ON ST. DONEVALD, CONFESSOR, WITH HIS NINE VIRGIN DAUGHTERS.
IN SCOTLAND.
From the Scottish Fasti.
8TH CENTURY.
CommentaryDonovald, confessor, in Scotland (S.)
The nine virgin daughters, in Scotland
J. B. S.
There recurs above the same St. Donevald
or Donald, with his holy virgin offspring, on the XII day of July, where concerning that family we treated among the things Passed Over from the Menology of Camerarius, remitting the whole matter, on the authority of others, to this day, These Saints are here recorded not without cause to fear that much more light might be shed by the darkness recognized from that quarter: whence probably here too they should be passed over. Nor indeed could the feeble authority of Camerarius or Dempster move me sufficiently, of whom the former there recorded the father with so many daughters, but the latter on this day, at their mere, as I then thought, discretion. Camerarius cited Scottish Writers, in whom, however the substance of the matter was recorded, namely that Saints of some sort had excelled by a wondrous and austere manner of life, it was not yet certain that they had ever been honored with a Catholic rite, which being lacking, it did not seem lawful to us to place them in our work. At length the Aberdeen Breviary prevailed, from which, other things being extracted, we have more than once made use: since in that church an Office was once in use. The title given elsewhere, we here repeat: The Lives of the Scottish Saints from the Breviary for the use of the distinguished Cathedral church of Aberdeen, and so of the whole Scottish church: committed to print at the expense of Walter Chepman, a merchant of Edinburgh, on the Kalends of February, in the year of the birth of Christ 1509, the XXII of James IV, King of the Scots, the winter part being excerpted: whence it runs through the whole year.
[2] I shall indeed confess that there are not there related lessons or an ordered history concerning these Saints; on the authority of the Aberdeen Breviary. but since their festivity, as well as that of St. Palladius, St. Kilian, etc., is there expressed, I seem to have foundation enough to grant them a place here. These things are there noted: Of the holy nine Virgins, daughters of St. Donald in Scotland, under King Eugene VII, in the year 712 or 716; July XV. The words of Camerarius on the XII of July are these: St. Donevald, otherwise Donald, with his nine daughters. See Leslie, book 4, Boece, book 9, Regius in the Calendar. He passed a most holy life with his daughters in the solitude of Ogilvy, but he himself being dead, they entered the monastery of Abernethy. Dempster has it thus on this day: At Abernethy, of Donevald the husbandman, and of his nine daughters ascribed to the Saints, whose dwelling, an aged oak, was shown in the memory of the fathers; and whose miracles, sculptured on the walls of a most ancient little church, were lately profaned and abolished by the heretics. Almost the same things are extant in other Scottish writers, of whom it will suffice to have selected Leslie, book 4, in Eugene VII, page 165: While this king lived, the holiness of a certain Donevald, of a noble family of the Scots, availed very much to inflame the minds of men with the zeal of piety: who, in the solitude of Ogilvy, not far from the town of Alecto, with his nine female children, leading a most strict life, passed his life in prayers and fastings. These things we have dared to bring forward, the veneration once exhibited to those Saints being supposed, the truth of whose history we wish left to the faith of the Scots.