Spiritual Descendants of St. Columba (part 1 of 2)
His posthumous glory: miraculous visions on the night of his death: rapid extension of his worship. — Note upon his supposed journey to Rome, and residence there, in search of the relics of St. Martin. — His solitary funeral and tomb at lona. — His translation to Ireland, where he rests between St. Patrick and St. Bridget. — He is, like Bridget, feared by the Anglo-Norman conquerors. — John de Courcy and Richard Strongbow. — The Vengeance of Columba. — Supremacy of lona over the Celtic churches of Caledonia and the north of Ireland. — Singular privilege and primacy of the abbot of lona in respect to bishops. — The ecclesiastical organization of Celtic countries exclusively monastic. — Moderation and respect of Columba for the episcopal rank. — He left behind him no special rule. That which he followed differed in no respect from the usual customs of the monastic order, which proves the exact observance of all the precepts of the Church, and the chimerical nature of all speculations upon the primitive Protestantism of the Celtic Church. — But he founded an order, which lasted several centuries under the title of the Family of Columb-Kill. —The clan and family spirit was the governing principle of Scottish monasticism. — Baithen and the eleven first successors of Columba at lona were all members of the same race. — The two lines, lay and ecclesiastical, of the great founders. — The headquarters of the order transferred from lona to Kells, one of Columba's foundations in Ireland. — The Coarbs. — Posthumous influence of Columba upon the Church of Ireland. — Lex Columcille. — Monastic Ireland in the seventh century the principal centre of Christian knowledge and piety. — Each monastery a school. — The transcription of manuscripts, which had been one of Columba's favorite occupations, continued and extended by his family even upon the continent. —Historic Annals. — The Festiloge of Angus the Culdee. — Note upon the Culdees, and upon the foundation of St. Andrews in Scotland. — Propagation of Irish monasticism abroad. — Irish saints and monasteries in France, Germany, and Italy. — The Irish saint Cathal venerated in Calabria under the name of San Cataldo. — Monastic university of Lismore: crowd of foreign students, especially of Anglo-Saxons, in Irish monasteries. — Confusion of temporal affairs in Ireland. — Civil wars and massacres. — Notes upon king-monks. — Patriotic intervention of the monks. — Adamnan, biographer and ninth successor of Columba, and his Law of the innocents. — They are driven from their cloisters by the English. — Influence of Columba in Scotland. — Traces of the ancient Caledonian Church in the Hebrides. — Apostolical mission of Kentigera in the country between the Clyde and the Mersey. — His meeting with Columba. — His connection 110 ST. COLUMBA,
with the king and queen of Strath-Clyde. — Legend of the queen's ring. —Neither Coluraba nor Kentigern acted upon the Anglo-Saxons, who continued pagans, and maintained a threatening attitude. — The last bishops of conquered Britain desert their churches.
The influence of Columba, as of all men really superior to their fellows, and especially of the saints, far from ceasing with his life, went on increasing after his death. The supernatural character of his virtues, the miracles which were attributed to his intercession with God, had for a long time left scarcely any doubt as to his sanctity. It was universally acknowledged after his death, and has since remained uncontested among all the Celtic races. The visions and miracles which went to prove it would fill a volume. then^ohTof ^^ ^^^ night, and at the very hour, of his death, a holy old man in a distant monastery in Ireland, one of those whom the Celtic chroniclers call the victorious soldiers of Christ,^'^*^ saw with the eyes of his mind the isle of lona, which he had never visited, flooded with miraculous light, and all the vault of heaven full of an innumerable army of shining angels, who went, singing celestial canticles, to bring away the holy soul of the great missionary. Upon the banks of a river,2*^i in Columba's native land, another holy monk, while occupied with several others in fishing, saw, as also did his companions, the sky lighted up by a pillar of fire, which rose from earth to the highest heaven, and disappeared only after lighting up the whole scene with a radiance as of the sun at noon.262
^^^ " Sanctus senex, Christi miles... Justus et sapiens... cuidam teque Christiano militi... suam enarravit visionem.... Christi.victor miles."
