The Apostolate of Columba Among the Scots and Picts
Moral transformation of Columba. — His progress in spiritual life. — His humility. — His charity. — His preaching by tears. — The hut which formed his abbatial palace at lona. — His prayers; his work of transcription. — His crowd of visitors. — His severity in the examination of monastic vocations. — Aldus the Black, the murderer of Columba's enemy King Diarmid, rejected by the community. — Penance of Libran of the Rushes. — Columba encourages the despairing and unmasks the hypocrites.—Monastic propaganda of lona; Columba's fifty-three foundations in Scotland. —His relations with the people of Caledonia: First with the colony of Dalriadians from Ireland, whose king was his relative; he enlightens and confirms their imperfect Christianity. — Ambushef laid for his chastity. — His connection with the Picts, who occupied the north of Britain. — The dorsum Britannia:. — Columba their first missionary.-— The fortress gates of their king Brudus open before him. — He struggles with the Druids in their last refuge. — He preaches by an interpreter. — His respect for natural virtue. — Baptism of two old Pictish chiefs. — Columba's humanity: he redeems an Irish captive. — Frequent journeys among the Picts, whose conversion he accomplishes before he dies. — His fellow-workers, Malruve and Drostan; the Monastery of Tears.
However bitter the sadness might be with which exile filled the heart of Columba, it did not for a moment turn him from his work of expiation. As soon as he had installed himself with his companions in that desert isle, from whence the Christian faith and monastic life were about to radiate over the north of Great Britain, a gradual and almost complete transformation became apparent in him. Without giving up the lovable peculiarities of his character and race, he gradually became a model for penitents, and at the same time for confessors and preachers. Without ceasing coimnba? to maintain an authority which was to increase with ?e'ss^[n°' years, and which does not seem ever to have been spiritual disputed, over the monasteries which he had founded in Ireland, he applied himself at once to establish, on the double basis of manual and intellectual labor, the new insular community which was to be the centre of his future activity. Then he proceeded to unite himself in friendly relations with the inhabitants of the neighboring districts, whom it was needful to evangelize or confirm in the faith, before thinking of carrjnng the light of the Gospel further off to the north. He prepared himself for this grand mission by miracles of fervor and austerity, as well as humble charity, to the great profit in the first place of his own monks, and afterwards of the many visitors who came, whether from Ireland or from the Caledonian shores, to seek at his side the healing or the consolation of penitence.
This man, whom we have seen so passionate, so ^^^ humiiiirritable, so warlike and vindictive, became little by little the most gentle, the humblest, the most tender of friends and fathers. It was he, the great head of the Caledonian Church, who, kneeling before the strangers who came to lona, or before the monks returning from their work, took off their shoes, washed their feet, and after having washed them respectfully kissed them. But charity was still stronger than humility in that transfigured soul. No necessity, spiritual or temporal, found him indifferent. He devoted himself to the solace of all infirmities, all miserj^ and pain, weeping often over those who did not weep for themselves.^^ These tears became the most eloquent part of his preaching, the means which he employed most willingly to subdue inveterate sinners, to arrest the criminal on the brink of the abyss, to appease and soften and change those wild and savage but simple and straightforward souls, whom God had given him to subdue.
In the midst of the new community Columba inhabited, instead of a cell, a sort of hut built of planks, and placed upon the most elevated spot within the monastic enclosure. Up to the age of seventy-six he slept there upon the hard floor, with no pillow but a stone. This hut was at once his study and his oratory. It was there that he gave himself up to those prolonged prayers which excited the admiration and almost the alarm of his disciples. It was there that he returned after sharing the out-door labor of his monks,^^like the least among them, to consecrate the rest of his time to the study of Holy Scripture and the transcription of the sacred text. The work of transcription remained until his " " Cum laborantibus laborabat, cum infirmantibus infirmabatur, cum flentibus semper, et cum non flcntibus sa^pe flebat.... Quando vel porvicaces in nefarium aliquod facinus ruentes cohibcre non poterat... lacrynias ubertim emittcbat." — O'Donnell, lib. iii. c. 40.
"" " Nullum hoTsu monientulum transibat, quo non pie occupatum rcperiri potuerit. ... In manuali laboratione cum aliis fratribus non sccus ac eorum miuimus, coUaborabat." — O'Donnell, Vita quinia, iii. 37,39. last day the occupation of his old age, as it had been the passion of his youth; it had such an attraction for him, and seemed to him so essential to a knowledge of the truth, that, as we have already said, three hundred copies of the Holy Gospels, copied by his own hand, have been attributed to him.
I^ was in the same hut that he received with unwearied patience the numerous and sometimes importunate visitors who soon flowed to him, and of whom sometimes he complained gently— as of that indiscreet stranger, who, desirous of embracing him, awkwardly overturned his ink upon the border of his robe.^^ These importunate guests did not come out of simple curiosity; they were most commonly penitent or fervid Christians, who, informed by the fishermen and inhabitants of the neighboring isles of the establishment of the Irish monk, who Avas already famous in his own country, and attracted by the growing renown of his virtues, came from Ireland, from the north and south of Britain, and even from the midst of the still heathen Saxons, to save their souls and gain heaven under the direction of a man of God.^o Hisscru- Far from making efforts to attract or lightly admitting thcso ncopliytes, nothing in his life is more clearly established than the scrupulous severity with which he examined into all vocations, and into the vocations, admission of penitents. He feared nothing so much as that the monastic frock might serve as a shelter for criminals who sought in the cloister not only a place of penitence and expiation, but a shelter from human justice. On occasion he even blamed the too gi-eat facility of his friends and disciples. One of the latter, Finchan, had founded upon Eigg,^^ another Hebridean island, a community resembling that of lona, and possibly dependent upon it: he had there admitted to clerical orders, and even to the priesthood, a prince of the clan of Picts established in Ireland, Aedh or Aldus, called the Black,a violentand bloodthirsty man, who had 89 " Tuguriolum hospitiolum, in eminentiore loco fabricatum, in quo vir beatus scribebat.... Hospes molestus supervenit, sanctumque osculandum appetens, ora vestimenti inclinatum effudit atramenti corniculum."— Adamnan, i. 25.
