THE FAMILY OF IONA.
[Sidenote: What St. Columba had accomplished in twelve years; and
meaning of the expression “Family of Iona.”]
Twelve years had now elapsed since Columba first set foot on the island
of Iona, and he had already to a great extent accomplished the task he
had set before him. He had founded his monastery in the island, as the
central point of his mission; and the exhibition of the Christian life,
as alone it was possible to present it in the state of society which
prevailed among these pagan tribes, as a colony of tonsured monks
following a monastic rule, had its usual effect in influencing the
population of the adjacent districts. He had converted and baptized the
most powerful monarch that ever occupied the Pictish throne, and secured
his friendship and support; and this was soon followed by the whole
nation ostensibly professing the Christian faith. He had succeeded in
re-establishing the Irish colony of Dalriada in the full possession of
its territories, and obtained from the _Ardri_, or supreme king of
Ireland, the recognition of its independence. He now found himself
occupying a position of great influence and authority both in Ireland
and Scotland—as the founder of numerous monasteries in the former, and
as the acknowledged head of the Christian Church in the latter. Adamnan
tells us that he had founded monasteries within the territories both of
the Picts and of the Scots of Britain, who are separated from each other
by the great mountain range of Drumalban.[252] These monasteries, as
well as those which he had founded in Ireland, regarded the insular
monastery of Iona as the mother church, and as having, as such, a claim
to their obedience; and became subject to her jurisdiction, while their
inmates constituted the great monastic fraternity which was termed the
_Muintir Iae_, or family of Iona, in the extended sense of the term.
Adamnan mentions only a few of these monasteries, and gives no details
which might enable us to fix the exact date of their foundation; though
we can gather from his narrative that some of them existed during the
earlier years of his mission, and all must, of course, have been founded
at some period during the thirty-four years of his life in Iona.
[Sidenote: Monasteries founded in the islands.]
Among the islands in which he founded monasteries, the two most
important are those termed by Adamnan ‘Ethica terra’ and ‘Insula Hinba,’
or ‘Hinbina:’ the former has been conclusively identified with the
low-lying and fertile island of Tiree, the _Tireth_, or ‘land of corn,’
which lies about twenty miles to the north-west of Iona, and whose dim
outline would be barely seen on the horizon were it not for the elevated
promontory of Ceannavara at the south end of the island. The name Hinba
or Hinbina seems to designate the group of islands called the Garveloch
Isles, situated in the centre of the great channel which separates the
island of Mull from the mainland of Lorn, and which were the _Imbach_,
or ‘sea-surrounded.’ The most westerly of the four islands which
constitute this group is termed Elachnave and _Eilean na Naomh_, or the
Island of Saints. It is a grassy island rising to a considerable height,
and has at the west side a small and sheltered bay, on the lower ground
facing which are a fountain, called St. Columcille’s Well, and the
foundations of what must have been a monastic establishment, near which
are the remains of two beehive cells.[253] It is probable that on these
two islands were founded the two earliest monasteries by Brendan before
they were lost to the Scots of Dalriada by the defeat of the year 560,
by which event they were probably swept away. In the year 565 Comgall of
Bangor, who had come to the assistance of Columba on his first visit to
King Brude, erected a monastery at a certain village in the land of
Heth, or Tiree, where he is said in his Life to have abode some time;
and that too was ruined by the Picts. We are told in his Life that, ‘one
day when Comgall was working in the field, he put his white hood over
his garment; and about the same time a number of heathen plunderers from
the Picts came to that village to carry away everything that was there,
whether man or beast. Accordingly when the heathen robbers came to
Comgall, who was labouring in the field, and saw his white hood over his
cape, thinking that this white hood was Comgall’s Deity, they were
deterred from laying hands on him, for fear of his God. However, they
carried off to their ship the brethren of Comgall and all their
substance.’ The pirates are of course shipwrecked through the prayers of
the Saint, and gave back their plunder; but afterwards Comgall was
conducted back to Ireland by a company of holy men.[254] This took place
during the interval of fourteen years between the defeat of the Dalriads
in 560 and their re-establishment in 574; and during this period the
islands around Iona, which had been occupied by the Scots and from which
they were driven by the Picts, seem to have formed a sort of debateable
ground with a mixed population of Scots and Picts, who carried on a kind
of guerilla warfare with each other; and any Christian establishments
which existed among them would form points of attack for the heathen
Picts. Thus we have here Pictish sea-robbers attacking the monastery in
Tiree; and Adamnan tells us of a noted pirate of the royal tribe of
Gabhran, and therefore a Scot, called Johan, son of Conall, whose seat
appears to have been the rude fort which gave the name of Dunchonell to
one of the Garvelochs, and whom we find plundering in the district of
Ardnamurchan.[255] He also tells us of a robber, Erc, the Druid’s son,
who resided in Colonsay, and who plunders in the island of Mull.
Of Columban monasteries in Tiree, Adamnan mentions two. One he calls
‘Campus Lunge,’ or the plain of Lunge. It was situated near the shore
over-against Iona, and had a _portus_, or harbour, which is probably the
little creek or bay still known as Portnaluing; and the site of the
monastery has been identified with that of Soroby on the south-east side
of the island, where a large churchyard with some old tombstones and an
ancient cross are the only remains of an ecclesiastical establishment.
The monastery is frequently mentioned by Adamnan. It seems to have been
founded at an early period, and was under the charge of Baithen,
afterwards the successor of Columba in the abbacy of Iona.[256] The
second is termed by Adamnan Artchain, and said to have been founded by
Findchan, one of Columba’s monks, whose name also appears in Kilfinichen
in the island of Mull.[257] The island, too, which he calls Hinba, is
repeatedly mentioned by Adamnan, and seems also to have been an early
foundation. He tells us that at one time Columba sent Ernan, his uncle,
an aged priest, to preside over the monastery he had founded many years
before in that island;[258] and it seems to have been especially
connected with the penitential discipline of the order, and a place of
retirement for those who wished to lead a more solitary life. Thus, we
find Columba on one occasion visiting Hinba, and ordering that the
penitents should enjoy some indulgence in respect of food, which one of
the penitents in that place, a certain Neman, refused to accept.[259]
Again, one of the brethren, Virgnous, after having lived for some time
in the monastery of Iona, resolved to spend the rest of his life in
Hinba, and led the life of an anchorite for twelve years in the
hermitage of Muirbulcmar.[260] The church and the house occupied by
Columba are mentioned by Adamnan, and it is not impossible that the
hermitage here referred to yet exists in one of the two beehive cells,
which is still entire.[261] Here, too, he tells us that four holy
founders of monasteries came from Ireland to visit Columba, whom they
found in Hinba. These were Comgall of Bangor and Cainnech of Achaboe,
the two who had accompanied him in his first visit to King Brude,
Brendan of Clonfert, and that Cormac for whom, when on a voyage in
search of a solitary island in which to found a hermitage, he asked King
Brude to secure the protection of the ruler of the Orkneys. This meeting
must have taken place before the year 577, when Brendan died. They are
termed by Adamnan ‘founders of monasteries,’ and he probably means here
monasteries in Scotland; for Cormac is not known to have founded any
monastery in Ireland, where he was superior of the monastery of Durrow,
founded by Columba shortly before he began his mission in Iona; but in
Galloway the church of Kirkcormac probably takes its name from him. The
other three had all founded monasteries in Scotland—Brendan one in
Tiree, and another probably in the island belonging to the Garveloch
group, called Culbrandon; Comgall, in Tiree; while Cainnech founded
several monasteries in Scotland. In his Life he is said to have lived in
Heth, or Tiree, where the remains of a church called Cillchainnech still
exist. He was also in Iona, where the remains of a burying-ground are
still called Cillchainnech. He is also said to have dwelt at the foot of
a mountain in the Drumalban range, referring, no doubt, to the church of
Laggankenney, at the east end of Loch Laggan, and two islands are
mentioned, _Ibdone_ and _Eninis_, or the ‘island of birds,’ one or other
of which was probably the island now called Inchkenneth, on the west
side of Mull.[262] Adamnan mentions one other island monastery, that of
Elena, of which one of Columba’s twelve followers, Lugneus Mocumin,
became superior—probably _Eilean Naomh_ on the west coast of Isla; and
two monasteries on the mainland, one called Cella Diuni, of which
Cailtan was superior, on the lake of the river Aba, which is probably
Lochawe; and the other called Kailleauinde, of which Finten was
superior, and which may be Killundine in the old parish of Killintag in
Morvern.[263] A few of Columba’s other foundations in western districts
and islands can be traced by their dedications to him. In the island of
Skye, where he is mentioned by Adamnan as having been twice, in the very
remarkable ruins on an island in a loch now drained, called Loch
Chollumcille, in the north of Skye. Also, on an island in the river of
Snizort, one which was of old called Sanct Colme’s kirk in Snizort; and
one on a small island in the bay of Portree, called Eilean
Columcille.[264] The church in Canna too bore his name. In Morvern one
of the two old parishes was called Cillcholumchille, and within the
limits of Dalriada, on the mainland, were a few churches bearing the
same name.
[Sidenote: Monasteries founded during St. Columba’s life by others in
the islands.]
Of churches founded during his life, and no doubt in connection with him
by others, three were sufficiently prominent to be occasionally
mentioned in the Irish Annals. The first was that of Lismore, founded on
the long grassy island of Lismore, lying between the coast of Lorn and
that of Morvern, by Lugadius, or Moluoc, a bishop. He is termed by Angus
the Culdee, under June 25th, ‘Lamluoc the pure, the bright, the
pleasant, the sun of Lismore;’ and the gloss adds, ‘that is, Moluoc of
Lismore in Alban.’ His death is recorded by Tighernac in 592.[265] He is
said by the Breviary of Aberdeen to have been a disciple of Brendan; but
it is more probable that he was attached to Columba, as his pedigree
takes him up to Conall Gulban, the ancestor of Columba and the founder
of the tribe to which he belonged.[266] The name of Kilmaluog in Lismore
still commemorates his church there. The second of these monasteries is
that of _Cinngaradh_, or Kingarth, a church in the south end of the
island of Bute, which was founded by Cathan, who also was a bishop. He
was of the race of the Irish Picts, and the contemporary and friend of
Comgall and Cainnech;[267] and from him were named the churches termed
Cillchattan. The third was founded in the island of _Egea_, or Egg,
which, with its strangely-shaped hill called the Scuir of Egg, can be
seen from the north end of Iona. The founder was Donnan. He is
commemorated by Angus the Culdee in his Felire, on the 17th of April, as
‘Donnan of cold Eig,’ to which the gloss adds, ‘Eig is the name of an
island which is in Alban, and in it is Donnan. This Donnan went to
Columcille to make him his _Anmchara_, or soul-friend; upon which
Columcille said to him, I shall not be soul-friend to a company of red
martyrdom, for thou shalt come to red martyrdom and thy people with
thee; and it was so fulfilled;’[268] and in his Litany he invokes the
‘fifty-four who suffered martyrdom with Donnan of Ega.’[269] This would
place the settlement in the island of Egg in the lifetime of Columba,
and probably during the interval between the defeat and death of Gabran
in 560 and the succession of Aidan in 574, when it required no great
gift of prophecy to anticipate such a fate for a Christian establishment
in one of the group of islands which were at the time the scene of
warfare between the two nations, though this fate did not in fact
overtake them till some time after. The churches termed Cill Donnan were
either founded by him or dedicated to him. The numerous churches in the
west Highlands bearing the names of Cillmaluag, Cillchattan, and
Cilldonnan show that these were centres of missionary work.
[Sidenote: Monasteries founded by Columba and other among the northern
Picts.]
Of the monasteries which must have been founded by Columba in the
Pictish territories east of the Drumalban range Adamnan gives us no
account, nor does he even mention any by name; but of the foundation of
one we have an instructive account in the Book of Deer, which shows that
they extended as far as the Eastern Sea. The tradition of the foundation
of the churches of Aberdour in Banffshire and of Deer in the district of
Buchan are thus given. ‘Columcille and Drostan, son of Cosgrach, his
pupil, came from _Hi_, or Iona, as God had shown to them, unto
_Abbordoboir_, or Aberdour, and Bede the _Cruithnech_, or Pict, was
Mormaer of Buchan before them; and it was he that gave them that
_cathair_, or town, in freedom for ever from Mormaer and Toisech. They
came after that to the other town; and it was pleasing to Columcille,
because it was full of God’s grace, and he asked of the Mormaer—viz.,
Bede—that he should give it him, and he did not give it; and a son of
his took an illness after refusing the clerics, and he was nearly dead.
