LIBRARY

OF THE
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Seminary,
PRINCETON,
N. J.
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THE MONKS OF THE WEST
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in 2014
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THE
MONKS OF THE WEST
FEOM ST BENEDICT TO ST BERNARD
BY
THE COUNT DE "MONTALEMBERT
MEMBER OF THE FRENCH ACADEMY
FIDE ET YERITATE
AUTHORISED TRANSLATION
VOL. III.
WILLIAM
BLACKWOOD AND SONS
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
MDCCCLXVII
i
1
O: Li v 4
PR/ENOBILI VIRO
EDVINO WYNDHAM QUIN,
COMITI DE DUNRAVEN
HIBERNI/E ET BRITANNI/E PARI,
ORDINIS S. PATRICII EQUITI,
COMITI ITINERIS COMISSIMO,
AMICO IN ADVERSIS PROBATISSIMO,
CIVI PRISC/E FIDEI SIMUL AC PATRI/E LAUDI
SERVANTISSI MO
QUI INSUPER,
EX ANTIQUISSI MA INTER CELTAS PROGENIE
E D I T U S,
CELTICIS C AT H O L I C I SQ U E REBUS
STRENUE SEMPER INCUBUIT,
TERTIUM HOC OPEROSI LABORIS VOLUMEN
D. D. D.
CAROLUS COMES DE MONTALEMBERT.
CONTENTS,
BOOK VIII.
CHRISTIAN ORIGIN OF THE BRITISH ISLES.
Chap. Page
I. Great Britain before the Conversion of the Saxons, 3
II. The Saints and Monks of Wales, . . .32
III. Monastic Ireland after St Patrick, . . .77
BOOK IX.
ST COLUMBA, THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA, 521-597.
I. The Youth of Columba and his Monastic Life in
Ireland, . . . . . . .97
II. Columba an Emigrant in Caledonia

The Holy Isle

OF IONA, ....... 135
III. The Apostolate of Columba among the Scots and
Picts, . . . . . . .150
IV. Columba consecrates the King of the Scots.

He
goes to the National Assembly of Ireland, de-
fends the independence of the Hiberno
-
Scotic
Colony, and saves the Corporation of Bards, . 1S2
V. Columba's Relations with Ireland

continued, . 205
VI. Columba the Protector of Sailors and Agricultur-
ists, the Friend of Laymen, and the Avenger of
the Oppressed, . . . . . .216
VII. Columba's last YearsHis DeathHis Character, . 251
VIII. Spiritual Descendants of St Columba, . . . 271
Vlll
CONTENTS.
BOOK X.
ST AUGUSTIN OF CANTERBURY AND THE ROMAN MISSIONARIES
IN ENGLAND, 597-633.
I. Mission of St Augustin, ..... 317
II. How Pope Gregory and Bishop Augustin governed
the new Church of England, .... 356
III. First Successors of St AugustinPagan Keaction, . 400
IV. First Mission in Northumbriaits Successes and its
Disaster

Bishop Paulinus and King Edwin, . 422

APPENDIX.
I. Iona, 461
II. Conclusions of the Two Papers of M. Yarin, . . 469
ERRATA.
page 41, first line of note,
for
"
quidem," read
"
quidam."

238, ninth line from foot, for

"
orandum," read
"
arandum."
,,
241, second line of note,/or "cum," read "eum,"
,,
280, fourth line from foot,
for
"jure pari," read
"
jurisdictioni."
,,
288, twenty-sixth line,
for
"eighth," read "ninth."
,,
289, third line of note,
for
"
Drontherin," read
"
Drontheim."
,,
379, second line of note, delete
"
and Schroedl."
BOOK VIII.
CHRISTIAN ORIGIN OF THE BRITISH ISLES.
"
Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the cur-
tains of thine habitations : spare not, lengthen thy cords, and
strengthen thy stakes : for thou shalt break forth on the right
hand and on the left ; and thy seed shall inherit the Gentiles,
and make the desolate cities to be inhabited."

Isaiah liv. 2, 3.
4
CHRISTIAN ORIGIN OF
latecl in the world. No other nation offers so
instructive a study, so original an aspect, or con-
trasts so remarkable. At once liberal and intoler-
ant, pious and inhuman, loving order and serenity
as much as noise and commotion, it unites a super-
stitious respect for the letter of the law with the
most unlimited practice of individual freedom.
Busied more than any other in all the arts of peace,
yet nevertheless invincible in war, and sometimes
rushing into it with frantic passiontoo often des-
titute of enthusiasm, but incapable of failureit
ignores the very idea of discouragement or effemi-
nacy. Sometimes it measures its profits and cap-
rices as by the yard, sometimes it takes fire for
a disinterested idea or passion. More changeable
than any in its affections and judgments, but almost
always capable of restraining and stopping itself in
time, it is endowed at once with an originating
power which falters at nothing, and with a perse-
verance which nothing can overthrow. Greedy of
conquests and discoveries, it rushes to the extremi-
ties of the earth, yet returns more enamoured than
ever of the domestic hearth, more jealous of securing
its dignity and everlasting duration. The implac-
able enemy of bondage, it is the voluntary slave
of tradition, of discipline freely accepted, or of a
prejudice transmitted from its fathers. No nation
has been more frequently conquered
;
none has suc-
ceeded better in absorbing and transforming its
conquerors. In no other country has Catholicism
THE BRITISH ISLES. 5
been persecuted with more sanguinary zeal ; at the
present moment none seems more hostile to the
Church, and at the same time none has greater
need of her care ; no other influence has been so
greatly wanting to its progress
;
nothing has left
within its breast a void so irreparable ; arid no-
where has a more generous hospitality been lavished
upon our bishops and priests and religious exiles.
Inaccessible to modern storms, this island has been
an inviolable asylum for our exiled fathers and
princes, not less than for our most violent enemies.
The sometimes savage egotism of these islanders,
and their too often cynical indifference to the suf-
ferings and bondage of others, ought not to make
us forget that there, more than anywhere else, man
belongs to himself and governs himself. It is there
that the nobility of our nature has developed all its
splendour and attained its highest level. It is
there that the generous passion of independence,
united to the genius of association and the constant
practice of self-government, have produced those
miracles of fierce energy, of dauntless vigour, and ob-
stinate heroism, which have triumphed over seas and
climates, time and distance, nature and tyranny,
exciting the perpetual envy of all nations, and among
the English themselves a proud enthusiasm.
1
1
This enthusiasm has never been better expressed than in those lines
which Johnson, the great English moralist of last century, repeated with
animation on his return from his visit to the monastic island of Iona, the
cradle of British Christianity, whither we are shortly to conduct our readers:
"
Stern o'er each bosom Reason holds her state,
With daring aims irregularly great
;
6 CHRISTIAN ORIGIN OF
Loving freedom for itself, and loving nothing
without freedom, this nation owes nothing to her
kings, who have been of importance only by her
and for her. Upon herself alone weighs the for-
midable responsibility of her history. After endur-
ing, as much or more than any European nation,
the horrors of political and religious despotism in
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, she has
been the first and the only one among them to free
herself from oppression for ever. Re-established in
her ancient rights, her proud and steadfast nature
has forbidden her since then to give up into any
hands whatsoever, her rights and destinies, her
interests and free will. She is able to decide and
act for herself, governing, elevating, and inspiring
her great men, instead of being seduced or led
astray by them, or worked upon for their advantage.
This English race has inherited the pride as well as
the grandeur of that Eoman people of which it is
the rival and the heir ; I mean the true Romans
of the Republic, not the base Romans subjugated
by Augustus. Like the Romans towards their
tributaries, it has shown itself ferocious and rapa-
cious to Ireland, inflicting upon its victim, even
up to recent times, that bondage and degradation
Pride in their port, defiance in their eye,
I see the lords of human kind pass by
;
Intent on high designs, a thoughtful band,
By forms unfashioned, fresh from nature's hand,
Fierce in their native hardiness of soul,
True to imagined right, above control
;
While even the peasant boasts these rights to scan,
And learns to venerate himself as man."
Goldsmith, The Traveller.
THE BRITISH ISLES.
1
which it repudiates with horror for itself. Like
ancient Borne, often hated, and too often worthy
of hate, it inspires its most favourable judges
rather with admiration than with love. But, hap-
pier than Kome, after a thousand years and more,
it is still young and fruitful. A slow, obscure, but
uninterrupted progress has created for England an
inexhaustible reservoir of strength and life. In
her veins the sap swells high to-day, and will swell
to-morrow. Happier than Eome, in spite of a
thousand false conclusions, a thousand excesses, a
thousand stains, she is of all the modern races, and
of all Christian nations, the one which has best pre-
served the three fundamental bases of every society
which is worthy of manthe spirit of freedom, the
domestic character, and the religious mind.
How, then, has this nation, in which a perfectly
pagan pride survives and triumphs, and which has
nevertheless remained, even in the bosom of error,
the most religious
1
of all European nations, become
Christian ? How and by what means has Chris-
tianity struck root so indestructibly in her soil ?
This is surely a question of radical interest among
all the great questions of history, and one which
takes new importance and interest when it is con-
sidered that upon the conversion of England there
1
This may be considered a surprising statement. It expresses, how-
ever, a conviction founded upon personal comparisons and studies made
during nearly forty years in all the countries of Europe except Russia.
It agrees, besides, with the results ascertained by one of the most consci-
entious and clear-sighted observers of our time, M. Le Play.
8
CHRISTIAN ORIGIN OF
has depended, and still depends, the conversion of
so many millions of souls. English Christianity
has been the cradle of Christianity in Germany
;
from the depths of Germany, missionaries formed
by the Anglo-Saxons have carried the faith into
Scandinavia and among the Slaves ; and even at
the present time, either by the fruitful expansion of
Irish orthodoxy, or by the obstinate zeal of the Pro-
testant propaganda, Christian societies, which speak
English and live like Englishmen, come into being
every day throughout North America, in the two
Indies, in immense Australia, and in the Isles of
the Pacific. The Christianity of nearly half of the
world flows, or will flow, from the fountain which
first burst forth upon British soil.
It is possible to answer this fundamental ques-
tion with the closest precision. No country in the
world has received the Christian faith more directly
from the Church of Eome, or more exclusively by
the ministration of monks.
If France has been made by bishops, as has been
said by a great enemy of Jesus Christ, it is still
more true that Christian England has been made
by monks. Of all the countries of Europe it is
this that has been the most deeply furrowed by the
monastic plough. The monks, and the monks
alone, have introduced, sowed, and cultivated
Christian civilisation in this famous island.
From whence came these monks ? From two
very distinct sources

from Pome and Ireland.

THE BRITISH ISLES. 9
British Christianity was produced by the rivalry,
and sometimes by the conflict, of the monastic
missionaries of the Eoman and of the Celtic
Church.
But before its final conversion, which was due,
above all, to a Pope and to monks produced by
the Benedictine order, Great Britain possessed a
primitive Christianity, obscure yet incontestable,
the career and downfall of which are worthy of a
rapid survey.
Of all the nations conquered by Borne, the Heroic re-
Britons were those who resisted her arms the
Britain to
the Roman
longest, and borrowed the least from her laws
Empire,
and manners. Vanquished for a moment, but not
subdued, by the invincible Caesar, they forced the
executioner of the Gauls, and the destroyer of
Roman freedom, to leave their shores, without hav-
ing established slavery there. Less happy under
his unworthy successors, reduced to a province,
and given up as a prey to avarice and luxury, to
the ferocity of usurers,
1
of procurators, and of im-
perial lieutenants, they long maintained a proud
and noble attitude, which contrasted with the uni-
versal bondage. Jam domiti at pareant, nondum
ut serviant.
2
To be subjects and not to be slaves

it is the first and the last word of British history.

Even under Nero, the Britons laughed at the
vile freedmen whom the Caesars imposed upon the
1
Such as Seneca himself, according to Dion Cassius.
2
Tacitus, Agricola, c. 13.
10 CHRISTIAN ORIGIN OF
dishonoured universe as administrators and magis-
trates.
1
Long before it was beaten down and revi-
vified by the successive invasions of three Teutonic
racesthe Saxons, Danes, and Normansthe noble
Celtic race had produced a succession of remarkable
personages who, thanks to Tacitus, shine with an
imperishable light amidst the degradation of the
world : the glorious prisoner Caractacus, the British
Vercingetorix, who spoke to the emperor in language
worthy of the finest days of the Eepublic

"Because
it is your will to enslave us, does it follow that all the
world desires your yoke ?
"
2
and Boadicea, the heroic
queen, exhibiting her scourged body and her out-
raged daughters to excite the indignant patriotism
of the Britons, betrayed by fortune but saved by
history
;
and, last of all, Galgacus, whose name
Tacitus has made immortal, by investing him with
all the eloquence which conscience and justice
could bestow upon an honest and indignant man,
in that speech which we all know by heart, and
which sounded the onset for that fight in which the
most distant descendants of Celtic liberty were to
cement with their blood the insurmountable ram-
part of their mountain independence.
3
It was thus that Britain gave a prelude to the
1
"
Hostibus irrisui fuit, apudquos flagrante etiam turn libertate, non-
dum cognita libertorum potentia erat : mirabauturque, quod dux, et ex-
ercitus tanti belli confector, servitiis obedirent."

Annul.
,
xiv. 39.
2
"
Num, si vos omnibus imperitare vultis, sequitur ut omnes servitu-
tem accipiant?"

Ibid., xii. 37.

3
"
Initium libertatis totius Britannia;. . . . Nos terrarum ac libertatis
extreinos."
THE BRITISH ISLES. 11
glorious future which freedom has created for her-
self, through so many tempests and eclipses, in
the island which has finally become her sanctuary
and indestructible shelter.
The civil code of Eome, which weighs heavily
still, after the lapse of eighteen centuries, upon
France, Spain, Italy, and Germany, reigned with-
out doubt in Britain during the period of Eoman
occupation ; but it disappeared with the reign of
the Caesars. Its unwholesome roots never wound
around, stifled, or poisoned the vigorous shoots of
civil, political, and domestic freedom. The same
thing may be said of all other similar influences.
Neither in the institutions nor in the monuments
of Britain has imperial Eome left any trace of her
hideous domination. Its language and its habits
have escaped her influence as well as its laws.
There, all that is not Celtic is Teutonic. It was
reserved for Catholic Eome, the Eome of the Popes,
to leave an ineffaceable impression upon this
famous island, and there to reclaim, for the im-
mortal majesty of the Gospel, that social influ-
ence which everywhere else has been disputed or
diverted from it by the fatal inheritance which
the Eome of the Caesars left to the world.
At the same time, after having been the last of
the Western nations to yield to the Eoman yoke,
Britain was the first to free herself from it ; she was
the first capable of throwing off the imperial autho-
rity, and showing the world that it was possible to do
12 CHRISTIAN ORIGIN OF
Britain the without an emperor. When the powerlessness of
first of
.
r
.-ill
western
the Empire against barbaric incursions had been
nations

which dis-
demonstrated in Britain as elsewhere, the Britons
pensed with
c^ar.
were not false to themselves. The little national
monarchies, the clans aristocratically organised,
whose divisions had occasioned the triumph of the
Roman invasion, reappeared under native chiefs.
A kind of federation was constituted, and its
leaders signified to the Emperor Honorius, in 410,
by an embassy received at Kavenna, that hence-
forward Britain reckoned upon defending and
governing herself.
1
A great writer has already
remarked, that of all the nations subdued by the
Roman Empire it is the Britons alone whose
struggle with the barbarians had a historyand
the history of that resistance lasted two centuries.
Nothing similar occurred at the same period, under
the same circumstances, among the Italians, the
Gauls, or the Spaniards, who all allowed themselves
to be crushed and overthrown without resistance.
2
At the same time, Britain herself had not passed
with impunity through three centuries and a half
of imperial bondage. As in Gaul, as in all the
countries subjugated by the Roman Empire, de-
1
"
Romanum nomen tenens, legem abjiciens."

Gildas, De Excidio
Britannia;. Zosime, Hist. Novcc, book vi.
pp.
376, 381. Compare Ling-
ard, History
of
England, c. 1. Amkdkk Thierry, Aries ct le Tyran
Constantin,
p.
309.
2
Guizot, Essai sur VHistoire de France,
p.
2. In Gaul only the
Arvernes, the compatriots of Vercingetorix, had one noble inspiration,
when Ecdicius compelled the Goths to raise the siege of Clermont in
471,
but it was but a passing gleam in the night.
THE BRITISH ISLES.
13
pendence and corruption had ended by enervating,
softening, and ruining the vigorous population.
The sons of those whom Caesar could not conquer,
and who had struggled heroically under Claudius
and Nero, soon began to think themselves in-
capable of making head against the barbarians,
amissa virtute porker etc libertate. They sought
in vain the intervention of the Roman legions,
which returned to the island on two different
occasions, without succeeding in delivering or pro-
tecting it. At the same time, the barbarians who
418-424.
came to shake and overthrow the sway of the
Csesars in Britain were not foreigners, as were
the Goths in Italy and the Franks in Gaul.
Those Caledonians who, under Galgacus, vietori- Ravages of
ously resisted Agricola, and who, under the new
names of Scots and Picts, breached the famous
ramparts erected against them by Antoninus and
Severus, and resumed year after year their san-
guinary devastations, wringing from Britain, over-
whelmed and desolated by half a century of ravage,
446.
that cry of distress which is known to all

" The
barbarians have driven us to the sea, the sea drives
us back npon the barbarians. We have only the
choice of being murdered or drowned;"
1
were no-
thing more than unsubdued tribes belonging to
Britain herself.
1
"Actio ter cmxsuli gemitus Britannorum. Repellunt nos barbari ad
mare, repellit mare ad barbaros. Inter h?ec oriuntur duo genera funerum:
aut jugulamur ant mergimur."
14 CHRISTIAN ORIGIN OF
Everybody knows also how imprudently the
Britons accepted the assistance against the Picts, of
the warlike and maritime race of Anglo-Saxons, and
how, themselves not less cruel nor less formidable
than the Picts, those allies, becoming the conquerors
of the country, founded there a new power, or, to
speak more justly, a new nationality, which has vic-
toriously maintained its existence through all subse-
quent conquests and revolutions. These warriors
were an offshoot from the great Germanic familyas
were also, according to general opinion, the Britons
themselvesand resembled the latter closely in
their institutions and habits
;
which did not, how-
ever, prevent the native population from maintain-
ing against them, during nearly two centuries, a
heroic, although in the end useless, resistance.
1
The Anglo-Saxons, who were entirely strangers to
Boman civilisation, took no pains to preserve or
re-establish the remains of the imperial rule. But
in destroying the dawning independence of the
Britons, in driving back into the hilly regions of
the west that part of the population which was be-
yond the reach of the long knives from which they
derived their name,
2
the pagan invaders overthrew,
and for a time annihilated, upon the blood-stained
soil of Great Britain, an edifice of a majesty very
different from that of the Roman Empire, and of
1
This resistance has been nowhere so well described as by M. Arthur
de la Borderie in the Revue Brctonne of 1864.
2
Sax, knife, sword, in old German.
THE BRITISH ISLES. 15
endurance more steadfast than that of Celtic nation-
alitythe edifice of the Christian religion.
It is known with certainty that Christianity Origin of
Christian
existed in Britain from the second century of the
fry in
J
Britain.
Christian era, but nothing is positively known
as to the origin or organisation of the primitive
church
;
according to TertulliaD, however, she had
penetrated into Caledonia beyond the limits of the
Eoman province.
1
She furnished her contingent of
martyrs to the persecution of Diocletian, in the
foremost rank among whom stood Alban, a young
deacon, whose tomb, at a later date, was consecrated
by one of the principal Anglo-Saxon monasteries.
She appeared, immediately after the peace of the
Church, in the persons of her bishops, at the first
Western councils. And she survived the Eoman 314.
domination, but only to fight for her footing inch
by inch, and finally to fall back, with the last tribes
of the Britons, before the Saxon invaders, after an
entire century of efforts and sufferings, of massacres
and profanations. During all this period, from one
end of the isle to the other, the Saxons carried fire
and sword and sacrilege, pulling down public build-
ings and private dwellings, devastating the churches,
breaking the sacred stones of the altars, and mur-
dering the pastors along with their flocks.
2
1
" Britannorum inaccessa Romanis loca, Christo vero subdita."