^^ Adamnan has among the list of the first companions of the holy abbot the names of two Saxons, one of whom was a baker, and also that of a Briton, who died first of all the lona monks. This was that Odhran or Orain who has left his name to the burying-ground, which is still called Reilig Ora%n. " Bonis actibus intentans qui primus apud nos in hac insula mortuus est." Adamnan, iii. 6.
^' To the north of lona, near the large island of Skye. assassinated Diarmid, the king of Ireland. It was this king, as will be remembered, who pronounced the unjust sentence which drove Columba frantic, and was the occasion of all his faults and misfortunes. The abbot of lona was not the less on this account indignant at the weakness of his friend. " The hand which Finchan has laid, in the face of all justice and ecclesiastical law, upon the head of this son of perdition," said Columba, ^' shall rot and fall off, and be buried before the body to which it is attached. As for the false priest, the assassin, he shall himself be assassinated." This double prophecy was accomplished.^^
Let us lend an ear to the following dialogue which Libranof Columba held with one of those who sought shelter ^'^^ Rushes, under his discipline. It will explain the moral and spiritual condition of that age better than many commentaries, and will, besides, show the wonderful influence which Columba, penitent and exiled in the depths of his distant island, exercised over all Ireland. It was one day announced to him that a stranger had just landed from Ireland, and Columba went to meet him in the house reserved for guests, to talk to him in private, and question him as to his dwelling-place, his family, and the cause of his journey. The stranger told him that he had undertaken this painful voyage in order, under the monastic habit and in exile, to expiate his sins. Columba, desirous of trying the reality of his penitence, drew a most repulsive picture of the hardship and difficult obligations of the new life. " I am ready," said the stranger, " to submit to the most cruel and humiliating conditions that thou canst command me." And after having made confession, he swore, still upon his knees, to accomplish all the requirements of penitence. " It is well," said the abbot; "now rise from thy knees, seat thyself, and listen; you must first do penance for seven years in the neighboring island of Tiree, after which I will see you again," '' But," said the penitent, still agitated by remorse, '' how can I expiate a perjury of which I have not yet spoken? Before I left my own country I killed a poor man. I was about to suffer the punishment of death for that crime, and I was already in irons,
^* "Finchanus, Christi miles, Aidum... regio genore ortum, Crutliinium gcntc, do Scotia ad Britanniam sub clericatus iiabitu seeum adduxit.... Qui valde sanguinarius homo et multoruin fuerat trucidator.... Uarmitium total Scotia; regnatorem Deo auctore ordinatum intcrfecerat.... Maiiua... contra fas ct jus ecclesiasticum super caput filii perditionis, raox coraputrescet." — Adamnait, i. 3G. when one of my relations, who is very rich, delivered me by paying the composition demanded. I swore that I would serve him all the rest of my life; but after some days of service I abandoned him, and here I am, notwithstanding my oath." Upon this the saint added that he would only be admitted to the paschal communion after seven years of penitence. When these were completed, Columba, after having given him the communion with his own hand, sent him back to Ireland to his patron, carrying a sword with an ivory handle for his ransom. The patron, however, moved by the entreaties of his wife, gave the penitent his pardon without ransom. " Why should we accept the price sent to us by the holy Columba? We are not worthy of it. The request of such an intercessor should be granted freely. His blessing will do more for us than any ransom." And immediately he detached the girdle from his waist, which was the ordinary formula in Ireland for the manumission of captives or slaves. Columba had besides commanded his penitent to remain with his old father and mother until he had rendered to them the last services. This accomplished, his brothers let him go, saying, " Far be it from us to detain a man who has labored for seven years for the salvation of his soul with the holy Columba." He then returned to lona, bringing with him the sword which was to have been his ransom. " Henceforward thou shalt be called Libran, for thou art free, and emancipated from all ties," said Columba; and he immediately admitted him to take the monastic vows. But when he was commanded to return to Tiree, to end his life at a distance from Columba, poor Libran, who up to this moment had been so docile, fell on his knees and wept bitterly. Columba, touched by his despair, comforted him, as besi he could, without, however, altering his sentence. " Thou shalt live far from me, but thou shalt die in one of my monasteries, and thou shalt rise again with my monks, and have part with them in heaven," said the abbot. Such was the history of Libran, called Libran of the Rushes, because he had passed many years in gathering rushes — the years probably of his penitence.^^
^^ " Libranus de Arundineto... plebeius nuper, sumpto clericatus liabitu ... ad delenda in peregrinatione peccaraina longo fatigatum itinere.... Cui sanctus, ut de suae poenitudinis exploraret qualitate, dura et laboriosa ante oculos monasterialia proposuisset imperia.... Paratus sura ad omnia quaecumque mihi jubere volueris, quamlibet durissima, quamlibet indigna.... Surge et reside.... Quid agere oportet de quodam meo falso juramento? Nam in patria trucidavi homuncionem.... Machseram belluinis
This doctor, learned in penitence, became day by day more gifted in the great art of ruling souls; and, with a hand as prudent as vigorous, raised up on one side the wounded and troubled conscience —while, on the other, he unveiled the false monks and false penitents. To a certain monk, who, in despair at having yielded during a journey to the temptations of a woman, rushed from confessor to confessor without ever finding himself sufficiently repentant or sufficiently punished, he restored peace and confidence, by showing him that his despair was nothing but an infernal hallucination, and by inflicting upon him a penance bard enough to convince him of the remission of his sin.^^ To another sinner from Ireland, who, guilty of incest and fratricide, had insisted, whether Columba pleased or not, on taking refuge in lona, he imposed perpetual exile from his native country, and twelve years of penance among the savages of Caledonia, predicting at the same time that the false penitent would perish in consequence of refusing this expiation.^s Arriving one day in a little community formed by himself in one of the neighboring islets,^'^ and intended to receive the penitents during their time of probation, he gave orders that certain delicacies should be added to their usual repast, and that even the penitents should be permitted to enjoy them. One of the latter, however, more scrupulous than needful, refused to accept the improved fare, even from the hand of the abbot. " Ah " said Columba, " thou refusest the solace which is offered to thee by thy superior and myself. A day will come when thou shalt again be a robber as thou hast been, and shalt ornatam dolatis dentibus.... Ut quid nobis hoc accipere quod sanctus pretium misit Columba? Hoc non sumus digni... liberetur ei pius hie gratis ministrator.... Continuo gratis liberavit servum... cingulum ex more captivi de lumbis resolvens.... Ut tanto tempore patri debitam, sed neglectam redintegres pietatem.... Nullo modo nos oportet fratrem in patria retentare qui per septcm annos apud S. Columbam in Britannia saluteni excrcuit animaj.... Tu Libranus vocaberis quod sis liber.... Qui ideo Arundineti est vocitatus, quia in arundineto multis annis arundines colligendo laboraverat." His death occurred long after that of Columba, at Durrow, one of the first of the great abbot's foundations in Ireland. — Adam- NAX, ii. 39.