Then the Mormaer went to entreat the clerics that they should make
prayer for the son, that health should come to him, and he gave in
offering to them from _Cloch in tiprat_ to _Cloch pette mic Garnait_.
They made the prayer, and health came to him. Then Columcille gave to
Drostan that _cathair_, and blessed it, and left as his word “Whosoever
should come against it, let him not be many-yeared victorious.”
Drostan’s tears came on parting with Columcille. Said Columcille, “Let
Dear be its name henceforward.”’[270] In this traditional account
preserved by the monks of Deer, we have a type of the mode in which
these monasteries, or Christian colonies, were settled among the heathen
tribes—the grant of a _cathair_, or fort, by the head of the tribe, and
its occupation by a colony of clerics,—which is quite in accordance with
what we learn as to the settlements of this monastic church in Ireland.
The church of _Rosmarkyn_, now Rosemarky, on the northern shore of the
Moray Firth, and that of _Muirthillauch_, or Mortlach, in the vale of
the Fiddich, were dedicated to Moluog of Lismore, and were probably
founded by him, as was that of Kildonan in Sutherland, by Donnan.
[Sidenote: A.D. 584-597.
Monasteries founded by Columba among the southern Picts.]
In 584 an event happened which appears to have opened up an additional
field for Columba’s missionary labour. This was the death of his steady
friend and supporter King Brude, who died in that year.[271] Adamnan
seems to be at a loss to account for death having been allowed to
overtake King Brude while the powerful intercession of the great saint
might have been exercised on his behalf, and attributes it to the
disappearance of a mysterious crystal which Columba had blessed, and
which, when dipped in water, was believed to impart to it a curative
virtue. It was preserved among the king’s treasures, but could not be
found, though sought for in the place where it was kept on the day when
King Brude died in his palace near the river Ness.[272] His successor
was Gartnaidh, son of Domelch, who belonged to the nation of the
southern Picts, and appears to have had his royal seat at Abernethy, on
the southern bank of the Tay, near its junction with the river Earn. The
only fact recorded of his reign is that he built the church of Abernethy
two hundred and twenty-five years and eleven months before the church of
Dunkeld was built by King Constantin.[273] The statement is so specific,
that it seems to embody a fragment of real history contained in some
early chronicle, and places the date of the foundation of Abernethy
during the first ten years of Gartnaidh’s reign. The nation of the
southern Picts had, as we have seen, been converted early in the
previous century by Ninian; and the Pictish Chronicle attributes the
foundation of the church of Abernethy to an early King Nectan, who
reigned from 457 to 481; but the Christianity established among them had
no permanence, and they gradually fell off, till hardly even the
semblance of a Christian church remained. What King Gartnaidh did,
therefore, was to found a new monastic church where the earlier church
had been, which, like it, was dedicated to St. Bridget of Kildare, and
this not only took place during Columba’s life, but is, in the ancient
tract called the _Amra Columcille_, directly attributed to his
preaching, for in alluding to his death it contains this line: ‘For the
teacher is not, who used to teach the _tuatha_, or tribes, of Toi;’ and
the gloss upon it is, ‘The teacher who used to teach the tribes who were
around Tai. It is the name of a river in Alban;’ and again, ‘He subdued
the mouths of the fierce who were at Toi with the will of the king,’
which is thus glossed: ‘He subdued the mouths of the fierce with the
_Ardrig_, or supreme king of Toi; though it was what they wished—to say
evil, so it is a blessing they used to make, _ut fuit_ Balam.’[274]
Gartnaidh is here called the supreme king of _Toi_, or of the Tay, and
the people whom Columba taught, the tribes about the Tay, which leaves
little doubt that the church of Abernethy on the banks of the Tay, at
this time the chief seat of government, had been refounded in connection
with his mission to the southern Picts. In this work Columba had also
the assistance of his friend Cainnech, whose Pictish descent would
render his aid more effective. Cainnech appears to have founded a
monastery in the east end of the province of Fife, not far from where
the river Eden pours its waters into the German Ocean at a place called
_Rig-Monadh_, or the royal mount, which afterwards became celebrated as
the site on which the church of St. Andrews was founded, and as giving
to that church its Gaelic name of _Kilrimont_. In the notice of Cainnech
on 11th October in the Martyrology of Angus the Culdee, the following
gloss is added: ‘And _Achadh-bo_ is his principal church, and he has a
_Recles_, or monastery, at _Cill Rig-monaig_ in Alban. Once upon a time,
when Cainnech went to visit Finnin, he asked him for a place of
residence. I see no place here now, said Finnin, for others have taken
all the places up before thee. May there be a desert place there, said
Cainnech, that is, in Alban;’[275] and this seems to be alluded to in
the Life of Cainnech when it is said, ‘Afterwards the Irish saints sent
messengers to Cainnech, having learnt that he was living as a hermit in
Britain; and Cainnech was then brought from his hermitage against his
will.’[276] The churches dedicated to Moluog, to Drostan, to Machut the
pupil of Brendan, and to Cathan, and the church founded at Dunblane by
Blaan of Cinngaradh, the son of King Aidan and nephew of Cathan,[277]
show the spread of the Columban Church in the territory of the southern
Picts.
[Sidenote: Visit of Saint Columba to Ireland.]
In the latter years of his life we find Columba residing for a few
months in the midland part of Ireland, and visiting the brethren who
dwelt in the celebrated monastery of Clonmacnois. His reception there
shows the estimation in which he was now held. ‘As soon as it was known
that he was near, all flocked from their little grange farms near the
monastery, and, along with those who were within it, ranged themselves
with enthusiasm under the Abbot Alither; then, advancing beyond the
enclosure of the monastery, they went out as one man to meet Columba, as
if he were an angel of the Lord; humbly bowing down, with their faces to
the ground, in his presence, they kissed him most reverently, and,
singing hymns of praise as they went, they conducted him with all honour
to the church. Over the saint, as he walked, a canopy made of wood was
supported by four men walking by his side, lest the holy abbot Columba
should be troubled by the crowd of brethren pressing upon him.’[278] In
593 Columba completed thirty years of his missionary work in Britain,
and this seems to have given him a foreboding of his coming end;[279]
but he survived four years longer, and then his thirty-four years’
pilgrimage in Britain was brought to its close with his life.
[Sidenote: Last day of his life.]
The touching narrative which both his biographers, Cummene and Adamnan,
give of his last days has been often quoted; but it presents such a
charming picture of what his life in the island was, that it may well be
repeated here. In the year 597 Columba had reached his seventy-seventh
year, and towards the end of May in that year, says Cummene, the man of
God, worn with age and carried in a car, goes to visit the working
brethren, who were, adds Adamnan, then at work on the western side of
the island, and addresses them, saying, ‘During the Paschal solemnities
in the month of April just past I could have desired to depart to
Christ, but lest a joyous festival should be turned for you into
mourning my departure has been deferred,’ Hearing these words, the
brethren, or, as Adamnan calls them, the beloved monks, were greatly
afflicted. The man of God, however, as he sat in his car, turned his
face towards the east and blessed the island with its insular
inhabitants. After the words of blessing, the saint was carried back to
his monastery. On Sunday the second of June we find him celebrating the
solemn offices of the eucharist, when, as his eyes were raised to
heaven, the brethren observed a sudden expression of rapture on his
face, which he explained to them was caused by his seeming to see an
angel of the Lord looking down upon them within the church and blessing
it, and who, he believed, had been sent on account of the death of some
one dear to God, or, as Adamnan expresses it, ‘to demand a deposit dear
to God, by which he understood was meant his own soul, as a deposit
intrusted to him by God.’
Columba seems to have had a presentiment that the following Saturday
would be his last day on earth, for, having called his attendant
Diormet, he solemnly addressed him—‘This day is called in the sacred
Scriptures the Sabbath, a day of rest; and truly to me this day will be
a day of rest, for it is the last of my life, and in it I shall enter
into my rest after the fatigues of my labours; and this night preceding
Sunday I shall go the way of my fathers, for Christ already calls me,
and thus it is revealed to me.’ These words saddened his attendant, but
the father consoled him. Such is Cummene’s short narrative. Adamnan, who
amplifies it, states that Columba had gone with his attendant Diormet to
bless the nearest barn, which was probably situated close to the mill
and not far from the present ruins. When the saint entered it, he
blessed it and two heaps of winnowed corn that were in it, and gave
thanks in these words, saying, ‘I heartily congratulate my beloved monks
that this year also, if I am obliged to depart from you, you will have a
sufficient supply for the year.’ According to Adamnan, it was in answer
to a remark which this called forth from his attendant that he made the
revelation to him, which he made him promise on his bended knees that he
would not reveal to any one before his death. Adamnan then introduces
after it the incident that Columba, in going back to the monastery from
the barn, rested half-way at a place where a cross which was afterwards
erected, and was standing to his day fixed into a millstone, might be
observed at the side of the road; and there came to him a white
pack-horse, the same that used, as a willing servant, to carry the milk
vessels from the cowshed to the monastery. It came up to the saint, and,
strange to say, laid its head on his bosom and began to utter plaintive
cries and, like a human being, to shed copious tears on the saint’s
bosom, foaming and greatly wailing. The attendant, seeing this, began to
drive the weeping mourner away; but the saint forbade him, saying, ‘Let
it alone, as it is so fond of me—let it pour out its bitter grief into
my bosom. Lo! thou, as thou art a man and hast a rational soul, canst
know nothing of my departure hence, except what I myself have just told
you, but to this brute beast devoid of reason the Creator himself hath
evidently in some way made it known that its master is going to leave
it;’ and saying this the saint blessed the work-horse, which turned away
from him in sadness.
According to both Cummene and Adamnan, he then went out, and, ascending
the hillock which overhangs the monastery,[280] he stood for some little
time on its summit, and, uplifting his hands, he blessed his monastery;
and, looking at its present position and future prospects, he uttered a
prophecy, the terms of which Adamnan alone adds: ‘Small and mean though
this place is, yet it shall be held in great and unusual honour, not
only by the kings of the Scots with their people, but also by the rulers
of foreign and barbarous nations and by their subjects; the saints also
of other churches even shall regard it with no common reverence.’ After
this, both biographers tell us, descending from the hill and returning
to the monastery, he sat in his cell and transcribed the Psalter. When
he came to that verse of the thirty-third Psalm (the thirty-fourth of
our version) where it is written, ‘They that seek the Lord shall want no
manner of thing that is good.’—‘Here,’ he said, ‘I think I can write no
more: let Baithen write what follows.’ Having thus written the verse at
the end of the page, he entered the holy church in order to celebrate
the nocturnal vigils of the Lord’s Day; and, as soon as they were over,
he returned to his cell and spent the rest of the night on his bed,
where he had for his couch the bare ground, or, as Adamnan says, a bare
flag, and for his pillow a stone. While reclining there, he commended
his last words to his sons, or, as Adamnan says, to the brethren. ‘Have
peace always and unfeigned charity among yourselves. The Lord, the
Comforter of the good, will be your helper; and I, abiding with Him,
will intercede for you that He may provide for you good things both
temporal and eternal.’ Having said these words, St. Columba became
silent. Then, as soon as the bell rang at midnight, rising hastily, he
went to the church, and, running more quickly than the rest, he entered
alone and knelt down in prayer beside the altar. Diormet, his attendant,
however, following more slowly, saw from a distance the whole interior
of the church filled at the same moment with a heavenly light; but, when
he drew near to the door, the same light, which had also been seen by
some of the brethren, quickly disappeared. Diormet, however, entering
the church, cried out in a mournful voice, ‘Where art thou, father?’
and, feeling his way in the darkness, the lights not having yet been
brought in by the brethren, he found the saint lying before the altar;
and raising him up a little, and sitting down beside him, he laid his
holy head on his bosom. Meantime the rest of the brethren ran in, and,
beholding their father dying, whom living they so loved, they burst into
lamentations. The saint, however, his soul having not yet departed,
opened wide his eyes and looked around him from side to side as if
seeing the holy angels coming to meet him. Diormet then, raising his
right hand, urged him to bless the brethren; but the holy father himself
moved his hand at the same time as well as he was able, and, having thus
signified to them his holy benediction, he immediately breathed his
last. His face still remained ruddy and brightened in a wonderful way
from the heavenly vision: so that he had the appearance not so much of
one dead as of one that sleepeth.’[281]
‘In the meantime,’ as both biographers inform us, ‘after the departure
of his saintly soul, the matin hymns being finished, his sacred body was
carried, the brethren chanting psalms, from the church to his cell,
where his obsequies were celebrated with all due honour for three days
and as many nights; and when these praises of God were finished, his
holy body, wrapped in fine clean linen cloths’ and, Adamnan adds, placed
in a coffin, or tomb,[282] prepared for it, was buried with all due
veneration. The stone which St. Columba had used as a pillow was placed,
as a kind of monument, at his grave, where it still stood in Adamnan’s
day. His obsequies, which lasted three days and nights, were confined to
the inhabitants of the island alone; for there arose a storm of wind
without rain, which blew so violently during the whole time that no one
could cross the sound in his boat;[283] but immediately after the
interment the wind ceased and the storm was quelled, so that the whole
sea became calm.