Ter-
tul., Adv. Judceos, c. 7.
2
"Accensus manibus paganoruni ignis . . . ab orientali mare usque
ad occidentale . . . totam prope insula? pereuntis superficiem obtexit.
Ruebant aedificia publica, simul et privata; passim sacerdotes inter
CHRISTIAN ORIGIN OF
Trials so cruel and prolonged necessarily dis-
turbed the habitual communication between the
Christians of Britain and the Eoman Church ; and
this absence of intercourse occasioned in its turn
the diversities of rites and usages, especially in
respect to the celebration of Easter, which will
be discussed further on. At present it is enough
to state that the most attentive study of authentic
documents reveals no doctrinal strife, no diver-
sity of belief, between the British bishops and the
Bishop of bishops at Kome. Besides, the Borne of
the Popes was lavishing its lights and consolations
upon its daughter beyond sea, at the very moment
when the Borne of the Caesars abandoned her to
disasters which could never be repaired.
The British Church had become acquainted with
the dangerous agitations of heresy even before she
was condemned to her mortal struggle against
Germanic paganism. Pelagius, the great heresiarch
of the fifth century, the great enemy of grace, was
altaria tracidabantur, prsesules cum populis, sine ullo respectu honoris,
ferro pariter et fiammis absumebantur.
"

Beda, Hist. Ecclesiastica Gentis

Anglorum, book i. c. 15. Compare Gildas, Be Excidio Britannia*. Opin-
ions are divided as to the complete or partial destruction of the Britons
in the districts conquered by the Saxons. Palgrave especially has ques-
tioned ordinary tradition upon this fact. However, the Saxon historians
themselves have proved more than one case of complete extermination.
The first Saxons established by Cerdic, founder of the kingdom of Wessex,
in the Isle of Wight, destroyed the entire native population there.
"
Paucos Britones, ejusdem insulse accolas, qnos in ea invenire potn-
erunt . . . occiderunt : caeteri enim accolse ejusdem insula? ante aut
occisi erant, aut exules aufugerant."

Asser,
p. 5,
ap. Lingahd, i. 19.
"
Hoc anno (490)
^Ella et Cissa obsederunt Andredescester (in Sus-
sex) et interfecerunt omnes qui id incolerent, adeo ut ne unus Brito ibi
superstes fuerit."

Chron. Anglo-Sax., ad ami. 490, ed. Gibson.

THE BRITISH ISLES. 17
born in her bosom. To defend herself from the
contagion of his doctrines, she called to her aid the
orthodox bishops of Gaul. Pope Celestin, who, about Mission of
the deacon
the same period, had sent the Eoman deacon Pal-
Palladius
1
to the
ladius to be the first bishop of the Scots of Ireland,
Scots,
L
424 or 431
;
or of the Hebrides,
1
warned by the same Palladius
of the great dangers which threatened the faith
in Britain, charged our great bishop of Auxerre,
agdof the
St Germain, to go and combat there the Pelagian
Germain of

Auxerre
heresy. This prelate paid two visits to Britain, for-
^ims
e
tifying her in the orthodox faith and the love of
celestial grace. Germain, who was accompanied the
first time by the bishop of Troyes,
2
and the second
by the bishop of Treves, employed at first against
the heretics only the arms of persuasion. He
preached to the faithful not only in the churches,
1
"Palladius ad Scotos in Christum credentes ordinatus a papa Ce-
lestino primus episcopus mittitur."

Prosper, Ghron. Consulare, ad ami.

429. In another work this contemporary adds: "Et ordinato Scotis
episcopo, dum Romanam insulam studet servare catholicam, fecit etiam
barbaram Christianam.
"

Lib.- contra Collat., c. 14. But the small suc-

cess of that mission, of which there is no mention even in the historic do-
cuments of Ireland, gives probability to the conjecture of M. Varin, who
concludes that Palladius was charged solely with the care of the Scots
already established in the Hebrides, and upon the western shores of Cale-
donia. This is the best place to mention a saint, venerated in the Church
of Scotland as the disciple of Palladius, St Ternan, described as archbishop
of the Picts in the liturgical books of Aberdeen, which have made of St
Palladius
(t
towards 450) a contemporary of St Gregory the Great
(t
604).
The memory of this saint has been brought again to light by the recent
publication of a very curious liturgical relic, Liber Ecclrsic Beati Terrenani
de A rbuthnott, seu Missalc secundum usum Eccleske S'ancti Andrea in Scotia,
which we owe to Dr Forbes, Anglican bishop of Brechin. But the article
devoted to him by the Bollandists {Act. SS.
t
Junii, vol. ii.
p.
533-35) does
not put an end to the uncertainty which prevails as to his existence.
2
St Lupus, educated at the monastic school of Lerins, and so well
known for his moral victory over Attila. See ante, vol. i.
p.
470.
VOL. III. B
18 CHRISTIAN ORIGIN OF
but at cross-roads and in the fields. He argued
publicly against the Pelagian doctors in presence of
the entire population, assembled with their wives
and children, who gave him the most absorbed
attention.
1
The illustrious bishop, who had been a
soldier in his youth, showed once more the bold ar-
dour of his early profession in defence of the people
whom he came to evangelise. At the head of his
disarmed converts he marched against a horde of
Saxons and Picts, who were leagued together against
the Britons, and put them to flight by making his
band repeat three times the cryHallelujah,which the
neighbouring mountains threw back in echoes. This
is the day known as the Victory
of
the IIallel ujah.
2
It would have been well could he have preserved
the victors from the steel of the barbarians as he
succeeded in curing them of the poison of heresy;
for after his visit Pelagianism appeared in Britain
only to receive its deathblow at the synod of 51.9.
By means of the disciples whom he trained, and
who became the founders of the principal monas-
teries of Wales, it is to our great Gallican saint
that Britain owes her first splendours of cenobiti-
cal life.
The celebrated bishop of Auxerre and his brethren
1
"
Divinus per eos sermo i'erme quotidie, non solum in ecclesiis, verum
etiam per trivia, per rura praedicabatur. . . . Immensa multitude- etiam
cum conjugibus et liberis excita convenorat, et erat populus expecta-
tor et futurus judex . . . vix manus continet, judicium tamen clamore
testator."

Bede, i. 18.
2
"Pugna alleluiatica."
THE BRITISH ISLES. 19
were not the only dignified ecclesiastics to whom
the Roman Church committed the care of preserv-
ing and propagating the faith in Britain. Towards The Breton
the end of the fourth century, at the height of the
undertakes
t
the conver-
Caledonian invasions, the son of a Breton chief,
sjpn of the
/
Picts.
Ninias or Ninian, went to Rome to refresh his
spirit in the fountains of orthodoxy and discipline,
and, after having lived, prayed, and studied there
in the school of Jerome and Damasus,
1
he re-
ceived from Pope Siricius episcopal ordination.
370-394.
He conceived the bold thought, in returning to
Britain, of meeting the waves of northern bar-
barians, who continued to approach ever nearer and
more terrible, by the only bulwark which could
subdue, by transforming them. He undertook to
convert them to the Christian faith. The first thing
he did was to establish the seat of his diocese in a
distant corner of that midland district which lies
between the two isthmuses that divide Great Britain
into three unequal parts. This region, the posses-
sion of which had been incessantly disputed by the
Picts, the Britons, and the Romans, had been re-
duced into a province, under the name of Valentin,
only in the time of the Emperor Valentinianus, and
comprehended all the land between the wall of
Antoninus on the north, and the wall of Severus to
the south. Its western extremity, the part of the
1
"
Nynia episcopo reverentissimo et sanctissirao viro, de nation
e
Britonum, qui erat Roma? regulariter fidem et mysteria veritatis edoc-
tus."

Bede, iii. 4.
20 CHRISTIAN ORIGIN OF
British coast which lay nearest to Ireland, bore at
that time the name of Galwidia or Galloway.
1
It
forms
a sort of peninsula, cut by the sea into several
vast and broad promontories. It was on the banks
of one of the bays thus formed, upon a headland
from which the distant heights of Cumberland and
the Isle of Man may be distinguished, that Ninian
established his ecclesiastical headquarters by build-
ing a stone church. This kind of edifice, till then
unknown in Britain, gained for the new cathedral
and its adjoining monastery the name of Candida
Casa, or Whitehorn,
2
which is still its title. He
consecrated the church to St Martin, the illustrious
apostle of the Gauls, to visit whom he had stopped
at Tours, on his way back from Borne, and who,
according to tradition, gave him masons cap-
able of building a church in the Boman manner.
The image of this holy man, who died at about the
same time as Ninian established himself in his
White House, the recollection of his courage, his
1
This province, so called during all the middle ages, is represented in
modern maps by the counties of Wigton and Kirkcudbright.
2
Horn, hern, Saxon cern, house. On an island near the shore there
is still shown a little ruined church which is said to have been built by
St Ninian. The diocese which he founded disappeared after his death
;
but it was re- established by the Anglo-Saxons, as was also the community,
to whom the famous Alcuin addressed a letter, entitled Ad fratres S.
Ninian in Candida Casa. A new invasion of the Picts, this time from
Ireland, destroyed for the second time the diocese of Galloway, which was
re-established only in the twelfth century, under King David I. The
beautiful ruins of this cathedral, which is comparatively modern, and was
destroyed by the Presbyterians, are seen in the town of Whitehorn. The
tomb of St Ninian was always much frequented as a place of pilgrimage
before the Reformation.
THE BRITISH ISLES.
2]
laborious efforts against idolatry and heresy, his
charity, full of generous indignation against all
persecutors,
1
were well worthy to preside over the
apostolic career of the new British bishop, and to
inspire him with the self-devotion necessary for
beoinninor the conversion of the Picts.
What traveller ever dreams in our days, while sur-
veying western Scotland from the banks of the Sol-
way to those of the Forth and Tay, passing from the
gigantic capitals of industry to the fields fertilised
by all the modern improvements of agriculture,
meeting everywhere the proofs and productions of
the most elaborate civilisation,who dreams now-
adays of the obstacles which had to be surmounted
before this very country could be snatched from bar-
barism ? It is but too easy to forget what its state
must have been when Ninian became its first mis-
sionary and bishop. Notwithstanding many authors, Ferocity of
tli6 tribes
both sacred and profane

Dion and Strabonius

evangelised
by Ninian.
St John Chrysostom and St Jeromehave emu-
lated each other in painting the horrible cruelty,
the savage and brutal habits, of those inhabitants
of North Britain, who, successively known under
the name of Caledonians, Meatw, Attacoti
2
Scots,
or Picts, were most probably nothing more than
the descendants of the British tribes whom Eome
1
See ante, vol. i.
p.
453.
2
These Attacoti, to whom St Jerome attributes morals and cruelties
which will not bear description, inhabited, according to the general
opinion, the picturesque district north of the Clyde, at present traversed
by so many travellers, between Loch Lomond and Loch Fyne.
22 CHK1STIAN ORIGIN OF
had not been able to subdue.
1
All agree in de-
nouncing the incestuous intercourse of their do-
mestic existence, and they have even been ac-
cused of cannibalism.- All express the horror with
which the subjects of the Empire regarded those
monsters in human form, who owed their final
name of Picts to their habit of marching to battle
naked, disclosing bodies tattooed, like those of
the savage islanders of the Pacific, with strange
devices and many colours. Notwithstanding,
Ninian did not hesitate to trust himself in the
midst of those enemies of faith and civilisation.
He, the son and representative of that British race
which they had been accustomed for more than
a century to massacre, spoil, and scorn, spent the
twenty years that remained of his life in unwearied
efforts to bring them into the light from on high,
to lead them back from cannibalism to Chris-
tianity, and that at the very moment when the
Koman Empire, as represented by Honorius, had
abandoned Britain to its implacable destroyers.
Unfortunately there remain no authentic details
of his mission,
3
no incident which recalls even dis-
tantly the clearly-characterised mission of his sue-
1
Palguave, Rise and Progress
of
the English Commonwealth, vol. i.
p.
419. This is true, however, only of the Picts, for the Scots unques-
tionably came from Ireland, the Scotia of the middle ages.
2
See specially St Jerome, in Jorinianum, book ii.
3
The Bollandists (die 16th September) do not admit the authenticity
of the life of St Ninian, written in the twelfth century by the holy abbot
.Elred, which contains only such miracles as are to be found everywhere,
without any specially characteristic feature.
THE BRITISH ISLES.
23
cessor, St Columba, who became, a century and a half
later, the apostle of the Northern Picts. We only 562-597.
know that he succeeded in founding, in the midst
of the Pictish race, a nucleus of Christianity which
was never altogether destroyed; after which, cross-
ing the limits which Agricola and Antoninus had
set to the Eoman sway at the time of its greatest
splendour, he went, preaching the faith to the foot
of those Grampians where the father-in-law of
Tacitus gained his last unfruitful victory.
1
We
know that his memory remains as a blessing among
the descendants of the Picts and Scots, and that
many churches consecrated under his invocation
still preserve the recollection of that worship which
was vowed to him by a grateful posterity
;
2
and,
finally, we know that, when above seventy, he re- Death of
Ninian,
turned to die in his monastery of the White House,
432.
after having passed the latter portion of his life,
preparing himself for the judgment of God, in a
cave still pointed out half-way up a white and lofty
cliff on the Galloway shore, upon which beat, with-
out cease, the impetuous waves of the Irish Sea.
3
But in the primitive British Church, which was
1
"
Ipsi anstrales Picti qui infra eosdem montes habent sedes . . . re-
lieto errore idololatriai fidem veritatis acceperant predicant! eis verbum
Ninia episcopo."

Bede, iii. 4.
2
Even beyond the Grampians, as far as the point where Glen Urquhart
opens upon Loch Ness, and where St Columba (see further on, Book IX.
chap, iii.) went to visit an old Pict when dying, a ruined chapel is still to
be seen bearing the name of St Ninian, from which it has been supposed
that his mission passed the limit which has been ordinarily assigned to it.
3
Lives of
the Englink Saints,
1845, No. xiii.,
p.
131.
24 CHRISTIAN ORIGIN OF
so cruelly afflicted by the heathens of the north
and of the east, by the Picts and the Saxons, there
were many other monasteries than that of Ninian at
Whitehorn. All the Christian churches of the period
were accompanied by cenobitical institutions, and
Gildas, the most trustworthy of British annalists,
leaves no doubt as to their existence in Britain.
1
But
history has retained no detailed recollection of them.
Out of Cambria, which will be spoken of hereafter,
the only great monastic institution whose name has
triumphed over oblivion belongs to legend rather
than to history; but it has held too important a place
in the religious traditions of the English people to
be altogether omitted here. It was an age in which
Catholic nations loved to dispute among themselves
their priority and antiquity in the profession of the
Christian faith, and to seek their direct ancestors
among the privileged beings who had known,
cherished, and served the Son of God during His
passage through this life. They aspired by these
legendary genealogies to draw themselves somehow
closer to Calvary, and to be represented at the mys-
teries of the Passion. For this reason Spain has
victoriously claimed as her apostle the son of
Zebedee, the brother of St John

that James
whom Jesus led with Him to the splendours of
Tabor and to the anguish of the Garden of Olives.
For this reason the south of France glories in trac-
ing back its Christian origin to that family whose
1
Dc Excidio Britaankc,
p.
43-45.
THE BRITISH ISLES. 25
sorrows and love are inscribed in the Gospelto
Martha, who was the hostess of Jesus ; to Lazarus,
whom He raised up
;
to Mary Magdalene, who was
the first witness of His own resurrection
;
to their
miraculous journey from Judea to Provence
;
to the
martyrdom of one, to the retreat of another in the
Grotto of St Baume ; admirable traditions, which
the most solid learning of our own day has
j
ustified
and consecrated.
1
England in other days, with
Legend of
Joseph of
much less foundation, loved to persuade herself
Arimathea.
that she owed the first seed of faith to Joseph of
Arimathea, the noble and rich disciple
2
who laid
the body of the Lord in the sepulchre where the
Magdalene came to embalm it. The Britons, and
after them the Anglo-Saxons and Anglo-Normans,
handed down from father to son the tradition
that Joseph, flying the persecutions of the Jews,
and carrying with him for all his treasure some
drops of the blood of Jesus Christ, landed on the
western coast of England with twelve companions
;
that he there found an asylum in a desert place Abbey of
surrounded by water,
3
and that he built and conse-
bury.
1
See the great and learned work published by M. Faillon, Director of
Saint-Sulpice, under the title of Monuments inedits sur VApostolat de
Sainte Marie Madeleine en Provence. Paris, 1848. Compare Bouche,
Defense de la Foi de Provence pour ses Saints Lazare, Maximin, Marthe,
et Madeleine.
2
"
Nobilis decurio."S. Marc.
3
Guillelmus Malmesbttriensis, Antiq. Glastonb., ap. Gale, Script.
Rer. Britann., vol. iii.
p.
293. Compare Baronius, Ann., ad ann. 48.
Dtjgdale, Monasticon, vol i.
p.
2. The Bollandists and various other
modern historians have taken much pains to refute this tradition. It
is, however, repeated in the letter which some monks addressed to Queen
26
CHRISTIAN ORIGIN OF
crated to the blessed Virgin a chapel, the walls of
which were formed by entwined branches of wil-
low, and the dedication of which Jesus Christ Him-
self did not disdain to celebrate. The same legend
has been told since then of two great and famous
monastic churchesthat of St Denis in France, and
of Notre Dame des Ermites in Switzerland.
1
This
spot, destined to become the first Christian sanc-
tuary of the British Isles, was situated upon a tri-
butary of the gulf into which the Severn falls. It
afterwards received the name of Glastonbury; and
such was, according to the unchangeable popular
conviction, the origin of the great abbey of that
name, which was afterwards occupied by monks of
Mary in 1553, to ask the re-establishmelit of their abbey (ap. Dugdale,
vol. i.
p.
9 of the new edition). In consequence of this tradition of
Joseph of Arimathea, the ambassadors of England claimed precedence
of those of France, Spain, and Scotland at the Councils of Pisa in 1409,
of Constance in 1114,
and, above all, of Bale in 1434, because, according
to them, the faith had been preached in France only by St Denis, and
later than the mission of Joseph of Arimathea.

Ussher, De Prim. Eccl.