""' The Finn, which, after having marked the boundary between the two countries of Tyrone and Donegal, throws itself into the Foyle, which flows by Derry.
-'^^ "Ilac prseterita nocte media,... et in hora beati exitus ejus lonam insulam, ad quam corpore nunquam perveni, totam angelorum claritudine in spiritu vidi irradiatam, totaque spatia aeris usque ad retiiera coelorum eorumdem angelorum claritate illustrata; qui ad sane ipsius animam preferendam, de ccelis missi descenderunt innumeri. Altisona carminalia et valde suavia audivi angelicorum coetuum cantica eodem momento egressionis inter angelicoa sanctae ipsius aninite ascendentes choros.... Ego et alii mecum viri laborantcs in captura piscium in valle piscosi fluminis Fendse subito totum aerei illustratum coeli spatiura vidimus... et ecce, quasi quaedara pergrandis ignea apparuit columna, quae in ilia nocte media sursum ascendens ita nobis A'idebatur mundum illustrare totum sicuti assteus et meridianus sol, et postquam ilia penetravit columna coelum, quasi post occasura solis tenebrte succedunt. Non tantum nos... sed et alii multi piscatores, qui sparsim per diversas fluminales piscinas ejusdem fluminis piscabantur, sicut nobis post retulerunt, simili apparitione visa, magno pavore sunt perculsi." Adamnaa takes pains to prove that he received the account of those nocturnal visions,
Thus began the long succession of wonders by which the worship of Columba's holy memory is characterized among the Celtic races. This worship, which seemed at one time concentrated in one of the smallest islets of the Atlantic, extended in less than a century after his death, not only throughout all Ireland and Great Britain, but into Gaul, Spain and Italy, and even to Rome,2<53 which some legends, insufBciently verified, describe him as having visited during the last years of his life, in order to renew the bonds of respectful affection and spiritual union which are supposed to have united him to the great pope St. Gregory, who ascended the pontifical throne seven years before the death of the Hebridean apostle.^^^
It was expected that all the population of the his funeral neighboring districts would hasten to lona and fill the island during the funeral of the great the first, from old monks at lona, to whom it had been told by a hermit from Ireland; and the second, from the very monk who had directed the fishing on that memorable night.
^'^^ "Et haec etiam eidera beatae memorias viro a Deo non mediocris est collata gratia qua noiuen ejus non tantum per totam nostram Scotiam et omnium totius orbis insularum maxiinam Britanniam, clare divulgari promeruit, in liac parva et extrema oceani Britannici commoratus (sic) insula; sod etiam ad trigonam usque Hispaniam, et Gallias, et ultra Alpes Penninas Italian! sitam pervenire, ipsara quoque Komanam civitatem, quse caput est omnium civitatum." — Adamnan, infinein.
