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is not recorded; but these two instances are quite sufficient to disprove the perpetuity of his retirement. That he was not banished by secular influence is clear even from the legend which represents his dismissal as an ecclesiastical penalty. Early in the next century, St. Carthach, or Mochuda, was driven by the secular arm from his flourishing monastery of Rahen; but then he only changed his province, and established himself at Lismore. In doing so, however, he took his fraternity with him, and gave up all connexion with Rahen. But St. Columba, when he departed, severed no ties, surrendered no jurisdiction; his congregations remained in their various settlements, still subject to his authority, and he took with him no more than the prescriptive attendance of a missionary leader.

Durrow, his principal Irish monastery, lay close to the territory of the prince whose displeasure he is supposed to have incurred, yet it remained undisturbed; and when, at a later time, he revisited Ireland to adjust the affairs of this house, it seemed a fitting occasion for him to traverse Meath, and visit Clonmacnois, the chief foundation of his alleged persecutor, and the religious centre of his family. Surely, if the Northern Hy Neill had defeated King Diarmait, they could easily have sheltered their kinsman.

In 563, St. Columba, now in his forty-second year, passed over with twelve attendants to the west of Scotland, possibly on the invitation of the provincial king, to whom he was allied by blood. Adamnan relates some particulars of an interview which they had this same year (B. I. c. 7); and the Irish Annals record the donation of Hy, as the result of King Conall's approval. At this time the island of Hy seems to have been on the confines of the Pictish and Scotic jurisdiction, so that while its tenure was in a measure subject to the consent of either people, it formed a most convenient centre for religious intercourse with both. The Scots were already Christians in name; the Picts were not. Hence the conversion of the latter formed a grand project for the exercise of missionary exertion, and St. Columba

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at once applied himself to the task. He visited the king at his fortress; and having surmounted the difficulties which at first lay in his way, he won his esteem, overcame the opposition of his ministers, and eventually succeeded in planting Christianity on a permanent footing in their province. The possession of Hy was formally granted, or substantially confirmed, by this sovereign also; and the combined consent to the occupation of it by St. Columba seems to have materially contributed to its stability as a monastic institution. St. Columba afterwards paid several visits to the king, whose friendship and co-operation continued unchanged till his death.

In 573, St. Brendan, of Birr, the friend and admirer of St. Columba, died, and a festival was instituted at Hy by St. Columba in commemoration of his day.

Of the places where St. Columba founded churches in Scotland, Adamnan has preserved some names, as Ethica insula, Elena, Himba, Scia, but he has given no dates, so that their origin must be collectively referred to the period of thirty-four years, ending in 597, during which the Saint was an insulanus miles.

Conall, the lord of Dalriada, died in 574, whereupon his cousin, Aidan, assumed the sovereignty, and was formally inaugurated by St. Columba in the monastery of Hy. Next year they both attended the convention of Drumceatt, where the claims of the Irish king to the homage of British Dalriada were abandoned, and the independence of that province declared.

St. Brendan, of Clonfert, who had been a frequent visitor of the western isles, and on one occasion had been a guest of St. Columba in Himba, died in 577; and St. Finnian of Moville, also one of our Saint's preceptors, was removed by death in 579. About the same time a question arose between St. Columba and St. Comgall, concerning a church in the neighbourhood of Coleraine, which was taken up by their respective races, and engaged them in sanguinary strife. In 587 another battle was fought, 1 namely, at Cuilfedha, near Clonard, in which engagement also St. Columba is said to have been an interested party.

In judging of the martial propensities of St. Columba, it will always be necessary to bear in mind the complexion of the times in which he was born, and the peculiar condition of society in his day, which required even women to enter battle, and justified ecclesiastics in the occasional exercise of warfare. Moreover, if we may judge from the biographical records which have descended to us, primitive Irish ecclesiastics, and especially the superior class, commonly known as saints, were very impatient of contradiction, and very resentful of injury. Excommunication, fasting against, and cursing, were in frequent employment, and inanimate, as well as animate objects, are represented as the subjects of their maledictions. St. Columba, who seems to have inherited the high bearing of his race, was not disposed to receive injuries, or even affronts, in silence. Adamnan relates how he pursued a plunderer with curses, following the retiring boat into the sea, until the water reached to his knees. We have an account also of his cursing a miser who neglected to extend hospitality to him. On another occasion, in Himba, he excommunicated some plunderers of the church; and one of them afterwards perished in combat, being transfixed by a spear which was discharged in St. Columba's name. Possibly some current stories of the Saint's imperious and vindictive temper may have suggested to Venerable Bede the qualified approbation "qualiscumque fuerit ipse, nos hoc de illo certum tenemus, quia reliquit successores magna continentia ac divino amore regularique institutione insignes."1 With the profound respect in which his memory was held, there seems to have been always associated a considerable degree of awe. Hence, perhaps, the repulsive form in which he was supposed to have presented himself to Alexander II. in 1249. Fordun (Bower) tells a story of some English pirates, who stripped the church of Emonia or Inchcolum, and on their return, being upset, went down like lead to the bottom; upon which he observes: "Qua

