St. Machbar of Aberdeen

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. He came to Iona with Columba and preached in Mull and later ministered to the Picts around Aberdeen. 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. St Machar's Cathedral in Aberdeen is named in his honor. The Machar oil field in the North Sea is named after the saint. His Feast day is on 12 November.

A fourteenth-century legend tells how God (or St Columba) told Machar to establish a church where a river bends into the shape of a bishop's crosier before flowing into the sea. The River Don bends in this way just below where the Church now stands.