^^^ According to an account given by Colgan (p. 473), the famous hymn Alius Prosator was composed by Columba while the envoys of St. Gregory the Great were at lona, and was sent by him to the Pontiff, who listened to it standing up, in token of respect. We are obliged to acknowledge the same want of proof in the tradition which connects the holy abbot of lona with the great wonder-worker of the Gauls, St. Martin, and which attributes to him a work similar to that of the great archbishop who, in our own days, lias undertaken to restore to an honorable condition the profaned grave of his greatest predecessor, by rebuilding the basilica which covers that glorious sepulchre. According to the narrative of O'Donnell (book iii. c. 27), Columba, on his return from Rome, went to Tours to seek the gospel which had lain for a century upon the breast of St. Martin, and carried it to Derry, where this relic was exhibited up to the twelfth century. The people of Tours had forgotten the situation of St. Martin's grave; and when they begged Columba to find it for them, he consented, only on condition of being allowed to keep for himself everything found in St. Martin's tomb, except his bones. The legend adds that Columba left one of his disciples there, the same Mochonna who had followed him first to lona, and that he afterwards became bishop of Tours. This alone is sufficient to disprove the narrative, since at the only ;)eriod in the life of Columba at which this journey could have taken place, the bishop of Tours was St. Gregory the historian, whose predecessor and successor are well known. Let us remark, at the same time, the curious traditional ties between the Church of Tours and that of Ireland, which lasted for several centuries. St. Patrick, the apostle of Ireland, is supposed to have been the grand-nephew of St. Martin, and to have been encouraged by him in his mission. abbot; and this had even been intimated to him before be died. But be had prophesied that the fact would be otherwise, and that his monastic family alone should perform the ceremonies of his burial. And it happened, accordingly, during the three days which were occupied with those rites, that a violent wind made it impossible for any boat to reach the island. Thus this friend and counsellor of princes and nations, this great traveller, this apostle of an entire nation which, during a thousand years, was to honor him as its patron saint, lay solitary upon his bier, in the little church of his island retirement; and his burial was witnessed only by his monks. But his grave, though it was not dug in presence of an enthusiastic crowd, as had been looked for, was not the less visited and surrounded by floods of successive generations, who for more than two hundred years crowded there to venerate the relics of the holy missionary, and to drink the pure waters of his doctrine and example at the fountain-head.
The remains of Columba rested here in peace up to the ninth century, until the moment when lona, like all the British isles, fell a prey to the ravages of the Danes. These cruel and insatiable pirates seem to have been attracted again and again by the wealth of the offerings that were lavished upon the tomb of the apostle of Caledonia. They burnt the monastery for the first time in 801; again in 805, when it contained only so small a number as sixty-four monks; and finally, a third time, in 877. To save from their rapacity a treasure which no pious liberality could replace, „ the body of St. Columba was carried to- Ireland.
And it IS the unvarying tradition of Irish annals Down.Tn that it was deposited finally at Down, in an episcowhere'they P^'' monastery not far from the western shore of the ^^^^f^^; between the great Monastery of Bangor on the north, from which came Columbanus of Luxeuil, ^^^ Dublin, the future capital of Ireland, to the south. There already lay the relics of Patrick and of Bridget; and thus was verified one of the prophecies in Irish verse attributed to Columba, in which he says
" They shall bury me first at lona;
But, by the will of the living God,
It is at Dun that I shall rest in my grave,
AVith Patrick and with Bridget the immaculate.
Three bodies in one grave." '^''
^^ See Reeves, pp. Ixxix. 313, 317, 462; compare Colgan, p. 446. These
The three names have remained since that time inseparably united in the dauntless heart and fervent tenacious memory of the Irish people. It is to Columba that the oppressed and impoverished Irish seem to have appealed Avith the greatest confidence in the first English conquest in the twelfth century. The conquerors themselves feared coiun^,,^ him, not without reason, for they had learned to feared by know his vengeance. John de Courcy, a warlike xorman Anglo-Norman baron, he who was called the Con- ^*'"°"^- queror {Conquestor) of Ulster, as William of Normandy of England, carried always with him the volume of Columba's prophecies; 2^*^ and when the bodies of the three saints were found in his new possessions in 1180, he prayed the Holy See to celebrate their translation by the appointment of a solemn festival. Richard Strongbow, the famous Earl of Pembroke, who had been the first chief of the invasion, died of an ulcer in the foot which had been inflicted upon him, according to the Irish narrative, at the prayer of St. Bridget, St. Columba, and other saints, Avhose churches he had destroyed. He himself said, when at the point of death, that he saw the sweet and noble Bridgetliit her arm to pierce him to the heart. Hugh de Lacy, another Anglo-Norman chief of great lineage, perished at Durrow, " by the vengeance of Columb-cille," says a chronicler, while he was engaged in building a castle to the injury of the abbey which Columba had founded, and loved so much.^'^' A century after, this vengeance was still popularlj^ dreaded; and some English pirates, who had pillaged his church in the island of Inchcolm, having sunk like lead in sight of land, their countrymen said that he should bo called, not St. Columba, but St. Quhahne'^^^ — that is to say, the saint of Sudden Death.
