Venerable Máel Ruba of Ross, Abbot of Applecross

The ruins of Applecross Monastery

This Palm Sunday, the twenty-first of April, is also the feast day of a pre-Schismatic saint of Scotland, the Irish abbot Máel Ruba. It’s rather a pity I haven’t done hagiographies of more Irish saints in this series, Saint Fursa of Burgh notwithstanding. However, Saint Máel Ruba is important on both isles and deserves a fond remembrance here as such.

Máel Ruba [also Máelrubai, Maol Rubha, Malruibhe or Rufus] was supposedly descended from Niall of the Nine Hostages on his father’s side. He was born on the tenth day of the Christmas feast, in the new year of 642 in Derry, and educated in Bangor. It was here that he took holy orders. When he was twenty-nine years old, he set sail from the northern coast of Ireland with several monks, to spread the Gospel among the Picts of Scotland. They spent two years in this pursuit, going all about the Highlands with the word of Christ on their tongues and kind deeds in their hands, before in 673 Máel Ruba decided to found a monastery on the far western coast of Ross – what is now Applecross.

The Applecross Monastery quickly became known as a’Chomraich or ‘the Sanctuary’. Using the monastery as a safe haven, the monks of a’Chomraich sent missionaries across a broad swathe of the Scottish Highlands, from the Western Isles to Keith and from Lewis to Durness.

There are two stories about how Máel Ruba ended his earthly life. The first and more dramatic one is that he was martyred, either at Urquhart or in his sojourn in Strathnaver at Teampull. A band of raiding Vikings came across Máel Ruba and his companions, and put them to the sword. This is somewhat far-fetched as the first documented appearance of Vikings in Scotland happened seven decades later, in the 790s. The other, and more likely, has it that he died peacefully at the age of eighty, at the community of Applecross. Regardless of which is true, the Christianisation of the Picts is largely owing to the efforts of his monks. He died on the twenty-first of April, which is kept as his feast-day. Holy Father Máel Ruba, pray unto Christ our God for us sinners!