Curetán

Who is Curetán?

Saint Curetán was a Scoto-Pictish bishop and saint, who floruit between 690 and 710. He is listed as one of the witnesses in the Cáin Adomnáin, where he is called "Curetan epscop". In the Matyrology of Tallaght he is called "of Ross Mand Bairend" and in the Martyrology of O'Gorman he is styled "bishop and abbot of Ross maic Bairend". His bishopric is usually held, and with good reason, to have been Ross, the seat of which was at the settlement in the Black Isle called Ros-Maircnidh or Rosemarkie, named after the adjacent promontory

A hagiography of Curetán is found in the sixteenth century MS known as the Breviary of Aberdeen, where his vita occurs under the name "Boniface". In this hagiography, his Latin name is accompanied by a story of his Hebrew origins, a descendant of the sister of Saint Peter and Saint Andrew, who was first ordained as a priest by the Patriarch of Jerusalem, before travelling to Rome and becoming Pope, later resigning and moving to Pictland. The story is similar to that in the Life of St. Serf, and it has been conjectured that both were the product of the Romanizing faction in the Easter Controversy. There are place-name commemorations to Saint Curetán along Glen Urquhart, Strathglass, Glen Glass, Loch Ness and the Cromarty Firth. Curetán-Boniface is also associated with the churches of Restenneth and Invergowrie, churches which, like Rosemarkie, both have dedications to Saint Peter.