Saint Machar

{{Short description|Irish saint}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}

{{Infobox saint

|name= Saint Machar

|birth_date=

|death_date= 6th century

|feast_day= 12 November

|venerated_in= Catholic Church
Eastern Orthodox Church

|image= The font at St Machar's Cathedral by Hew Lorimer.jpg

|imagesize=

|caption= St Machar baptising converts (on the font in St Machar's Cathedral, Aberdeen, 1954)

|birth_place= Ireland

|death_place= Scotland

|titles= Bishop

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|canonized_date=

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Machar was a 6th-century Irish Saint active in Scotland.

A Bishop of Irish origin, Machar is said to have been a former nobleman, baptized by St Colman.[http://www.indcatholicnews.com/news.php?viewStory=25985 "St. Machar", Independent Catholic News, November 12, 2014] He came to Iona with Columba and preached in Mull and later ministered to the Picts around Aberdeen.[https://catholicsaints.info/book-of-saints-macharius/ Monks of Ramsgate. “Macharius”. Book of Saints, 1921. CatholicSaints.Info. 13 November 2014]{{PD-notice}} For this reason he was described anachronistically as the first Bishop of the see of Aberdeen.

His legend, however, in the Aberdeen breviary makes him "Archbishop of Tours", appointed by Gregory the Great for the last few years of his life. This story deserves no credence. Water from his well was used for baptism in Aberdeen Cathedral. A few dedications survive from this area.Oxford Dictionary of Saints, 1978

Much of what is claimed to be known about St Machar derives from the Aberdeen Breviary, a work compiled in the late fifteenth to early sixteenth centuries, long after the traditional date of Machar's life. It is therefore hard to assess its reliability.

One recent theory is that St Machar and St Mungo were the same person, on the grounds of a possible link between their names (Colm Ó Baoill, St Machar - some linguistic light?, Innes Review XLIV, p. 1-13).