Brit.,
p.
22.
1
The following narrative, told by William of Malmesbuiy, shows to
what extent this legend was accepted in France up to the twelfth century :
"
Monachus quidam Glastonise, Godefridus nomine (de cujus epistola
hoc capitulum assumpsimus), tempore Henrice Blesensis abbatis Glas-
toniensis, cum in pago Parisiacensi apud Sanctum Dionysium moraretur
;
senior quidam ex monachis interrogavit eum :
'
Quo genus ? Undo domo
?
'
Respondit : 'Normannum e Britannia? monasterio, quod Glastingeia dice-
tur, monachum. Papre ! inquit, an adhuc stat ilia perpetiue Virginia et
misericordiiii Matris vetusta ecclesia
?
Stat,' inquit. Turn ille lepido at-
tactu caput G. Glastoniensis demulcens, din silentio suspensum tenuit, ac
sic demum ora resolvit :
'
H.
r
ec gloriosissimi martyris Dionysii ecclesia et
ilia, de qua te asseris, eamdem privilegii dignitatem habent ; ista in
Gallia, ilia in Britannia, uno eodem tempore exortre, a summo et magna
pontifice consecrataj. Uno tamen gradu ilia supereminet : Roma
etenim
secunda vocatur.'
"
THE BRITISH ISLES.
27
Irish origin.
1
This sanctuary of the primitive legends
and national traditions of the Celtic race was besides
supposed to enclose the tomb of King Arthur, who
was, as is well known, the personification of the
long and bloody resistance of the Britons to the
Saxon invasion, the heroic champion of their liberty,
of their language, and of their faith, and the first
type of that chivalrous ideal of the middle ages in
which warlike virtues were identified with the ser-
vice of God and of our Lady.
2
Mortally wounded
in one of these combats against the Saxons, which
lasted three successive days and nights, he was car-
ried to Glastonbury, died there, and was buried in
secret, leaving to his nation the vain hope of seeing
him one day reappear,
3
and to the whole of Christian
Europe a legendary glory, a memory destined to
emulate that of Charlemagne.
1
The curious collection entitled Monasticon Anglicanum, with the ad-
mirable plates of W. Hollar, which are to be found in the editions of the
seventeenth century, should be consulted upon this famous abbey, as also
upon all the others we may name. The bones of King Arthur were sup-
posed to have been found at Glastonbury in the reign of Henry II., at
the end of the twelfth century.
2
See all the many poems on the Round Tabic in England, France, and
Germany, and especially the three great poems entitled Parcevcd, TUurel,
and Lohengrin, which turn upon the worship of the Saint Graal or Sang Real,
that is to say, the blood of our Lord, collected by Joseph of Arimathea,
and preserved in the vase which Jesus Christ had used in the institution
of the Eucharist.
3
Compare Thierry, Hist, ale la Conquete oVAngletcrre, book i.
p.
39.
Lappenberg, vol. i.
p.
104-107. M. de la Borderie, in his fine narra-
tive of the struggle of the insular Britons with the Anglo-Saxons, has
well distinguished the hyperbolical personage of legendary tradition from
the real Arthur, chief of the league of Britons of the south and west, and
conqueror of the Saxons, or rather of the Angles, in twelve battles.
28 CHRISTIAN ORIGIN OF
Thus poetry, history, and faith found a common
home in the old monastery, which was for more
than a thousand years one of the wonders of Eng-
land, and which still remained erect, flourishing,
and extensive as an entire town, up to the day
when Henry VIII. hung and quartered the last
abbot before the great portal of the confiscated and
profaned sanctuary.
1
Position of
But we return to the reality of history, and
Britain
.
.
J J
from 450
to the period which must now occupy our atten-
tion, that which extends from the middle of the
fifth to that of the sixth century, the same age
in which the Merovingians founded in Gaul the
Frankish kingdom, so beloved by the monks ; and
St Benedict planted upon Monte Cassino the cradle
of the greatest of monastic orders. Great Britain,
destined to become the most precious conquest of
the Benedictines, offered at that moment the spec-
tacle of four different races desperately struggling
against each other for the mastery.
In the north were the Picts and Scots, still
strangers and enemies to the faith of Christ, in-
trenched
behind those mountains and gulfs, which
gained for them the character of transmarine
foreigners, people from beyond seas
;
2
continually
1
14th May 1539. This martyr was accused of having withdrawn from
the hand of the spoiler some part of the treasure of the abbey. He was
pursued and put to death by the zeal of John Kussell, founder of the
house of Bedford, and one of the principal instruments of the tyranny of
Henry VIII.
2
Gildas and Bede call them
"
gcntcs transmarinas : non quod extra
Britanniam essent positic, sed quia a parte Brittonum erant remotae."
THE BRITISH ISLES.
29
threatening the southern districts, which they had
crushed or stupefied for a century by the inter-
mitting recurrence of their infestations ; and from
which they were driven only by other barbarians
as heathen and as savage as themselves.
Further down, in that region which the gulfs of
Clyde, Forth, and Solway constitute the central
peninsula of the three which compose Great
Britain, were other Picts permanently established,
since 448, in the land which they had torn from
the Britons, and among whom the apostle Ninian
had sown the seeds of Christianity.
1
To the south-west, and upon all the coast which
faces Ireland, remained a native and still indepen-
dent population. It was here that the unhappy
Britonsabandoned by the Bomans, decimated,
ravaged, and trodden down for a century by the
Picts
;
then for another century spoiled, enslaved,
driven from their towns and fields by the Saxons
;
then driven back again, some to the mountains of
Wales, others to that tongue or horn of land which
is called Cornwall, Cornu wallice, others to the
maritime district which extends from the banks of
the Clyde to those of the Mersey
2
still found an
asylum.
1
"
Picti in extrema parte insula
"
(that is to say, of the Roman isle, in
Valentia),
"
tunc primnra et deinceps requieverunt, preedas et contritiones
nonnunquam facientes," &c.Gildas, apud Gale,
p.
13.
2
This was the kingdom of Strath-Clyde, which later took the name of
Cambria, and of which a vestige remains, and, at the same time, a popula-
tion more British than Saxon, in the existing county of Cumberland.
The boundaries of this kingdom, however, are much disputed. To find a
30 CHRISTIAN ORIGIN OF
Finally, in the south-east, all the country
which is now England had fallen a prey to the
Anglo-Saxons, who were occupied in laying,
under the federative form of the seven or eio-ht
kingdoms of the Heptarchy, the immovable foun-
dations of the most powerful nation of the modern
world.
But, like the Picts of the north, the Anglo-Saxons
were still heathens. From whence shall come to
them the light of the Gospel and the bond of
Christian civilisation, which are indispensable to
their future grandeur and virtue ? Shall it be from
those mountains of Cambria, from Wales, where the
vanquished race maintains the sacred fire of faith
and the traditions of the British Church, with its
way through the confusion of texts and traditions relative to the religious
and chronological origin of Great Britain, recourse should be had to two
admirable papers, by a modern writer, too soon withdrawn from the
ranks of French erudition, M. Varin, Dean of the Faculty of Sciences at
Rennes, which are to be found in the Recueil des Memoircs presentes par
divers savants a VAcademic des Inscrijrtions et Belles-Lcttrcs (tome v., first
and second part, 1857, 1858). The first is entitled Etudes relatives a
Vetat politique ct religieux des lies Britanniqucs au moment de VInvasion
Saxonne ;
the second, Memoire sur les Causes de la Dissidence entre
VEglise Brctonne et VEglise Romaine relativement a la Celebration de la
Fete de Pdques. Before resolving this last question, with a precision and
a perspicuity which permit us to follow him without hesitation, M.
V
r
arin guides us across all the meanderings of the three principal schools,
Irish, English, and Scotch, which dispute the origin of the Caledonians
;
and which, as personified in Usher, Camden, and Lines, have remained
almost unknown to Continental learning.
He regards as proved1st, The identity of the Picts with the ancient
Caledonians. 2d, The Irish theory, which makes out the Scots to be a
colony of Hibernians, of Irish origin (probably towards 258), and estab-
lished in Caledonia before the period of the infestations.
THE BRITISH ISLES.
31
native clergy and monastic institutions ? It is
a question impossible to solve, without having
thrown a rapid glance over the religious condition
of that picturesque and attractive country during
the sixth century.
CHAPTER II.
THE SAINTS AND MONKS OF WALES.
The British refugees in Cambria maintain there the genius of the Celtic
race.

Testimony rendered to the virtues of the Welsh by their

enemy Giraldus. Music and poetry : the bards and their triads.

Devotion to the Christian faith. King Arthur crowned by the

Bishop Dubricius. Alliance between the bards and the monks : the
bard surprised by the flood.

A few names which float in the

ocean of legends.

Mutual influence of Cambria, Armorica, and

Ireland upon each other : their legends identical.The love of the
Celtic monks for travel. Foundation of the episcopal monasteries
of St Asaph by Kentigern, of Llandaff by Dubricius, of Bangor by
Iltud, a converted bandit. St David, monk and bishop, the Bene-
dict of Welles. .His pilgrimage to Jerusalem, from which he returns
archbishop. The right of asylum recognised. He restores Glaston-
bury.His tomb becomes the national sanctuary of Cambria.Legend
of St Cadoc and his father and mother. He founds Llancarvan, the
school and burying-place of the Cambrian race. His poetical aphor-
isms, his vast domains. He protects the peasants. A young girl car-
ried off and restored. Right of asylum as for St David.

The Hate
of
Cadoc.

He takes refuge in Armorica, prays for Virgil, returns to

Britain, and there perishes by the sword of the Saxons. His name
invoked at the battle of the Thirty. St Winifred and her fountain.
St Beino, the enemy of the Saxons. The hatred of the Cambrians
to the Saxons an obstacle to the conversion of the conquerors.
449-560. During the long struggle maintained by . the
Britons in defence of their lands and their in-
sion of invading expeditions brought like waves
with the Saxons, whom a succes-
THE BRITISH ISLES. 33
of the sea upon the eastern and southern shores
of the island, a certain number of those who re-
pudiated the foreign rule had sought an asylum
in the western peninsulas of their native land, and
especially in that great peninsular basin which the
Latins called Cambria, and which is now called
Wales, the land of the Gael. This district seems
intended by nature to be the citadel of England.
Bathed on three sides by the sea, defended on the
fourth by the Severn and other rivers, this quad-
rilateral, moreover, contains the highest mountains
in the southern part of the island, and a crowd of
gorges and denies inaccessible to the military opera-
tions of old. After having served as a refuge to
the Britons oppressed by the Roman conquest,
Cambria resisted the efforts of the Anglo-Saxons
for five centuries, and even remained long inac-
cessible to the Anglo-Normans, whom it took more 1066-1284.
than two hundred years to complete in this region
the work of William the Conqueror.
Like Ireland and Scotland, and our own
Armorica, this fine country has at all times been
the object of lively sympathy, not only among
learned Celtomaniacs, but among all men whose
hearts are moved by the sight of a race which
makes defeat honourable by the tenacity of its
resistance to the victorand still more among all
lovers of that inimitable poetry which springs
spontaneously from the traditions and instincts of
a generous and unfortunate people.
VOL. III. c
34 CHRISTIAN ORIGIN OF
The unquestionable signs of a race entirely dis-
tinct from that which inhabits the other parts of
England may still be distinguished there
;
and
there, too, may be found a language evidently the
sister language of the three other Celtic dialects
which are still in existencethe Breton Armorican,
the Irish, and the Gaelic of the Scottish Highlands.
Cambria But it is, above all, in the sudden vicissitudes
sanctuary
of the history of Wales, from King Arthur to
of the
... .
Celtic
Llewellyn, and in the institutions which enabled
genius.
^
it to resist the foreign invasion for seven centuries,
that we recognise the true characteristics and rich
nature of the ancient British race. Everywhere
else the native population had either been killed,
enslaved, or absorbed. But in this spot, where it
had sufficient strength to survive and flourish along
with the other nationalities of the West, it has
displayed all its native worth, bequeathing to us
historical, juridical, and poetical remains, which
prove the powerful and original vitality with
which it was endowed.
1
By its soul, by its tongue,
and by its blood, the race has thus
protested
against the exaggerated statements made by the
Briton Gildas, and the Saxon Bede, of the corrup-
tion of the victims of the Saxon invasion. In all
times there have been found men, and even the
best of men, who thus wrong the vanquished,
and
make history conspire with fortune to absolve and
1
See the excellent work entitled Das Alte Wales, by Ferdinand
Walter, Professor at the University of Bonn. 1859.
THE BRITISH ISLES. 35
crown the victors. The turn of the Anglo-Saxons
was to come
;
they also, when the Norman invasion
had crushed them, found a crowd of pious detractors
to prove that they had merited their fate, and To
absolve and mitigate the crimes of the Conquest.
The most striking, and. at the same time, the
most attractive, feature in the characteristic his-
tory of the Welsh is, without doubt, the ardour
of patriotism, the invincible love of liberty and
national independence, which they evidenced
throughout seven centuries, and which no other
race has surpassed. We are specially informed of
these qualities, even by the servile chroniclers of
their conquerors, by the Anglo-Norman writers of
the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, from whom
truth extorts the most unequivocal eulogiums.
These writers certainly point out certain vices,
and especially certain customs, which are in
opposition to the rules of civilised nations, such
as that of fighting naked, like the Britons of
Caesars day, or the Picts of a later date, against
adversaries armed from head to foot. But
thev
rival each other in celebrating the heroic
The ene-
-. -| . ~
mies of tht
and
unwearied devotion of the Gael to their
Gael bear
witness to
country, and to general and individual freedom
;
J^ir
vir-
their reverence for the achievements and memory
of their ancestors
;
their love of war ; their con-
tempt of life ; their charity to the poor ; their
exemplary temperance, which was combined with
inexhaustible hospitality
;
and, above all, their
36 CHRISTIAN ORIGIN OF
extraordinary valour in figlit, and their obstinate
constancy through all their reverses and disasters.
1
Nothing can give a better picture of this people
than that decree of their ancient laws which inter-
dicted the seizure by justice, in the house of any Gael
whatsoever, of three specified thingshis sword, his
harp, and one of his books
;
2
the harp and. the book,
because in time of peace they regarded music and
poetry as the best occupation of an honest and free
Their pas- man. Thus from infancy every Gael cultivated
sionate love ..
.
for music these two arts, and especially music, with passionate
and poetry.
.
and unanimous eagerness. It was the favourite
form, the gracious accompaniment of hospitality.
The traveller was everywhere received by choirs of
singers. From morning to evening every house
rang with the sound of the harp and other instru-
1
Let us quote the very words of the enemies of Welsh independence
;
history too seldom gives us an opportunity of hearing and repeating de-
tails so noble
:

"
Patriae tutelne student et libertatis
;
pro patria pugnant, pro libertate
laborant. . . . Continua pristinas nobilitatis memoria. . . . Tantse
audacise et ferocitatis, ut nudi cum armatis congredi non vereantur, adeo
ut sanguinem pro patria fundere promptissime, vitamque velint pro laude
pacisci."

Giraldus, Cambrice Descript., c. 8, 10.

"
In bellico conflictu
primo impetu, acrimonia, voce, vultu terribiles tarn . . . tubarum prse-
longarum clangore altisono quam cursu pernici. . . . Gens asperrima
. . . hodie confecta et cruentam in fugam turpiter conversa, eras nihi-
lominus expeditionem parat, nec damno nec dedecore retardata."

Gir-
ald., De Illaudabilibus Wallicc, c. 3.
"
Nec crapulae dediti nec temu-
lentiae ... in equis sola et armis tota versatur intentio. . . . Ves-
pere ccena sobria : et si forte nulla vel minima pars, vesperam alteram
patienter expectant. Nemo in hac gente mendicus, omnium hospitia
omnibus communia."

Dcscr. Cambrice, c. 9.
"
Omnium rerum largissimi,
ciborum sibi quisque parcissimus." Gualt. Mapes, DcNugis Curialium,
ii. 20.
2
Trades of Dymvall Moelmud, 54,
ap. Walter, p.
315.
THE BRITISH ISLES.
37
meiits, played with a perfection which delighted the
foreign hearers, who were at the same time always
struck, amid all the skilful turns of musical art, by
the constant repetition of sweet and melancholy
chords, which seemed to reflect, as in the music of
Ireland, the candid genius and cruel destiny of the
Celtic race.
1
The bards themselves, singers and poets, some-
The bards,
times even princes and warriors, presided over the
musical education of the country as well as over
its intellectual development. But they did not
confine themselves to song
;
they also fought and
died for national independence ; the harp in their
hands was often only the auxiliary of the sword,
and one weapon the more against the Saxon.
2
This powerful corporation, which was constituted
in a hierarchical form, had survived the ruin of the
Druids, and appeared in the sixth century in its
fullest splendour in the centre of those poetic
assemblies,
3
presided over by the kings and chiefs
1
"Qui matutinis horis adveniunt, puellaruni affatibus et cytherarum
modulis usque ad vesperam delectantur : domus enim hie quadibet puellas
habet ad cytharas ad hoc deputatas. ... In musico modulamine non
nniformiter, ut alibi ; sed multiplicity multisque modis et modulis
cantilenas emittunt, adeo ut in turba canentium, sicut huic genti mos
est, quot videas capita, tot audias carmina discriminaque vocum, varia in
unam denique sub B mollis dulcedine blanda consonantiam et organicum
convenientia melodiam. ... In musicis instrumentis dulcedine aures
deliniunt et demulcent, tanta modulorum celeritate, pariter et subtilitate
feruntur, tantamque discrepantium sub tarn prsecipiti digitorum rapiditate
consonantiam prsestant. . . . Semper autem ab molli incipiunt et in
idem redeunt, ut cuncta sub jucunda sonoritatis dulcedine compleantur."

Giraldus Cambrensis, c.
10, 12, 13.
2
A. de la Borderie,
p.
179. La Villemarque, Les Bardes Bretons.
3
The Eisteddfods. An attempt has been made to revive them.
38 CHRISTIAN ORIGIN OF
of the country, which were a truly national institu-
tion, and continued to exist until the latest days
of Welsh independence. In the numerous relics of
their fertile activity recently brought to light
by
efforts which are as patriotic as intelligent,
1
but
still insufficiently elucidatedin those triads which,
under the comparatively recent form known to us,
disguise but faintly the highest antiquityare to be
found treasures of true poetry, in which the savage
grandeur of a primitive race, tempered and purified
by the teachings and mysteries of the Gospel, seems
to play in a thousand limpid currents which sparkle
in the morning sunlight of history, before running
into and identifying themselves with the great river
of Christian tradition in the West,
christian- For the Christian religion was adopted, cherished,
ityofthe
to
.
Gael.
and defended amidst the mountains of Cambria
with not less fervour and passion than national
independence. Kings and chiefs there were not
more blameless than elsewhere. There, too, as
everywhere else, the abuse of strength and the
exercise of power engendered every kind of crime :
too often perjury, adultery, and murder appear in
their annals."
2
But at the same time faitli and
repentance often reclaimed their rights over souls
1
Those of Williams ah Jolo, of Williams ah Ithel, of the two Owens,
of Stephens, of Walter, and, above all, of M. de la Villemarque, who has
heen the first to open up to literary France the history of a race naturally
so dear to the Bretons of Armorica.
2
See the numerous examples collected by Lingard {Anglo-Saxon
church; vol. ii.
p.
362), in the Book
of Llandaff,
and other Welsh
documents.
THE BRITISH ISLES. 39
not so much corrupt as gone astray. In imitation
of the great Arthur, who was crowned, according
coronation
to Celtic tradition, in
516, by a holy archbishop
called Dubricius, they almost all showed themselves
zealous for the service of God and generous to
the Church ; and the people, separated from Home
by the waves of blood in which the Saxon inva-
sion had drowned British Christianity, soon dis-
played again that natural tendency which marked
them out to the Norman conquerors as the most
zealous of all the pilgrims who made their eager
way to the tombs of the apostles.
1
The bards, though they had existed before Union of
/->n
...
cr i i -i
1

the bards
Christianity, far from being hostile to it, lived in
and the
.
monks.
an intimate and cordial alliance with the clergy,
and especially with the monks. Each monastery
had its bardat once poet and historianwho
chronicled the wars, alliances, and other events
of the age. Every three years these national
annalists, like the pontiffs of ancient Eome, assem-
bled to compare their narratives, and to register
them at the foot of the code of Good customs and
ancient liberties of the country, of which they
were the guardians.
2
It was in these monastic
1
"
Trae omni peregrino labore Roniam peregre libentius eundo, devotis
mentibus apostoloruin limina propensius adorant."