*^ " Magna est, o frater, hallucinatio tua. Ego quindecim tibi annos in pane ot aqua jejunandos pro poenitentia injungo, quo tibi vel ipsa poenitentiae gravitas persuadeat peccatum tuum esse remissum." — O'Donxell, vol.
i. c. 24.
"* " Si duodecim annis inter Brittones cum fletu et lachrymis poenitcntiam egeris, nee ad Scotiam usque ad mortem reversus fueris, forsan l3eus peccato ignoscat tuo." — Adamnan, i. 22.
*® Himba, the modern name of which is unknown. steal, and eat the venison in the forests wherever thou goest." And this prophecy too was fulfilled.^^
Notwithstanding these precautions, and his apparent severity, the number of neophytes who sought the privilege of living under the rule of Columba increased more and more. Every day, and every minute of the day, the abbot and his companions, in the retirement of their cells, or at their outdoor labors, heard great cries addressed to them from the other side of the narrow strait which separates lona from the neighboring island of Mull. These shouts were the understood signal by which those who sought admission to lona gave notice of their presence, that the boat of the monastery might be sent to carry them over.^^ Among the crowds who crossed in that boat some sought only material help, alms, or medicines; but the greater part sought permission to do penance, and to pass a shorter or longer time in the new monastery, where Columba put their vocation to so many trials. Once only was he known to have at the very moment of their arrival imposed, so to speak, the monastic vows, upon two pilgrims, whose virtues and approaching death had been by a supernatural instinct revealed to him/^^ Monastic The narrow enclosure of lona was soon too small fo^' the increasing crowd, and from this little monasfic colony issued in succession a swarm of similar colonies, which went forth to plant new communities, daughters of lona, in the neighboring isles, and on the main land of Caledonia, all of which were under the authority of Columba. Ancient traditions attribute to him the foundation of three hundred monasteries or churches, as many in Caledonia as in Hibernia, a hundred of which were in the islands or upon the sea-shore of the two countries. Modern learning has discovered and registered the existence of ninety churches, whose origin goes back to Columba, and to all or almost all of which, according to the custom of the
^'' " Ut etiam pcenitentibus aliqua praecipit consolatio indulgeretur.... Erit tempus quo cum furacibus furtive carnem in sylva manducabis." —Adamnan, i. 21.
^* " Alia die, ultra fretum lonae insulae clamatum est, quem sanctus, sedens in tuguriolo tabulis suffulto audiens, clamorem.... Mane eadem quarta feria, alius ultra fretum clamitabat proselytus.... Quadam die, quemdam ultra fretum audiens clamitantcm, sanctus.... Valde miserandus est ille clamitans homo, qui aliqua ad carnalia medicamenta petiturus pertinentia, ad nos venit.... Ite, ait, celeriter peregrinosque de longinqua venientes regione, ad nos ocius adducite." — Adamnan, i. 25, 26, 27, 32, 43.
'*^ " Apud me, ut dicitis, anni unius spatio peregrinari non poteritis, nisi prius monachicum promiseretis votum." — Adamnan, i. 32. time, monastic communities must have been attached.!*^*' Traces of fifty-three of these churches remain still in raoderu Scotland, unequally divided amono^ the districts inhabited by the two races which then shared Caledonia between them.ioi Thirty-two are in the western isles, and the country occupied by the Irish-Scots, and the twenty-one others mark the principal stations of the great missionary in the land of the Picts. The most enlightened judges among the Scotch Protestants agree in attributing to the teachings of Columba— to his foundations and his disciples — all the primitive churches, and the very ancient parochial division of Scotland.^^^
But it is time to tell what the population was whose confidence Columba had thus gained, and ofCoiumba from which the communities of his monastic family were recruited. The portion of Great Britain which received the name of Caledonia did not include the whole of modern Scotland; it embraced only the districts to the north of the isthmus which separates the Clyde from the Forth, or Glasgow from Edinburgh. All this region to the north and to the east was in the hands of those terrible Picts whom the Romans had been unable to conquer, and who were the terror of the Britons. But to the Avest and southwest, on the side where Columba landed, he found a colony of his own country and race — that is to say, the Scots of Ireland, who were destined to become the sole masters of Caledonia, and to bestow
'"*' Jocelyn, in his Vie do St. Patrice, c. 89, attributes a hundred to him and this number is increased to three hundred by O'Donnell, book iii. c. 32. Colgan has named sixty-six of which Columba must have been, directly or indirectly, the founder (six more than St. Bernard). Fifty-eight of these foundations were in Ireland. But Colgan regards as founded by him almost all the churches built in Scotland before his death in 597. Bede, iii. 4, seems to give Durrow and lona as the only direct foundations of Columba, and the others as proceeding from these two: "Ex utroque monasterio plurima exindc monasteria per discipulos et in Britannia et in Scotia propagata sunt." But he evidently is in the wrong, so far at least as Derry is concerned. All the communities erected under the supremacy of the abbot of lona bore the name of Fa7nilia Columba-Cille.