A nation has special need to believe in these vengeances of God, always so tardy and infrequent, and which, in Ireland, above all, have scarcely sufficed to light with a fugitive gleam the long night of the conquest, with all its iniquities
three bodies were found at Down in 1183, after the disasters of the first English conquest, and again united in one tomb by the bishop Mahichi, and by Jolin de Courcy, one of the great Anglo-Norman barons, conqueror {conquesior, according to the office) of Ulster. A special holiday was instituted by the Holy See in memory of this translation. The office for this festival, printed first at Paris in 1G20, has been given by Colgan at the beginning of his ]>recious work, Trias Thaumaturga.
^"^ Kellky, note to Lynch, Cambrensis Eversus, vol. i. p. 386. ^*' O'Donovan's Four Masters, vol. i. pp. 25, 75.
^^ Quhahne in Anglo-Saxon meant sudden death, from whence the modern English word qualm.
114 ST. COLUMBA,
and crime. Happy are the people among whom the everlasting justice of the appeal against falsehood and evil is placed under the shadow of God and the saints; and blessed also the saints who have left to posterity the memory of their indignation against all injustice.
As long as the body of Columba remained in his island grave, lona, consecrated henceforward by the life and death of so great a Christian, continued to be the most venerated sanctuary of the Celts. For two centuries she was the nursery of bishops, the centre of education, the asylum of religious knowledge, the point of union among the British isles, the capital and necropolis of the Celtic race. Seventy kings or princes were buried there at the feet of Columba, faithful to a kind of traditional law, the recollection of which has been consecrated by Shakespeare^*^^ During these two centuries, she retained an uncontested supremacy over all the monasteries and churches of Caledonia, as over those of half Ireland; ^'o and we shall hereafter see how she disputed with the Roman missionaries the authority over the Anglo-Saxons of the north. Later still, if we are permitted to follow this narrative so far, at the end of the eleventh century, we shall see her ruins raised up and restored to monastic life by one of the most noble and touching heroines of Scotland and Christendom, the hol}^ Queen Margaret, the gentle and noble exile, so beautiful, so wise', so magnanimous and beloved, who used her influence over Malcolm her husband only for the regeneration of the Church in his kingdom, and whose dear memory is worthy of being associated in the heart of the Scottish people with that of Columba, since she obtained by his intercession that grace of maternity which has made her the origin of the dynasty which still reigns over the British Isles.^'i
*®' "RossE. AVhere is Duncan's body ?
Macduff. Carried to Colmes-Kill,
The sacred storehouse of his predecessors,
And guardian of their bones."
Shakespeare, Macbeth, 270 (( piurima exinde nionasteria per discipulos ejus in Britannia et ia Hibernia propagata sunt: in quibus omnibus idem monasterium insulanum, in quo ipse requiescit corpore, prineipatum tenet."— Bede, iii. 4. " Cujus monasterium in cunctis pene septentrionalium Scotorum et omnium Pictoruni monasteriis non parvo tempore arcem tenebat regendisque eorura populis praeerat." — Ibid., iii. 3.
'"' Orderic Vital, 1. viii. 702; Fordun, Scotichronicon, v. 37. On the summit of the picturesque rock upon which Edinburgh Castle is built, may still be seen the chapel dedicated to St. Margaret, recently restored by order of the Queen. She is the Christian Minerva of that Acropolis of the North.