Cambriat Descriptio,
p.
891, ed. 1602. Let us repeat once more, that in none of the numerous
relics of Welsh archaeology and geography recently published can there
be found the slightest trace of hostility, either systematic or temporary,
against the Holy See.
2
Walter, ojj. tit., p.
33. Lloyd, History
of
Cambria, ed. Powell,
prsef.,
p.
9.
40 CHRISTIAN ORIGIN OF
schools also that the bards were trained to poetry
and to music. The best known among them, Ta-
liesin, was educated, like the historian Gildas, in
the Monastery of Llancarvan.
1
a bard, Let us here quote one incident out of a hundred
while cclc-
bratingthe
which throws light upon the singularly intimate
fame of a
...
hermit, is
connection existing: between the poetry of the Welsh
surprised
0 L J
by a flood,
bards and the legends of the monastic orders, while
it shows at the same time the proud intrepidity of
the Celtic character. The father of the founder of
the Monastery of Llancarvan having become a
hermit, as will be narrated further on, died in the
odour of sanctity, and was buried in a church, to
which crowds were soon attracted by the miraculous
cures accomplished. Among those crowds came
a bard with the intention of making a poem in
honour of the new saint. While he composed his
lines a sudden flood ravaged the surrounding
country, and penetrated even into the church itself.
All the neighbouring population and their cattle
had already perished, and the waters continued to
rise. The bard, while composing his poem, took
refuge in the higher storey of the church, and then
upon the roof; he mounted from rafter to rafter
pursued by the flood, but still continuing to im-
provise his lines, and drawing from danger the
inspiration which had been previously wanting.
When the water subsided, from the tomb of the
hermit to the Severn, there remained no living
1
La VillemarquJs, Poemes des Bardes Bretons, 1850, p.
44.
THE BRITISH ISLES. 41
creature except the bard, and no other edifice
standing except the church upon which he had
put together his heroic strains.
1
In this sea of Celtic legend, where neither fables Relics
.
.
which float
nor anachronisms are sufficient to obscure the vio-or-
on the sea

of legends.
ous and constant affirmation of Catholic faith and
British patriotism, a few names of monastic found-
ers and missionaries still survive. They have been
rescued from forgetfulness not only by the revived
learning of Cambrian archaeologists, but also by
faithful popular tradition, even after the complete
and lamentable extinction of Catholicism in Wales.
2
While surveying their lives, and examining the
general scope of the monastic legends and institu-
1
"
Britannus quidem versifieator Britannice versifkans, composuit
carmina a gente sua. . . . Xondum eadem finita erant a compositore. . .
Marina undositas contexit campestria, submergit habitatores et sedificia :
equi cum bobus natant in aqua : matres tenebant filios prre manibus . . .
flunt cadavera. Cum viderit undositatem altissimam inimiuere, suscepit
componere quartam partem carminum. Dam incepisset, impleta est
fluctibus : post hrec ascendit trabes superius, et secutus est iterum tumens
fluctus tertio super tectum, nec cessat ille fungi laudibus. Illis finitis
Britannus poeta evasit, domus fulciens stabilivit."

Vita S. Gundleii, c.
11, ap. Rees,
p.
15.
2
See the important publication entitled Lives
of
the Cambro-British
Saints
of
the Fifth and immediate successive Centuries,
from ancient
Welsh and Latin MSS., by the Rev. W. Rees, Llandovery, 1853
;
a
work to which nothing is wanting except a historical and geographical
commentary, adapted for foreign readers. It is entirely distinct from
the Essay on the Welsh Saints, by the Rev. Rice Rees, so much praised
by Walter, but which I have not been able to meet with. The
biographies published by Rees, from the MS. in the Cottonian Library,
are partly in Welsh and partly in Latin
;
they must have been, not
written, but certainly retouched at a later period than that to which in
the first place one is tempted to attribute them. By the side of details
evidently contemporary and local are to be found traces of declamatory
interpolations, which must have been the work of a posterity much less
devoted than we are to local colour and historical authenticity.
42 CHRISTIAN ORIGIN OF
tions connected with them, the existence of a double
influence which attracts the looks and steps of the
Gael from their native mountains to Armorica in the
south, and to Ireland in the west, becomes immedi-
ately apparent ; as is also the constant reflux of these
two countries back upon Great Britain, from whence
had come their first missionaries, and the religious
and national life of which had concentrated itself
more and more in Cambria.
Reciprocal
The Saxon invason, as has been already seen,
1
influence
exercised
had thrown upon the shores of Gaul a crowd of
by Cam-
bria, at-
fugitives, who, transformed into missionaries, had
monca, and
o
7 7 7
iponeich
created a new Britain, invincibly Christian and
other.
Catholic, at the gates of Merovingian France. The
most celebrated among these missionaries, Tugdual,
Samson, Malo, and Paul Aurelian, had been edu-
cated in the Cambrian monasteries, from whence
also the historian Gildas and the bard Taliesin
accompanied them beyond the seas. From the
earliest days of her conversion Ireland had received
a similar emigration. The greater part of these
pious and brave missionaries came back once at
least in their lives to visit the country which they
had left, leading with them disciples, born in other
Celtic lands, but eager to carry back to the dear
and much-threatened homes of insular Britain the
light and fervour which had first been received
from them.
2
Thence arises the singular uni-
1
See ante, vol. ii.
2
"
Sicut hiemale alvearium, arridente vcre, animos extollens . . .
THE BRITISH ISLES. 43
formity of proper names, traditions, miracles, and
anecdotes, among the legends of the three coun-
tries, a uniformity which has often degenerated
into inextricable confusion.
One particular, however, which imprints a uniform
The love of
1 r
the Celtic
and very distinct character upon all the holy monks
^
for
of Celtic origin, is then- extraordinary love for
distant and frequent journeysand it is one of the
points in which the modern English resemble them
most. At that distant age, in the midst of barba-
rian invasions, and of the local disorganisation of
the Eoman world, and consequently in the face of
obstacles which nothing in Europe as it now exists
can give the slightest idea of, they are visible, tra-
versing immense distances, and scarcely done with
one laborious pilgrimage before they begin again or
undertake another. The journey to Rome, or even
to Jerusalem, which finds a place in the legend of
almost every Cambrian or Irish saint, seems to have
been sport to them. St Kentigern, for example,
went seven times in succession to Rome.
1
This same Kentigern, whom we shall meet again Kentigern,
hereafter as the missionary bishop of the southern
St Asaph.
Scots and Picts, is said to have been born of one of 550?-6T2.
those irregular unions which evidence either do-
mestic deraugement or the abuse of power among
aliud foras emittit examen, ut alibi mellificet, ita Lctavia (the ancient
name of Armorica), accrescente serenitate religionis, catervam sanctorum
ad originem nnde exierunt, transmittit.

Vit. S. Patcrni, ap. Rees,

Cambro
-
British Sainis.
1
Act SS. Bolland., t. i. January,
p.
819.
44 CHRISTIAN ORIGIN OF
the chiefs and great men of the country, and which
are so often referred to in the annals of Celtic
hagiography.
1
He was none the less one of the
principal monastic personages in Cambria, where he
founded, at the junction of the Clwyd
2
and Elwy,
an immense monastery, inhabited by nine hundred
and sixty-five monks, three hundred of whom, being
illiterate, cultivated the fields ; three hundredworked
in the interior of the monastery ; and the three
hundred and sixty-five others celebrated divine
worship without interruption.
3
This monastery
became at the same time an episcopal see, which
still exists under the name of St Asaph, the suc-
cessor of Kentigern.
4
This was not, however, either the oldest or most
important monastic colony of Cambria, where, as in
Saxon England, every bishopric was cradled in a
Dubricius, monastery. More than a century before Kentigern,
Liandaff.
Dubricius, whose long life, if tradition is to be be-
1
"
Matrem habuit Pictorum regis filiain. . . . Ea seu vi compressa, seu
dolo, a nobili adolescente cum uteram gereret, auctorem prodere . . . per-
tinenter fertur recusasse. . . . Plurium ex eaclem Scottorum ac Britan-
norum gente sanctorum par ortus narratur, Fursrei, Davidis," &c.

Bol-
LAND.,
p.
815.
2
This is the Clwyd of Wales and not the Clyde at Glasgow where St
Kentigern was bishop. There are also two rivers Deeone in Wales and
one in Scotlandwhich occasions a confusion of which it is well to be
warned.
3
Bolland.,
p.
819. This monastery was at first called Llan-Elwy.
4
Each tribe, every little princedom of Wales, had its bishopric. Lian-
daff for the Silurians, Menevia (afterwards St David's) for the Demetes,
&C. There was one also at Margam, which afterwards became a celebrated
Cistercian abbey. The ruins, enclosed and preserved with care in the
splendid residence of a branch of the house of Talbot, are well worthy of
being visited and admired.
THE BRITISH ISLES. 45
lieved, made him the contemporary of Patrick and
Palladius as well as of King Arthur, is instanced as
the first founder of a great monastic centre in Cam-
bria, from which religious colonies swarmed off
continually to Armorica and to Ireland. Dubricius
was ordained bishop at Llandaff in the south of
Wales by St Germain of Auxerre, and ended his
career in the north as a hermit, after having assem-
bled at one period more than a thousand auditors
round his pulpit. Among these the most illustrious
were Iltud and David.
Iltucl, or Eltut, who was also a disciple of St
ntud, a
converted
Germain, founded the great Monastery of Bangor
j?^^
the
upon the banks of the Dee, which became a centre
|
reat Cam
-
-l
brian
of missionary enterprise, as well as of political
^ango?
resistance to the foreign conquerors
;
it was reck-
oned to consist of seven divisions, each of three
hundred monks, who all lived by the labour of
their hands. It was a veritable army, yet still a
half less than that of the four thousand monks
of the other Bangor,
1
on the other side of the
Channel, in Ireland, which was destined to be the
cradle of St Columbanus and St Gall, the monastic
apostles of eastern France and of Switzerland.
2
1
There was, besides, a third Bangor or Banchor, which is the existing
bishopric of that title, and was also founded by a disciple of Dubricius,
the holy abbot Daniel, who died about 548. This little episcopal see,
situated on the sea-coast, in the county of Caernarvon, has often been
confounded with the great monastery of the same name which was in
Flintshire, on the banks of the Dee. Ban-gor, which is interpreted to
mean magnns circulus, seems, besides, to have been a sort of generic name
for monastic congregations or enclosures.
2
See ante, vol. ii.
p.
399.
46 CHRISTIAN ORIGIN OF
Iltud was born in Armorica, but his curious legend,
some touching details of which our readers will
thank us for quoting, records that he was attracted
to Wales by the fame of his cousin, King Arthur.
He began his life there as a man of war and of rapine
;
but he was converted while hawking by the sight
of a catastrophe which befell his companions, who,
at the moment when they had extorted from the
holy abbot Cadoc, the founder of Llancarvan, fifty
loaves, a measure of beer, and a fat pig, to satisfy
their hunger, were swallowed up by the earth,
which opened under their feet. Iltud, terrified by
this lesson and counselled by the abbot Cadoc, con-
secrated himself to the service of God in solitude,
even although he was married and dearly loved his
young and beautiful wife. At first, she desired to
accompany him and share with him the hut of
branches which he had built on the banks of the
Tave, in Gloucestershire.
"
What !
"
said an angel
who appeared to him in a dream
;
"
thou also art
enthralled by the love of a woman ? Certainly thy
wife is beautiful, but chastity is more beautiful still."'
Obedient to that voice, he abandoned his wife, and
at the same time his horses and followers, buried
himself in a deep wood, and there built an oratory
which the number of his disciples soon changed
into a convent. He divided his life between great
agricultural labours and frequent struggles with the
robber-kings and chiefs of the neighbourhood. He
distinguished himself specially by constructing im-
THE BRITISH ISLES.
47
mense dykes against the floods from which Wales
seems to have suffered so much. His wife pursued He is pur-
, . . -. . - . -,
, i
,
sued bv his
him even into this new solitude ; but when she
wife, who
will not
discovered him at the bottom of a ditch which he
consent to
his conver-
was himself digging, with his body and face covered
sion-
with mud, she saw that it was no longer her fair
knight of other days, and thenceforward gave up
visiting him, lest she should displease God and the
friend of God. Later in his life he shut himself up
in a cave where he had only the cold stone for his
bed. He took delight in this solitary lair for four
long years, and left it only twice, to protect his
monastery against violence and robbery. He died
at Dol, in that Armorica which he had always loved,
and where he took pleasure in sending in times of
famine, to help his Breton countrymen beyond
seas, shiploads of grain which were provided by the
labours of his Welsh community.
1
1
"
Princeps militia? et tribunus . . . miles olim celeberrimus. . . .
Accipitrem per volatiles instigabat. . . . Astabat angelus ammonens : Te
quoque muliebris amor occupat . . . uxor est decora sed castimonia est
melior. . . . TJxore consociante et arniigeris . . . composuit tegmen ex
arimdineto ut non plueret super lectum. . . . Mulier licet induta finxit se
frigescere cum tremulo pectore, quateuus posset in lecto denuo collateralis
jacere. . . . Operatus est immensam fossam limo et lapidibus mixtam,
quam retruderet irruentem undam. . . . Ubi operosum vidit fossorem per
assidua fossura lutulentum perfaciens . . . inquisivit ab eo suave collo-
quium. . . . Conspexit ilia vilem habitum . . . non sicut antea viderat
militem speciosum. . . . Remansit itaque . . . nimquam amplius visitans
eum, quae nolebat displicere Deo et Dei dilectissimo. . . . Tota nocte ja-
cebat super frigidam petram . . . quasi diceret
:
"
Hoc lapis in lecto positus sub pectore nostro,
Hec mea dulcedo : jaceani pro Numine summo.
Mollis erit merces ventura beata beato,
Que manet in coelo michi debita, quando redibo."
Vita S. Iltuti, Rees,
pp.
45, 161-182.
48 CHRISTIAN ORIGIN OF
st David,
David is much more generally known than his
monk and
,
bishop.
co-disciple, Iltut. He has always continued popular
among the inhabitants of "Wales
;
and Shakespeare
informs us that, even since the Reformation, the
Welsh have retained the custom of wearing a leek
in their hats upon his feast-day.
1
His history has
been often written,
2
and through the transfor-
mation of the legend it is still easy to recognise
in it the salutary sway of a great monk and
bishop over souls which were faithful to reli-
gion, but yet in full conflict with those savage
and sensual impulses which are to be found only
too universally among all men and all nations,
in the centre of civilisation as on the verge
of barbarism. The origin, indeed, of the holy
1
"Pistol. Art thou of Cornish crew ?
King Henry. No, I'm a Welshman.
Pistol. Knowest thou Fluellen ?
King. Yes.
Pistol. Tell him I'll knock his leek about his pate
Upon St Davy's day."
And afterwards :

"
Fluellen. I do believe your majesty takes no scorn
To wear the leek upon St Davy's day.
King. I wear it for a memorable honour :
For I am Welsh, you know, good countryman."
King Henri/ V.
2
Notably by an anonymous writer, of whose work the Franciscan Ool-
gan has published a first version in his Acta Sanctorum Hibernia>, vol. i.
Eicemarch, the successor of David as bishop of Menevia towards 1085,
gave a much more complete version of this first biography, which lias been
published by Rees in his Lives
of
Cambro-British Saints. Another of his
successors, the famous Giraldus Cambrensis, has also written a life of St
David, which may be found in Wharton's Anglia Sacra, vol. ii. The date
and duration of his life is, however, very uncertain : according to Usserius
he lived between 472 and 554
;
according to the Bollandists, between 447
and 544
;
according to other authorities, between 484 and 560.
THE BRITISH ISLES. 49
patron of Cambria himself, like that of St Bridget,
the patroness of Ireland, affords a startling proof of
a state of affairs both corrupt and violent. He was
the son of a nun whom the king of the country
a
nephew of the great Arthurmet upon the public-
road, and whom, struck by her beauty, he instantly
made the victim of his passion.
1
This crime is told
by all the biographers of David, generally so lavish
of praise and blame, without the least expression
of surprise or indignation. The scribe Paulinus,
whose name indicates a Roman origin, and who
is known to have been a disciple of St Germain
of Auxerre, was charged with the education of
the young David, which was as long and com-
plete as possible.
2
He issued from his tutors
hands clothed with the priesthood and devoted
to a kind of monastic existence which did not ex-
clude him either from Continental travel, nor from
exercising a great influence over men and exter-
nal affairs. He exercised a double power over He be-
,
comes the
his countrymen, by directing one part to ceno-
Benedict of

J
.

f
Cambria.
bitical life, and arming the other with the know-
ledge and virtue which enabled them to triumph
over the dangers of a secular career. It is on
1
"
Invenit rex obviam sibi sanctam monialem, Xonnitam virginem,
puellam pulchram nimis et decoram, quam, concupiseens tetigit vi op-
pressam."

Eicemakch, ed. Rees,

p.
119.
"
In quam ut oculos injecit,
in cupidinem ejus niedullitus exardens, statim equo dilapsus, virgineis
amplexibus est delectatus.
"

Giraldus,
p.
629.
2
"
Quique eum docuit in tribus partibus lectionis, donee fuit scriba :
mansit ibi multis annis legendo, implendoque quod legebat."

