Triduana

Saint Triduana, also known as Tredwell or Trøllhaena, is a virgin saint of medieval Scotland whose cult was centred at Restalrig, now part of Edinburgh. Virtually nothing about her can be confirmed from contemporary records; the principal narrative of her life is the legend printed in the Aberdeen Breviary in the early sixteenth century, supplemented by place-names, well dedications, and later local tradition. She is remembered above all as a healer of diseases of the eyes.

According to that legend, Triduana was of noble Greek family and came to Pictland in the company of Saint Rule (Regulus), who is said to have brought relics of the Apostle Andrew from Patras. Some versions associate her origin with Colosse in Phrygia. She first settled at Rescobie in Angus. A Pictish king named Nechtan, struck by the beauty of her eyes, sought her in marriage. In order to remain a virgin consecrated to God, Triduana tore out her own eyes and sent them to the king on a thorn or wooden pin, telling him that he might possess what he had desired but would not possess her. She then lived as a recluse, traditions placing her subsequently at Dunfallandy in Atholl and finally at Restalrig in Lothian, where she died and was buried.

Her tomb and holy well at Restalrig became a noted pilgrimage shrine in later medieval Scotland, visited especially by those suffering from blindness or other ocular ailments. A chapel of Saint Triduana stood there; in the late fifteenth century King James III favoured the site, and a distinctive hexagonal structure, often interpreted as a well-house, was associated with her cult. The shrine was suppressed at the Scottish Reformation in 1560 and her relics disappeared. Devotion to her is also attested in Caithness and Sutherland, where the name Kintradwell is derived from a church of Triduana, and in Orkney, where Saint Tredwell’s Chapel and loch on Papa Westray were long credited with cures of the eyes.

Historians regard the fourth-century Greek origin and the episode with King Nechtan as hagiographical legend rather than recoverable fact. The name Triduana may be Pictish or early Gaelic, and it is possible that the Restalrig cult preserves the memory of an otherwise unknown local holy woman, or that several traditions have been fused. She is commemorated as a virgin and recluse. Her feast day is 8 October. In Scottish religious tradition she remains the saint invoked against blindness and diseases of the eyes.