Let us here reconsider the privilege which gave to the abbots of loria a sort of jurisdiction over the bishops of the neighboring districts -'^ — a privilege unique, and which would even appear fabulous, if it were not attested by two of the most trustworthy historians of the time, the Venerable Bede and Notker of St. Gall. In order to explain this strange anomaly it must be understood that in Celtic countries, especially in Ireland and in Scotland, ecclesiastical organization rested, in the first place, solely upon conventual life. Dioceses and parishes were regularly constituted only in the twelfth century. Bishops, it is true, existed from the beginning, but either without any clearly fixed territorial jurisdiction, or incorporated as a necessary but subordinate part of the ecclesiastical machinery with the great monastic bodies; and such was specially the case in Ireland. It is for this reason that the bishops of the Celtic Church, as has been often remarked, are so much overshadowed not only by great founders and superiors of monasteries, such as Columba, but even by simple abbots.-"-^ Nevertheless, it is evident that during the life of Columba, far from assuming any superiority whatever over the bishops who were his contemporaries, he showed them the utmost respect, even to such a point that he would not celebrate mass in the presence of a bishop who had come, humbly disguised as a simple convert, to visit the community of lona.^'^ At the same time the
*" "Habet insula rcctorera semper abbatera presbyterum, cujusjuraomnis provincia, et ipsi etiam episcopi, ordine inusitato, debeant esse subjecti." — Bede, 1. iii. 4. Compare Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ad an. 565, ed. Giles. " In Scotia insula Hibernia deposilio sancti Columbaj, cognomento apud suos Colunib-Killi, eo quod multarum cellarum, id est monasteriorum vel ecclesiaruni institutor, fundator et rector cxstiterit: adeo ut abbas monasterii, cui novissime prsefuit et ubi requicscit, contra niorem ecclesiasticum primus omnium Hibcrnensium babeatur episcoporum." — Notker Balbulus, Martyrologium. Mabillon quotes tbe charter of the Irish Abbey of Ilonau in Germany, where tlie signature of the abbot precedes those of seven bishops, all bearing Celtic names. — Annales Bencdidini, vol. ii. Appendix, p. 70. Who were tbe bisliops subject to the primacy of lona? If Colgan is to be believed — in Prcef., Triad. Thaicm., " pra;rogativo forte jurisdictioni legimus concessum, quod ejus abbas primatum et prtccedentiam habeat ante omnes Scotorum cpiscopos" — it must be supposed that all the bishops of Ireland and Scotland were under its authority.
-" See the curious incident narrated by Adamnan (i. 36), where a bishop hesitated to confer the priesthood on Afdus the Black before having the authority of the abbot of Tiree, an insular cella dependent upon lona. —"Episcopus non ausus est super caput ejus nianum imponcre, nisi prius presbyter Findchanus... suam capiti ejus pro confirnuitione imponeret dextram."
"•* " Quidam proselytus ad sanctum venit qui se in quantum potuit occultabat humiliter, ut nullus sciret quod csset cspiscopus." — Adamnan, i. 44.
116 ST. COLUMBA,
abbots scrupulously abstained from all usurpation of the rank, privileges, or functions reserved to bishops, to whom they had recourse for all the ordinations celebrated in the monasteries.^'^ But as most of the bishops had been educated in monastic schools, they retained an affectionate veneration for their cradle, which, in regard to lona especiall}^, from which we shall see so many bishops issue, might have translated itself into a sort of prolonged submission to the conventual authority of their former superior. Five centuries later the bishops who came from the great French abbeys of Cluny and Citeaux took pleasure in professing the same filial subordination to their monastic birthplace.
The uncontested primacy of lona over the bishops who had there professed religion, or who came there to be consecrated after their election, may be besides explained by the influence exercised by Columba over both clergy and people of the districts evangelized by him — an influence which was only increased by his death.
Was Co- ^^^^ ^^^® great abbot of lona, like his namesake of Luxeuil, leave to his disciples a monastic rule of his owu, distinct from that of other Celtic monasteries? This has been often asserted, but without positive proof— and in any case no authentic text of such a document exists.^'^ That which bears the name of the Mule of Columb-lcill, and which has been sometimes attributed to him, has no reference in any way to the cenobites of lona, and is only applicable to hermits or recluses, who lived perhaps under his authority, but isolated, and who were always very numerous in Ireland.^'^
275 <«Accito episcopo... apud supradictum Findchanum presbyter ordinatus est."— Abamnan, i. 3G.
