Eikon

Lolan of Kincardine

Saint Lolan, Bishop, honoured at Kincardine-in-Menteith

Bishop · d. c. 1034 (calendar tradition; see entry)

Commemorated 2 September — As kept in the GB&I layer; the Scottish kalendars give September 22

Lolan (Lolanus, †c. 1034 in the calendar tradition) is a saint of Scotland honoured at Kincardine-in-Menteith, near Stirling, where the old parish church bears his name and where the Aberdeen Martyrology says he was buried. The pre-Reformation Scottish books commemorate him on September 22 as a bishop and confessor; his bell and pastoral staff survived as heritable relics attached to lands there into the seventeenth century. His written legend, preserved only in the Aberdeen Breviary of 1510, is late and extravagant — a nephew of St Serf, born in Galilee, keeper of the keys of St Peter's in Rome — and stands in flat contradiction with the calendar notices that place him under King Duncan I (†1040). The contradiction is recorded here, not resolved.

Nothing contemporary survives about Lolan. What exists is a cultus — a church, a burial tradition, relics, a fair — and, at the end of the Middle Ages, a legend. This entry gives each stratum in turn and does not join them into a biography, because they cannot be joined.

The fixed points are these. The old parish church of Kincardine-in-Menteith, in the carse of the Forth west of Stirling, is a dedication to St Lolan. The Aberdeen Martyrology commemorates, at September 22, "in Scotland, Saint Lolan, bishop and confessor, of Kincardine near Stirling, and buried there," adding that he is celebrated for the greatness of his miracles. The Register of Cambuskenneth Abbey records among holdings at Kincardine "a toft, and the bell of St Lolan and the staff of St Lolan" (unum toftum et campana Sti. Lolani et baculum Sti. Lolani): the saint's campana and baculum — the classic relics of a Celtic churchman — were heritable property attached to land there, and the bell still appears (garbled as "the sacred bell of St Olave, or Solan") in the Retours of the Earl of Perth as late as 1662 and 1675. A fair of St Lolan was held at Broughton in Stobo, Peeblesshire. The modern Scottish place-name surveys add only a possible further dedication at Bonhill on the Leven.

The legend of the Aberdeen Breviary

The Aberdeen Breviary (1510) gives Lolan at September 22 an office of nine lessons, whose legend is, in Bishop Forbes's words, "a very strange one." Lolanus, a nephew of St Servanus (Serf), born in Galilee in the land of Canaan, came to Rome and was made claviger — key-keeper — of the Roman Church. When his uncle left Rome by divine command to preach to the Scots, Lolan remained seven years in his ministry; then, longing to see Serf's face, he one night shut the church of St Peter as usual, left the key in a conspicuous place, and set out on foot for the west, coming at last to the place "which the common people call Planum." In the morning the clergy of Rome could not open the door of St Peter's: it was revealed to them that it could be opened only by the hand that had shut it. A deacon and subdeacon were sent after Lolan, who, when they found him and told him this, took a sword, cut off his right hand upon a stone, and gave it to the legates, by which the gate was opened. In return he asked for four ass-loads of earth from the cemetery of St Peter, in which his own body might be buried, and prayed that whoever in sickness should vow to be buried in that earth should receive the same indulgences as if buried at St Peter's itself. The whole of this rests on the Breviary alone; it is a late medieval composition, its indulgence-motif belongs to its own age rather than the saint's, and it is retold here as legend, not as history.

The calendar notices and King Duncan

A different and equally late stratum ties Lolan to the eleventh century. Adam King's Kalendar (1588) enters at September 22: "S. Lolane bischop and confess. in Scotlande vnder king Dunkane. 1034" — the source, evidently, of the date "c. 1034" carried by the modern lists. Camerarius (1631), placing him at September 24, states that the saint aided King Duncan by counsel and prayers when the Danes invaded by sea and land and were routed partly at Kinghorn, partly at Culross; Forbes takes this as a traditional refraction of Duncan I's historical struggle with Thorfinn Sigurdsson of Orkney. Bishop Challoner (Memorials of British Piety) makes him a bishop at Whithorn and has him depart to the Lord in 1054. None of these notices is older than the sixteenth century, and no see-list of Whithorn or elsewhere carries him.

Feast and commemoration

The pre-Reformation Scottish witnesses — the kalendar and breviary of Aberdeen, the Aberdeen Martyrology, Adam King — keep Lolan on September 22; Camerarius gives September 24. The GB&I layer of the St Constantine York calendar, the witness for this entry, lists him on September 2 as "St. Lolanus (c. 1034)" (church date 09-02; New Calendar civil September 2, Old Calendar civil September 15, rank primary). The discrepancy between the modern Orthodox listing and the old Scottish date is recorded here as an open question; no source consulted explains the transfer. He is found on no other Orthodox calendar consulted for this day. No proper service exists; the common of a hierarch applies.

Iconography

No iconography of Lolan survives, ancient or medieval; his memory at Kincardine was carried by his bell and staff rather than by any image, and no Orthodox icon of him is known. He is listed among the wanted icons. His church at Kincardine-in-Menteith and its burial ground still stand.

Disputed questions

  • One saint, two centuries. A nephew of St Serf belongs, on any reckoning of the Serf traditions, to the earliest ages of Scottish Christianity; a counsellor of King Duncan I died about four or five centuries later. Both cannot be true of one man, and the sources are too thin to decide whether an early saint was re-dated, a late bishop was given an apostolic legend, or two commemorations have merged. The date c. 1034 used in this entry's frontmatter follows the calendar tradition that the witness calendar itself follows (Adam King), and is flagged as tradition, not record.
  • Not to be confused with the Greek martyr Lollianus (July 15), a synaxarion martyr trampled to death, who is a wholly different commemoration despite the similar name; nor with Lollion the New (June 23). The resemblance of Lolanus to Lollianus is coincidental so far as the sources show.

Sources

  1. St Constantine York, Calendar of Saints and Readings (ICS feed), retrieved 2026-07-29 — the witness for this entry: "St. Lolanus (c. 1034)", September 2.
  2. A. P. Forbes, Kalendars of Scottish Saints (Edinburgh, 1872), s.v. "Lolan," pp. 378–79 — the backbone of this entry; Forbes prints or cites the Aberdeen Breviary legend (Brev. Aberd., pars estiva, fol. cxiii), the Aberdeen Martyrology notice, Adam King's Kalendar, Camerarius, Challoner (Memorials of British Piety, p. 132), the Retours of Perth (nos. 708, 880) for the bell, the Register of Cambuskenneth for bell and staff, and Origines Parochiales (i. 201) for the Stobo fair. Consulted in the public-domain text on archive.org.
  3. Aberdeen Breviary (1510), September 22, office of nine lessons — via Forbes and the University of Edinburgh's digitised copy (fol. 113v).
  4. Saints in Scottish Place-Names database (University of Glasgow) and the Database of Dedications to Saints in Medieval Scotland (University of Edinburgh) — modern surveys confirming the Kincardine dedication, the September 22 feast, the Serf relationship in the Breviary, and the possible Bonhill dedication. Leads and cross-checks only.
  5. Independent Orthodox corroboration beyond the York calendar's own tradition was sought and not found: he appears on no OCA, Greek, Russian or Romanian calendar consulted for September 2. Orthodox England (Fr Andrew Phillips), the York list's named upstream, could not be consulted: the site fails direct fetch (TLS error) and the Wayback Machine was unreachable from this environment at authoring time.
  6. Baring-Gould and Fisher, Lives of the British Saints, does not cover him: its scope is the saints of Wales and Cornwall, and no claim in this entry rests on it.