[Sidenote: Character of St. Columba.]
Columba died on Sunday morning the 9th of June in the year 597,[284] and
left behind him an imperishable memory in the affections and veneration
of the people whom he first brought over to the Christian faith. It is
unfortunately the fate of all such men who stand out prominently from
among their fellows and put their stamp upon the age in which they
lived, that, as the true character of their sayings and doings fades
from men’s minds, they become more and more the subject of spurious
traditions, and the popular mind invests them with attributes to which
they have no claim. When these loose popular traditions and conceptions
are collected and become imbedded in a systematic biography, the evil
becomes irreparable, and it is no longer possible to separate in popular
estimation the true from the spurious. This has been peculiarly the case
with Columba, and has led to a very false estimate of his character. It
has been thus drawn by a great writer, in language at least of much
eloquence:—‘He was vindictive, passionate, bold, a man of strife, born a
soldier rather than a monk, and known, praised and blamed as a
soldier—so that even in his lifetime he was invoked in fight; and
continued a soldier, _insulanus miles_, even upon the island rock from
which he rushed forth to preach, convert, enlighten, reconcile and
reprimand both princes and nations, men and women, laymen and clerks. He
was at the same time full of contradictions and contrasts—at once tender
and irritable, rude and courteous, ironical and compassionate, caressing
and imperious, grateful and revengeful—led by pity as well as by wrath,
ever moved by generous passions, and among all passions fired to the
very end of his life by two which his countrymen understand the best,
the love of poetry and the love of country. Little inclined to
melancholy when he had once surmounted the great sorrow of his life,
which was his exile; little disposed, save towards the end, to
contemplation or solitude, but trained by prayer and austerities to
triumphs of evangelical exposition; despising rest, untiring in mental
and manual toil, born for eloquence, and gifted with a voice so
penetrating and sonorous that it was thought of afterwards as one of the
most miraculous gifts that he had received of God; frank and loyal,
original and powerful in his words as in his actions—in cloister and
mission and parliament, on land and on sea, in Ireland as in Scotland,
always swayed by the love of God and of his neighbour, whom it was his
will and pleasure to serve with an impassioned uprightness. Such was
Columba.’[285] Or rather, such is the Columba of popular tradition,
described in the beautiful and forcible language of his most eloquent
biographer; but much of this character is based upon very questionable
statements, and, as the facts which appear to sanction it do not stand
the test of critical examination, so the harder features of his
character disappear in the earlier estimates of it. Adamnan says of him,
‘From his boyhood he had been brought up in Christian training, in the
study of wisdom, and by the grace of God had so preserved the integrity
of his body and the purity of his soul, that, though dwelling on earth,
he appeared to live like the saints in heaven. For he was angelic in
appearance, graceful in speech, holy in work, with talents of the
highest order and consummate prudence; he lived during thirty-four years
an island soldier. He never could spend the space even of one hour
without study, or prayer, or writing, or some other holy occupation. So
incessantly was he engaged night and day in the unwearied exercise of
fasting and watching, that the burden of each of these austerities would
seem beyond the power of all human endurance. And still, in all these,
he was beloved by all; for a holy joy ever beaming on his face revealed
the joy and gladness with which the Holy Spirit filled his inmost
soul.’[286]
Dallan Forgaill, in the ancient tract called the _Amra Choluimchille_,
speaks of him in the same strain. He describes his people mourning him
who was ‘their souls’ light, their learned one—their chief from
right—who was God’s messenger—who dispelled fears from them—who used to
explain the truth of words—a harp without a base chord;—a perfect sage
who believed Christ—he was learned, he was chaste—he was charitable—he
was an abounding benefit of guests—he was eager—he was noble—he was
gentle—he was the physician of the heart of every sage—he was to persons
inscrutable—he was a shelter to the naked—he was a consolation to the
poor;—there went not from the world one who was more continual for the
remembrance of the cross.’[287] There is no trace here of those darker
features of vindictiveness, love of fighting, and the remorse caused by
its indulgence; nor do the events of his life, as we find them rather
hinted at than narrated, bear out such an estimate of it. He was
evidently a man of great force of character and determined zeal in
effecting his purpose—one of those master-minds which influence and sway
others by the mere force of contact; but he could not have been the
object of such tender love and implicit devotion from all who came under
the sphere of his influence, if the softer and more amiable features
pictured in these earlier descriptions of him had not predominated in
his character.
Three peculiarities he had, which led afterwards to a belief in his
miraculous powers. One was his sonorous voice. Dallan Forgaill tells us
The sound of his voice, Columcille’s,
Great its sweetness above every company;
To the end of fifteen hundred paces—
Vast courses—it was clear.[288]
Adamnan includes this among his miraculous gifts, and adds that to those
who were with him in the church his voice did not seem louder than that
of others; and yet, at the same time, persons more than a mile away
heard it so distinctly that they could mark each syllable of the verses
he was singing, for his voice sounded the same whether far or near! He
gives us another instance of it. Columba was chanting the evening hymns
with a few of his brethren, as usual, near King Brude’s fortress, and
outside the king’s fortifications, when some ‘Magi,’ coming near to
them, did all they could to prevent God’s praises being sung in the
midst of a pagan nation. On seeing this, the saint began to sing the
44th Psalm; and, at the same moment, so wonderfully loud, like pealing
thunder, did his voice become, that king and people were struck with
terror and amazement.[289] Another trait, which was ascribed to
prophetic power, was his remarkable observation of natural objects and
skill in interpreting the signs of the weather in these western regions.
Dallan Forgaill says: ‘Seasons and storms he perceived, that is, he used
to understand when calm and storm would come—he harmonised the moon’s
cocircle in regard to course—he perceived its race with the branching
sun—and sea course, that is, he was skilful in the course of the sea—he
would count the stars of heaven.’[290] When Adamnan tells us that
Baithene and Columban asked him to obtain from the Lord a favourable
wind on the next day, though they were to sail in different directions,
and how he promised a south wind to Baithene next morning till he
reached Tiree, and told Columban to set out for Ireland at the third
hour of the same day, ‘for the Lord will soon change the wind to the
north,’[291] it required no more than great skill in interpreting
natural signs to foretell a south wind in the morning and the return
breeze three hours after. The third quality was a remarkable sagacity in
forecasting probable events, and a keen insight into character and
motives. How tales handed down of the exercise of such qualities should
by degrees come to be held as proofs of miraculous and prophetic power,
it is not difficult to understand.
[Sidenote: Primacy of Iona and successors of St. Columba.]
After Columba’s death, the monastery of Iona appears to have been the
acknowledged head of all the monasteries and churches which his mission
had established in Scotland, as well as of those previously founded by
him in Ireland. To use the words of Bede, ‘This monastery for a long
time held the pre-eminence over most of those of the northern Scots, and
all those of the Picts, and had the direction of their people,’[292] a
position to which it was entitled, as the mother church, from its
possession of the body of the patron saint.[293] Of the subsequent
abbots of Iona who succeeded Columba in this position of pre-eminency,
Bede tells us that, ‘whatever kind of person he was himself, this we
know of him for certain, that he left successors distinguished for their
great charity, divine love and strict attention to their rules of
discipline; following, indeed, uncertain cycles in their computation of
the great festival (of Easter), because, far away as they were out of
the world, no one had supplied them with the synodal decrees relating to
the Paschal observance; yet withal diligently observing such works of
piety and charity as they could find in the Prophetic, Evangelic and
Apostolic writings.’[294]
[Sidenote: A.D. 597-599.
Baithene, son of Brendan.]
According to the law which regulated the succession to the abbacy in
these Irish monasteries, it fell to the tribe of the patron saint to
provide a successor; and Baithene, the cousin and confidential friend
and associate of Columba, and superior of his monastery of Maigh Lunge
in Tiree, who was also of the northern Hy Neill, and a descendant of
Conall Gulban, became his successor, ‘for,’ says the Martyrology of
Donegal, ‘it was from the men of Erin the abbot of I was chosen, and he
was most frequently chosen from the men of Cinel Conaill.’ He appears to
have been designated by Columba himself as his successor, and to have
been at once acknowledged by the other Columban monasteries; for Adamnan
tells us that Finten, the son of Tailchen, had resolved to leave Ireland
and go to Columba in Iona. ‘Burning with that desire,’ says Adamnan, ‘he
went to an old friend, the most prudent and venerable cleric in his
country, who was called in the Scotic tongue Columb Crag, to get some
sound advice from him. When he had laid open his mind to him, he
received the following answer: “As thy devout wish is, I feel, inspired
by God, who can presume to say that thou shouldst not cross the sea to
Saint Columba?” At the same moment two monks of Columba happened to
arrive; and when they remarked about their journey, they replied, “We
have lately come across from Britain, and to-day we have come from Daire
Calgaich,” or Derry. “Is he well,” says Columb Crag, “your holy father
Columba?” Then they burst into tears, and answered, with great sorrow,
“Our patron is indeed well, for a few days ago he departed to Christ.”
Hearing this, Finten and Columb and all who were there present fell on
their faces on the ground and wept bitterly. Finten then asked, “Whom
did he leave as his successor?” “Baithene, his disciple,” they replied.
And we all cried out, “It is meet and right.” Columb said to Finten,
“What wilt thou do now, Finten?” He answered, “With God’s permission, I
will sail over to Baithene, that wise and holy man; and if he receive
me, I will take him as my abbot.”’[295] Baithene enjoyed the abbacy,
however, for two years only, and died in the year 599, on the same day
of the year as Saint Columba, on which day his festival was likewise
held.[296]
[Sidenote: A.D. 599-605.
Laisren, son of Feradhach.]
His successor was Laisren, son of Feradhach, who was also a descendant
of Conall Gulban, and had been superior of Durrow during Columba’s life.