'"' The enumeration of Dr. Reeves (Appendix H) might be much augmented, according to what he himself says. The thirty-two churches or monasteries inter Scottos comprehended those of the Hebridean isles, such as Skye, IMull, Oronsay, even down to the distant islet of St. Kilda, one of the three churches of which bears his name. In those inter Pictos is included Inchcolm, an island near Edinburgh. These fifty-three, and the thirtyseven already brought to light by Dr. Keeves, make very nearly the number of one hundred given by the author of the Vie de Si. Patrice.
'"^ Sec specially Cosmo Innes, the modest and learned author of the excellent works entitled Scotland in the Middle Ages, 18C0, and Sketches of Early Scottish History, 1861. upon it the name of Scotland. i*^^ More than half a century before, followino- in the train of many similar inva- 500-503.. '. f., f T • U J •
sions or emigrations, a colony oi Irish, or, according to the name then in use, of Scots, belonging to the tribe of Dalriadians,^*^* had crossed the sea which separates the northeast coast of Ireland from the north-west of Great Britain, and had established itself— between the Picts of the north and the Britons of the south — in the islands and upon the western coast of Caledonia, north of the mouth of the Clyde, and in the district which has since taken the name of Argyll. The chiefs or kings of this Dalriadian colony, who were destined to become the parent stock of those famous and unfortunate Stuarts who once reigned over both Scotland and England, had at that time strengthened their growing power by the aid of the Niall princes who reigned in the north of Ireland, and to whose family Columba belonged. Columba had also a very close tie of kindred with the Dalriadians themselves, his paternal grandmother having been the daughter of Lorn, the first, or one of the first kings of the colony .^*^^ He was thus a relation of King Connal, the sixth related to successor of Lom, who, at the moment of Columba's their chiefs, ^^.j.-^^]^ y^^^ ^ggj^ foj. ^^^^.^^ ^.g^rs the chief of the Scotic emigrants in Caledonia. lona, where the abbot established himself, was at the northern extremity of the then
^°^ We again repeat what it required all the learning of Ussher, White, Colgan, and Ward to prove— namely, that the holy and learned Scotia of the ancients was Ireland. The name of Scotia became the exclusive possession of the Scotch — that is to say, of the Irish colonists in Caledonia —only in the eleventh or twelfth century, in the time of Giraldus Cambrensis, at the moment when the power of the true Scots declined in Scotland under the influence of the Anglo-Norman conquest. The Bollandists have applied the very appropriate name of Scotia Nova or Iliherno- Scotia to the Scotic colonies in Scotland. — Vita S. Cadro6, ap. Act. SS. Martii, vol. i. p. 473, and Vita S. Domnani, Act. SS. Aprilis, vol. ii. 487. The modern English also use a title historically exact in describing as North Britain the kingdom of Scotland since its union with England. M. Varin, in the papers which we have already quoted, has proved the obscurity of the political and religious origin of Caledonia. He remarks that, of the three primitive populations successively noted in that part of Great Britain, the only one which has retainetl its name is that which was the last to arrive upon the soil, which from it is still called Scotland. He is even disposed to believe that Ireland sometimes claimed for herself the credit of the civil and religious acts accomplished in her colony.
'"^ These Dalriadians were themselves descended from Picts, who, under the name of Cruithne or Cruithnii, had long swayed a part of Ireland. —See Reeves, pp. 33, 67, and 94; O'Kelly, notes to the new edition of Cambrensis Eversus, of Lynch, vol. i. pp. 436, 463, 495. In Columba's time they still occupied the counties of Antrim and Down.
"•^ See the genealogical table of Heeves, p. 8, note 4. very limited domain of the Dalriadians, and might be regarded as a dependency of their new state, not less than of that of the Picts, who occupied all the rest of Caledonia. Columba immediately entered into alliance with this prince. He visited him in his residence on the main land, and obtained from him, in his double title of cousin and countryman, a gift of the uninhabited island where he had just established his community. ^*^^
These Scots who had left Ireland after the conversion of the island by St. Patrick were probably ens and" Christians, like all the Irish, at least in name; but thd?imperno certain trace of ecclesiastical organization or of [i^nj?*^"^' monastic institutions is visible among them before Columba's arrival at lona. The apostolate of Ninian and of Palladius does not seem to have produced a durable impres-
sion upon them anymore than upon the southern Picts.^*^'' A
new apostolical enterprise by Celtic monks was necessary to renew the work at which the Roman missionaries had labored a century before.^'^^ Columba and his disciples neglected no means of fortifying and spreading religion among their coun-
trymen, who were emigrants like themselves. We see him
in the narratives of Adamnan administering baptism and the other rites of religion to the people of Scotic race, through whose lands he passed, planting there the first foundations of monastic communities. Many narratives, more or less legendary, indicate that this people, even when Christian, had great need to be instructed, directed, and established in the good way; while at the same time the Dalriadians showed a certain suspicion and doubt of the new apostle of their race, which only yielded to the prolonged influence of his selfdevotion and unquestionable virtue.
Columba was still in the flower of his age when he established himself at lona; he was not more at the most than forty-two. All testimonies agree in celebrating his manly beauty, his remarkable height, his sweet and sonorous voice, the cordiality of his manner, the gracious dignity of his deportment and person.io^ These external advantages, added to '"* TiGiiERNACH, Annates; Adamnan, 574, i. 7.
'"^ This explains the name of apostates given by St. Patrick to the Scots and Picts of his time — " Socii Scotoriim atque Pictorum ajjostatarum... Ijessimorura atque apostatarum Pictorum."
""* The Irish Scots, newly converted, reconquered to Christianity the Scots of Caledonia. The Picts, forgetful of Ninian and of Rome, received the gospel the second time from Ilibernia in the name of Britain. — Varin, 2d paper.
