Monan’s honor is crumbled ruins. As one tourist’s guidebook offers: “Truly the glory of this world passeth away!”