It was in his time that the discussion commenced between the Roman and
the Irish Church regarding the proper time for keeping Easter. The
mission of Columbanus to Gaul in the year 590, and that of Augustine to
Britain in 597, had now brought the Roman Church in contact with the
British and Irish Churches, and this—the most salient point of
difference between them—became at once the subject of a contest for the
enforcement of uniformity on the one part, and the maintenance of their
ancient customs, to which the Celtic mind clings with peculiar tenacity,
on the other. Augustine, on his death in 604, was succeeded by one of
his companions, named Laurentius; and this prelate, Bede tells us, ‘did
not only attend to the charge of the new church that was gathered from
the English people, but also regarded with pastoral solicitude the old
natives of Britain, and likewise the people of the Scots who inhabit the
island of Ireland adjacent to Britain. For observing that the practice
and sentiments of the Scots in their own country, and also those of the
Britons in Britain itself, were contrary to church order in many things,
particularly because they used not to celebrate the solemnity of Easter
at the proper time, but supposed, as we have shown above, that the day
to be observed in commemoration of the Lord’s resurrection was included
in the week from the fourteenth to the twentieth day of the moon, he, in
conjunction with his fellow-bishops, wrote them a letter of exhortation,
beseeching and entreating them to keep the bond of peace and Catholic
observances with that church of Christ which is extended all over the
world. The beginning of his letter is here given: “To our lords and most
dear brethren the bishops or abbots throughout all Scotia (or Ireland),
Laurentius, Mellitus and Justus, bishops, the servants of the servants
of God. When the Apostolic See, according to her practice in all the
world, stationed us in these western parts to preach to the pagan
nations here, and so it came to pass that we entered into this island
which is called Britain, before we were acquainted with it, supposing
that they walked in the ways of the universal church, we felt a very
high respect for the Britons as well as the Scots, from our regard to
their sanctity of character; but when we came to know the Britons, we
supposed the Scots must be superior to them. However, we have learned
from Bishop Daganus coming into this island and Abbot Columbanus coming
into Gaul, that the Scots differ not at all from the Britons in their
habits. For Bishop Daganus, when he came to us, would not take meat with
us, no, not so much as in the same lodging where we were eating.”’[297]
This letter does not appear to have had any effect; but it shows the
spirit in which the two churches came into contact with each other.
[Sidenote: A.D. 605-623.
Fergna Brit, son of Failbhe.]
Laisren died in the following year.[298] His successor was Fergna Brit,
or the Briton. From what he derived this epithet it is impossible to
say, for certain it is that he also was of the tribe of the patron saint
and a descendant of Conall Gulban. He had apparently been a pupil in the
monastery of Iona during Columba’s life, and Adamnan mentions him as
Virgnous—the Latin form of Fergna—‘a youth of good disposition, and
afterwards made by God superior of this church in which I, though
unworthy, now serve.’[299] In his time we again hear of two of the three
great island monasteries which are specially mentioned in the Irish
Annals. In 611 Tighernac records the death of Neman, bishop of Lismore;
and in 617 of Donnan of Egg having been burnt on the fifteenth day
before the kalends of May, or 17th April, with his martyr clerics.[300]
The tale of their martyrdom is thus told in the gloss upon the
Martyrology of Angus the Culdee already quoted. It says, ‘Donnan then
went with his _muintir_, or monastic family, to the _Gallgaedalu_, or
Western Isles, and they took up their abode there, in a place where the
sheep of the queen of the country were kept. This was told to the queen.
Let them all be killed, said she. That would not be a religious act,
said her people. But they were murderously assailed. At this time the
cleric was at mass. Let us have respite till mass is ended, said Donnan.
Thou shalt have it, said they. And when it was over, they were slain
every one of them,’ The Calendar of Marian Gorman has the following
commemoration: ‘Donnan the great with his monks. Fifty-two were his
congregation. There came pirates of the sea to the island in which they
were, and slew them all. Eig is the name of that island.’[301] The
island of Egg is the most easterly of a group of islands lying between
the promontory of Ardnamurchan and the island of Skye. It faces a wild
and rugged district on the mainland, extending from Ardnamurchan to
Glenelg, still known by the name of the _Garbhcriochan_, or rough
bounds. The Christian religion appears to have as yet hardly penetrated
the western districts north of Ardnamurchan, as is indicated by the
dedications of their churches. The island of Egg was probably at this
time connected with this district as a pasture island reserved for their
flocks of sheep; and, while the people would seem to have been
favourable to the little Christian colony established in the island by
Donnan, the rule had passed into the hands of a queen who was still
pagan and employed pirates to destroy them, who burnt the wooden church
in which they were celebrating the eucharist, and the whole community
accordingly perished. We have also at this time a slight trace of the
Columban Church in the eastern districts of the northern Picts in the
Irish Annals, which record in 616 the death of Tolorggain or Talarican,
who is associated in the Scotch Calendars with the Church of Fordyce on
the south shore of the Moray Firth, and who gives his name to the great
district of Cilltalargyn, or Kiltarlity, in the district of the Aird,
extending from the river Ness to the bounds of Ross-shire.[302]
The only other event which took place while Fergna Brit was abbot was
one which was destined to lead to a great extension of the Columban
Church. In the year 617 there arrived at Iona some young and noble
Angles of Bernicia. They were the sons of Aidilfrid, king of Bernicia,
who, while still pagan, as were his people, had been slain by Aeduin,
king of Deira. Bede tells us that his sons, with many of the youth of
the nobility, took refuge among the Scots or Picts, where they lived in
banishment during the whole of Aeduin’s reign, ‘and,’ says Bede, ‘were
there catechised according to the doctrine of the Scots, and regenerated
by the grace of baptism.’[303] Many of them were no doubt sent to the
monastery of Iona to receive this catechetical instruction, and among
them was certainly Osuald, the second son of Aidilfrid, who was at that
time about thirteen years old, and who, we are expressly told, with his
followers had, ‘when in banishment, received the sacraments of baptism
among the seniors of the Scots,’ by whom those of the monastery of Iona
are meant. He appears to have remained there during the rest of Fergna’s
tenure of the abbacy, and the first ten years of that of his successor.
[Sidenote: A.D. 623-652.
Segine, son of Fiachna.]
Fergna died in the year 623,[304] and was succeeded by Segine, son of
Fiachna and nephew of Laisren the third abbot, who of course also
belonged to the tribe of the patron saint, the race of Conall Gulban.
The presidency of Segine over the family of Iona was chiefly remarkable
for two great events in two opposite directions. One was the extension
of the Columban Church into the Anglic kingdom of Northumbria; the
other, that a large section of the Irish Church conformed to Rome: and
both events appear to have taken place at the same time.
[Sidenote: A.D. 634.
Extension of Columban Church to Northumbria.]
At the time that the sons of Aidilfrid fled from the face of King
Aeduin, the latter and his people were still pagans; but the king having
married the daughter of the Christian king of Kent, in the eleventh year
of his reign he was converted to Christianity by the preaching of
Paulinus, who had been ordained bishop by Archbishop Justus of
Canterbury, and accompanied the queen to York. Aeduin was baptized at
York on Easter Sunday in the year 627, ‘in the church of Saint Peter the
apostle, which he himself had there built of timber whilst he was being
catechised and instructed in order to receive baptism. In that city also
he appointed the see for the bishopric of his instructor and bishop,
Paulinus.’[305] The people of the two provinces of Bernicia and Deira
followed their king, and ostensibly embraced Christianity. As soon as
the news reached Rome that the nation of the Northumbrians with their
king had been, by the preaching of Paulinus, converted to the faith of
Christ, Honorius I., who was at that time Pope, sent the ‘pallium’ to
Paulinus, and at the same time wrote letters of exhortation to King
Aeduin, exhorting him with fatherly charity that his people should
persist in and profess the faith of truth which they had received.[306]
When this letter reached York, King Aeduin had been slain, the heathen
Penda of Mercia and the apostate Caedwalla of Wales were in possession
of the country, the infant Christian Church was trampled under foot, and
Paulinus, with his ‘pallium,’ had fled back to Kent. After a year, in
which the land had been given up to paganism, Osuald, who was now thirty
years old, and to whom the right to the Anglic throne had opened by the
death of his brother Ainfrid, invaded Northumbria, and won his kingdom
by the battle of the Heavenly Field, at Denisburn, near Hexham. His
first object was to restore the Christian Church which had been swept
away; and for this purpose he naturally turned to the church where he
himself had been trained in the Christian faith. As Bede tells us, ‘He
sent to the seniors of the Scots, among whom himself and his
fellow-soldiers, when in banishment, had received the sacrament of
baptism, desiring they would send him a bishop, by whose instructions
and ministry the Anglic nation which he governed might be taught the
advantages of faith in the Lord and receive its sacraments. Nor were
they slow in granting his request, but sent him Bishop Aidan, a man of
singular meekness, piety and moderation.’[307] Bede further tells us
that ‘it is reported that when King Osuald had asked a bishop of the
province of the Scots to minister the word of faith to him and his
nation, there was first sent another man of more austere disposition,
who, after preaching for some time to the nation of the Angles and
meeting with no success, and being disregarded by the Anglic people,
returned home, and in an assembly of the seniors reported that he had
not been able to do any good in instructing that nation he had been sent
to preach to, because they were untameable men, and of a stubborn and
barbarous disposition. They, as is testified, in a great council
seriously debated what was to be done, being desirous of the good of the
nation in the matter which it demanded, and grieving that they had not
received the preacher sent to them. Then said Aidan, who was also
present in the council, to the priest then spoken of, “I am of opinion,
brother, that you were more severe to your unlearned hearers than you
ought to have been, and did not at first, conformably to the apostolic
discipline, give them the milk of more gentle doctrine, till, being by
degrees nourished with the Word of God, they should be capable of
greater perfection, and be able to practise God’s sublimer precepts.”
Having heard these words, all who sat with him, turning on him their
eyes, began diligently to weigh what he had said, and presently
concluded that he deserved to be made a bishop, and ought to be sent to
instruct the unbelievers and unlearned, since he was found to be endowed
with the grace of a singular discretion, which is the mother of other
virtues; and accordingly, being ordained, they sent him to preach.’[308]
Bede adds that ‘most of those that had come to preach were monks, and
that Bishop Aidan was himself a monk of the island called Hii, whose
monastery for a long time held the pre-eminence over almost all those of
the northern Scots, and all those of the Picts;’ and again, ‘that from
the aforesaid island, and from this college of monks, was Aidan sent to
instruct the province of the Angles in Christ, having received the
episcopal grade. At this time Segine, abbot and priest, presided over
that monastery.’ There can therefore be little doubt that the great
council was held in Iona under the presidency of Abbot Segine; and it
would almost appear that he himself had gone personally to Northumbria
on the failure of the first mission, as Adamnan refers to a conversation
which he says Abbot Failbe solemnly declared that he himself heard
between King Osuald and Abbot Segine after the battle of the Heavenly
Field had been fought.[309]
As the first missionary sent had been a priest, and the result of
Aidan’s interposition was that all declared him worthy of the
episcopate, there can be little doubt that, as we have already had
occasion to show, the distinction of the orders and the superiority of
the episcopal grade were fully recognised. By the custom of the Scottish
Church, only one bishop was necessary for the consecration of another
bishop. That there were bishops in the Columban Church we know, for Bede
tells us that ‘all the province, and even the bishops, were subject to
the abbot of Iona;’ and, as we have seen, two of the monasteries subject
to Iona—Lismore and _Cinngaradh_, or Kingarth—had episcopal heads. There
may have been an especial reason why it should be better that Aidan
should have episcopal orders, which did not exist in the case of the
Columban monasteries; for, as the head of a remote church, he might have
to ordain priests from among his Anglic converts; while the Columban
Church had Ireland at its back as a great storehouse of clerics, both
bishops and priests. When, therefore, it is said that he received the
episcopal grade, no doubt a bishop had been called in to consecrate him.
But though he was thus enabled to exercise episcopal functions, in other
respects the organisation of the church thus introduced into
Northumbria, both with respect to jurisdiction and to its monastic
character, was the same as that of the Columban Church at home; for,
instead of fixing his episcopal seat at York, he followed the custom of
the monastic church by selecting a small island near the Northumbrian
coast, bearing the Celtic name of _Inis Metcaud_,[310] but known to the
Angles as Lindisfarne, as the site of his monastery, which he was to
rule as episcopal abbot. Bede tells us that, ‘on the arrival of the
bishop, the king appointed him his episcopal see in the isle of
Lindisfarne, as he himself desired; which place, as the tide flows and
ebbs, twice a day is enclosed by the waves of the sea like an island,
and again, twice in the day, when the shore is left dry, becomes
contiguous to the land,’—a very apt description of the island, which is
now called Holy Island; and Bede adds, in his Life of Cudberct, ‘And let
no man marvel that in this same island of Lindisfarne, which is of very
small extent, there should be, as we mentioned above, the seat of a
bishop, and, at the same time, as we now state, the residence of an
abbot and monks. For so it is, in truth. For one and the same habitation
of the servants of God contains both at the same time. Yea, all whom it
contains are monks; for Aidan, who was the first bishop of this place,
was a monk, and was always wont to lead a monastic life, with all his
people. Hence, after him, all the bishops of that place until this day
exercise the episcopal functions in such sort, that, while the abbot,
who is chosen by the bishop with the consent of the brethren, governs
the monastery, all the priests, deacons, chanters, readers and the other
ecclesiastical orders, with the bishop himself, observe in all things
the monastic rule.’[311] This Northumbrian church was therefore an exact
counterpart of the monastic church of which Iona was the head; and Bede
bears a noble testimony to its efficiency as a missionary church. He
says, ‘From that time many from the region of the Scots came daily into
Britain, and with great devotion preached the word of faith to those
provinces of the Angles over which King Osuald reigned; and those among
them that had received priests’ orders administered to the believers the
grace of baptism. Churches were built in several places; the people
joyfully flocked together to hear the Word; possessions and lands were
given of the king’s bounty to build monasteries; the younger Angles were
by their Scottish masters instructed; and greater care and attention
were bestowed upon the rules and observances of regular
discipline.’[312]
[Sidenote: A.D. 634.