109 "Erataspectu angelicus.... Omnibus carus, hilarem semper faciem the fame of his .austerities and the inviolable purity of his life, made a singular and varied impression upon the pagans and the very imperfect Christians of Caledonia. The Dalriadian king put his virtue to the proof by presenting to him his daughter, who was remarkably beautiful, and clothed in the richest ornaments. He asked if the kin<^ and*'^*^ sight of a crcaturo so beautiful and so adorned did not Gxcite somo inclination in him. "Without doubt," answered the missionary, " the inclination of the flesh and of nature; but understand well, lord king, that not for all the empire of the world, even could its honors and pleasures be secured to me to the end of time, would I yield to my natural weakness." '^^^ About the same time, a woman who lived not far from lona spread for him a more dangerous and subtle snare. The celebrated and handsome exile having inspired her with a violent and guilty passion, she conceived the idea of seducing him, and succeeded in drawing him to her house. But as soon as he understood her design, he addressed to her an exhortation upon death and the last judgment, which he ended by blessing her, and making the sign of the cross. The temptress was thus delivered even from her own temptations. She continued to love him, but with a religious respect. It is added that she herself became a model of holiness.^^^
ostendens... cujus alta proceritas... ." Adamn., Traf., unci i. 1. *' Vir tantEe deditus austeritati... tamen extcriori forma et corporis habitu speciosus, genis rubicundus et vultu hilaris... semper apparebat et omnibus.... Colloquio affabilem, benignum, jucundum et interior is Isetitiaea Spiritu Sancto infusse indicia, liilari vultu prodentem se semper exhibebat." — O'Donnell, Vita quinta, 1. iii. c. 43.
no n Puellam valde speciosam purpura, auro, gemmis, aliisque id generis regii amictus ornamentis... exornatam... coram S. Columba sistit.... Percontatus an filife et pulchritudo et ornatus placeant. Respondit eanctus omnino placere. Iterum corapellat an non etiam ejus formaj ducatur coraplacentia.... Respondit se natura ad talem oomplacentiam propensura esse. Ecce, inquit rex... biccine est qui nullo carnali desiderio inquinatus deprffidicatur? Tunc S. Columba... O rex, sciat altitudo tua, et si insita carnis propensio meani naturam ad probibitas inclinet complacentias, pro universi tamen imperio, bonoribus et voluptatibus, si usque mundi finera ad concederetur, me nolle talibus complacenter indulgere." — O'Donnell, lib. ii. c. 39. The king who figures in this anecdote does not appear to have been Ai'dan, as O'Donnell would assert. Aidan began to reign over the Scotic colony only in 574, eleven j'ears after the arrival of Columba at lona. It must have been his predecessor Connell.
"' " Ipsum in lonam jam commorantem, multisque... percelebrem.... Quamdam de vicino feminam S. viri concupiscentiainflammat (antiquus serpens).... Delude earn aucto crucis signo bcnedicens, ab omni mox tentatione liberam dimisit.... Casto deinceps amore, niagnaque reverentia coluit, ipsa tandem sanctitate Celebris."— O'Donnell, lib, ii. c. 25.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA, 45
But it was towards another race, very different from his Scotic countrymen and much less accessible, that Columba felt himself drawn as much by the penance imposed upon him as by the necessities of the Church and of Christendom. While the Irish Scots occupied the islands and part of the western coast of Caledonia, all the north and east— that is to say, by far the greater part of the country — was inhabited by the Picts, who were still heathens. Originally from Sarmatia, according to Tacitus— according to Bede, descendants of the Scythians— these primitive inhabitants of Great Britain, who had remained untouched by Roman or Christian influences, owed their name to their custom of fighting naked, and of painting their bodies in various colors, which had been the wont of all the ancient Britons at the time of Csesar's invasion. We have already seen that the holy bishop Ninian more than a century before had preached the Christian flxith to the Southern Picts 1^2— that is to say, to those who lived on the banks of the Forth or scattered among the Britons in the districts south of that river. But while even the traces of Ninian's apostolic work seemed at that moment effaced, although destined afterwards to reappear, the great majority of the Picts— those who inhabited the vast tracts to the north of the Grampians, into which no missionary before Columba had ever dared to penetrate ^^^ — had always continued heathen. The thirty-four years of life which Columba had still before him were chiefly spent in missions, undertaken for the purpose of carrying the faith to the hilly straths, and into the deep glens and numerous islands of northern Caledonia. There dwelt a race, warlike, grasping, and bold, as inaccessible to softness as to fear, only half clothed notwithstanding the severity of the climate, and obstinately attached to their customs, belief, and chiefs. The missionary had to preach, to convert, and even at need to brave those formidable tribes, in whom Tacitus recognized the farthest off of the earth's inhabitants, and the last champions of freedom — ^^terrarumac libertatis exti'emos; " those barbarians who, having gloriously resisted Agricola, drove the frightened Romans from Britain, and devastated and desolated the entire island up to the arrival of the Saxons; and "'^ Book viii. chap. 1.
113 " Primus doctor fidei Christianae transmontanis Pictis ad Aquiloncm." — Bede, v. 9. " Gentem illam verbo et exemplo ad fidem Christi convertit." — Ibid., ill. 4. whose descendants, after filling the history of Scotland with their feats of arms, have given, under the name of Highlaiulers, to the fallen Stuarts their most dauntless defenders, and to modern England her most glorious soldiers.
Columba crossed again and again that central mountain range in which rise those waters which flow, some«north and west to fall into the Atlantic Ocean, and some to the south to swell the North Sea — a range which the biographer of the saint calls the backbone of Britain {dorsum, Britannice,), and which separates the counties of Inverness and Argyll, as now existing, from the county of Perth, and includes the districts so well known to travellers under the names of Breadalbane, Atholi, and the Grampians. This was the recognized boundary between the Scots and Picts,^!* and it was here that the ancestors of the latter, the heroic soldiers of Galgacus, had held their ground against the father-in-law of Tacitus, who even when victorious did not venture to cross that barrier.i^^ Often, too, Columba followed the course of that long valley of waters which, to the north of these mountains, traverses Scotland diagonally from the south-west, near lona, to the north-east beyond Inverness. This valley is formed by a series of long gulfs and of inland lakes which modern industry has linked together, making it possible for boats to pass from one sea to the other without making the long round by the Orcadian Isles. Thirteen centuries ago religion alone could undertake the conquest of those wild and picturesque regions, which a scanty but fierce and suspicious population disputed with the fir-forests and vast tracts of fern and heather, which are still to be encountered there.