Rice-
M4.RCH,
p.
122.
VOL. Ill, D
50 CHRISTIAN ORIGIN OF
this latter point that he differs from his illustri-
ous contemporary, St Benedict, whom he re-
sembles in so many other features. Like Bene-
dict, he founded, almost at one time, twelve mon-
asteries
;
like Benedict, he saw his young disciples
tempted to their fall by the voluptuous wiles of
shameless women ; like Benedict, he was exposed
to the danger of being poisoned by traitors in the
very bosom of his own community
;
1
and, finally,
like Benedict, he imposed upon his monks a rule
which severely prohibited all individual property,
and made manual and intellectual labour obli-
gatory. The agricultural labour thus prescribed
was so severe, that the Welsh monks had not only
to saw the wood and delve the soil, but even to
yoke themselves to the plough, and work without
the aid of oxen. As soon as this toil came to an
end they returned to their cells to pass the rest of
the day in reading and writing; and when thus
engaged it was sometimes necessary to stop in
the midst of a letter or paragraph, to answer to the
first sound of the bell, by which divine service was
announced.
2
1
"
Convocatis ancillis : Ite, inquit uxor satrapae, ad flumen Alum, et,
nudatis corporibus, in conspectu sanctorum ludite. . . . Ancillse obe-
diunt . . . impudicos exercent ludos . . . concubitus simulant blandos
. . . monachoram mentes quorumdam- ad libidines protrahunt, quorum:
dam molestant. Cuucti vero discipuli ejus dixerunt David : Fugiamus
ex hoc loco, quia non possumus hie habitare propter molestiam mulier-
cularum malignantium. Diaconusqui pani ministrare consuluerat, panem
veneno confectum mensa imponit, cui coquus et oeconOmus
consenserant."
RlCEMARCH, p.
125-31.
2
"
Pede manuque laborant, jugum ponunt in humero, suffossarias
THE BRITISH ISLES. 51
In the midst of these severe labours the abbot
David had continual struggles with the satraps
and magicianSy which, no doubt, means the chiefs
of the clan and the Druids, who had not been de-
stroyed in Britain, as in Gaul, by the Roman con-
quest,
1
and whose last surviving representatives
could not see, without violent dislike, the progress
of monastic institutions. But the sphere of David's
influence and activity was to extend far beyond
that of his early work. Having made a pilgrim- He goes to
.
Jenisalem.
age to the Holv Land, he returned thence invested
and returns
. . .
Arch
-
with the office of archbishop, which had been con-
bishop.
ferred upon him by the patriarch of Jerusalem.'
2
On his return he was acknowledged metropolitan
of all that part of the island not yet invaded by
the Saxons, by two very numerously attended coun-
cils,
3
in which he had the honour of striking a
verangasque invicto brachio terre defigunt, sarculos serrasque ad succi-
dendum Sanctis ferunt manibns. . . . Boum nulla ad arandnm cura in-
troducitur. Quisque sibi et fratribus divitige, quisque et bos. . . .
Peracto rurali opere, totam ad vesperam pervagabant dieni aut legend o
aut scribendo aut orando . . . vespere cum nole pulsus audiebatur,
quisquis studium detexebat, si enim auribus cujuscumque pulsus reson-
aret, scripto tunc litere apice vel etiam dimidia ejusdeni litere, figura
citius assurgentes . . . ecclesiam petunt, earn incompletam dimmitte-
bant."PacEMARCH,
p.
127. I quote literally the Latin of Ricemarch,
which is often very singular. Further on he adds Greek after his fashion.
1
Dcellinger, Heidenthum unci JudentJmm,
p.
611.
2
Compare Bolland., Act. SS., Martii, t. i.
p.
40.
3
At Breves in 519, and at Victoria in 526. The expressions of Bice-
march upon this last synod are worthy of remark, since they prove tin-
presence of abbots beside the bishops of the council, and the undisputed
recognition of Roman authority. It remains to be ascertained, however,
whether this writer of the eleventh century did not attribute the customs
of his own time to a previous age.
"
Alia synodus ... in qua collecta
episcoporum, saeerdotum, abatum turba . . . cunctorum consensu . .
.
52 CHRISTIAN ORIGIN OF
519. deathblow at the Pelagian heresy, which had come
to life again since the mission of St Germain.
Right of
One of these councils recognised in his honour a
asylum
i)avi!i
to
right f asylum, pointed out by ancient authors as
the most respected and the most complete which
existed in Britain, and which created for all pur-
sued culprits an inviolable refuge wherever there
was a field which had been given to David.
1
This
is one of the first examples, as conferred upon a
monastic establishment, of that right of asylum,
afterwards too much extended, and disgracefully
abused towards the end of the middle ages, but
which, at that far-distant period, was a most im-
portant protection to the weak. Who does not un-
derstand how irregular and brutal was at that time
the pursuit of a criminal
;
how many vile and vio-
lent passions usurped the office of the law ; and how
justice herself and humanity had reason to rejoice
when religion stretched her maternal hands over a
omnium ordinum totius Britannia? gentis archiepiscopus constitutus. . . .
Ex his duabus synodis omnes nostra patriae eccleshe modum et regulam
Romana auctoritate receperunt."
1
11
Dcderuntque universi episcopi maims et monarchiam, et bragmi-
nationem David agio, et consenserunt omnes licitum esse refugium ejus
ut daret illud omni stupro et homicide et peccatori, omnique maligno
fugienti de loco ad locum pro omni sancto ac regibus et hominibus totius
Britannia? insula? in omni regno, et in unaquaque regione in qua sit ager
consecratus David agio. Et nulli reges neque seniores, neque satraps,
sed neque episcopi principesve ac sancti audeant pra David agio refugium
dare
;
ipse vero refugium ducit ante unumquemque hominem, et nemo
ante ipsum, quia ipse est caput et previus ac bragmaticus omnibus Brit-
tonibus. Et statuerunt omnes sancti anathema esset et maledictum,
quisquis non servaverit illud decreturo scilicet refugium sancti David."

RlCEMARCH,
p.
140.
THE BRITISH ISLES. 53
fugitive unjustly accused, or even over a culprit
who might be worthy of excuse or indulgence !
David immediately resumed his monastic and
ecclesiastical foundations,
1
and restored for the
first time from its ruins the Church of Glastonbury,
so that it might consecrate the tomb of his cousin
King Arthur.
2
He himself died more than a hun-
544.
dred years old, surrounded by the reverence of all,
and in reality the chief of the British nation.
3
He
was buried in the Monastery of Menevia, which he
had built at the southern extremity of Wales, facing
Ireland, on a site which had been indicated thirty
years before by St Patrick, the apostle of that
island. It was of all his foundations the one most
dear to him, and he had made it the seat of a dio-
cese which has retained his name.
After his death the monastic tomb of the great His tomb
bishop and British chief became a much-frequented
the national
.sanctuary
place of pilgrimage. Not only the Welsh, Bre-
^
Cam
-
tons, and Irish came to it in crowds, but three
Anglo
-
Norman kings

William the Conqueror,

Henry II., and Edward I.appeared there in their
turn. David was canonised by Pope Calistus II.
in 1120, at a period when Wales still retained its
independence. He became from that moment, and
has remained until the present time, the patron of
Cambria. A group of half-ruined religious build-
1
"Percnncta totius patriee loca monasteria construxere fratres . . .
quanta monacliorum examina seminavit."
2
Ricemarcii,
p.
125
;
Dugdale, t. i.
p.
1-7
;
Bolland., he. cit.
3
"
Omnis Britannia? gentis caput et patriae honor."' Rees,
p.
140.
54 CHRISTIAN ORIGIN OF
ino-s, forming altogether one of the most solemn
and least visited relics of Europe, still surrounds
the ancient cathedral which bears his name, and
crowns the imposing promontory, thrust out into
the sea like an eagle's beak, from the south-eastern
corner of the principality of Wales, which is still
more deserving than the two analogous headlands
of Cornwall and Armorica, of the name of Finisterre.
1
Legend of
Immediately after the period occupied in the
annals of Cambria by King Arthur and the monk-
522 500
?
bishop David, another monastic and patriotic saint
becomes visible, who, like his predecessor, remained
long popular among the Britons of Wales, and is so
still among the Bretons of Armorica. This was St
Cadoc or Kadok, a personage regarding whom it
will be very difficult to make an exact distinction
between history and legend, but whose life has left
so profound an impression upon the Celtic races,
that we may be permitted to borrow from it cer-
tain details, which will set in a clear light the faith
and manners of these races and of that age.
2
His
father, Gundliew or Guen-Liou, surnamed the War-
rior, oi] e of the petty kings of southern Cambria,
having heard much of the beauty of the daughter
of a neighbouring chief, had her carried off, by a
band of three hundred vassals, from the midst of
1
A group of rocks near this promontory is still culled The Bishop and
his Clerks. It lies a little way to the north of the celebrated Roads of Mil-
lord Haven and the great dockyard of the English navy at Pembroke.
2
Vita 8. Cadoci, ap. Rees, op. cit.,
p.
22-96; HEBSART de la
ViLLEMARQUhi, La Ligende Celtique,
p.
127-227.
THE BRITISH ISLES. 55
her sisters, and from the door of her own chamber,
in her father's castle.
1
The father hastened to the Son of a
ni i tit
stolen prin-
rescue of his daughter with all his vassals and allies,
cess, and oi
-
.
*
a robber-
and soon overtook Guen-Liou, who rode with the
kin
s-
young princess at the croup, going softly not to
fatigue her. It was not an encounter favourable for
the lover: two hundred of his followers perished,
but he himself succeeded in escaping safely with
the lady, whose attractions he had afterwards to
conceal from the passion of King Arthur;
2
for that
great king is far from playing in all the monastic
legends the chivalric and disinterested part after-
wards attributed to him by the host of national
and European traditions of which he is the hero.
Of this rude warrior and his beautiful princess was
to be born the saint who has been called the Doctor
of the Cambrian race, and who founded the great
monastic establishment which has been already
mentioned here. The very night of his birth the
soldiers, or, to speak more justly, the robber-fol-
lowers (latrones), of the king his father, who had
1
Talgarth, nine miles from the town of Brecknock. The name of the
beautiful princess was Gwladys, in Latin Gladusa, and that of her father
Brychan or Brachan.
2
"
Puellam eleganti quidem specie, sed et forma valde decoram. . . .
Virginem ante conclavis suae januam cum ipsius sororibus sedentem pudi-
cisque sermonibus vacantem . . . statim vi capientes obstinato cursu re-
grediuntur . . . Gundlaus . . . jussit puellam afferri . . . baud fugi-
endo, sed pedetentim secnm gestans adolescentulam in equo. . . . Ubi
corpore incolumis cum prsenotata virgine . . . terminos suae terrse atti-
gisset . . . ecce Arthurus : . . . Scitote me vehementer in concupiscentiam
puelhe hujus quam ille miles equitando devehit accendi."

Vita S. Ca-
doci, ap. Rees,
p.
23.
56 CHRISTIAN ORIGIN OF
been sent to pillage the neighbours right and left,
stole the milch cow of a holy Irish monk, who had
no sustenance, he nor his twelve disciples, except the
abundant milk of this cow. When informed of this
nocturnal theft, the monk got up, put on his shoes in
all haste, and hurried to reclaim his cow from the
king, who was still asleep. The latter took advan-
tage of the occasion to have his new-born son ba}>
tised by the pious solitary, and made him promise to
undertake the education and future vocation of the
infant. The Irishman gave him the name of Cadoc,
which in Celtic means warlike
;
and then, having re-
covered his cow, went back to his cell to await the
king's son, who was sent to him at the age of seven,
having already learned to hunt and to fight.
1
^an^risi
y
oun
& P
rmce passed twelve years with the
monk.
Irish monk, whom he served, lighting his fire and
cooking his food, and who taught him grammar ac-
cording to Priscian and Donatus.
2
Preferring the
life of a recluse to the throne of his father, he went
to Ireland for three years, to carry on his education
at Lismore, a celebrated monastic school, after which
he returned to Cambria, and continued his studies
1
"
Satellites suos sajpius ad rapinam et latrocinia instigabat. . . . Qui-
dam ex Gundleii latronibus ad quoddam oppidum . . . furandi causa per-
venerunt, quos prenotatus Gundleius rex lures diligebat, eosque saepius
ad latrocinia instigabat. . . . Surge velociter . . . et calcia caligas tuas,
nam bos tua a furibus exstat ablata . . . ad triclinium in quo dormierat
rex . . . adepta pr.edicta bove."

Ekes,
pp.
85, 25, 27.
2
"
Tibi filium meum commendo . . . ut ilium liberalibus artibus divi-
nisque dogmatibus crudias. . . . Ilium Donato, Priscianoque, neenon aliis
artibus, per annos duodecim diligentius instruxit."P. 28.
THE BRITISH ISLES.
57
under a famous British rhetorician, newly arrived
from Italy, who taught Latin and the liberal arts
after the best Roman system.
1
This doctor had
more pupils than money: famine reigned in his
school. One day poor Cadoc, who fasted continu-
ally, was learning his lesson in his cell, seated be-
fore a little table, and leaning his head on his
hands, when suddenly a white mouse, coming out
of a hole in the wall, jumped on the table, and put
down a grain of corn
;
but being unable to at-
tract the attention of the student, she returned
with a second and third grain, and continued until
seven grains lay before his eyes. Then Cadoc
rising, followed the mouse into a cellar, where he
found deposited an enormous heap of corn.
2
This
wheat, a gift of Providence, gave sustenance to the
master and his pupils; and, according to the wish
of Cadoc, was shared with all who were in want
like themselves.
Having early decided to embrace monastic life,
He founds
he hid himself in a wood, where, after making a nar- van, the
row escape from assassination by the armed swine-
piaceofthe
kings and
herd of a neighbouring chief, he saw, near a forgotten
jjjjj
1
^
fountain, an enormous wild boar, white with age,
great
t
.
7
c?
7
monastic
come out of his den, and make three bounds, one
^Xs
f
after the other, stopping each time, and turning
round to stare furiously at the stranger who had
1
' '
Ab illo Romano more latinitate doceri non minimum optavit."

Vita, c. 8.
2
"
Mus septies eundo et redeundo totidem triticea in suo volumine
abdidit, animadvertens indicio divinam sibi adesse miserationem.
"

Ibid.
58 CHRISTIAN ORIGIN OF
disturbed him in his resting-place. Cadoc marked
with three branches the three bounds of the wild
boar, which afterwards became the site of the
church, dormitories, and refectory of the great Abbey
of Llancarvan, of which he was the founder. The
abbey took its name (Ecclesia Cervorum) from the
celebrated legend, according to which, two deer
from the neighbouring wood came one day to
replace two idle and disobedient monks who had
refused to perform the necessary labour for the con-
struction of the monastery, saying,
"
Are we oxen,
that we should be yoked to carts, and compelled to
drag timber ?
99
1
Llancarvan, however, was not only a great work-
shop, where numerous monks, subject to a very
severe rule, bowed their bodies under a yoke of con-
tinual fatigue, clearing the forests, and cultivating
the fields when cleared
;
it was, besides, a great reli-
gious and literary school, in which the study and
transcription of the Holy Scriptures held the van,
and was followed by that of the ancient authors and
their more recent commentators.
Among the numerous pupils whom it received

some to follow the monastic life for the rest of their

days, some only to carry on their ordinary educa-
tionwere many chiefs' and kings' sons like Cadoc
himself. To these he addressed special instructions,
which may be summed up in the two sentences
which a prince of North Wales remembered long
1
"
Numquid more bourn plaustra gestare valemus
?"
THE BIUTISH ISLES. 59
after to have heard from his own lips

" Remember
that thou art a man
;
" "
There is no king like him
who is king of himself."
1
Cadoc loved to sum up, chiefly under the form Poetic
. .
aphorisms
of sentences in verse and poetical aphorisms, the
of Cadoc
instructions given to the pupils of the Llancarvan
cloister. A great number of such poetical utter-
ances, which have been preserved in the memory
of the Gael and brought to light by modern erudi-
tion, are attributed to him. We instance some,
which are not the less interesting and touching,
for having been produced in a British cloister in
the sixth century, under the disturbing influences
of Saxon invasion, and far from all the fountains
of classic wisdom and beauty
:

Truth is the elder daughter of God.

Without light nothing is good.
Without light there is no piety.
Without light there is no religion.
Without light there is no faith.
There is no light without the sight of God.
The same thought is afterwards reproduced under
another form
:

Without knowledge, no power.

Without knowledge, no wisdom.
Without knowledge, no freedom.
Without knowledge, no beauty.
Without knowledge, no nobleness.
Without knowledge, no victory.
Without knowledge, no honour.
1
LA VlLLEMAKQUB,
p.
184.
CO CHRISTIAN ORIGIN OF
Without knowledge, no God.
The best of attitudes is humility.
The best of occupations, work.
The best of sentiments, pity.
The best of cares, justice.
The best of pains, that which a man takes to make peace
between two enemies.
The best of sorrows, sorrow for sin.
The best of characters, generosity.
The poet then makes his appearance by the side
of the theologian and moralist
:

No man is the son of knowledge if he is not the son

of poetry.
No man loves poetry without loving the light
;
Nor the light without loving the truth
;
Nor the truth without loving justice
;
Nor justice without loving God.
And he who loves God cannot fail to be happy.
The love of God was, then, the supreme aim of his
teaching as of his life. When one of his disciples
asked him to define it, he answered
:

"
Love, it is Heaven."
"
And hate 1
"
asked the disciple.
"
Hate is Hell."
"
And conscience 1
"
"
It is the eye of God in the soul of man."
1
Cadoc asked nothing from the postulants who came
to take the cowl in his monastery. On the contrary,
1
I borrow these quotations from those drawn by M. Walter and M. de
la "Villemarque from the collection entitled Myvyrian Archaeology
of
Wales, London, 1801-7.
THE BRITISH ISLES.
(11
in order to gain admission it was necessary to lay
aside everything, even to the last article of dress,
and to be received naked as a shipwrecked man,
according to the expression of the rule.
1
This was
the easier to him that he was himself rich by means
of the gifts of land given him by his father and
maternal grandfather.
2
Cadoc had the happiness of assisting in the con-
Penitence
version of his father before he became his heir. In
father and
mother.
the depths of his cloister he groaned over the rapines
and sins of the old robber from whom he derived
his life and his monastic possessions. Accordingly
he sent to his fathers house three of his monks,
who, after having consulted with the elders and
lords of the country, undertook to preach repentance
to the father of their abbot.' His mother, the beau-
tiful Gladusa, carried off of old by King Guen-Liou,
was the first to be touched.
"
Let us believe," she
said, "in our son, and let him be our father for
heaven." And it was not long before she persuaded
her husband to agree with her. They called their
son to make to him public confession of their sins,
after which the king said,
"
Let all my race obey
Cadoc with true piety, and after death let all the
kings, earls, and chiefs, and all the servants of the
kings, be buried in his cemetery."
3
Then the father
and son chanted together the psalm,
"
Exaudiat te
1
La Villemarque,
p.
160.
2
The boundaries of his lands are very exactly noted by his biographer,
Rees,
pp.
38, 45, and 336.
3
Llancarvan actually became the bnrying-place of the Welsh kings and
62
CHRISTIAN ORIGIN OF
Dominus in die tribulation is" When this was
ended the king and queen retired into solitude,
establishing themselves in the first place at a short
distance from each other, in two cabins on the bank
of a river. They lived there by the work of their
hands, without other food than barley bread, in
which there was a mingling of ashes, and cresses,
the bitterness of which was sweet to them as a fore-
taste of heaven. One of their principal austerities,
which is also to be found in the history of various
other Celtic and Anglo-Saxon saints, was to bathe,
in winter as in summer, in cold water in the middle
of the night, and to pass its remaining hours in
prayer. Cadoc visited them often and exhorted
them to perseverance ; he ended even by persuad-
ing them to give up the comparative sweetness of
their life together. His mother was still the first
to obey him. She sought out a more profound
solitude, and disappeared there. Guen-Liou fol-
lowed her example. He died soon after in his
son's arms, leaving him all his lands.
1
One would
fain hope that the same consolation was accorded
nobility as long as the independence of the country lasted
;
but, strangely
enough, King Guen-Liou was not himself buried there.
1
"
Vir Dei pravos proprii genitoris actus congemiscens, sibi condolens
. . . Gladusa : . . . Credamur filio nostro, eritque nobis pater in ccelo.
. . . Carices fontanre erant illis in pulmentaria dulces herbe, sed dul-
cissime que trahebant ad premia. . . . Noluit ut tanta vicinia esset inter
illos, ne carnalis concupiscentia a castitate inviolanda perverteret animos.
. . . Nunc totam regionem meam, pro quo plures injurias nonnullaque
dampna sustinuisti, tibi modo veluti prius coram astantibus cunctis, et
mourn testamentum hie audientibus commendo."