Church of the southern Scots of Ireland conforms to Rome.]
The same year which brought to Segine this important request from King
Osuald of Northumbria brought him likewise a letter of not less
importance, but one of a very different tenor, from the head of one of
the dependent monasteries in Ireland. This letter[313] was written by
Cummian, one of the most learned of the Irish ecclesiastics, and
believed to have been abbot of the monastery of Durrow in King’s County,
founded by Columba shortly before he passed over from Ireland to Iona;
and it is still extant. It is addressed to the abbot ‘Segine, successor
of Saint Columba, and other holy men, and to Beccan the anchorite, his
dear brother according to the flesh and in the spirit, with his wise
companions.’ In this letter he tells him that, when the Roman mode of
computation was first introduced into Ireland, he did not adopt it; but,
retiring in private for a year, he entered into the sanctuary of God,
that is, the holy Scripture, and examined it as well as he was able;
after that, works on history; lastly, whatever cycles he could meet
with. He then gives a very learned summary of the result of his
investigations which led him to adopt the Roman system as correct. When
the year had expired, he says, he applied to the successors of our
ancient fathers, of Bishop Ailbe, of Kieran of Clonmacnois, of Brendan,
of Nessan and of Lugidus, that they might tell him what they thought of
the excommunication directed against them from the Apostolic See; and
they having assembled together, some in person, others by
representatives, at _Magh Lene_, or the plain of Lene, in which the
monastery of Durrow was situated, came to the resolution that they ought
to adopt without scruple the more worthy and approved practice
recommended to them by the successors of the apostles of the Lord. They
accordingly enjoined him to celebrate Easter in the following year with
the universal church. Not long after, however, there arose up a certain
whited wall, pretending that he was for upholding the traditions of his
elders, which caused disunion and partly rendered void what had been
agreed to. Upon this it was determined by ‘our seniors’ that if
questions of a more weighty character should arise, they ought to be
referred, according to the decree of the synod, to the head of cities.
They therefore sent some that they knew to be wise and humble, as
children to a mother, and having a prosperous journey by the will of
God, and some of them having come to the city of Rome, they returned in
the third year, and they saw everything accord with what they had heard,
or rather they obtained a much clearer view of the matter, as seeing
instead of hearing; and, being in one lodging with a Greek and a Hebrew,
a Scythian and an Egyptian, they all celebrated their Easter together in
St. Peter’s Church, while they differed from them by a whole month. And
they solemnly assured him of this, saying, This Easter is celebrated to
our knowledge all the world over. ‘These statements,’ adds Cummian, ‘I
have made, not with a view to attack you, but to defend myself.’ Such is
the substance of Cummian’s letter;[314] and as the times for celebrating
Easter according to the Roman and to the Irish computation would be
separated by the interval of a month in the year 631,[315] the synod
must have been held about 630, the return of the deputies taken place in
633, and the letter have been written in the following year. According
to Bede, Pope Honorius in this year ‘wrote to the nation of the Scots,
whom he had found to err in the observance of Easter, earnestly
exhorting them not to esteem their small number, placed in the utmost
borders of the earth, wiser than all the ancient and modern churches of
Christ throughout the world, and not to celebrate a different Easter,
contrary to the Paschal calculation and the synodical decrees of all the
bishops upon earth;’[316] and the result was that, as Bede tells us,
‘the Scots which dwelt in the southern districts of Ireland, by the
admonition of the bishop of the Apostolic See, learned to observe Easter
according to the canonical custom;’ while the northern province of the
Scots and the whole nation of the Picts adhered to the old custom of the
country.[317]
The distinction here drawn by Bede between the Scots inhabiting the
southern districts and the northern province of the Scots obviously
refers to the old traditional division of Ireland into two parts, termed
severally _Leth Mogha_ and _Leth Cuinn_, which were divided from each
other by a ridge extending from the mouth of the Liffey to Galway, and
termed _Eisgir Riada_.[318] The southern districts were Munster and
Leinster south of the Liffey. The northern division contained the rest
of Leinster, Ulster and Connaught. Durrow, though a Columban monastery,
was situated in the southern division, and probably now broke off from
the jurisdiction of Iona and, along with the rest of the Irish Church in
the southern division of Ireland, conformed to Rome.
We meet with a passing notice of the monastery of Lismore in the
following year, when Tighernac records the death of its abbot Eochaidh;
and in the same year Abbot Segine appears to have founded a church in
Rechrann, or the island of Rathlin off the north coast of Ireland.[319]
Some years after a letter appears to have been sent from the Irish
Church to Pope Severinus, who succeeded Honorius in 640, but died within
the year, which called forth a reply from his successor John, while
Pope-elect, by the person who had taken the letter, which Bede tells us
was ‘full of great authority and erudition for correcting the same
error,’ and at the same time admonished them to be careful to crush the
Pelagian heresy, which, he had been informed, was reviving amongst them.
Bede gives us the opening of this epistle thus:—‘To our most beloved and
most holy Tomianus, Columbanus, Cromanus, Dinanus, and Baithanus,
bishops; to Cromanus, Ernianus, Laistranus, Scellanus, and Segenus,
priests; to Saranus and the rest of the Scottish doctors or abbots,
greeting from Hilarius, the arch-priest and keeper of the place of the
holy Apostolic See; from John, the deacon and elect in the name of God;
from John the chief secretary and keeper of the place of the holy
Apostolic See, and from John the servant of God and councillor of the
same Apostolic See.’[320] These Scottish doctors or abbots, with
Tomianus, who was bishop of Armagh, at their head, all belonged to the
northern province, and this appeal had no effect in altering their
relation towards the Church of Rome. But it is instructive to observe
that Segenus or Segine, abbot of Iona, is placed among the clergy of the
Irish Church, of which his monastery, with its dependent monasteries in
Scotland, was ranked as forming a part. Ten years afterwards news came
of the death of Aidan, after a sixteen years’ episcopate over the church
of Northumbria; and Finan, ‘who had,’ says Bede, ‘been sent from Hii,
the island and monastery of the Scots,’ succeeded him.[321]
[Sidenote: A.D. 652-657.
Suibhne, son of Cuirtri.]
Segine’s own death followed a year after. His successor was Suibhne, of
whom we know nothing except that his father’s name was Cuirtri, but it
is unlikely that at this early stage any one who did not belong to the
tribe of the patron saint could be elected an abbot, and the only notice
we have of him is his death after having been five years in the
abbacy.[322]
[Sidenote: A.D. 657-669.
Cummene Ailbhe, son of Ernan.]
He was succeeded in the abbacy by Cummene Ailbhe, the nephew of his
predecessor Segene, whose tenure of office was signalised by equally
important events. His first year is coincident with the extension of the
dominion of Osuiu, the Northumbrian king, over the Britons of
Strathclyde, the southern Picts and the Scots of Dalriada; but, though
the latter ceased for a time to possess an independent king, the rule of
Northumbria could not have affected the church to which her own church
was affiliated. Accordingly, when Finan, the successor of Aidan, died,
we find that Colman was also ‘sent out of Scotia,’ and succeeded him as
bishop.[323] Tighernac records, in the same year, the death of Bishop
Finan and of Daniel, bishop of _Cinngaradh_ or Kingarth, in Bute; and in
the following year, a visit of Abbot Cummene to Ireland;[324] and, as
Bede says of Finan that he was ordained and sent by the Scots, while, in
the case of Colman, he uses the expression that he was sent out of
Scotia, or Ireland, this rather confirms our suspicion that the bishops
called in to consecrate these Northumbrian missionaries were the bishops
of Kingarth, and that the death of Bishop Daniel in the same year
rendered an appeal to Ireland necessary.
[Sidenote: A.D. 664.
Termination of Columban Church in Northumbria.]
While, however, Segine’s tenure of the abbacy saw the extension of the
Columban Church into Northumbria, that of his nephew Cummene was doomed
to see its extinction after it had for thirty years been the church of
the country. The cause was the controversy regarding the proper time for
celebrating Easter. It had been raised, during the episcopate of Finan,
by some ecclesiastics who came from Kent or France; and among them, says
Bede, ‘was a most zealous defender of the true Easter, whose name was
Ronan, a Scot indeed by nation, but instructed in ecclesiastical truth
either in the parts of France or of Italy, who, by disputing with Finan,
corrected many, or at least induced them to make a more strict inquiry
after the truth; yet he could not amend Finan, but on the contrary made
him the more inveterate by reproof, and an open opposer of the truth, he
being of a hot and violent temper.’[325] The royal family, too, were
divided. The queen, Eanfled, being from Kent and having a Kentish
priest, Romanus, with her, followed the Catholic mode, so that one year
the king and queen both celebrated their Easter at different times.
Under Colman the controversy became more bitter, and the king Osuiu and
his son Alchfrid were now opposed to each other, the latter having been
instructed in Christianity by Wilfrid, a most learned man, who had been
originally trained in the Scottish monastery of Lindisfarne, but had
gone from thence to Rome to learn the ecclesiastical doctrine, and spent
much time at Lyons with Dalfin, archbishop of Gaul, from whom he had
received the coronal tonsure. Agilberct, bishop of the West Saxons, a
friend to Alchfrid and to Abbot Wilfrid, having come to Northumbria,
suggested that a synod should be held to settle the controversy
regarding Easter, the tonsure and other ecclesiastical affairs. This was
agreed to; and it was accordingly held, in the year 664, at the
monastery of Streanashalch, near Whitby, where the abbess Hilda, a woman
devoted to God, then presided. The king Osuiu and his son Alchfrid were
both present. On the Catholic side was Bishop Agilberct, with the
priests Agatho and Wilfrid, James and Romanus. On the Scottish side was
Bishop Colman with his clerics from Scotia, or Ireland, the abbess Hilda
and her followers, and Bishop Cedd of Essex, who had been ordained by
the Scots, and acted as interpreter for both parties. The king called
upon Colman and Wilfrid to conduct the discussion. It is given at length
by Bede, but it is unnecessary to say more than that the usual arguments
were used. Colman pleaded that the Easter he kept he received from his
elders; and all his forefathers, men beloved of God, are known to have
celebrated it after the same manner. Wilfrid opposed the custom of the
universal church and the authority of Rome. Colman asks, ‘Is it to be
believed that our most reverend father Columba, and his successors, men
beloved by God, who kept Easter after the same manner, thought or acted
contrary to the divine writings? whereas there were many among them
whose sanctity is testified by heavenly signs and the working of
miracles which they performed, whose life, customs and discipline I
never cease to follow, nor question their sanctity.’ Wilfrid replied,
‘Concerning your father Columba and his followers, whose sanctity you
say you imitate and whose rule and precepts you observe, which have been
confirmed by signs from heaven, I might answer that when many, on the
day of judgment, shall say to our Lord that in his name they prophesied
and cast out devils and wrought many wonders, our Lord will reply that
He never knew them. But far be it from me that I should say so of your
father, because it is more just to believe what is good than what is
evil of persons whom one does not know. If that Columba of yours—and I
may say ours also, if he were Christ’s—was a holy man and powerful in
miracles, yet should he be preferred before the most blessed prince of
the apostles, to whom our Lord had given the keys of the kingdom of
heaven?’ And as Colman admitted that these words were spoken to Peter,
and could not show that any such power was given to Columba, the king
decided to obey the decrees of Rome, and all present gave their assent
and, renouncing the more imperfect institution, hastened to conform
themselves to that which they found to be better.[326] Bede then tells
us ‘that Colman, perceiving that his doctrine was rejected and his sect
despised, took with him such as were willing to follow him and would not
comply with the Catholic Easter and the coronal tonsure—for there was
much controversy about that also—and went back into Scotia, or Ireland,
to consult with his people what was to be done in this case.’ And he
adds that Colman carried home with him part of the bones of the most
reverend father Aidan, and left part of them in the church where he had
presided, ordering them to be interred in its sacristy.[327]
The character which this most candid historian gives of the church of
the Scots in Northumbria so much reflects that of the parent church of
Iona, that it may be well to insert it. He says of Bishop Colman, ‘How
great was his parsimony, how great his continence, the place which they
governed shows for himself and his predecessors, for there were very few
houses besides the church found at their departure, indeed no more than
were barely sufficient for their daily residence. They had also no money
but cattle; for, if they received any money from rich persons, they
immediately gave it to the poor, there being no need to gather money or
provide houses for the entertainment of the great men of the world? for
such never resorted to the church except to pray and hear the Word of
God. For this reason the religious habit was at that time in great
veneration, so that, wheresoever any cleric or monk happened to come, he
was joyfully received by all persons, as God’s servant; and, if they
chanced to meet him as he was upon the way they ran to him and, bowing,
were glad to be signed with his hand or blessed with his mouth. Great
attention was also paid to their exhortations; and on Sundays the people
flocked eagerly to the church or the monasteries, not to feed their
bodies, but to hear the Word of God; and, if any priest happened to come
into a village the inhabitants flocked together forthwith to hear from
him the Word of Life. For the priests and clerics went into the villages
on no other account than to preach, baptize, visit the sick and, in few
words, to take care of souls; and they were so free from the curse of
worldly avarice, that none of them received lands and possessions for
building monasteries, unless they were compelled to do so by the
temporal authorities.’[328]
Though Bede tells us in general terms that Colman returned to Ireland,
he did not actually do so till after four years; for he mentions
afterwards that Colman ‘repaired first to the isle of _Hii_, or Iona,
whence he had been sent to preach the word of God to the Anglic nation.