2'® Colgan {Trias Thaum., p. 471) and Hceften (Disqtiisiiionea Monasticce, 1. i. tr. 8, p. 84) had in their hands the text of a rule attributed to Columba, and reprinted by Reeves in 1850, but both have acknowledged that it would be applicable only to anchorites. — O'Cvuky, Lectures, pp. 374,612. The only proof of the existence of a cenobitical rule originated by Columba, is the mention made of it by Bede in the address of Wilfrid at the celebrated conference of Whitby between the Benedictines and the Celtic monks, which •will be discussed hereafter: "De Patre Vestro Columba et sequacibus ejus, quorum sanctitatem vos imitari et Regulam ac pra3cepta coelestibus signis confirmata." The word Regula, however, which occurs so often in the lives of the Irish saints, can scarcely mean anything more than observance, discipline; each considerable saint had his own. Reeves has proved that the Ordo monasticus, attributed to Columba by the last edition of Holsteinus, does not go farther back than to the twelfth century.
^" The recluses or anchorites, who passed their life in a little cell containing an altar, at which to say mass, sometimes solitary, sometimes attached to their church (like that of Marianus Scotus at Fulda), existed for a very
A conscientious and attentive examination of all the monastic peculiarities which can be discovered in his biography 278 reveals absolutely nothing in respect to observances or obligations different from the rules borrowed by all the religious communities of the sixth century from the traditions of the Fathers of the Desert. Such an examination brings out distinctly in the first place, the necessity for a vow 2'9 or solemn profession to prove the final admission of the monk into the community after a probation more or less prolonged; and, in the second place, the absolute conformity of the monastic life of Columba and his monks to the precepts and rites of the Catholic Church in all ages. Authorities unquestionable and unquestioned' demonstrate the existence of auricular confession, the invocation of saints, the universal faith in their protection and intervention in temporal affairs, the celebration of the mass, the real presence in the Eucharist, ecclesiastical celibacy, fasts and abstinences, prayer for the dead, the sign of the cross, and, above all, the assiduous and profound study of the Holy Scriptures.-^'' Thus the assumption made by certain writers of having found in the Celtic Church some sort of primitive Christianity not Catholic, crumbles to the dust; and the ridiculous but inveterate prejudice which accuses our fathers of having ignored or interdicted the study of the Bible is once again proved to be without foundation.
As to the customs peculiar to the Irish Church, and which were afterwards the cause of so many tedious struggles with the Roman and Anglo-Saxon missionaries, no trace of them is to be discovered in the acts or words of Columba. There
long time in Ireland. Sir Henry Piers has proved the existence of one of these recluses, and described his cell in the county of Westmeath in 1682. Reeves, Memory of the Church of St. Duilech, 1859.
"" See the Appendix N to the volume of Reeves, entitled Institutio Ilyensis. It is an excellent epitome of all the monastic customs of the pei-iod.
*"" " Votum monaehiale voverunt... votum monachicum devotus vovit." — Adamnan, i. 31, ii. 39.
^®** To prove our assertion vre indicate several passages from Adamnan Auricular Confession is expressly pointed out in the history of Libranus, ii. 39.
The Invocation of Saints at each page. Columba is even invoked during his life. Their protection and intervention in temporal affairs, ii. 5, 15, 39,
The celebration offestivals and offices in their honor.
The real j^rcsence — \\\ the elements of the Eucharist. " A sancto jussus Christi corpus conficere.... Eucharistiaa mysteria celebrare pro anima eancta." — Colgan, Vita Prima, c. 8; Adamnan, iii. 12.
