Drostan

Saint Drostan (also known as Drustan or Throstan) was an Irish-⁠Scottish abbot who flourished around 600 and died in the early seventh century, around 610. He was the founder and first abbot of the monastery of Old Deer in Aberdeenshire in Scotland. What is known of him is found in the Breviarium Aberdonense and in the Book of Deer, a ninth-⁠century manuscript, but the two accounts do not agree in every particular. He seems to have belonged to the royal family of the Scots, his father's name being Cosgrach. Showing signs of a religious vocation from an early age, he was entrusted to Saint Columba, who trained him and gave him the monastic habit.

He was one of the twelve companions who sailed from Ireland to Scotland with Saint Columba around 563, known as the "Brethren of Saint Columba". According to the Celtic legend, Columba, Drostan and others went from Iona into Buchan and established an important missionary centre at Deer on the banks of the Ugie, on lands given by the mormaer of the district, whose son had been freed by their prayers from a dangerous illness. The Pictish ruler gave them the site of Deir, fourteen miles farther inland, and when Columba returned to Iona he left Drostan there as abbot. On the death of the abbot of Dalquhongale (Holywood) a few years later, Drostan was chosen to succeed him. Afterwards, feeling called to a life of greater seclusion, he resigned his abbacy and became a hermit at Glenesk, where his sanctity attracted the poor and needy and many miracles are ascribed to him, including the restoration of sight to a priest named Symon.

He died at Glen Esk, and his remains were conveyed to Aberdour and deposited in a stone coffin, where his bones were said to work miraculous cures on the sick. His relics are kept in the church of New Aberdour, and his holy well lies nearby. The Breviary of Aberdeen celebrates his feast on 15 December, and in the West it is kept on 11 July. The monastery of Old Deer, fallen into decay, was rebuilt for Cistercian monks in 1213 and continued until the Reformation. The Orthodox calendar commemorates him on 11 July, as a saint of the West before the Great Schism (a saint of the undivided Church), by the New Calendar.