There has been a pervasive modern assumption, repeated in many church guide books, that churches dedicated to early saints were a result of their missionary activity and ministry in these places. Successive hagiographers may have made the same assumption, and the stories that they told connecting saints with these disparate locations subsequently provided evidence in support of this supposition. Medieval tales of voyages overseas have supported the idea that churches dedicated to foreign saints in other countries bear their names because of their own travels. Although none of these missionary journeys can be substantiated with certainty, it is clear that people and ideas moved around the western seaways in the early medieval period.