Túathalán

Túathalán (died c. 747) was an 8th-century abbot of Cennrigmonaid. He is known only from his obituary in the Annals of Ulster. Cennrigmonaid, literally "head of the king's pastureland", is a site associated with later St. Andrews, and is probably that site's former name. Túathalán is the first cleric associated with a church establishment there, and Túathalán's obituary constitutes the first source for both the existence of a church there and for the existence of the location itself. The church was likely founded around the beginning of the 8th century, probably by Óengus I mac Fergusa, King of the Picts, although King Nechtan mac Der-Ile may also have been responsible. Túathalán may therefore have been the first ever abbot of the location. There was probably a Hexham connection. The latter was a monastic establishment whose writings show a good deal of knowledge about the Picts, and who share a dedication to St. Andrew.

References

• Anderson, Alan Orr, Scottish Annals from English Chroniclers: AD 500–1286, (London, 1908), republished, Marjorie Anderson (ed.) (Stamford, 1991)
• Forsyth, Kathryn, "Evidence of a Lost Pictish source in the Historia Regum Anglorum of Symeon of Durham", in Simon Taylor (ed.) Kings, Clerics, and Chronicles in Scotland, 500-1297: Essays in Honour of Marjorie Ogilvie Anderson on the Occasion of Her Ninetieth Birthday, (Dublin, 2000), pp. 19–32; Appendix by John Koch, pp. 33–4
• Woolf, Alex, "Onuist son of Uurguist:Tyrannus Carnifex or a David for the Picts", in David Hill & Margaret Worthington (eds.), Æthelbald and Off, Two Eighth-Century Kings of Mercia: Papers from a Conference held in Manchester in 2000, (Manchester, 2005), pp. 35–42.