Solemn mass on Sunday, iii. 12; on other days, i. 40. is no mention of the tiresome disputes about the tonsure, or even of the irregular celebration of Easter, except perhaps in a prophecy vaguely made by him on the occasion of a visit to Clonmacnoise, upon the discords which this difference of opinion in respect to Easter would one day excite in the Scotic Church.2^1
If Columba made no rule calculated, like that of Bt Benedict, to last for centuries, he nevertheless Columba. igfj ^Q j^jg disciples a spirit of life, of union, and of discipline, which was sufficient to maintain in one great body, for several centuries after his death, not only the monks of Zona, but the numerous communities which had gathered round them. This monastic body bore a noble name; it was long called the Order of the Fair Company,282 and still longer the Family of Columb-kill. It was governed by abbots, who succeeded Columba as superiors of the community of lona. These abbots proved themselves worthy of, and obtained from Bede, one of the most competent of judges, who began to write a hundred years after the death of Columba, a tribute of admiration without reserve, and even more striking than that which he gave to their founder: — " Whatever he may have been," said the Venerable Bede, with a certain shadow of Anglo-Saxon suspicion in respect to Celtic virtue and sanctity, ^' it is undeniable that he has left successors illustrious by the purity of their life, their great love of God, and their zeal for monastic order; aixl, although separated from us as to the observance of Easter, which is caused by their distance from all the rest of the M'orld, ardently and closely devoted to the observance of those laws of piety and chastity which they have learned in the Old and New Testaments." ^^^ These praises are justified by the great number of saints who have issued from the spiritual lineage of Columba; ^^^ but they should be specially applied to his successors in the abbatial see of lona, and, in the first place, to his first successor, whom he had himself pointed out, the holy and amiable Baithen, who 2*^' Adamnan, i. 3.
282 " Cujus ordo dicebatur pulchrae societatis."— Vita Sancti Kierani, apud HtEFTEN, op. cit., pp. 61, 64.
283 (4 Qualiscunque fuerit ipse, nos hoc de illo certum tenemus, quia reliquit, successores magna continentia et divino amore regulseque nionasticaB insignes... pietatis et castitatis opera diligenter observantes." — Bede, iii. 4.
2'*'' The number may be seen in Colgan, who names as many as a hundred and twelve, the most part of whom are commemorated in the Irish martyrologies. was SO worthy to be his lieutenant and friend, and could so well replace him. He survived Columba only three years, and died on the anniversary of his master's death.^^^ The cruel sufferings of his last illness did not prevent him from praying, writing, and teaching to his last hour, Baithen was, as has been said, the cousin-german of Columba, and almost all the abbots of lona wbo succeeded him were of the same race.
The family spirit, or, to speak more truly, the preponderclan spirit, always so powerful and active in Ireland, and which was so striking a feature in the character of Columba, had become a predominating influence in the monastic life of the Celtic Church. It was not precisely hereditary succession, since marriage was absolutely unknown among the regular clergy; but great influence was given to blood in the election of abbots, as in that of princes or military leaders. The nephew or cousin of the founder or superior of a monastery seemed the candidate pointed out by nature for the vacant dignity. Special reasons were necessary for breaking through this rule. Thus it is apparent that the eleven first abbots of loua after Columba, proceeded, with the exception of one individual, from the same stock as himself, from the race of Tyrconnel, and were all descended from the same son of Niall of the Nine Hostages, the famous king of all Ireland.-^'^ Every great monastery became thus the centre and appanage of a family, or, to speak more exactly, of a clan, and was alike the school and the asylum of all the founder's kindred. At a later period a kind of succession, purely laic and hereditary, developed itself by the side of the spiritual posterity, and was invested with the possession of most of the monastic domains. These two lines of descendants, simultaneous but distinct, from the principal monastic founders, are distinguished in the historical genealogies of Ireland under the names of ecclesiastica progenies and of plebilis progenies?^''
*®" During his short abbacy, it is apparent that all was not unanimous adhesion and entlmsiasm. A certain Bevan, described as a persecutor of the Churches, once sent to ask the remains of the meal which the monks of lona had just eaten, in order to turn them into derision. " Nee ob aliud hoc postulabat, nisi ut causam blasphemiai ac despectionis fratrum inveniret." Baithen sent to him what remained of the milk which liad made the repast of the brethren. After he had drunk it, the scoffer was seized with such suflerinjr, that he was converted, and died confessing his repentance. — Act. Sy. BoLLAND., vol. ii. June, p. 238.