Vita S. Oadoci, c. 24
and 50. Vita S. Gundlcii, c.
6',
7, 8, ap. Rees.
THE BRITISH ISLES. 63
to a mother so generous, but the legend is silent as
to her death.
These patrimonial gifts conferred upon Cadoc Ho pro-
great territorial wealth, and an external power which
cultivators

1
of his
he used to secure around his monastery the safety
domain and
J J
the neigh-
and wellbeino; which were nowhere else to be found.
ljou
.
rll0
;}
& against the
"To know the country of Cadoc," it was said,
a
it
is only necessary to discover where the cattle feed in
freedom, where the men fear nothing, and where
everything breathes peace."
1
His wealth permitted
him to accomplish with success and energy the
noble mission which is the most interesting part of
his life, in which he appeared as the protector of
his dependants and neighbours, the guardian of the
goods of the poor, of the honour of women, of the
weakness of the humble, and of all the lower classes
of the Cambrian people, against the oppression, pil-
lage, violence, and extortions of the princes and the
powerful. His personal character, courageous and
compassionate, is better evidenced thus than in the
position, half of austere solitary, half of feudal chief,
which was held by so great a number of monastic
superiors in medieval times.
We are expressly told that he was at once abbot He is at
.
. _
-in
once a^bot
and prince. Are you tools, said the steward of
and prince,
one of his domains to the squires of a Cambrian
prince who would have taken from him by force
1
"Hoc erit vobis in signum : cum ad illius patriam solum veneritis,
animalia liberius in pascuis pascentia, hominesque fretos ac imperteiritos
invenietis . . . ab omni belli precinctu indempnes."

Vita, c. 20.
64 CHRISTIAN ORIGIN OF
the milk of his cows

" are you unaware that our

master is a man of great honour and dignitythat
he has a family of three hundred men, main-
tained at his cost, a hundred priests, a hundred
knights, and a hundred workmen, without count-
ing women and children?"
1
It is not, however,
apparent that he ever fought for his rights by force
of arms, as did more than one abbot of later times.
But at the head of fifty monks chanting psalms,
and with a harp in his hand, he went out to meet
the exactors, the robbers, the tyrants, and their fol-
lowers
;
and if he did not succeed in arresting their
steps and turning them from their evil intentions,
he called down upon their heads a supernatural and
exemplary chastisement. Sometimes the aggressors
were swallowed up in a quagmire, which opened all
at once under their feetand the abyss remained
open and gaping, as a warning to future tyrants.
2
Sometimes they were struck with blindness, and
wandered groping through the district which they
had come to ravage. Such was the fate of the
prince whose messengers had carried off the daugh-
1
"
Abbas enim erat et princeps. . . . Numquid excordes estis, estiman-
tes quod dominus noster honoris sit vir magni et dignitatis cum utique
magnam familiam trecentorum virorum, scilicet clericos, totidemque
milites atque ejusdem numeri operarios, exceptis parvulis et mulieribus,
possideatur."

Vita, c.
15,
20.
2
"Praedones infausti . . . secuti sunt eum fere L. clerici obviantes
funesto tyranno cum canticis et hymnis et psalmis. . . . Terra aperuit
os suum . . . et absorbuit tyrannum vivum cum suis. . . . Fossaquc
usque in hodiernum diem cunctis transeuntibus liquet . . . qua? patula
semper in hujus rei testimonium permanens a nullo oppilari permittitur."

Vita, c. in.
THE BRITISH ISLES. 05
ter of one of Cadoc's stewards, whose fresh beauty
had gained for her the name of Aval-Kain, or
Fresh as an apple. Her relations mounted their
horses, and, giving the alarm everywhere by sound
of trumpet, pursued the ravishers and killed them
all except one, who escaped to tell the tale to his
master. The latter returned with a more numerous
following to put the neighbourhood to fire and
sword
;
but Cadoc reassured the people, who sur-
rounded him with groans and cries.
"
Be at rest,"
he said
;
"
courage and confidence
;
the Lord will
bring our enemies to nothing." And, in fact, the
invader and his followers were soon seen groping
their way like the blind.
"
Why comest thou here
in arms to pillage and ravage the country
?"
Cadoc
asked of their leader
;
and he restored him his
sight and the means of returning to his country
only after having made him swear to maintain per-
petual peace.
"
It is thou whom I will take for
my confessor before all other,"
1
said the contrite
and comforted prince. On another occasion the
smoking of a burning barn blinded the leader
whose men had set it on fire. He too was healed
by the holy abbot, and presented to Cadoc *his
1
"Ad B. Cadoci pretoris domum venientes ejusdem formosissimnm
filiam rapuerunt Abalcem nomine, puellam speciosissimam. . . . Consan-
guinei puellre caballos suos ascenderunt, cornibusque insonuerunt. . . .
Occurrerunt indigence hostili timore perterriti, cum nimio planctu. . . .
Respondit eis : Estote robusti nec formidetis. . . . Utquid ad meam pa-
triam armatamanuprpedandivastandique causa advenisti? Cui rex : . . .
Te hodie confessorem mihi, si tibi beneplacitum merit, inter dextralcs
pra? omnibus eligo."

Vita, c. 19 and 65.

VOL. III.
E
66 CHRISTIAN ORIGIN OF
sword, his lance, his buckler, and war-horse com-
pletely equipped for battle.
1
By such services, constantly and everywhere re-
newed, the power of the monastic order was founded,
in Britain as elsewhere, in the souls of the Christian
people. Such recollections, transmitted from father
to son at the domestic hearth, explain the long
existence of a fame so nobly acquired. And it is
the desire not only to reward, but, above all, to
guarantee and perpetuate an intervention at once
so powerful and so blessed, which justifies the vast
donations lavished, not less by wise foresight than
by the gratitude of nations, upon the men who
alone showed themselves always ready to combat
the greedy and sensual instincts of the kings and
the great, and to punish the odious abuses of wealth
and force.
He obtains The petty robber princes of North Wales were
Arthur the
all constrained to recognise the right of asylum and
same right
of asylum
immunity which had been granted to the noble
as was
J 0
st^kf
0
abbt and his monastery by King Arthur, whose
states extended to the west and south of Cadoc's
domain. For, without any fear of anachronism,
the legend takes pains to connect the popular saint
with the great Briton king who was once enamoured
of his mother ; and in connection with this, gives
one more instance of the brave and liberal charity
1
"Dum prelocutus Rein in tabernaculo ludens in alea cum suis eunuchis
consedisset, fumus ad instar lignei postis, de horreo procedens, recto
tramite se ad ipsius papilionein tetendit lumenque oculorum omnium
ibidem commanentium obcecavit."

Vita, c. 20.
THE BRITISH ISLES.
67
of Cadoc, who, not content with protecting his own
oppressed countrymen, opened the gates of Llancar-
van to exiles and outlaws, and even received there
a prince pursued by the hate of Arthur. A long
contest followed between the king and the abbot,
which was ended by the solemn recognition of a
right of asylum similar to that which had been
granted to St David. By the side of this protection
guaranteed to fugitives, the principle of composition
that is to say, of a ransom for murder, payable
in money or in cattle to the relations of the victim
makes its appearance in the abbot's agreements
with his rapacious and violent neighbours.
1
It was thus that the glorious abbot acquired the
surname of Cadoc the Wisea name which still
appears at the head of the many poems attributed
to him. For, like all the Gaels, he continued faith-
ful to poetry, and often, among his disciples, sang,
to the accompaniment of his harp, verses in which
he gave full utterance to the religious and patriotic
emotions of his heart, as in the poem which has
been preserved under the name of the Hate
of
Cadoc.
"
I hate the judge who loves money, and the
The Hate
ot Cadoc.
bard who loves war, and the chiefs who do not
guard their subjects, and the nations without
vigour
;
I hate houses without dwellers, lands un-
tilled, fields that bear no harvest, landless clans, the
agents of error, the oppressors of truth ; I hate
1
Vita S. Cadoci, c.
18, 25,
(55. La Villemarque,
p.
172-77.
68 CHRISTIAN ORIGIN OF
him who respects not father and mother, those who
make strife among friends, a country in anarchy,
lost learning, and uncertain boundaries
;
I hate
journeys without safety, families without virtue,
lawsuits without reason, ambushes and treasons,
falsehood in council, justice unhonoured
;
I hate a
man without a trade, a labourer without freedom,
a house without a teacher, a false witness before a
judge, the miserable exalted, fables in place of
teaching, knowledge without inspiration, sermons
without eloquence, and a man without conscience."
1
Cadoc takes
The invasion of the Saxon idolaters, however,
refuge in
Armorica
: with all its accompanying horrors and profanations,
is anxious
x J

1
for the sai-
reached in succession the banks of the Severn and
vation of
vhiu.
et
^he Usk, which bounded the monastic domains of
Cadoc. He found himself compelled to leave Wales
and make sail for Armorica, where so many illus-
trious exiles, who have since become the apostles
and legendary patrons of that glorious province, had
preceded him. He founded there a new monastery
on a little desert island of the archipelago of Mor-
bihan, which is still shown from the peninsula of
Khuys
;
and to make his school accessible to the
children of the district, who had to cross to the isle
and back again in a boat, he threw a stone bridge
four hundred and fifty feet long across this arm of
the sea. In this modest retreat the Cambrian prince
resumed his monastic life, adapting it especially
to
1
Translated by M. de la Villemarque, who publishes the original text,
p.
309 of his Legmde Critique.
THE BRITISH ISLES. 69
his ancient scholarly habits. He made his scholars
learn Virgil by heart ; and one day, while walking
with his friend and companion, the famous historian
Gildas,
1
with his Virgil under his arm, the abbot
began to weep at the thought that the poet whom
he loved so much might be even then perhaps in
hell. At the moment when Gildas reprimanded him
severely for that perhcqis, protesting that without
any doubt Virgil must be damned, a sudden gust of
wind tossed Cadoc s book into the sea. He was much
moved by this accident, and, returning to his cell,
said to himself,
"
I will not eat a mouthful of bread
nor drink a drop of water before I know truly what
fate God has allotted to those who sang upon earth
as the angels sing in heaven/' After this he fell
asleep, and soon after, dreaming, heard a soft voice
addressing him.
"
Pray for me, pray for me/' said
the voice

"never be weary of praying; I shall yet

sing eternally the mercy of the Lord."
The next morning a fisherman of Belz brought
him a salmon, and the saint found in the fish the
book which the wind had snatched out of his hands.
2
After a sojourn of several years in Armorica, Cadoc He returns
left his new community nourishing under the gov-
and dies,
murdered
by the
,
. , .
Saxons.
1
bntannus egregms scholasticus et scriptor optimus."

Vita S.
Cadoci,
p. 59.
2
La Villemarque,
p.
203. The same sentiment is to be found here
which dictated that sequence, pointed out by Ozanam and sung at Mantua,
upon St Paul's visit to the tomb of Virgil
:

"
Ad Maronis mausoleum
"
Quern te, inquit, reddidissem,
Ductus, fudit super eum Si te vivum invenissem,
Pise rorem lacrymae, Poetarum maxime
!
"
70 CHRISTIAN ORIGIN OF
eminent of another pastor, and to put in practice
that maxim which he loved to repeat to his fol-
lowers

" Wouldst thou find glory

?
march to
the grave
! "
he returned to Britain, not to find
again the ancient peace and prosperity of his be-
loved retreat of Llancarvan,
1
but to establish himself
in the very centre of the Saxon settlements, and
console the numerous Christians who had survived
the massacres of the conquest, and lived under the
yoke of a foreign and heathen race. He settled at
Weedon, in the county of Northampton
;
2
and it
was there that he awaited his martyrdom.
One morning when, vested with the ornaments of
his ecclesiastical rank, he was celebrating the divine
sacrifice, a furious band of Saxon cavalry, chasing
the Christians before them, entered pell-mell into
the church, and crowded towards the altar. The
saint continued the sacrifice as calmly as he had
begun it. A Saxon chief, urging on his horse, and
brandishing his lance, went up to him and struck
him to the heart. Cadoc fell on his knees ; and his
last desire, his last thought, were still for his dear
countrymen :
"
Lord," he said, while dying,
"
in-
1 '
' Ad proprias sui cari runs sedes Llandcarvan.
"
Vita, c. 9.
2
All historians seem to agree in translating thus the Bcncventum, in
the Latin text, which has given occasion to strange speculations upon
the episcopate of Cadoc at Benevento, in Italy. It is not positively
stated in the Latin that Cadoc's murderers were Saxons, but such is the
unvarying tradition, which is also affirmed by M. de la Villemarque,
on the authority of the Chronicle of Quimperle, in the possession of Lord
Beaumont, at Castleton (Yorkshire), and according to the inscription of
a tablet in the Chapel of St Cadoc, near Entel, in Brittany.
THE BRITISH ISLES. 71
visible King, Saviour Jesus, grant me one grace

protect the Christians of my country

;
1
let their
trees still bear fruit, their fields give corn ; fill
them with goods and blessings
;
and, above all, be
merciful to them, that, after having honoured Thee
on earth, they may glorify Thee in heaven
!
"
The Britons of Cambria and of Armorica long
His popu-
disputed the glory and privilege of paying to tm the
8
Cadoc those honours which were due to him at once
the Thirty,
in a religious and national point of view. But the
latter have remained the most faithful ; and eight
centuries after his death the great Celtic monk and
patriot was still invoked as their special patron by
the Breton knights in the famous battle of the
Thirty, where Beaumanoir drank his own blood.
On their way to the field they went into a chapel
dedicated to St Cadoc, and appealed to him for aid,
and returned victorious, singing a Breton ballad,
which ends thus

"
He is not the friend of the Bretons who does
not cry for joy to see our warriors return with
the yellow broom in their casques
;
"
He is no friend of the Bretons, nor of the Breton
saints, who does not bless St Cadoc, the patron of
our warriors
;
"
He who does not shout, and bless, and wor-
ship, and sing,
'
In heaven, as on earth, Cadoc has
no peer.' "
2
1
La Villemarque,
p.
215.
2
The Breton text of this ballad has been published by M. de la Ville-
72 CHRISTIAN ORIGIN OF
st wini.
The long popularity of this Cambrian Briton
lied, her
Oil J
martyrdom
upon the two shores of that sea which separates
and her
x L
fountain,
the Celtic countries is, however, eclipsed by that of
a young girl, whose history is unknown, and her
faith unpractised, by the Welsh population of the
present day, but whose memory has nevertheless
been preserved among them with superstitious
fidelity. This is Winifred, the young and beauti-
ful daughter of one of the lords of Wales. Flying
from the brutality of a certain King Caradoc,
1
who
had found her alone in her father's house, she fled
to the church where her parents were praying, but
was pursued by the king, who struck off her head
on the very threshold of the church. At the
spot where the head of this martyr of modesty
struck the soil, there sprang up an abundant foun-
tain, which is still frequented, and even venerated,
by a population divided into twenty different sects,
but animated by one common hatred for Catholic
truth. This fountain has given its name to the
town of Holywell. Its source is covered by a fine
Gothic porch of three arches, under which it forms
a vast basin, where, from morning to evening, the
sick and infirm of a region ravaged by heresy
come to bathe, with a strange confidence in the
miraculous virtue of those icy waters.
marque. The touching narrative of his visit to the ruins of Llancarvan,
and of the devotion which still draws a crowd of pilgrims into the isle of
Morbihan, which was inhabited by the saint, will be found in his IAgi noU
Celtiquc.
1
Evidently the same name as that of the Caractacus of Tacitus.
THE BRITISH ISLES.
73
According to the legend, tins virgin martyr was The monk
restored to life by a holy monk called Beino, who, enemy of
the Saxons.
like all the monks of the time, had founded many
About 616.
convents, and received from the princes many con-
tributions for his foundations. Notwithstanding,
he exercised a conscientious reserve as to accept-
ing anything which the donor had not a full title
to bestow. One day he superintended, in his
own person, the building of a church upon an
estate which had just been granted to him by
King Cadwallon, the conqueror of the North-
umbrian
1
Saxons, or rather, had been given in
exchange for a golden sceptre, of the value of
sixty cows. While there, a woman came to him,
bringing a new-born child to be baptised. The
cries of the child were deafening.
"
What ails
the child, that he cries so much
?
" Beino at leno th
asked.
"
He has a very good reason," said the woman.
"
What is the reason ?
"
asked the monk.
"
This land which you have in your possession,
and on which you are building a church, belonged
to his father."
At that moment Beino called out to his work-
men,
"
Stop ; let nothing more be done till I have
baptised the child, and spoken to the king." Then
he hastened to Caernarvon to the monarch
;
"Why,"
cried the monk,
"
hast thou given me these lands
which belong justly to another ? The child in this
1
Bede, book ii. c. 20
;
book iii. c. 1.
74 CHRISTIAN ORIGIN OF
woman's arms is the lieir : let them be restored to
him."
Nothing can be more noble and touching than
this evidence of the respect of the cenobites for
that sacred right of property which has been so
constantly and vilely, and with such impunity,
violated to their hurt
!
The life of this monk, which was originally
written only in the Welsh language,
1
contains
other details not less curious. It was he who
planted beside his father's grave an acorn, which
grew into a great oak, and which, according to the
legend, no Englishman could approach without
instant death, though the Welsh took no harm.
He, too, it was who was driven to abandon a
favourite spot on the banks of the Severn, by
the sound of an English voice which he heard
with horror, from the other side of the river, cheer-
ing on the hounds with Saxon cries.
"
Take up
your frocks and your shoes," he said to his com-
panions,
"
and, quick, let us depart ; this man's
nation speaks a language abominable to me : they
come to invade us, and take away our goods for
ever."
The anti- These familiar anecdotes of the monk Beino, as
pathy be-
tween the
well as the martyrdom of Cadoc, the patriot monk
Cambrians
J r
and the
anc[ Sao;e, by the hand of the Anglo-Saxons, prove
the insurmountable dislike which rose like a wall
Saxons a
.serious ob-
stacle to
sioVof the
between the souls of the Britons and those of the
latter.
1
Published and translated by Rees.
THE BRITISH ISLES. 75
Saxons, more than a century and a half after the
arrival of the heathen invaders in Britain. The
fertile and generous genius of the Celtic race, over-
mastered by this patriotic hatred, and by a too
just resentment of the violence and sacrilege of
the conquest, was thus made powerless to aid in
the great work of converting the Anglo-Saxons to
Christianity. Not only is it impossible to record a
single effort, made by any British monk or prelate,
to preach the faith to the conquerors ; but even
the great historian of the Anglo-Saxons expressly
states, that the British inhabitants of the great
island had come under a mutual engagement never
to reveal the truths of religion to those whose
power and neighbourhood they were obliged to
endureand, at the same time, had taken a vin-
dictive resolution, even when they became Christ-
ians, to treat them as incurable heathens.
1
St
Gregory the Great makes the same accusation
against them in still more severe terms.
"
The
priests," he said,
"
who dwell on the borders of the
English neglect them, and, putting aside all pastoral
solicitude, refuse to answer to any desire which
that people might have to be converted to the faith
of Christ."
2
1
"
Ut nunquam genti Saxonum sive Anglorum secum Britanniam in-
colenti, verbum fidei pmedicando committerent. . . . Cum usque liodie
moris sit Brittonum, fidem religionemque Anglorum pro nihilo habere,
neque in aliquo eis magis communicare quam cum paganis."