The first glance thrown by history upon this watery highway discovers there the preaching and miracles of Columba. He was the first to traverse in his little skiiT Loch Ness and the river which issues from it; he penetrated thus, after a long and painful journey, to the principal fortress of the Pictish king, the site of which is still shown upon a rock north
"* Such at least is the assertion of Adamnan, ii. 46. But his contemporary Bede and all modern authors give another frontier. According to the latter, the Scots extended through all the west of the Caledonian peninsula, and the Southern Picts occupied, to the south of the Grampians, the counties of Perth, Forfar, and Fife. See the map of Scotland in the eleventh century, in the Sketches of Early Scotch History, by Cosmo Innes. "Prfedicaturus verbum Dei provinciis septentrionalium Pictorum, hoc est, eis quas arduis atque horrentibus montium jugis ab australibus eorum sunt regionibus sequestratse." — Bede, iii. 4.
"^ Walter Scott, History of Scotland, c. 1. of the town of Inverness. This powerful and redoubtable monarch, whose name was Bruidh or Brude, son of Malcolm, gave at first a very inhospitable reception to the Irish missionary. The companions of the saint relate that, He overpriding himself upon the royal magnificence of his fortress, he gave orders that the gates should not be opened to the unwelcome visitor; but this was not a command to alarm Columba. He went up to the gateway, made the sign of the cross upon the two gates, and then knocked with his hand. Immediately the bars and bolts drew back, the gates rolled upon their hinges and were thrown wide open, and Columba entered like a conqueror. The king, though surrounded by his council, among whom no doubt were his heathen priests, was struck with panic; he hastened to meet the missionary, addressed to him pacific and encouraging words, and from that moment gave him every honor.i^'' It is not recorded whether Bruidh himself became a Christian, but during all the rest of his life he remained the friend and protector of Columba. He confirmed to him the possession of lona, the sovereignty of which he seems to have disputed with his rival the king of the Dalriadian Scots, and our exile thus saw his establishment placed under the double protection of the two powers which shared Caledonia between them.^^''
But the favor of the king did not bring with it that of the heathen priests, who are indicated by the Christian historians under the name of Druids or Magi, and who made an energetic and persevering resistance to the new apostle. These priests do not seem cither to have taught or practised the worship of idols, but 116 "Bridiorege potentissimo." — Bede, iii. 4. "In prima sancti fatigcatione itincris ad regeni Briuleum ... ex fastu elatus regio munitionis suae supcrbe agens... bonio Dei, cum coraitibus, ad valvas portarum acccdens... tunc manum pulsans contra, ostia, quae continuo sponte, retro rctrusis fortiter seris, cum omni celeritate aperta sunt. Rex cum senatu valde per timescunt." — Adamn., i. o. 35. It is supposed that this royal fortress occupied the site of the vitrified fort of Cmiff Pharrick, on a rock 1200 feet above the Ness, near its embouchure into the Moray Firth. These 'vitrified walls — that is to say, walls the stones of which have been dipped, instead of cement, into a vitreous substance produced by the action of tire — are to be found in some districts of Brittany and of Maine, and are everywhere imputed to the Celtic period.
"^ "Qua? videlicet insula ad jus quidem Britannia^ pertinet, sed donatione Pictorum qui illas Britanniie plagas incolunt, jamdudum monachis Scotoruni tradita, co quod illis praedicantibus fidera Christi perceperint.... Unde et Columba... prajfatam insulam ab eis in possessionem monasterii faciendi accepit." — Bede, iii. 3, 4. Compare Reeves, p. 76. rather that of natural forces, and especially of the sun and other celestial bodies. They followed or met the Irish preacher in his apostolic journeys, less to refute his arguments than to hold back and intimidate those whom his preaching- gained to Christ. The religious and supernatural character which was attributed by the Druids of Gaul to the woods and ancient trees, was attached by those of Caledonia to the streams and fountains, some of which were, according to their belief, salutary and beneficial, while others were deadly to man. Columba made special efforts to forbid among the new Christians the worship of sacred fountains, and, braving the threats of the Druids, drank in their presence the water which they affirmed would kill any man who dared to put it to his lips.^^^ But they used no actual violence against the stranger whom their prince had taken under his protection. One day, when Columba and his monks came out of the enclosure of the fort in which the king resided, to chant vespers according to the monastic custom, the Druids attempted to prevent them from singing, lest the sound of the religious chants should reach the people; but the abbot instantly intoned the sixty-fourth psalm, " Eructavit cor meicm verhum bonum: dico opera mea regi,'' with so formidable a voice, that he reduced his adversaries to silence, and made the surrounding spectators, and even the king himself, tremble before him.^^^ He preach- ^^^ ^^^ ^^^ ^°^ conBue himself to chanting iu esbyan Latin; he preached. The dialect of the Picts, howm erpre er. ^^^^.^ being different from that of the Scots, and unknown to him, it was necessary to employ the services of an interpreter.i^*^ But his words were not the less efficacious on this account, though everywhere he was met by the rival exhortations or derisions of the pagan priests. His impassioned nature, as ready to love as to hate, made itself as apparent in his apostolic preachings as formerly in the
*^^ Adamnan, ii 2.
*" " Dum cum paucis fratribus extra regis munitionem vespertinales Dei laudes ex more celebraret, quidam Magi."
