Barvitus (

fl. ''Floruit'' ( ; usually abbreviated fl. or occasionally flor.; from Latin for 'flourished') denotes a date or period during which a person was known to have been alive or active. In English, the unabbreviated word may also be used as a noun indic ...

545) was a supposed Scottish saint. David E. Thornton suggests that he is a manifestation of the cult of St Finbarr, from north-east

Ulster Ulster (; or ; or ''Ulster'') is one of the four traditional or historic provinces of Ireland, Irish provinces. It is made up of nine Counties of Ireland, counties: six of these constitute Northern Ireland (a part of the United Kingdom); t ...

. Barvitus is said to have been the disciple of St Brandan, and his companion in his wanderings.

Historical records

Thomas Dempster Thomas Dempster (23 August 1579 – 6 September 1625) was a Scottish scholar and historian. Born into the aristocracy in Aberdeenshire, which comprises regions of both the Scottish highlands and the Scottish lowlands, he was sent abroad as a yo ...

in his ''Historia ecclesiastica gentis Scotarum'' stated that he wrote the life of his teacher, and flourished about 658, and that the Scotch church kept 5 January sacred to his memory. Other authorities refer to one Barnitus, not Barvitus, as the saint from whose accounts of his own experience Brandan was tempted to go on his search for the

Fortunate Isles The Fortunate Isles or Isles of the Blessed (, ''makarōn nēsoi'') were semi-legendary islands in the Atlantic Ocean, variously treated as a simple geographical location and as a winterless earthly paradise inhabited by the heroes of Greek myth ...

, but Barnitus and Barvitus were apparently variants of one name. A Scottish breviary says that Barvitus' body, or relics, were venerated at

Dreghorn Dreghorn is a village in North Ayrshire, Scotland, east of Irvine town centre, on the old main road from Irvine to Kilmarnock. It is sited on a ridge between two rivers. As archaeological excavations near the village centre have found a signi ...

. The exact connection of the saint with St. Brandan seems uncertain. The only work assigned to Barvitus by Dempster is one entitled 'De Brandani Rebus.' Thomas Tanner suggested that this might be the old manuscript life of St. Brandan preserved in Lincoln College library at Oxford. But Henry Octavius Coxe assigned the handwriting of this manuscript to the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

References

* ;Attribution Year of birth unknown Year of death unknown 6th-century Scottish people Medieval Scottish saints Scottish biographers 6th-century Christian saints {{saint-stub