^'*** See the genealogical table given by Dr. Reeves, at page 313 of his edition of Adamnan.
^' Dr. liceves has thoroughly examined this curious question in a special After the ninth century, in consequence of the relaxation of discipline, the invasion of married clerks, and the increasing value of land, the line of spiritual descent confounded itself more and more with that of natural inheritance, and there arose a crowd of abbots purely lay and hereditary, as proud of being- the collateral descendants of a holy founder, as they were happy to possess the vast domains with which the foundation had been gradually enriched. This fatal abuse made its appearance also in France and Germany, but was less inveterate than in Ireland, where it still existed in the time of St Bernard; and in Scotland, where it lasted even after the Reformation,
It was never thus at lona, where the abbatical succession was always perfectly regular and uninterrupted up to the invasions and devastations of the Danes at the commencement of the ninth century. Prom the time of those invasions the abbots of lona began to occupy an inferior position. The radiant centre from which Christian civilization had shone upon the British Isles grew dim.^ss The headquarters of the communities united under the title of the Family or Order of Columb-kill, were transferred from lona to one of the other foundations of the saint at Kells, in the centre of Ireland, where a successor of Columba, superior-general of the order, titulary abbot of lona, Armagh, or some other great Irish monastery, and bearing the distinctive title of Coarb, resided for three centuries more.^^^
We have lingered too long over the great and touching figure of the- saint whose hfe we have just recorded. And it now remains to us to throw a rapid glance at the influence which he exercised on all around him, and even upon posterity.
paper, On the Ancient Abbatial Succession in Ireland, ap. Proceedings of the Koyal Irish Academy, vol. vii., 1857.
"^^ Magnus, king of Norway, after having conquered the Hebrides, visited lona in 1007, and annexed the islands to the bishopric of Sodor and Man {Sodorensis), under the metropolitan of Drontheim, which destroyed the ancient ecclesiastical tradition in the island. In 1203, an abbot of lona, who came from Ireland, and belonged to the family of Columba, is mentioned for the last time. In 1214, there is mention of a priory of the order of Cluny, the origin of which is unknown. — Lanigan, vol. iv. p. 347; Cosmo Innes, p. 110. The tempor.al sovereignty fell to the famous Lords of the Isles, immortalized by Walter Scott, and whose tombs may still be seen there. —See Appendix A.
*®^ See the detailed chronology of the forty-nine successors of Columba, and of their arts and laws, from 597 to 1219, in the Ohronicon Ilyense of Reeves, from page 359. These Coarbs have been strangely confounded by Ussher, Ware, Lanigan, and other writers, with the chorepiscopi of the continent.
This influence is especially evident in the Irish Church, which seems to have been entirely swayed J^uce of°^"' bv his spirit, his successors, and his disciples, dur-. -^. 1. ',.,.,, ' 1 ,1 n 1 1 ing the time which is looked upon as the Golden Age in its history, and which extends up to the period of the Danish invasions, at the end of the eighth century. During all this time the Irish Church, which continued, as from its origin, entirely monastic, seems to have been governed by the recollections or institutions of Columba. The words Lex CohimbciUe are found on many pages of its confused annals, and indicate sometimes the mass of traditions preserved by its monasteries, sometimes the tributes which the kings levied for the defence of the Church and country, while carrying through all Ireland the shrine which contained his relics.^^ The continued influence of the great abbot of loua was so marked, even in temporal affairs, that more than two centuries after his death, in 817, the monks of his order, Congregaiio Columhcille, went solemnly to Tara, the ancient capital of Druidical Ireland, to excommunicate there the supreme monarch of the island, who had assassinated a prince of the family of their holy chief291
It has been said, and cannot be sufEcienth^ repeated, that Ireland was then regarded by all Christian Europe as the principal centre of knowledge m7nt Xthe and piety. In the shelter of its numberless monas- agjlri^""^' teries a crowd of missionaries, doctors, and preachers were educated for the service of the Church and the