Afterwards he retired to a certain small island which is to the west of
Ireland, and at some distance from its coast, called, in the language of
the Scots, _Inisboufinde,_’ and Tighernac places this event in the year
668.[329] As he had taken the relics of Aidan with him, it was probably
during this interval that he founded the church of Fearn in Angus,
dedicated to Aidan, and the church of Tarbet, in Easter Ross, with which
his own name is connected; and if he reported to Abbot Cummene, as no
doubt he would, the discussion he had held with Wilfrid, and the appeal
which he had made in vain to the authority of Columba as a man whose
sanctity was testified by heavenly signs and the working of miracles, it
probably led to Cummene’s writing the Life of their great saint, which
Adamnan calls ‘the book which he wrote on the virtues of St.
Columba,’[330] in vindication of the assertion. This Life is still
extant, and the whole of it has been embodied in Adamnan’s more
elaborate production. Tighernac records the death of Cummene in the year
669, and along with it those of two saints who belonged to the church
among the southern Picts—Itharnan or Ethernanus, of Madderdyn, now
Madderty in Strathearn, and Corindu, or Caran, of Fetteresso in the
Mearns.[331]
[Sidenote: A.D. 669-679.
Failbhe, son of Pipan.]
His successor was Failbhe, son of Pipan, also a descendant of Conall
Gulban, and the first year of his tenure of the abbacy also saw Wilfrid
in possession of the diocese of York. According to Bede, he at this time
administered the bishopric of York and of all the Northumbrians, and
likewise of the Picts as far as the dominions of king Osuiu
extended.[332] His diocese therefore comprehended the territories of the
southern Picts, the Britons of Strathclyde and the Scots of Dalriada,
over all of which King Osuiu had extended his rule. Wilfrid retained
this extensive diocese during the entire period of Failbhe’s abbacy;
and, so far as he could make his power felt, his influence would no
doubt be exercised against the Columban Church; for, as Eddi tells us,
‘under Bishop Wilfrid the churches were multiplied both in the south
among the Saxons and in the north among the Britons, Scots and Picts,
Wilfrid having ordained everywhere presbyters and deacons, and governed
new churches.’[333] But the territories of the northern Picts were
beyond his reach; and Failbhe’s tenure of the abbacy is chiefly
remarkable for the extension of the Columban Church to those rugged and
almost inaccessible districts which lay on the western seaboard between
Ardnamurchan on the south and Loch Broom on the north.
[Sidenote: A.D. 673.
Foundation of church of Applecross by Maelrubha.]
The principal agent in effecting this was Maelrubha, who was of the race
of the northern Hy Neill, but belonged to a different sept from that
which had the right of furnishing abbots to the monastery of Iona. He
was connected through his mother with Comgall of Bangor, and became a
member of that monastery which, as situated among the Picts of Ireland,
well fitted him to be a missionary to those of the same race in
Scotland. He came over to Britain in the year 671, and two years
afterwards he founded the church of Aporcrosan, now Applecross,[334]
from which as a centre he evangelised the whole of the western districts
lying between Loch Carron and Loch Broom, as well as the south and west
parts of the island of Skye, and planted churches in Easter Ross and
elsewhere. The dedications to him show that his missionary work was very
extensive. In the same year Failbhe went to Ireland, where he appears to
have remained three years,[335] and was probably engaged in arrangements
for extending the missionary work; for it is probably at this period
that we must place the arrival of Comgan with his sister Kentigerna and
her son Fillan in the district of Lochalsh, where they planted churches,
as well as in the districts south of it as far as Loch Sunart.[336] At
this time too the church in Egg appears to have been restored.[337] In
the year 678 Wilfrid was ejected from his extensive bishopric, but
Failbhe only survived this event one year, when his death is recorded;
and at the same time we have a trace of the church in the eastern
territories of the northern Picts, in the death of Neachtan Neir, who
can be identified with the great saint of Deeside in Aberdeenshire,
called by the people there, Nathalan, or Nachlan.[338]
[Sidenote: A.D. 679-704.
Adamnan, son of Ronan.]
We are now brought in our narrative to the very important period when
Adamnan, the biographer of Columba, ruled over his monastery as ninth
abbot. He was also a descendant of Conall Gulban, and belonged to the
tribe of the patron saint. He was born in 624, just twenty-seven years
after the death of Saint Columba. During the first six years of his
abbacy, the rule of the Angles, under King Ecgfrid, still extended as
far as it did during the reign of his father Osuiu. After the ejection
of Wilfrid from the diocese in this its fullest extent, it was divided
between Bosa and Eata, the latter being appointed bishop of the northern
part; and three years afterwards it was still further divided, Trumuin
being appointed bishop over the province of the Picts which was subject
to the Angles. The defeat and death of King Ecgfrid, however, at the
battle of Dunnichen in the year 685 terminated this rule of the Angles,
and with it the interference of the Anglic bishops with the Columban
Church. The Scots of Dalriada recovered their independence. The southern
Picts were relieved from the more direct yoke of the Angles, and Trumuin
fled from his diocese.
[Sidenote: A.D. 686.
His first mission to Northumbria.]
The new king Aldfrid had been long in exile in Ireland, where he was
known by the name of Flann Finn, and Adamnan was on terms of friendly
acquaintance with him. His first proceeding was to go on a mission to
him to ask the release of the Irish captives whom Berct, King Ecgfrid’s
general, had carried away from the plain of Breg; and the Irish Life of
Adamnan gives us the route he took. It says ‘The North Saxons went to
him and plundered _Magh Bregh_ as far as _Bealach-duin_; they carried
off with them a great prey of men and women. The men of Erin besought of
Adamnan to go in quest of the captives to Saxonland. Adamnan went to
demand the prisoners, and put in at _Tracht-Romra_. The strand is long,
and the flood rapid; so rapid that if the best steed in Saxonland ridden
by the best horseman were to start from the edge of the tide when the
tide begins to flow, he could only bring his rider ashore by swimming,
so extensive is the strand, and so impetuous is the tide.’ Adamnan
appears therefore to have gone in his curach and entered the Solway
Firth, which is evidently the place meant, and landed on the southern
shore. He succeeded in his undertaking, and brought sixty of the
captives back to their homes.[339]
[Sidenote: Adamnan repairs the monastery of Iona.]
His next step was to repair the monastery, which had probably fallen
into disrepair during Failbhe’s time; and for this purpose he sent
twelve vessels to Lorn for oak trees to furnish the necessary
timber.[340] In this monastery he received Arculfus, a bishop of Gaul,
who had gone to Jerusalem to visit the holy places, and returning home
was driven by a violent storm on the west coast of Britain and made his
way to Iona and passed the winter there. During the dreary winter
months, Adamnan committed to writing all the information he could obtain
from him as to the holy places; and this work is still extant.[341]
[Sidenote: A.D. 688.
His second mission to Northumbria.]
In 688 Adamnan proceeded on a second mission to King Aldfrid, with what
object is not known; but it appears to have been connected with the
affairs of Dalriada. This second visit to Northumbria had very important
consequences both for himself and for his church; for Bede tells us that
‘Adamnan, priest and abbot of the monks that were in the isle of Hii,
was sent ambassador by his nation to Aldfrid, king of the Angles, where,
having made some stay, he observed the canonical rites of the church,
and was earnestly admonished by many who were more learned than himself
not to presume to live contrary to the universal custom of the church in
relation to either the observance of Easter or any other decrees
whatsoever, considering the small number of his followers, seated at so
distant a corner of the world. In consequence of this he changed his
mind, and readily preferred those things which he had seen and heard in
the churches of the Angles to the customs which he and his people had
hitherto followed. For he was a good and a wise man, and remarkably
learned in the knowledge of the Scriptures;’[342] and Abbot Ceolfrid of
Jarrow, in his letter to King Naiton of the Picts, who calls him
‘Adamnan, the abbot and renowned priest of the Columbans,’ says that he
visited his monastery, and narrates at length the conversation he had
with him, to which he attributes Adamnan’s conversion.[343] ‘Returning
home,’ continues Bede, ‘he endeavoured to bring his own people that were
in Hii, or that were subject to that monastery, into the way of truth,
which he himself had learned and embraced with all his heart; but in
this he could not prevail.’ We have thus the anomalous state of matters
that the abbot of the monastery had conformed to Rome, but that his
monks and those of the dependent monasteries refused to go along with
him. In the year after his return to Iona, the death of Iolan, bishop of
_Cinngaradh_, or Kingarth in Bute, is recorded; and in 692, which the
annalist marks as the fourteenth after the decease of his predecessor
Failbhe, he went to Ireland, but for what especial purpose which might
render the reference to Failbhe appropriate, we do not learn; and the
following year we find him again in Iona, when the body of Brude mac
Bile, king of the Picts, who died in 693, is brought for interment.[344]
[Sidenote: A.D. 692.
Synod of Tara. The northern Scots, with the exception of the
Columban monasteries, conform to Rome.]
Four years after, in the year 697, he goes again to Ireland, and on this
occasion he was accompanied by Brude, son of Derile, king of the Picts.
His object was to obtain the sanction of the Irish people to a law
exempting women from the burden laid upon all, of what was called
_Fecht_ and _Sluagad_, or the duty attending hostings and expeditions.