1 Beda, Hist. Eccl., iii. 4.

Et

de re versum est in Anglia proverbium; Sanctum viz. Columbam in suos malefactores vindicem fore satis et ultorem. ideo, ut non reticeam quid de eo dicatur, apud eos vulgariter Sanct Quhalme nuncupatur."

"1

St. Columba visited Ireland subsequently to June 585, and from Durrow proceeded westwards to Clonmacnois, where he was received with the warmest tokens of affection and respect.

In 593 he seems to have been visited with sickness, and to have been brought near death. Such, at least, may be supposed to be the moral of his alleged declaration concerning the angels who were sent to conduct his soul to paradise, and whose services were postponed for four years. At length, however, the day came, and just after midnight, between Saturday the 8th, and Sunday the 9th of June, in the year 597, while on his knees at the altar, without ache or struggle, his spirit gently took its flight. Of his various qualities, both mental and bodily, Adamnan gives a brief but expressive summary. Writing was an employment to which he was much devoted. Adamnan makes special mention of books written by his hand; but from the way in which they are introduced, one would be disposed to conclude that the exercise consisted in transcription rather than composition. Three Latin hymns of considerable beauty are attributed to him, and in the ancient Liber Hymnorum, where they are preserved, each is accompanied by a preface describing the occasion on which it was written. His alleged Irish compositions are also poems: some specimens of which will be found in the original edition, pp. 264-277, 285-289. There are also in print his "Farewel to Aran," a poem of twenty-two stanzas;2 and another poem of seventeen stanzas, which he is supposed to have written on the occasion of his flight from King Diarmait.3 Besides these, there is a collection of some fifteen poems, bearing his name, in one of the O'Clery MSS. preserved in the Burgundian

1 Scotichron., xiii. 37.

2 Transactions of the Gaelic Society, pp. 180-189.

3 Misc. Ir. Ar. Soc., pp. 3-15.

Library at Brussels. But much the largest collection is contained in an oblong manuscript of the Bodleian library at Oxford, Laud 615, which embraces everything in the shape of poem or fragment that could be called Columba's, which industry was able to scrape together at the middle of the sixteenth century. Many of the poems are ancient, but in the whole collection there is probably not one of Columcille's composition. Among them are his alleged prophecies, the genuineness of which even Colgan called in question. Copies of some of these compositions have been preserved in Ireland, and from a modernized, interpolated, and often garbled version of them, a collection of "the Prophecies of St. Columbkille" has been lately published in Dublin (in 1856). But it is to be regretted that the editor, not content with mediæval forgeries, has lent his name, and, what is worse, has degraded that of St. Columba, to the propagation of a silly imposture, which does not possess even an antiquity of ten years to take off the gloss of its barefaced pretensions.

II.

WITH WHICH

SAINT

WAS CONNECTED

The belief was current among the Irish at a very early BATTLES period, that the withdrawal of St. Columba to Britain was a sort of penance, which was, with his own consent, imposed COLUMBA upon him in consequence of his having fomented domestic feuds that resulted in sanguinary engagements. And the opinion derives considerable support, at least as regards the battle of Cul-dreimhne, from the mention of it by Adamnan, who in two instances makes it a kind of Hegira in the Saint's life. The following narrative from Keating's History affords the simplest statement of the prevalent belief:—

"Now this is the cause why Molaise sentenced Columcille to go into Alba, because it came of him to occasion three battles in Erin, viz., the battle of Cul Dreimhne, the battle of Rathan, and the battle of Cuil Feadha. The cause of the battle of Cul Feadha, according to the old book called the Leabar Uidhre of Ciaran, Diarmuid, son of Fergus Cerrbhoil, king of Ireland, made the Feast of Tara, and a noble man was killed at that feast by Curnan, son of

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