Bede, i. 22
;
ii. 20.
2
Epist. vi. 58, 59.
76 CHRISTIAN ORIGIN OF THE BRITISH ISLES.
The idea of seeking among the Britons the in-
struments of that conversion which was to give
another great nation to the Church, must then be
relinquished. But in a neighbouring island, in
Hibernia, there existed, in the midst of a population
of Celts, like the Britons, a flourishing and fertile
Church, the spectator, and not the victim, of the
Saxon invasion. Let us see if, from that Island
of
Saints, and from its brave and adventurous race,
there may not issue a more generous and expansive
impulse than could be hoped for amid the bleeding
remnants of British Christianity.
CHAPTER III.
MONASTIC IRELAND AFTER ST PATRICK.
Ireland escapes the Rome of the Cresars to be invaded by the Rome of
the Popes.The British assistants of St Patrick carry there certain
usages different from those of Rome.Division between Patrick and
his fellow-labourers. He would preach the faith to all. St Caran-
toc. Emigrations of the Welsh to Ireland, and of the Irish to Wales.
Disciples of St David in Ireland. Modonnoc and his bees. Im-
mense monastic development of Ireland under the influence of the
Welsh monks. The peculiar British usages have nothing to do with
doctrine. Families or clans transformed into monasteries, with
their chiefs for abbots. The three orders of saints. Irish mission-
aries on the continent ; their journeys and visions. St Brendan the
sailor. Dega, monk-bishop and sculptor. Mochuda the shepherd
converted by means of music. Continual preponderance of the
monastic element. Celebrated foundations. Monasterboyce, Glen-
dalough and its nine churches. Bangor, from which came Colum-
banus, the reformer of the Gauls, and Clonard, from which issued
Columba, the apostle of Caledonia.
Ireland, happier of old than Great Britain, es-
Ireland
escapes the
caped the Koman conquest. Agricola had dreamt
-Rome of the
*
.
Csesars
of invading it, and even of holding it with a single
JjJ^^
legion
;
by such a means he would, according to
the Rome
rs to
n-
quered by
the Ro
l
5
w
of the
the words of his son-in-law, have riveted the irons
Popes'
of Britain by depriving her of the dangerous sight
and contagious neighbourhood of freedom.
1
But
1
"
Srepe ex eo audivi, legione una et mcdicis auxiliis debellari obti-
78 CHRISTIAN ORIGIN OF
this intention proved happily abortive. Saved from
imperial proconsuls and praetors, the genius of the
Celtic race found there a full development : it
created for itself a language, a distinctive poetry,
worship, and cultivation, and a social hierarchy; in
one word, a system of civilisation equal and even
superior to that of most other heathen nations. In
the middle of the fifth century, Eome, Christian and
Apostolic, extended its sceptre over the land which
the Caesars had not been able to reach, and St
Patrick carried to it the laws of Christianity.
1
Of British origin, but imbued, like his contempo-
raries Ninian and Palladius, the apostles of the
southern Picts and Scots, with the doctrines and
usages of Eome,
2
the great apostle of the Celts of
Ireland left the shores of Cambria to convert the

neighbouring island. He was accompanied and
followed by a crowd of Welsh or British monks,
who hurried after him, driven to Ireland, as their
brothers had been to Armorica, either by terror of
the Saxon invasion or by the thirst of conquering
souls to the truth.
3
nerique Hiberniam posse : idque etiam adversus Britanniam
profuturum,
si Kornana ubique anna, et velut e conspeetu libcrtas tolleretur."

Tacit.
,
Agricola, c. 24.
1
See vol. ii. book vii.
p.
385, the narrative of the conversion of Ireland
by St Patrick.
2
"
Romanis eruditus disciplinis." 17/. >S'. David., ap. Bees,
p.
41.
3
One of the British assistants of Patrick was a St Mochta, whose
legend has been published by the Bollandists, in their vol. iii. August,
]). 736. In this legend the mother of Mochta is represented as the ser-
vant of a British Druid. The foundation of many monasteries is attri-
buted to him, and the evidently fabulous number of a hundred bishops
THE BRITISH ISLES. 7:>
These British missionaries furnished Patriek with
the thirty first bishops of the Church of Ireland,
1
who, in the exercise of their office, substituted or
added certain rites and usages, purely British, to
those Avhich Patrick had brought from Eome. Ire-
land was converted, but she was converted accord-
ing to the model of Britain
2
profoundly and un-
changeably Catholic in doctrine, but separated from
Eome by various points of discipline and liturgy,
without any real importance, which, from the nar-
ratives that remain to us of the life of St Patrick,
it would be impossible to define. Even in the life- Differences
time of Patrick, might there not have been differ-
Patrick and

.
.
his British
ences between him and his British fellow-labourers
assistants,
on these points ? This seems probable, from certain
particulars in his history and writings, as, for
example, that passage in his Confession where he
and three hundred priests as his disciples
;
but the legend is specially-
curious as showing a kind of testamentary brotherhood between Patrick
and Mochta.
"
Tunc Mocteus ait : Si ante te de hac luce emigravero,
lamiliam meam tibi committo. At Patricius ait : Et ego tibi meam corn-
mendo, si te ad Dominum prsecessero
;
et factum est ita."
1
"
Viros multos litteratos et religiosos . . . e quibus triginta in epi-
scopatus officiis principum sublimavit."

Jocelin, ap. Bolland., vol.

ii. Martii,
p.
559. It is not necessary to suppose that these bishops
had actual dioceses, and a jurisdiction perfectly established, as at a later
period. We shall have occasion often to repeat that the bishops of the
Celtic churches had scarcely any other functions than those of ordination
and transmission of the priestly character. The power of the chiefs of
great monastic establishments, who besides often became bishops, was of
a very different description. The constitution of dioceses and parishes,
in Ireland as in Scotland, does not go further back than to the twelfth
century.
2
This has been learnedly proved and put beyond doubt by M. Varin,
in the papers already quoted.
80 CHRISTIAN ORIGIN OF
says that he had brought the Gospel to Ireland in
spite of his seniorsthat is to say, according to
Tillemont, in spite of the British priests. In the
obscure and perhaps altered texts of the two Canons
of Council which are attributed to him, certain acts
which show a violent hostility to the British clergy
and monks will be remarked with surprise.
1
The
Cambrian legend, on the other hand, expressly points
out, among the companions of Patrick, a Welsh
monk, Carantoc or Carranog, whom it describes as
"
a strong knight under the sun," and a
"
herald of
the celestial kingdom
;
" but takes care to add
that, in consequence of the multitude of clerks who
accompanied them, the two agreed to separate, and
turned one to the right and the other to the left.
2
A still more curious passage of the Amhra, or pane-
gyric in Irish verse, addressed to St Patrick by a
monastic bard, may throw a ray of light upon the sen-
timents which separated that truly apostolic leader
from the Welsh monks, who were too often distin-
guished by their exclusive and jealous spirit. Always
faithful to the prevailing sentiment of the Roman
Church, which regarded the conversion of a sinner
as a greater miracle than resurrection from the
1
"
Clericus qui <le Britannia ad nos venit sine cpistola (episcopi
?) et
si habitet in plebe, non licitum ministrare."Can. 33 du l
e
*
synodo.
"Cum monachis non est docendum, quorum malum est inauditum qui
unitatem vero plebis non incongrue suscepimus."Can. 20 du 2
L
-
synode.
Concilia, ed. Coletti, vol. iv.
pp.
756, 760.
2
"Sub prasentia solis, fortis miles, mirabilis, spiritalis, summus abbas,
longanimus, pweceptor fidelitatis . . . prreco regni ccelestis."

Vita S.
Carant, ap. Rees,
p.
98. Compare the legend cited by M. Varin, op, cit.
THE BRITISH ISLES.
8 1
dead,
1
the saint is applauded by his panegyrist for
having taught the Gospel always without distinc-
tion, without difference of caste, even to strangers,
barbarians, and Piets.
2
Whatever these discussions were, however, they
did no hurt either to the Catholic faith

for
Pelagianism, the leading heresy in Britain, never
had any ground to stand on in Ireland
3
nor to
the influence of the great Roman missionary, who
has continued the first and most popular saint
in Catholic Ireland. The gratitude of the kings
and people whom he had converted showed itself
in such lavish generosity, that, according to the
Irish saying, had he accepted all that was offered
him, he would not have left for the saints that came
after as much as would have fed two horses.
4
No-
thing is more certainly proved than the subordina-
tion of the new-born Irish Church to the Roman
Seea subordination which was decided and regu-
lated by Patrick.
5
But it is not less certain that
Welsh and Breton monks were the fellow-workers,
and, above all, the successors of Patrick in Ireland
;
1
"
Majus est miraculum verbo peccatorem convertere quam came mor-
tuum resuscitare."Gregorius, De Vita et Mirac. Patrum, lib. iv c. 36.
9
La Villemarqtje, Poesie dcs Clottres Celtiqurs.
3
This is clearly shown by Lanigan, vol. ii.
p.
410-15 {Ecclesiastical
History of Ireland), notwithstanding the affirmation to the contrary of
the venerable Bede, 1. ii. c. 19.
4
Lynch, Cambrensis Eversus, vol. ii.
p.
11, ed. Kelly.
5
"
Item quaecumque canssa valde difficilis exorta fuerit atque ignota
cnnctis Scotorum gentium judicious, ad cathedram archiepiscopi Hibernien-
sium, id est Patricii atque hujus antistitis examinationem recte referenda.
"Si vero in ilia cum suis sapientibus facile sanari non poterit talis
VOL. III.
F
82 CHRISTIAN ORIGIN OF
that they completed his work, and that the Church of
the island was organised and developed under then-
influence, thanks to the continual emigration which
took place from Wales to Ireland and from Ireland
to Wales, proofs of which are to be found on every
page of the annals of those times.
Connection
It is to the influence of St David, the great
and his monk-bishop of Wales, that the history of the two
wuuVre-
Churches attributes the principal share in the close
union of Irish and Welsh monasticism. We have
already said that the episcopal monastery which
has retained his name is situated on a promon-
tory which projects from the coast of Great
Britain as if to throw itself towards Ireland.
The legend narrates that Patrick, while standing
on this promontory at a despondent moment,
overwhelmed by vexation and discouragement,
was consoled by a vision in which there was re-
vealed to him, at one glance, the whole extent of
the great island which God had reserved for him
to convert and save.
1
David, born of an Irish
caussa praedicta negotiationis, ad sedem apostolicam decrevimus esse
mittendam, id est ad Petri apostoli cathedram, auctoritatem Roma? urbis
habentem.
"Hi sunt qui de hoc decreverunt, id est Auxilius, Fatrieius, Secundi-
nus, Benignus. Post vero exitum Patricii sancti, alumpni sui valde
ejusdem libros conscripserunt."Canon drawn from MS. in Armagh,
which is believed to be written by Patrick's own hand, and is published
by O'Curry {Lectures on the Manuscript Materials
of
Irish History,
p.
611).
All the discoveries of contemporary archa-ology and theology confirm the
union of the primitive Church of Ireland with the Church of Rome.
1
"
Ex loco in quo stabat, qui modo sedes Patricii dicitur, totam pro-
spexit insulam."Vita S. David.,
p.
119.
THE BRITISH ISLES.
83
mother/ died in the arms of one of his Irish dis-
ciples. Another of his disciples was long cele- The monk
brated for the service he rendered to Ireland by
introduces
.
bees into
introducing there the culture of bees. For there,
Ireland,
as everywhere, the monastic missionaries brought
with them not only faith, truth, and virtue, but, at
the same time, the inferior but essential benefits
of cultivation, labour, and the arts.
Modonnoc, the monk in question, was a rough
labourer, so rugged and intent upon keeping all
at work, that he escaped narrowly on one occasion
from having his head broken by the axe of a com-
rade whom he had reproached for his idleness when
the two were working together to soften the slope
of a road excavated near St Davids monastery.
2
Towards the end of his days, after a long life of
obedience and humility, he embarked for Ireland.
All the bees of St David's followed him. It was
vain that he turned back his boat, on the prow
of which they had settled, to the shore, and de-
nounced the fugitives to his superior. Three
times in succession he attempted to free himself
from his strange companions, and had at last to
1
Bolland., vol. i. Martii,
p.
39.
2
"Cum fratribus viam prope civitatis confinia in proclivio cavabat,
quo ad deferenda necessitatum onera viantibus facilior fieret accessus.
Quid tu tam desidiose et seguiter laboras ? At ille . . . ferrum quod
manu tenebat, id est bipennem in altum elevans, in cervice eum ferire
conatus est."
Ap.
Rees,
p.
133. In this legend the monastery is always
entitled civitas, which thoroughly answers to the idea of the social and
industrial community of which, at that period, a cenobitical establish-
ment was formed.
8-4 CHRISTIAN ORIGIN OF
Monastic
develop-
ment of
Ireland
under the
influence
of the
Cambrian
monks.
resign himself to the necessity of carrying them
with him into Ireland, where up to this time they
were unknown. By this graceful little story the
legend enshrines in Christian gratitude the recol-
lection of the laborious disciple who was the first
to introduce the culture of bees into Ireland, where
it spread rapidly, and became a source of wealth to
the country. It is pleasant to find, in the same
legend, that the aged emigrant took special pains,
in gathering his honey, to procure a more delicate
food than their ordinary coarse fare, for the poor.
1
Thanks to this incessant emigration, Ireland,
from the fifth to the eighth century, became one of
the principal centres of Christianity in the world;
and not only of Christian holiness and virtue, but
also of knowledge, literature, and that intellectual
civilisation with which the new faith was about to
endow Europe, then delivered from heathenism
and from the Koman empire. This golden age
presented two remarkable phenomena : the tem-
porary predominance for one or two centuries of
certain rites and customs proper to the British
Church, and the extraordinary development of
monastic institutions. As to the British pccu-
1
*'
Cuncta apum multitudo eum secuta est, secumque in navi ubi inse-
derat collocavit in prora navis. . . . Alveariis ad nutriendos examinum
fetus operam dedit quo indigentibus aliqua suavioris cibi oblectamenta
procuraret. . . . Hibernia autem in qua nunqnam usque ad illud tempus
apesviverc poterant, niniia mellis fertilitate dotatur."A
p.
Rbes, p.
134.
Colgan, however (AH. SS. Hibernice, 13th February), aflirnis that they
already existed in Ireland.
THE BRITISH ISLES.
85
liarities, in proportion as they become apparent
The Brit-
under Patrick's successors, it becomes clear that
iarities do
not inter-
they differ from Koman usages only upon a few
^tl^
h
points of no real importance, although at that
moment they seemed weighty enough. They vary
from Catholic rule only in respect to the right day
for the feast of Easter, the form and size of the
monastic tonsure, and the ceremonies of baptism
1
questions which in no way involve any point of
doctrine. Nor do they impugn the authority of
the Holy See in respect to matters of faith; and
it is impossible to support, by facts or authentic
documents, those doubts as to the orthodoxy of the
Irish, which have been borrowed from the unsatis-
factory and partial learning of English writers of
the past century by various authors of our own
day

such as Rettberg and Augustin Thierry

:
that orthodoxy was then, what it has always con-
tinued, irreproachable.
The Catholic the Romanfaith reigned thus
without limitation in the great and numberless
communities which constituted the chief strength
of the Church founded by Patrick and his British
fellow-labourers. This Church had been at its very
origin clothed with an almost exclusively monastic
1
A learned Englishman of our own day, Dr Todd, in his Monograph
on St Patrick, published in 1863. acknowledges that the Irish Church of
the sixth century differed in nothing as to doctrine from the rest of the
Catholic Church ; but at the same time he maintains her independence of
the Holy See. See upon this question an excellent article in the Home
and Foreign Review, for January 1864.
86
CHRISTIAN ORIGIN OF
character. Episcopal succession remained long un-
known or confused; the authority of bishops, de-
prived of all local jurisdiction, was subordinated to
that of the abbots, even when the latter did not
share the episcopal rank. Patrick had converted a
crowd of petty princes, chiefs of tribes or clans;
indeed, all the primitive saints of Ireland were
connected with reigning families, and almost all
the converted chiefs embraced monastic life. Their
families, their clansmen, their dependants, followed
their example. A prince, in becoming a monk,
naturally became also an abbot, and in his monas-
tic life continued, as he had been in his worldly
existence, the chief of his race and of his clan.
The first great monasteries of Ireland were then
nothing else, to speak simply, than clans reorgan-
ised under a religious form. From this cause re-
sulted the extraordinary number of their inhabit-
ants, who were counted by hundreds and thousands
;
1
from this also came their influence and productive-
ness, which were still more wonderful. In these vast
monastic cities, that fidelity to the Church which
Ireland has maintained with heroic constancy for
fourteen centuries, in face of all the excesses, as
well as all the refinements, of persecution, took per-
manent root. There also were trained an entire
population of philosophers, of writers, of architects,
of carvers, of painters, of caligraphers, of musicians,
1
The number of three thousand monks is eonstantly met with in the
records of the great monasteries.
THE BRITISH ISLES.
87
poets, and historians
;
but, above all, of missionaries
and preachers, destined to spread the light of the
Gospel and of Christian education, not only in all
the Celtic countries, of which Ireland was always
the nursing mother, but throughout Europe, among
all the Teutonic racesamong the Franks and Bur-
gundians, who were already masters of Gaul, as well
as amid the dwellers by the Ehine and Danube, and
up to the frontiers of Italy. Thus sprang up also
those armies of saints, who were more numerous,
more national, more popular, and, it must be added,
more extraordinary, in Ireland, than in any other
Christian land.
It is well known that the unanimous testimony
of Christendom conferred upon Ireland at this pe-
riod the name of Isle
of
Saints;
1
but it is much
less known that these saints were all, or almost all,
attached to monastic institutions, which retained a
discipline and regularity, steady but strangely allied
to the violence and eccentricity of the national char-
acter. The ancient relics of Irish tradition show
them to us classified, and as if ranged in line of
battle, in three orders or battalions, by the poetic
and warlike imagination of the Celt : the first, com- The three
manded by St Patrick, was composed exclusively
sai,its -
of bishopsRoman, Briton, Prankish, or Scotic
2

1
"Hibernia, insula sanctorum, Sanctis et mirabilibus perplurimis su-
blimiter plena habetur."