For this purpose a synod was held at Tara, which was attended by
thirty-nine ecclesiastics presided over by the abbot of Armagh, and by
forty-seven chiefs of tribes, at the head of whom was the monarch of
Ireland. The law exempting women from this burdensome duty was termed
‘Lex innocentium;’ and the enactments of the synod were called _Cain
Adhamhnain_ or ‘Lex Adamnani,’ because among its results was the
privilege of levying contributions under certain conditions.[345] In the
list of those present occurs the name of _Brude mac Derili ri
Cruithentuaithe_, or King of Pictland. It is to the occasion of this
visit to Ireland that must be referred the statement of Bede that ‘he
then sailed over into Ireland to preach to those people, and, by modest
exhortation declaring the true time of Easter, he reduced many of them,
and almost all that were not under the dominion of those of Hii, from
their ancient error to the Catholic unity, and taught them to keep the
proper time of Easter. Returning to his island after having celebrated
Easter in Ireland canonically, he most earnestly inculcated the
observance of Easter in his monastery, yet without being able to
prevail; and it so happened that he departed this life before the next
year came round. For the divine goodness so ordained it that, as he was
a great lover of peace and unity, he should be taken away to everlasting
life before he would be obliged, on the return of the time of Easter, to
have still more serious discord with those that would not follow him in
the truth.’[346] It would therefore appear that Adamnan did not return
to Iona till the year of his death, which took place on the 23d of
September in the year 704, and in the seventy-seventh year of his
age.[347]
At what period of Adamnan’s abbacy he wrote his life of the patron saint
and founder of the monastery cannot be fixed with any accuracy, but it
was after his visit to Aldfrid in 688; and, as he states that he did so
at the urgent request of his brethren, and alludes incidentally to the
discord which arose among the churches of Ireland on account of the
difference with regard to the Easter feast, it was probably compiled
before the same discord had arisen between the brethren of Iona and
himself as their abbot.[348] Neither can the precise period be fixed
when he founded those churches in the eastern districts which are
dedicated to him; but no doubt, after the termination of the Anglic rule
over the southern Picts and Scots of Dalriada, he would be desirous to
strengthen the Columban Church; and his relations with the kings of the
Picts who reigned after the overthrow of the Angles were, as we have
seen, cordial and friendly. In this work he appears to have been
assisted by the family who had already evangelised the rugged district
termed the ‘Rough Bounds,’ as the churches dedicated to them and him are
found adjacent to each other. Among the northern Picts, Adamnan’s
principal church was that of Forglen on the east bank of the river
Doveran, in which the _Brecbannoch_, or banner of Columba, was
preserved; and separated from it by the same river is Turriff, dedicated
to Comgan. South of the range of the Mounth Adamnan’s most important
foundation was the monastery of Dull in the district of Atholl, which
was dedicated to him, and to which a very extensive territory was
annexed; and closely contiguous to it was the district of Glendochart,
with its monastery dedicated to Fillan, whose name is preserved in
Strathfillan. Fillan again appears in Pittenweem on the south coast of
the peninsula of Fife; and in the Firth of Forth which it bounds is
Inchkeith, ‘on which Saint Adamnan the abbot presided.’[349]
[Sidenote: A.D. 704-717.
Schism at Iona after death of Adamnan.]
Adamnan, though, as Bede says, a man of peace and providentially removed
before the coming Easter, when matters would have been brought to a
crisis between him and his recalcitrant monks, seems notwithstanding to
have left a legacy of discord behind him. For the first time since the
foundation of the monastery of Iona, we find in the successor of Adamnan
an abbot who was not a descendant of Conall Gulban. Conmael, son of
Failbhe, was of the tribe of Airgialla in Ireland, who were descended
from Colla Uais; but three years after Adamnan’s death we find Duncadh,
who belonged to the tribe of the patron saint, obtaining the abbacy.
Then three years after we have the death of Conmael as abbot of Iona.
After his death appears Ceode, bishop of Iona, who dies in 712, and in
713 Dorbeni obtains the chair of Iona, but after five months’ possession
of the primacy dies on Saturday the 28th of October in the same year.
During the whole of this time, however, Duncadh is likewise abbot.[350]
The explanation seems to be that the community of Iona had become
divided on the subject of the Easter question, and that a party had
become favourable to Adamnan’s views. As he had not succeeded in
bringing over any of the Columban monasteries, they were driven to
obtain an abbot elsewhere, and procured the nomination of Conmael; while
the opposing party having got the upper hand three years after, Duncadh,
the legitimate successor of the line of Conall Gulban, obtained the
abbacy, and there was thus a schism in the community—one section of them
celebrating their Easter after the Roman system, who had at their head
Conmael, Ceode the bishop, and Dorbeni; and the other and more powerful
section maintaining, under the presidency of Duncadh, the old custom of
their church. After narrating how ‘at that time,’ that is, in 710,
‘Naiton, king of the Picts who inhabit the northern parts of Britain,
taught by frequent study of the ecclesiastical writings, renounced the
error by which he and his nation had till then been held in relation to
the observance of Easter, and submitted, together with his people, to
celebrate the Catholic time of our Lord’s resurrection,’ Bede closes his
notices of the monastery of Iona by telling us that ‘not long after,
those monks also of the Scottish nation who lived in the isle of Hii,
with the other monasteries that were subject to them, were, by the
procurement of our Lord, brought to the canonical observance of Easter
and the right mode of tonsure. For in the year after the incarnation of
our Lord 716, the father and priest Ecgberct, beloved of God and worthy
to be named with all honour, coming to them from Ireland, was very
honourably and joyfully received by them. Being a most agreeable teacher
and most devout in practising those things which he taught, he was
willingly heard by all; and, by his pious and frequent exhortations he
converted them from the inveterate tradition of their ancestors. He
taught them to perform the principal solemnity after the Catholic and
apostolic manner;’ and Bede adds, ‘The monks of Hii, by the instruction
of Ecgberct, adopted the Catholic rites, under Abbot Dunchad, about
eighty years after they had sent Bishop Aidan to preach to the nation of
the Angles.’[351] It is rarely, however, that, when a change is proposed
in matters of faith or practice, a Christian community is unanimous, and
there is always an opposing minority who refuse their assent to it. So
it must have been here, for in the same passage in which Tighernac
notices the adoption of the Catholic Easter in 716 he adds that Faelchu
mac Dorbeni takes the chair of Columba in the eighty-seventh year of his
age, and on Saturday the 29th of August; while he records the death of
Abbot Duncadh in the following year.[352] We have here again a schism in
the community; and no sooner does Abbot Duncadh with his adherents go
over to the Roman party, than the opposing section adopt a new abbot.
[Sidenote: A.D. 717
Expulsion of the Columban monks from the kingdom of the
Picts.]
The greater part, if not the whole, of the dependent monasteries among
the Picts seem to have resisted the change, and to have refused
obedience to the decree which Bede tells us King Naiton had issued, when
‘the cycles of nineteen years were forthwith by public command sent
throughout all the provinces of the Picts to be transcribed, learned and
observed;’ for we are told by Tighernac that in 717, when Abbot Duncadh
had died and Faelchu remained alone in possession of the abbacy, the
family of Iona were driven across Drumalban by King Naiton. In other
words, the whole of the Columban monks were expelled from his
kingdom;[353] and there is reason to think that Faelchu had been at the
head of one of these dependent monasteries in the territories of the
northern Picts.[354] It is possible that the monks of the monasteries
recently established among the southern Picts by Adamnan may have
conformed; but those of the older foundations, such as Abernethy and
_Cillrigmonadh_, or St. Andrews, were probably driven out; and thus with
the expulsion of the family of Iona terminated the primacy of its
monastery over the monasteries and churches in the extensive districts
of the east and north of Scotland which formed at that time the kingdom
of the Picts.
-----
Footnote 252:
Exceptis duobus populis, hoc est, Pictorum plebs et Scotorum
Britanniæ, inter quos utrosque Dorsi montes Britannici
disterminant.... Cujus (Columbæ) monasteria intra utrorumque populorum
terminos fundata ab utrisque ad præsens tempus valde sunt
honorificata.—B. ii. c. 47·
Footnote 253:
For an account of the remains on this island, see p. 97.
Footnote 254:
See Dr. Reeves’s _Adamnan_, ed. 1874, App. I. p. 306.
Footnote 255:
Adamnan, B. ii. 23, 25.
Footnote 256:
_Ib._, B. i. cc. 24, 41; B. ii. c. 15; B. iii. c. 8. See ed. 1874,
Appendix I., for an account of the monasteries in Tiree.
Footnote 257:
_Ib._, B. i. c. 29.
Footnote 258:
_Ib._, B. i. c. 35.
Footnote 259:
Adamnan, B. i. c. 15.
Footnote 260:
_Ib._, B. i. c. 24.
Footnote 261:
See Reeves’s _Adamnan_, ed. 1874, App. No. I., for an account of the
remains on this island.
Footnote 262:
_Vit. S. Kannechi_, cc. 19, 27, 28.
Footnote 263:
Adamnan, B. ii. c. 17; i. 25; ii. 32.
Footnote 264:
See the edition of 1874, p. 274, for a description of these ruins in
Skye.
Footnote 265:
592 Obitus Lugdach Lissmoir _.i. Moluoc_.—_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p.
67.
Footnote 266:
Colgan, _Tr. Th._, p. 481. _Obits of Christ Church, Dublin_, p. 65.
Footnote 267:
Colgan, _A.SS._, p. 233.
Footnote 268:
Reeves’s _Adamnan_, ed. 1874, p. 293.
Footnote 269:
_Cetrar for coicait lotar hi martrai la Donnan Ega._
Footnote 270:
Book of Deer, published by the Spalding Club in 1869, p. 91.
Footnote 271:
584 Mors Bruidhe mac Maelchon _Rig Cruithneach_.—_Chron. Picts and
Scots_, p. 67.
Footnote 272:
Adamnan, B. ii. c. 34.
Footnote 273:
_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 201. Constantin reigned from 790 to 820
and Gartnaidh from 584 to 599, which places the foundation of
Abernethy during the ten years from 584 to 596.
Footnote 274:
_Amra Columcille_, by O’Beirne Crowe, pp. 29, 63.
Footnote 275:
Introduction to _Obits of Christ Church_, by Dr. Todd, p. lxxvii.
Footnote 276:
_Vit. S. Cainneci_ in Archbishop Marsh’s Library, Dublin, cap. 19. The
Breviary of Aberdeen gives his festival as ‘Sancti Caynici abbatis qui
in Kennoquy in diocesi Sancti Andree pro patrono habetur.’—_Pars
Æstiv. for_ cxxv.
Footnote 277:
Blaan is mentioned in the Martyrology of Angus the Culdee, at 10th
August as ‘Blann the wild of Cinngaradh;’ and the gloss adds, ‘_i.e._
bishop of Cinngaradh, _i.e._ Dumblaan is his chief city, and he is
also of Cinngaradh in the Gall-Gaedelu, or Western Isles.’—Int. to
_Obits of Christ Church_, p. lxviii.
Footnote 278:
Adamnan, B. i. c. 3. Alither became fourth abbot of Clonmacnois on
12th June 585, and died in 599.—Reeves’s _Adamnan_, orig. ed., p. 24,
_note_.
Footnote 279:
Adamnan, B. iii. c. 23.
Footnote 280:
This little hill is twice mentioned by Adamnan. In B. i. c. 24, he
describes the saint as ‘in cacumine sedens montis qui nostro huic
monasterio eminus supereminet;’ and on this occasion he has
‘monticellum monasterio supereminentum ascendens in vertice ejus
paululum stetit.’ If the monastery and Columba’s cell have been
rightly placed, it must have been the rocky knoll behind Clachanach
called _Cnoc an bristeclach_.
Footnote 281:
_Vit. Columbæ, autore Cummenio, apud_ Pinkerton, _Vitæ Sanctorum_, cc.
17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22. Adamnan, B. iii. c. 24. Cummene’s account is
enlarged by Adamnan, and he has added the visit to the barn and the
incident of the white horse; but, as Cummene wrote so much earlier, it
has been thought desirable to discriminate between the two accounts.
Footnote 282:
Adamnan’s word is ‘Ratabusta,’ an unknown word either in classical or
mediæval Latin; and it appears to have puzzled the transcribers, as
other MSS. read ‘Rata busta’ ‘Intra busta,’ ‘In rata tabeta.’ The
Bollandists propose ‘Catabusta.’ Bustum is used for a sepulchre; and
Ducange has Busticeta, which he defines ‘sepulchra antiqua,’
‘sepulchra in agro.’ Dr. Reeves thinks it is used here for a coffin.
Footnote 283:
This frequently happens when the wind blows strongly from the
south-west.