120 «' Verbum vitse per interpretatorem sancto praedicante viro." — Adamn., ii. 32. Bede states that there were five different languages spoken in Great Britain, and compares them with the five bool£S of the Pentateuch. " Anglorura videlicet" (that is to say, the Anglo-Saxons), " Britonum, Scottorum, Pictorum et Latinorura quse meditatione Scripturarum casteris omnibus est facta communis." — Ilist. Eccl., i. 1. The text, which is so important for the history of philology, is not less important as a proof to what point the knowledge of the Holy Scriptures had already spread among the Catholic nations. struggles of his youth; and ties of tender intimacy, active and never appealed to in vain, were soon formed between himself and his converts. One of the Picts, who, having heard him preach by his interpreter, was converted with his wife and all his family, became his friend, and received many visits from him. One of the sons of this new convert fell dangerously ill; the Druids profited by the misfortune to reproach the anxious parents, making it appear that the sickness of their child was the punishment of their apostasy, and boasting the power of the ancient gods of the country, as superior to that of the Christian's God. Columba having been informed hastened to his friend's aid: when he arrived the child had just expired. As soon as he had done all that in him lay to console the father and mother, he asked to be allowed to enter alone into the place where the body of the child was. There he knelt down and prayed long, bathed in tears; then rising, he said, " In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, return to life and arise! "' At the same moment the soul came back to the child's body. Columba helped him to rise, supported him, led him out of the cabin, and restored him to his parents. The power of prayer was thus as great, says Adamnan, in our saint as in Elijah and Elisha under the old law, or in St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. John under the new.121
While thus preaching faith and the grace of God ^.^ ^^^ ^ by the voice of an interpreter, he at the same time lor^nltS recognized, admired, and proclaimed among those ^"'*"^* savage tribes the lights and virtues of the law of nature. He discovered the rays of its radiance in many an unknown hearer, by the help of that supernatural gift which enabled him to read the secrets of the heart, and to penetrate the darkness of the future; a gift which developed itself more and more in him as his apostolic career went on. One day while laboring in his evangelical work in the principal island of the Hebrides, the one which lies nearest to the main
land,^22 he cried out all at once, " My sons, to-day you
''^' " Quidam plebeius" (this term is always used by Adamnan to express a layman, but at tlie same time a man either rich or of consideration).... 'Magi parentibus saepe cum magna exprobratione cceperunt illudere, suosque quasi fortiorcs magnificare deos, Christianorum Ueo quasi infirmiori derogare.... Hoc noster Columba cum Elia et Eliseo.... Petro et Paulo ct Joanni... habebat sibi commune virtutis miraculum." — Adamnan, ii. 32.
'" Skye, the same in which Charles-Edward took refuge in 174C, after the defeat of CuUoden, and where he met Flora Macdonald.
VOL. U. 5 will See an ancient Pictish chief, who has kept faithfully all his life the precepts of the natural law, arrive the^fsieof ^^ this island; he comes to be baptized and to die."
Immediately after, a boat was seen to approach the shore with a feeble old man seated in the prow, who was recognized as the chief of one of the neighboring tribes. Two of his companions took him up in their arms and brought him before the missionary, to whose words, as repeated by the interpreter, he listened attentively. When the discourse was ended the old man asked to be baptized; and immediately after breathed his last breath, and was buried in the very spot where he had just been brought to shore. ^^^
At a later date, in one of his last missions, when, himself an old man, he travelled along the banks of Loch Ness, always in the district to the north of the mountain range of the dorsum Britannice, he said to the disciples who accompanied him, " Let us make haste and meet the angels who have come down from heaven, and who wait for us beside a Pict who has done well according to the natural law during his And whole life to extreme old age: we must baptize him before he dies." Then hastening his steps and outstripping his disciples, as much as was possible at his great age, he reached a retired valley, now called Glen Urquhart, where he found the old man who awaited him. Here there was no longer any need of an interpreter, which makes it probable that Columba in his old age had learned the Pictish dialect. The old Pict heard him preach, was baptized, and with joyful serenity gave up to God the soul which was awaited by those angels whom Columba saw.^^* Hishu- Ii^ this generous heart humanity claimed its rights no Icss than justice. It was in the name of humanity ,1-^ his biographer expressly tells us, that he begged the freedom of a young female slave, born in Ireland, and the
123 (i Q gjji^ hodie in hac terrula quidam gentilis senex naturale per totara bonum custodiens vitam, et baptizabitur et morietur.... Navicula cujus in prora advectus est decrepitus senex Geonae primarius cohortis, quern bini juvenes de navi sublevantes, ante beati conspcetum viri deponunt. •.. Verbo Dei a sancto per interpretem recepto... ." — Adamnan, i. 33.
'-* " Ultra BritanniiB dorsum iter agens.... Properemus Sanctis obviam angelis qui de ccclis ad prajferendam alicujus gentilici aniniam emissi nos illuc expectant, ut ipsum naturale bonuni per totam vitam usque ad extremam senectutem conservantem, priusquam moriatur, opportune baptizemus.... Sanctus senex in quantum potuit comites festinus praecedebat... et credens baptizatus est et continuo Isetus et securus, cum angelis observantibus ad Deum commigravit." — Auamnan, iii. 14.
''•'* " Scoticam postulavit servam... humanitatis miseratione liberandam." — Ibid., ii. 33. captive of one of the principal Druids or Magi. This Druid was named Bro'ichan, and lived with the king, whose fosterfather '^^ he was, a tie of singular force and authority among the Celtic nations. Either from a savage pride, or out of enmity to the new religion, the Druid obstinately and cruelly refused the prayer of Columba. " Be it so," said the apostle; " but learn, Bro'ichan, that if thou refusest to set free this foreign captive, thou shalt die before I leave the province." When he had said this he left the castle, directing his stops towards that river Ness which appears so often in his history. But he waa soon overtaken b}'' two horsemen who came from the king to tell him that Bro'ichan, the victim of an accident, was dying, and fully disposed to set the young Irish girl free. The saint took up from the river bank a pebble, which he blessed, and gave to two of his monks, with the assurance that the sick man would be healed by drinking water in which this stone had been steeped, but only on the express condition that the captive should be delivered. She was immediately put under the charge of Columba's companions, and was thus restored at the same moment to her country and her freedom.127
The Druid, though healed, was not thereby rendered less hostile to the apostle. Like the magicians of Pharaoh, he attempted 'to raise nature and her forces against the new Moses. On the day fixed for his departure, Columba found, on reaching, followed by a numerous crowd, the banks of the long and narrow lake from which the Ness issues, and by which he meant to travel, a strong contrary wind and thick fog, as Bro'ichan had threatened, which the Druids exulted to see. But Columba, entering his boat, bade the frightened
'^* The reciprocal duties of foster fathers and children (fosterage) were minutely regulated by the British laws. In the twelfth century, Giraldus Cambrensis still remarked that among the Irish foster brothers and sisters were united by a tie almost stronger and more tender than brothers and sisters of the same blood. Dr. Lynch, in his Cambrensis Eversus (first published in 1GG2, and re-edited by Prof. Kelly in 1850), enlarges upon the importance of the tie which united the Irish princes and lords -to their foster fathers and brothers. He recalls Mordecai, the foster-father of Esther, and Clitus, the foster-brother of Alexander the Great, among many examples of sacred and profane history which support his idea. His new editor asserts (ii. 141, 1G2) that at the Council of Trent the Irish bishop of Raphoe, Donald MacCongal, demonstrated ihixX, fosterage and gossipred (cognato spiritualis) were the principal safeguard of the public peace in Ireland.
