Pictus

ON ST. PICTUS, BISHOP.

Pictus, Bishop (St.)

I. B.

We have recorded Pictus the Martyr on January 9, on the authority of several old Martyrologies. Concerning this one, a single old Roman Martyrology, St. Pictus, Bishop, unknown: or that of St. Jerome, has under February 1: "And the Deposition of Pictus, Bishop." He is unknown to us. For the one whom Baronius in volume 9 of his Annals at the year 721, number 5, says subscribed to a Roman synod as "Pictus, Bishop of Scotland," is called in volume 3 of the Councils "Fergustus, Bishop of Scotland, a Pict"; so that "Pictus" is an ethnic, not the man's proper name. And he is more recent than one who could seem to have been inscribed in the Hieronymian Martyrology by St. Willibrord. Dempster in his Ecclesiastical History of the Scots, book 6, number 533, states that he was a Bishop of the Picts. Our present subject is more ancient; but of what see or even of what nation he was Bishop, we do not know.