MacCallin of Lusk
The Holy Hierarch MacCallin (Mac Cuilinn), Bishop of Lusk
Bishop · d. c. 497
Commemorated 6 September
MacCallin (Mac Cuilinn, Macculind) was bishop of Lusk (Lusca) in the north of the present County Dublin, one of the founding generation of the Irish church in the age after St Patrick. The Annals of Ulster record his death under the year 496; the traditional date, following the hagiographer Colgan, is 497. His name stands in the earliest Irish martyrologies, and a Scottish parish (Macallan, in Moray) preserved his veneration in Scotland. Beyond this the record is thin: the surviving Acts attached to his name are late and legendary. He is commemorated on September 6.
The secure record of MacCallin is short and early. The Annals of Ulster enter his death — Mac Cuilinn, bishop of Lusca, rested — under the year 496 (the traditional 497 derives from Colgan's reckoning). Lusk, whose name preserves the old Lusca, lies in Fingal north of Dublin and remained a monastic and episcopal site of consequence for centuries; MacCallin is its first recorded bishop. His memory is kept in the earliest stratum of the Irish calendars: the Martyrology of Tallaght lists him, and the metrical Martyrology of Óengus (c. 800) gives the line Luscai la Macc Cuilinn — "Lusk with Mac Cuilinn" (see the feast note below on the day).
The name Mac Cuilinn is a patronymic form; the later Irish tradition supplies a personal name for him in varying shapes (Cainnech/Caindedh among them) and a Munster genealogy, but these come from the seventeenth-century compilers and the late Acts, not from the early record. A body of Acts of St Maculin of Lusk survives in manuscript at Trinity College Dublin, reported by O'Hanlon; it credits him with many foundations, miracles in Ireland and Scotland, and a journey to Rome — matter of the high-medieval legendary kind, several centuries removed from the saint, and it is recorded here as legend, not history. His veneration in Scotland, however, is independently witnessed by the old parish of Macallan in Moray (annexed to Knockando in the modern era), which Forbes's Kalendars of Scottish Saints derives from him.
He is not to be confused with the much later Maccallin (Macallan) of Waulsort (†978), an Irish monk of Péronne and Gorze who became abbot of Waulsort near Dinant, commemorated January 21 — a distinct saint whom the same calendars carry under an identical name.
Feast and commemoration
September 6 (church date; Old Calendar civil September 19), in the GB&I layer of the St Constantine York calendar: "St. MacCallin, bishop of Lusk (497)." Orthodox England keeps him the same day ("Bishop of Lusk in Ireland, he is also venerated in Scotland"). The oldest martyrologies — Tallaght and Óengus — place him on September 5, while the Martyrology of Donegal and the general later tradition give September 6; the York calendar follows the latter, and so does this entry. He is not found in the OCA's Lives of the Saints (checked 2026-07-29). No proper service is known; the common of a hierarch applies.
Iconography
No image of MacCallin is known, ancient or modern, and no icon could be stored for this entry. He would be painted as an elder bishop of the early Irish church, with omophorion and Gospel book; the round tower and medieval church of Lusk, his see, would serve to identify him.