Footnote 284:
St. Columba’s day was the 9th of June, and the year on which he died
is determined by the consideration of whether he must be held to have
died on Saturday evening or on Sunday morning. If on Sunday, then the
9th of June fell on a Sunday in the year 597. If on Saturday, then the
9th of June fell on a Saturday in 596. The former is most consistent
with Adamnan’s narrative, who places his death after midnight, and
states the duration of his life in Iona at 34 years, which, added to
563, gives us the year 597. Bede’s statement, though made on different
_data_, brings us to the same year. He brings him over in 565, but
gives 32 years as the duration of his life after, which also brings us
to 597. Tighernac seems to have adopted the other view, for he says
that he died on the eve of Whitsunday, ‘in nocte Dominica
Pentecosten,’ and Whitsunday fell on the 10th of June 596; but this is
inconsistent with his other statement, that he came over to Britain in
563, and died in the thirty-fifth year of his pilgrimage, which brings
us to 597.
Footnote 285:
Montalembert’s _Monks of the West_, vol. iii. p. 269. Montalembert
accepts the whole of O’Donnel’s biography of St. Columba as true.
Footnote 286:
Adamnan, Pref. 2. His expression ‘insulanus miles’ has been entirely
misunderstood by Montalembert.
Footnote 287:
_Amra Choluimchille_, by O’Beirne Crowe, pp. 27, 39, 49, 51, 53, 65.
Footnote 288:
_Ib._, p. 39.
Footnote 289:
Adamnan, B. i. c. 29.
Footnote 290:
_Amra Choluimchille_, pp. 43, 45.
Footnote 291:
Adamnan, B. ii. c. 14.
Footnote 292:
Bede, _Η. E._, B. iii. c. 3.
Footnote 293:
Bede seems to refer to this when he says, ‘in quibus omnibus idem
monasterium insulanum, _in quo ipse requiescit corpore_, principatum
teneret.’—B. iii. c. 4.
Footnote 294:
The expression, ‘whatever kind of person he was himself,’—verum
qualiscumque fuerit ipse,—has been held to imply that Bede had no
great opinion of St. Columba’s sanctity, or, at all events, referred
to traits in his character which were unfavourable, and Dr. Reeves
suggests that he may refer to current stories of the saint’s imperious
and vindictive temper; but the expression appears to the author to
refer to the immediately preceding sentence—‘de cujus vita et verbis
nonnulla a discipulis ejus feruntur scripta haberi’—which surely
refers to the Lives by Cummene and Adamnan. As Bede was acquainted
with Adamnan’s work on the Holy Places, he could hardly have been
ignorant of his Life of St. Columba; and probably all Bede meant to
express was that he had some hesitation in accepting as true all that
Adamnan said of him.
Footnote 295:
Adamnan, B. i. c. 2. It is unnecessary to follow Finten’s proceedings
further. He is the Finten, surnamed Munnu, who founded Tach Munnu, now
Taghmon, in Ireland, and to whom the churches of St. Mund in Lochleven
and Kilmund in Cowal were dedicated.
Footnote 296:
598 Quies Baethin abbatis Ea anno lxvi etatis sue.—_Tigh._ Tighernac
antedates the deaths of Columba and Baithene one year. The Martyrology
of Donegal records two anecdotes of him. ‘When he used to eat food, he
was wont to say _Deus in adjutorium meum intende_ between every two
morsels. When he used to be gathering corn along with the monks, he
held one hand up beseeching God, and another hand gathering
corn.’—_Mart. Don._ p. 165.
Footnote 297:
Bede, _Η. E._, B. ii. c. 4.
Footnote 298:
605 Obitus Laisreni abbatis Iae.—_Tigh._
Footnote 299:
Adamnan, B. iii. c. 20.
Footnote 300:
611 Neman Abbas Lesmoir.—_Tigh._ 617 Combustio Donnain Ega hi xv
kalendas Mai cum clericis martiribus.—_Tigh._ _Chron. Picts and
Scots_, pp. 68, 69.
Footnote 301:
Dr. Reeves’s _Adamnan_, 1874, p. 294.
Footnote 302:
_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 168. Bishop Forbes’s _Calendars_, p. 449.
Footnote 303:
Bede, _Hist. Ec._, B. iii. c. 1.
Footnote 304:
623 Bass Fergna abbas Iae.—_Tigh._
Footnote 305:
Bede, _Η. E._, B. ii. c. 14.
Footnote 306:
Bede, _Hist. Ec._, B. ii. c. 17.
Footnote 307:
_Ib._, B. iii. c. 3.
Footnote 308:
Bede, _Hist. Ec._, B. iii. c. 5.
Footnote 309:
‘Hanc mihi Adamnano narrationem meus decessor, noster abbas Failbeus,
indubitanter enarravit, qui se ab ore ipsius Ossualdi regis Segineo
abbati eamdem enuntiantis visionem audisse protestatus
est.’—_Adamnan_, B. i. c. 1.
Footnote 310:
632 _Inis Metgoit_ fundata est.—_Tigh._ Tighernac antedates at this
period transactions in Northumbria by about three years.
Footnote 311:
Bede in _Vit. S. Cudbercti_, c. xvi.
Footnote 312:
Bede, _Hist. Ec._, B. iii. c. 3.
Footnote 313:
The title of the letter is—‘In nomine Divino Dei summi confido.
Dominis sanctis et in Christo venerandis Segieno abbati, Columbæ
Sancti et cæterorum sanctorum successori, Beccanoque solitario, charo
carne et spiritu fratri, cum suis sapientibus, Cummianus supplex
peccator, magnis minimus, apologeticam in Christo salutem.’
Footnote 314:
The letter is printed at length in Usher’s _Veterum Epistolarum
Hibernicarum Sylloge_, p. 24, and in Migne’s _Patrologia_, vol.
xxxviii.
Footnote 315:
According to the Irish method Easter in 631 fell on 21st April,
according to the Roman on the 24th of March.
Footnote 316:
Bede, _Hist. Ec._, B. ii. c. 19.
Footnote 317:
_Ib._, B. iii. c. 3.
Footnote 318:
Keating’s _History of Ireland_, cap. ii. § 7.
Footnote 319:
635 Seigine abbas Ie ecclesiam Recharnn fundavit. Eocha abbas Lismoir
quievit.—_Tigh._
Footnote 320:
Bede, _Hist. Ec._, B. ii. c. 19.
Footnote 321:
Bede, _Hist. Ec._, B. iii. c. 17. 651 Quies Aidain episcopi
Saxan.—_Tigh._
Footnote 322:
652 Obitus Seghine abbas Iea .i. filii Fiachna.—_Tigh._
657 Quies Suibne mic Cuirthre abbatis Iea.—_Tigh._
Footnote 323:
Bede, _Hist. Ec._, B. iii. c. 25.
Footnote 324:
660 Obitus Finain mac Rimeda episcopi et Daniel episcopi Cindgaradh.
661 Cuimine abbas ad Hiberniam venit.—_Tigh._
Footnote 325:
Bede, _H. E._, B. iii. c. 25.
Footnote 326:
Bede, _Hist. Ec._, B. iii. c. 25.
Footnote 327:
_Ib._, c. 26.
Footnote 328:
Bede, _Hist. Ec._, B. iii. c. 26.
Footnote 329:
_Ib._, B. iv. c. 4.
A.D. 668 Navigatio Colmani episcop cum reliquiis sanctorum ad insulam
vacce albe in qua fundavit ecclesiam.—_Tigh._
Footnote 330:
Adamnan, B. iii. c. 6.
Footnote 331:
A.D. 669 Obitus Cumaine Ailbe abbatis Iea. Itharnan et Corindu apud
Pictores defuncti sunt.—_Tigh._
Footnote 332:
Bede, _Hist. Ec._, B. iv. c. 3.
Footnote 333:
Eddii _Vit. S. Wilf._, c. xxi.
Footnote 334:
A.D. 671 Maelruba in Britanniam navigat.
A.D. 673 Maelruba fundavit ecclesiam Aporcrosan.—_Tigh._
Footnote 335:
A.D. 673 Navigatio Failbe abbatis Iea in Hiberniam. A.D. 676 Failbe de
Hibernia revertitur.—_Tigh._
Footnote 336:
Bishop Forbes, _Scottish Calendars_, pp. 310-341.
Footnote 337:
Dr. Reeves’s _Adamnan_, ed. 1874, p. 296.
Footnote 338:
A.D. 674 Quies Failbe abbatis Iea. Dormitatio Nechtain.—_Tigh._ He
appears in the Felire of Angus on 8th January as _Nechtain Nair de
albae_, which is glossed _Anair de Albain_—from the east, from Alban.
Footnote 339:
A.D. 687 Adamnanus captivos reduxit ad Hiberniam lx.—_Tigh._ Reeves’s
_Adamnan_, ed. 1874, p. cli. Adamnan alludes to this mission, B. ii.
c. 1.
Footnote 340:
Adamnan, B. ii. c. 46. Boece states that the monastery was rebuilt by
Maelduin, king of Dalriada, whose death is recorded by Tighernac in
690. He therefore reigned at the very time when Adamnan was abbot, and
this fixes the date of these repairs as between 687 and 690.
Footnote 341:
Bede, _Hist. Ec._, B. v. c. 15. Reeves’s _Adamnan_, ed. 1874, p. clxi.
Footnote 342:
Bede, _Hist. Ec._, B. v. c. 15.
Footnote 343:
_Ib._ c. 21. He calls him ‘Abbas et sacerdos Columbiensium egregius.’
Footnote 344:
A.D. 689 Iolan episcopus Cindgaradh obiit. 692 Adamnanus xiiii annis
post pausam Failbe Ea ad Hiberniam pergit.—_Tigh._ See _Chron. Picts
and Scots_, p. 408.
Footnote 345:
Dr. Reeves’s _Adamnan_, ed. 1874, p. clvi. A.D. 697 Adamnan _tuc recht
lecsa in Erind an bliadhna seo_ (brought a law with him this year to
Ireland).—_Tigh._
Footnote 346:
Bede, _Hist. Ec._, B. v. c. 15.
Footnote 347:
A.D. 704 Adamnanus lxxvii anno ætatis suæ, in nonas kalendis Octobris,
abbas Ie, pausat.—_Tigh._
Footnote 348:
See Adamnan, Pref. i. and B. i. c. 3. Dr. Reeves considers that it was
written between the years 692 and 697, but it was more probably
compiled immediately after his return from England in 688, and before
his visit to Ireland in 692.
Footnote 349:
‘Inchekethe, in qua præfuit Sanctus Adamnanus
abbas.’—_Scotichronicon_, B. i. c. 6.
Footnote 350:
A.D. 707 Dunchadh principatum Iae tenuit.—_Tigh._
710 Conmael mac abbatis Cilledara Iae pausat.—_Tigh._
712 Ceode episcopus Iea pausat.—_Tigh._
713 Dorbeni cathedram Iae obtinuit, et v. mensibus peractis in primatu
v kalendis Novembris die Sabbati obiit.—_Tigh._ The 28th day of
October fell on a Saturday in the year 713. The passage recording the
death of Conmael is corrupt.
Footnote 351:
Bede, _Hist. Ec._, B. v. c. 22.
Footnote 352:
A.D. 716 Pasca in Eo civitate commotatur. Faelchu mac Doirbeni
cathedram Columbæ lxxxvii ætatis anno, in iiii kal. Septembris die
Sabbati suscepit.—_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 73. The 29th day of
August fell on a Saturday in the year 716.
A.D. 717 Dunchadh mac Cindfaeladh abbas Ie obiit.—_Ib._ p. 74.
Footnote 353:
A.D. 717 Expulsio familiæ Ie trans dorsum Britanniæ a Nectono
rege.—_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 74.
Footnote 354:
In the Breviary of Aberdeen is the legend of S. Volocus, patron saint
of Dunmeth and Logy in Mar, both in Aberdeenshire. Volocus is the
Latin form of Faelchu, as Vigeanus is of Fechin, Vynanus of Finan, and
Virgilius of Fergal.
[Illustration:
MAP
illustrating History of
MONASTIC CHURCH
prior to 8^{th}. Century
_J. Bartholomew, Edin._
]