gentleness and was canonised in 1135. St Ronald, the son of Magnus's sister Gunhild Erlendsdotter, became Earl of Orkney in 1136 and in 1137 initiated the construction of St Magnus Cathedral in Kirkwall. The story of St Magnus has been retold in the 20th century in the chamber opera The Martyrdom of St Magnus (1976) by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, based on George Mackay Brown's novel Magnus (1973). However, the church was not linked to St Magnus of Orkney before the 18th century when it was suggested that the church was either "dedicated to the memory of St Magnus or Magnes, who suffer'd under the Emperor Aurelian in 276 [this appears to be a reference to St Mammes of Caesarea, whose feast day is on 17 August], or else to a person of that name, who was the famous Apostle or Bishop of the Orcades." For the next century most historians followed the suggestion that the church was dedicated to the Roman saint of Cæsarea. The famous Danish archaeologist Professor Jens Jacob Asmussen Worsaae (1821–85) promoted the attribution to St Magnus of Orkney during his visit to the British Isles in 1846-7, when he was formulating the concept of the 'Viking Age', and in his Account of the Danes and Norwegians in England, Scotland, and Ireland of 1852. This theory immediately found its way into both guides and academic works. The discovery of St Magnus of Orkney's relics in 1919 increased interest in a Scandinavian patron and this connection was encouraged by the Rector who arrived in 1921. The dedication to St Magnus of Orkney was confirmed by the Bishop of London in 1926. Following this decision a patronal festival service was held on 16 April 1926. The 900th anniversary of the death of St Magnus was marked with a Pontifical High Mass and Solemn Pontifical Vespers on 16 April 2016, but in 2017 at St Magnus Cathedral in Orkney. The original church pre-dated the canonisation of St Magnus of Orkney by around a century and was also probably constructed before the cult of St Olaf, which did not become established in London until the 1050s. The dedication of the church to St Magnus (as for the four City churches dedicated to St Botolph) at least partly reflected interest in particular saints' relics during the 11th century. There was a cultus to this earlier St Magnus before the Norman Conquest;