Contents

Rev. Alban Butler (1711–73). Volume I: January. The Lives of the Saints. 1866.

January 26

St. Conon, Bishop of the Isle of Man

IF we can give credit to some lives of Saint Fiaker, and the old Breviary of Limoges, that saint was son of Eugenius, king of Scotland, and by his father committed in his childhood, with his two brothers, to the care of St. Conon, from which saintly education he received that ardent love and perfect spirit of piety, by which he was distinguished during the whole course of his life. Conon, by the purity and fervour in which he served God, was a saint from his infancy. The Isle of Man, which was a famous ancient seat of the Druids, is said to have received the seeds of the Christian faith, by the zeal of St. Patrick. St. Conon, passing thither from Scotland, completed that great work, and is said to have been made bishop of Man, or of Sodor, supposed by these authors to have been anciently a town in this island. This bishopric was soon after united with that of the Hebrides or the Western Islands, which see was fixed in the Isle of Hi, Iona or Y-colmkille. St. Conon died in the Isle of Man, about the year 648. His name continued to the change of religion, in great veneration throughout the Hebrides, or islands on the West of Scotland. 1 On St. Conon, see Leslie, Hist. of Scotland, &c.

1

Note 1. In some few of these islands, the laird and all the inhabitants remain still Catholics; as Banbecula, under Ranal Mac Donald; South-Vist, under Alan Mac Donald of Moydart, whose ancestors were once kings of these islands; Barry, under Mac Neil; Canny, and Egg, and some others. In many others there are long since no Catholics, as in Lewis, North-Vist, Harries, St. Kilda, &c. See the latest edition of the Present State of England, and Bishop Leslie’s nephew, in his MS. account, &c. [back]