'" " Scito, Broichane, scito quia si mihi banc peregrinam liberare captivam nolueris, priusquam dc hac revertar provincia, citius niorieris.... Nunc formidabiliter correptus ancillulam liberare est paratus... eademque hora liberata famula sancti legatis viri assignatur." — Adamnan, ii. 33.
52 ST. COLUMBA,
rowers set the sail against the wind, and the assembled people saw him proceed rapidly on his course, as if borne by favorable breezes, towards the south end of the lake, by He com- which he returned to lona. But he left only to naake a speedy return, and came so often as to accomplish the convorsion of the Pictish nation, by deofthePicts. gtroying forever the authority of the Druids in this last refuge of Celtic paganism.^'^^ This sanguinary and untamable race was finally conquered by the Irish missionary. Before he ended his glorious career he had sown their forests, their defiles, their inaccessible mountains, their savage moors, and scarcely inhabited islands, with churches and monasteries.
His fellow- Columba's assistants, in his numerous missions among the Picts, were the monks who had come with him, or who had followed him from Ireland. The fame of the obscure benefactors and civilizers of so distant a region has still more completely disappeared than that of Columba it is with difficulty that some lingering trace of them is to be disentangled from the traditions of some churches whose sites may yet be found upon the ancient maps of Scotland. Such Avas Malruve (642-722),i29 ^ kinsman of Columba, and like him descended from the royal race of Niall, but educated in the great Monastery of Bangor, which he left to follow his illustrious cousin into Albyn, passing by lona. He must have long survived Columba, for he was for fifty-one years abbot of a community at Apercrossan,i3° upon the north-west coast of Caledonia, opposite the large island of Skye, before he met his death, which was, according to local tradition, by the sword of Norwegian pirates.
Upon the opposite shore, in that striking promontory which forms the eastern extremity of Scotland, a district now known as Buchan, various churches trace their origin to Columba, and to one of his Irish disciples called Drostan. The mormaer or chief of the country had at first refused them his permission to settle there, but his son fell dangerously ill, 128 " Ventum tibi contrariura caliginenique umbrosam superinducara.... Christum invocat, cymbulamque ascendens nautis haesitantibus, ipse constanter factus velum contra ventum jubet subrigi... omnique inspectante turba, navigium flatus contra adversos mira occurrit velocitate." — Adamnan, ii. 34. The place where he landed is at present occupied by Fort Augustus, at the commencement of the Caledonian Canal.
'''^ W. Reeves, St. Maelrubha, his History and Churches. Edinburgh, 1861. Compare Act. SS. Bolland., vol. vi. August, p. 132.
'^" At present Applecross. Twenty-one parishes in the north of Scotland were in primitive times dedicated to this saint. and he hastened after the missionaries, offering them the land necessary for their foundation, and begging them to pray for the dying boy. They prayed, and the child was saved. After having blessed the new church, and predicted that none who profaned it should ever conquer their enemies or enjoy long life, Columba installed his companions in their new home, and himself turned to continue his journey. When Drostan saw himself thus condemned to live at a distance from his master, he could not restrain his tears; for these old saints, in their wild and laborious career, loved each other with a passionate tenderness, which is certainly not the least touching feature in their character, and which places an inextinguishable light upon their heads amid the darkness of the legends. " Then," Columba said, *' let us call this place the Monastery of Tears; " ^^^ and the great tery of""**"" abbey which lasted a thousand years upon that spot '^^^"' always retained the name. " He who sows in tears shall reap in joy."
"' Said Columb-Cille: "Let Dear (Tear) be its name henceforward." This incident is found in the Celtic language in the most ancient manuscript which exists relative to Scotland; it has been recently discovered in Cambridge, and is of the ninth century. It is about to be published under the name of the Book of Deir. Cosmo Innes, Scotland in the Middle Ages, p. 325. Whitley Stokes, Saturday Review, 8th December, 18G0. The Monastery of Deir was rebuilt for the Cistercians by the Earl of Buchan in 1213. The prophecy of Columba was verified in the family of the Earl Marischal, head of the great house of Keith, who was, after the Reformation, the first spoliator of the monastery, which had been given to him by James VI. In vain his wife, a daughter of Lord Home, begged him not to accept the sacrilegious gift. He would not listen to her. The following night she saw in a dream a multitude of monks, clothed like those of Deir, surround the principal castle of the Earl, Dunnotter-Craig, which was situated on an immense rock on the coast. They began to demolish the rock with no other tools than penknives: at this sight the Countess hastened to look for her husband, that he might stop their work of destruction; but when she returned the rock and the castle had already been undermined and overthrown by the penknives of the monks, and nothing was to be seen but the fragments of the furniture floating on the sea. This vision was immediately interpreted as the announcement of a future catastrophe, and the use of penknives as a sign of the length of time which should pass before its fulfilment. From that moment tills powerful house began to diminish, and finally fell in 1715 in the Stuart rebellion.
5*