Marianus Scottjs, CJiron. ad. aim. 696 (a.d.

o89), ap. Pertz, Monumenta, vol. vii.
p.
544.
2
The word Scotic, though an awkward one, is made use of here and
elsewhere to distinguish the Scots of Ireland from the more modern
88 CHRISTIAN ORIGIN OF
and shone like the sun; the second, commanded by
St Columba, and composed of priests, shone like
the moon; and the third, under the orders of Col-
man and Aidan, was composed at once of bishops,
priests, and hermits, and shone like the stars.
1
Let
us point out, in passing, in this beatific crowd the
famous travellers and the sailor-monks. Such was
Brendan, whose fantastic pilgrimages into the great
ocean, in search of the earthly Paradise, and of souls
to convert, and unknown lands to discover, have
been preserved under the form of visions, which are
always wonderfully penetrated by the spirit of God
and of theological truth.'
2
In thus putting imagina-
tion, as well as the spirit of adventure, at the ser-
vice of the faith and ideal Christian virtue, these
visions are worthy of being reckoned among the
poetic sources of the Di/vvna Commedia? They ex-
ercised a lively influence upon the Christian imagi-
nation during all the middle ages, and even up to
the time of Christopher Columbus himself, to whom
the salt-water epic of St Brendan seems to have
pointed out the way to America.
4
Scottish race which has since identified the name with Scotland alone.
Ti'emulator's note.
1
(Issuer, Antiquities,
pp.
473, 490, 913. The very learned Anglican
primate was aided in his researches into the history and archaeology of
Ireland by David Rooth, the Catholic bishop of Ossory, to whom he
publicly avows his gratitude in various parts of his works. See also Lan-
i<*;an, vol. i.
p.
5;
vol. ii.
p.
13.
2
La Villemarque, op. eit.
:i
Ozanam, (Euvres, vol. v.
p.
373.
4
"
I am convinced," he said, "that the terrestrial paradise is in the
island of St Brendan, which nobody can reach except by the will of
THE BRITISH ISLES. 89
By the side of this monkish traveller, let us
Dega,
monk,
instance as a type of the religious who remained
bishop, an
J r &
_
artist.
in Ireland to fertilise it by their labours, a monk-
+
586-
bishop called Dega or Dagan
3
who passed his nights
in transcribing manuscripts, and his days in read-
ing, and carving in iron and copper. He was so
laborious that the construction of three hundred
bells and three hundred crosiers of bishops or
abbots, is attributed to him, and the transcription
of three hundred copies of the Gospels.
"
I thank
my God," he said, while preaching to the monks
of Bangor,
"
that He has made me recognise among
you the three orders of monks which I have already
seen elsewherethose who are angels for purity,
those who are apostles for activity, and those who
would be martyrs, were it needed, by their readi-
ness to shed their blood for Christ/'
1
At that period, as ever since, the love and practice
of music was a national passion with the Irish. The
missionaries and the monks, their successors, were
also inspired by this passion, and knew how to use it
for the government and consolation of souls. An- Legend of
other pleasant legend depicts to us its influence, in uda, 580.
God."

Quoted by M. Ferdinand Denis, Le Monde Enchante,

p.
130.
There were two saints of the name of Brendan: the best known, founder
of the Monastery of Clonfert, and celebrated for his voyages, died in 577.
1
"Hie Dagyeus fuit fabertam in ferro quam in aire, et scriba insignis.
. . . Gratias ago Deo ineo quod S. Moetei postremo similes conventus
vos video, tria quippe nionachorum genera sibi succedentia habuit : pri-
mum puritate angelieuin, secundum actibus apostolicum, tertium, ut
sancti martyres, sanguinem pro Christo effundere promptum."

Holland.,
vol. iii. Augusti,
pp.
657, 658.
90 CHRISTIAN ORIGIN OF
the form of ecclesiastical chants, upon an Irish youth.
Mochuda, the son of a great lord of Kerry, kept, like
David, his father's flocks in the great forests which
then covered a district now almost altogether with-
out wood. He attracted, by his piety and grace, the
regard of the duke or prince of the province, who
called him often in the evening to his presence to
converse with him, while his wife, who was the
daughter of the King of Munster, showed the same
affection for the young shepherd. In the wood
where his swine fed, there passed one day a bishop
with his suite, chanting psalms in alternate strophes
as they continued their course. The young Mo-
chuda was so rapt by this psalmody that he aban-
doned his flock, and followed the choir of singers
to the gates of the monastery where they were to
pass the night. He did not venture to enter with
them, but remained outside, close to the place where
they lay, and where he could hear them continue
their song till the hour of repose, the bishop chant-
ing longest of all after the others were asleep. The
shepherd thus passed the entire night. The chief
who loved him sought him everywhere, and when at
last the young man was brought to him, asked why
lie had not come, as usual, on the previous evening.
"Mylord," said the shepherd, "I did not come because
I was ravished by the divine song which I have
heard sung by the holy clergy
;
please Heaven, lord
duke, that I was but with them, that I might learn
to sing as they do." The chief in vain admitted him
THE BRITISH ISLES. 91
to his table, offered liim his sword, his buckler, his
lance, all the tokens of a stirring and prosperous life.
"
I want none of your gifts," the shepherd always
replied; "I want but one thingto learn the chant
which I have heard sung by the saints of God." In
the end he prevailed, and was sent to the bishop to
be made a monk. The legend adds that thirty
beautiful young girls loved him openly ; for he was
handsome and agreeable : but the servant of God
having prayed that their love should become spiri-
tual love, they were all, like himself, converted, and
consecrated themselves to God in isolated cells,
which remained under his authority, when he had
in his turn become a bishop, and founder of the
great monastic city of Lismore.
1
This preponderance of the monastic element in
the Irish Churchwhich was due to the fact that
the first apostles of the isle were monks, and was
at the same time thoroughly justified by the adven-
turous zeal of their successorsmaintained itself
1
"Ait dux : Veni hue quotidie cum aliis subulcis. . . . Aliquando
sues paseebat in silvis, aliquando manebat in castellis cum duce. . . .
Canebat episcopus cum comitibus suis psalm os invicem per viam. . . .
Ideo ad te non veni, domine mi, quia delectavit me divinum carmen, quod
audivi a cunctis choris, et nusquam audivi simile huic carmini. . . .
Nolo aliquid de donis tuis carnalibus, sed volo vere ut carmen quod a
Sanctis Dei audivi discam. . . . S. Mochuda speciosus erat, et in juven-
tute sua triginta juvencula? virgines amaverunt eum magno amore carnali,
hoc non celantes. Famulus autem Dei rogavit pro eis, ut carnalem
amorem mutarent in spiritualem
;
quod ita est factum
;
illse enim vir-
gines seipsas cum suis cellis Deo et S. Mochudte obtulerunt.
"

Acta SS.
Bolland., vol. iii. Maii,
p.
379. Mochuda is better known under the
name of Cartagh, which was that of the bishop whose disciple he became,
and whose name he adopted out of affection for his spiritual father. He
died in 637.
92 CHRISTIAN ORIGIN OF
not only during all the flourishing period of the
Church's history, but even as long as the nation
continued independent. Even the Anglo-Norman
conquerors of the twelfth century, though they too
came from a country where most of the bishops
had been monks, and where almost all the sees had
begun by being monasteries, were struck by this
distinguishing characteristic of Irish Christianity.
1
celebrated
Of sJl these celebrated communities of the sixth
monaster- .
1

i j_i
ies of the
century, which were the most numerous ever seen
turv in Ire- m Christendom, there remain only vague associa-
tions connected with certain sites, whose names be-
tray their monastic originor a few ruins visited by
unfrequent travellers. Let us instance, for example,
Monasterevan, founded in
504,
upon the banks of
the Barrow; Monasterboyce,
2
a great lay and eccle-
siastical school in the valley of the Boyne ; Innis-
1
"Nam monachi erant maxime qui ad pradicandum venerant."

Bede,
1. iii. c. 3.
"
Cum fere omnes Hiberniae pradati de monasteriis in elerum
electi sunt, ([uaj monaclii sunt, sollicite eomplent omnia, qum vero clerici
vel praelati, fere praetermittunt universa." Giraldits Cambkensis, Topo-
gvaphia Hibcrmcc, dist. iii. c. 29.
2
Founded by St Bnilhe, who died in 621. M. Henri Martin,
in his interesting pamphlet entitled Antiqvites Irlandaises, 1863, has
given an animated picture of Monasterboyce and of that "burying-ground
in which there rises a round tower a hundred and ten feet high, of the
most graceful poise, and the boldest and finest form. Around it are the
ruins of two churches and two magnificent stone crosses
;
the highest of
these crosses is twenty-seven feet in height, covered with Gaelic ornaments
and inscriptions. These latter alone repay the journey, for there exists
nothing like them on the Continent. As a specimen of Gaelic Christian
art, there is nothing comparable to Monasterboyce." M. Martin also
remarks, at a distance of three miles, the graceful ruins of Mellifont :
"In the depths of a valley, by the banks of a brook, with a church of
the ogival period, . . . and, at some steps from the church, a rotonda (or
chapter-house) with Roman arcades of the purest style." Mellifont was
THE BRITISH ISLES. 93
fallen, in the picturesque Lake of Killarney
;
and,
above all, Glendalough, in the valley of the two lakes,
with its nine ruined churches, its round tower, and
its vast cemetery, a sort of pontifical and monastic
necropolis, founded in the midst of a wild and
desolate landscape, by St Kevin, one of the first
successors of Patrick, and one of those who, to quote
the Irish hagiographers, counted by millions the souls
whom they led to heaven.
1
Among these sanc-
tuaries there are two which must be pointed out to
the attention of the reader, less because of their
population and celebrity, than because they have
produced the two most remarkable Celtic monks of
whom we have to speak.
These are Clonard and Bangor, both of which
cionard,
reckoned three thousand monks. The one was st Fmnian.
founded by St Finnian, who was also venerated as
the celestial guide of innumerable souls.
2
He was
born in Ireland, but educated by David and other
monks in Britain, where he spent thirty years. He
then returned to his native country to create the
great monastic school of Clonard, from which, says
the historian,
3
saints came out in as great number as
Greeks of old from the sides of the horse of Troy.
The other, the third Bangor

glorious rival of Bangor.

i n
,
r
. . . founded by
the two monasteries 01 the same name m Cambriastcomgaii,
559.
a Cistercian abbey, founded by a community from Clairvaux. whom St
Bernard sent to his friend St Malachi in 1135.
1
"Muitarnm millium anitnarum duces."
2
"
Innnmeras ad patriam animas ccelestem ducens."
3
TJsshee, Antiquities, p.
622.
94 CHRISTIAN ORIGIN OF THE BRITISH ISLES.
was founded upon the shores of the Irish sea facing
Britain,
1
by Comgall, who was descended from a
reigning family of Irish Picts, but who had, like
Patrick, Finnian, and so many others, lived in Bri-
tain. He gave a rule, written in Irish verse, to this
community, the fame of which was to eclipse that
of all other Irish monasteries in the estimation of
Europe, and whose three thousand friars, divided
into seven alternate choirs, each composed of three
hundred singers, chanted the praises of God day
and night, to call down His grace upon their
Church and their country.
Coluni- It was Bangor that produced, as we have already
former of
seen, the great St Columbanus, whose glorious life
the Gauls,
& &
produced
was passed far from Ireland, who sowed the seed of
by Bangor.
x
so many great and holy deeds between the Vosges
and the Alps, between the banks of the Loire and
those of the Danube, and whose bold genius having
by turns startled the Franks, the Burgundians, and
the Lombards, disputed the future supremacy over
the monastic world for half a century with the rule
Columba. of St Benedict. And it is from Clonard that we
the apostle
,
. _ _
ot caie-
now await another great saint 01 the same name,
donia, pro-
duced by
who, restoring and extending the work of Ninian and
Clonard.
' 6
&
Palladius, was to conquer Caledonia to the Christian
faith, and whose sons at the destined moment were,
if not to begin, at least to accomplish and complete
the difficult conversion of the Anglo-Saxons.
1
It is now only a village on the shore of the Bay of Belfast, without
the slightest vestige of the famous monastery.
BOOK IX.
ST COLUMBA, THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA, 521-597.
"
I send thee unto the Gentiles, to open their eyes, and to turn
them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto
God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance
among them which are sanctified."

Acts xxvi. 18.

CHAPTER I.
THE YOUTH OF COLUMBA AND HTS MONASTIC
LIFE IN IRELAND.
The biographers of Colnmba.His different names. His royal origin.
-
The supreme kings of Ireland : the O'Neills and O'Donnells
;
Red
Hugh. Birth of Columba
;
vision of his mother. His monastic edu-
cation
;
jealousy of his comrades
;
Kieran
;
the two Finnians ; the
school of Clonard.Vision of the guardian angel and the three brides.

The assassin of a virgin struck by death at the prayer of Columba.

His youthful influence in Ireland
;
his monastic foundations, espe-
cially at Durrowand at Derry
;
his song in honour of Deny. His love
for poetry
;
his connection with the travelling bards.

He was himself
a poet, a great traveller, and of a quarrelsome disposition. His passion
for manuscripts.

Longarad of the hairy legs and his bag of books.

Dispute about the Psalter of Finnian

;
judgment of King Diarmid,
founder of Clonmacnoise. Protest of Columba
;
he takes to flight,
chanting the Hymn
of Confidence, and raises a civil war. Battle of
Cnl-Dreimhne
;
the Cathac or Psalter of battle. Synod of Teltown
;
Columba is excommunicated. St Brendan takes part with Columba,
who consults several hermits, and among others Abban, in the Cell
of Tears. The last of his advisers, Molaise, condemns him to exile.

Twelve of his disciples follow him

;
devotion of the young Mochonna.
Contradictory reports concerning the first forty years of his life.
St Columba, the apostle and monastic hero of
The bio-
Caledonia, has had the good fortune to have
hiscoiumi.a.
history written by another monk, almost a contem-
porary of his own, whose biography of him is as de-
lightful as it is edifying. This biographer, Adam-
VOL. III.
G
98 ST COLUMBAj
nan, was the ninth successor of Columba as abbot
of his principal establishment at Iona, and in addi-
tion was related to him. Born only a
quarter of a
century later, he had seen in his childhood the
actual companions of Columba and those who had
received his last breath.
1
He wrote at the very
fountainhead, on the spot where his glorious pre-
decessor had dictated his last words, surrounded by
scenes and recollections which still bore the trace of
his presence, or were connected with the incidents
of his life. A still earlier narrative, written by
another abbot of Iona,
2
and reproduced almost word
for word by Adamnan, forms the basis of his work,
which he has completed by a multitude of anec-
dotes and testimonies collected with scrupulous care,
and which altogether, though unfortunately without
chronological order, forms one of the most living, at-
tractive, and authentic relics of Christian history.
3
1
"
Ut ab aliquibus, qui prresentes inerant, didicimus."

Adamnan,
lib. iii. c. 23.
2
By Cornyn the Fair {Cummeneus Albus), the seventh bishop of Iona,
657 to 609. This narrative was first published by Colgan in the Trias
Thaumaturga, afterwards in the first volume of the Acta Sanctorum
on?nn's
S. Bencdicti, and finally by the Bollandists, vol. ii. June.
Adamnan, who was born in 624, must have written the biography of
St Columba between 690 and 703, a period at which he gave up the litur-
gical traditions of the Scots and the direction of the Monastery of Iona
to settle near the Anglo-Saxon king of Northumbria, Aldfrid (Varin,
Prt mier MSmoire,
p.
172). Adamnan's work was first published by Can-
isius in his Thesaurus Antiquitatum in 1604
;
afterwards with four other
biographies of the same saint by the Franciscan Colgan, in his Trias
Thaumaturga (Louvain, 1647)
;
by the Bollandists in 1698
;
and finally
by Pinkerton, a Scotch antiquary of the last century. It has just been
reprinted, after a MS. of the eighth century, by the Rev. Dr W. Beeves,
for the Celtic Archaeological Society of Dublin, with maps, glossary, and
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 99
Like twenty other saints of the Irish calendar, His am. .
Columba bore a symbolical name borrowed from the
Latin, a name which signified the dove of the Holy
Ghost, and which was soon to be rendered illustrious
by his countryman Oolumbanus, the celebrated
founder of Luxeuil, with whom many modern his-
torians have confounded him.
1
To distinguish the
one from the other, and to indicate specially the
greatest Celtic missionary of' the British Isles, we
shall adopt, from the different versions of his name,
that of Columba. His countrymen have almost
always named him Columb-Kill or Cille, that is to
say, the dove
of
the cell, thus adding to his primitive
name a special designation, intended to recall either
the essentially monastic character of the saint, or
the great number of communities founded and
governed by him.
2
He was a scion of one of those His royal
origin.
great Irish races, of whom it is literally true to say
that they lose themselves in the night of ages, but
which have retained to our own day, thanks to the
tenacious attachment of the Irish people to their
national recollections, through all the vicissitudes of
appendix
;
Dublin, 1857. This excellent publication, which is distin-
guished by an impartiality too rare among learned English authors, has
rendered a considerable service both to the hagiography and to the
national history of Ireland and Scotland.
1
Among others, Camden, in the sixteenth century
;
Fleury at certain
points (book xxxix. c. 36) ;
and Augustin Thierry, in the first editions
of his Histoire cle la Conqutte (VAngUUrrr,.
2
"
Qui videlicet Columba nunc a nonnullis, composite a cella et col-
umba nomine, Columcelli vocatur."

Bede, Hist. Ecclcs., v. 9. "Eo

quod multarum cellarnm, id est, monasteriorum vel ecclesiarum institutor,
fundator et rector fuit."

Notkeb Balbulus, Mariyrol^ 9 -Tun.

100 ST COLUMBA,
conquest, persecution, and exile, a rank more patri-
otic and popular than that of mere nobility or aris-
tocratic lineage. This was the great race of the
Mails or O'Donnells
1
{dan DomhnaiU), which,
native to and master of all the north-western part
of the island (the modern counties of Tyrconnell,
Tyrone, and Donegal), held sovereign sway in Hi-
bernia and Caledonia, over the two shores of the
The mon- Scottish sea, during the sixth century. Almost
archs or
. . .
supreme
without interruption, up to
1168,
kings, springing
Ireland,
from its different branches, exercised in Ireland the
supreme monarchythat is to say, a sort of primacy
over the provincial kings, which has been compared
to that of metropolitan over bishops, but which
rather recalls the feudal sovereignty of the Salic
emperors, or of the kings of the family of Capet
over the great vassals of Germany and France, in
the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Nothing could
be more unsettled or stormy than the exercise of
this sovereignty. It was incessantly disputed by
some vassal king, who generally succeeded by force
1
There is a history of the saint in Irish by Magnus O'Donnell, who
describes himself as prince of Tyrconnell. It was put together in 1532,
and the original MS. is to be found in the Bodleian. It is a legendary
compilation, founded upon the narrative of Adamnan, but augmented by
a crowd of fabulous legends, though at the same time by important Irish
traditions and historical details in honour of the race of O'Donnell, which
was that of the saint and of the historian. It has been abridged, tro.ns-
lated into Latin, and published by Colgan in the Triadcs Tliaumaturgce.
This volume is the second of the author's collected works, entitled Acta
Sanctorum Ilibcrniw, scu sacra; cjusdcm insula antiquitatcs, which he was
not able to finish, and which unfortunately includes only the saints of the
first three months of the year. I have found a copy of this very rare col-
lection in only one of all the Paris libraries, that of St Genevieve.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 101
of arms in robbing the supreme monarch of his crown
and his life, and replacing him upon the throne of
Tara, with a tolerable certainty of being himself
similarly treated by the son of the dethroned
prince.
1
Besides, the right of succession in Ireland
was not regulated by the law of primogeniture.
According to the custom known under the name
of Tanistry, the eldest blood -relation succeeded
every deceased prince or chief, and the brother
in consequence preceded the son in the order of
succession.
After the English conquest, the warlike and The
O'Neills
powerful race of Mails was able to maintain, by
and
1
. .
O'Donnells
dint of dauntless perseverance, a sort of indepen-
dent sovereignty in the north-west of Ireland. The
names of the O'Neills and O'Donnells, chiefs of its
two principal branches, and too often at war with
each other, are to be found on every page of the
annals of unhappy Ireland. After the Keformation,
when religious persecution had come in to aggra-
vate all the evils of the conquest, these two houses
supplied their indignant and unsubdued
country
with a succession of heroic soldiers who struggled
to the death against the perfidious and sanguinary
1
Let us recall in this connection the very ancient division of Ireland
into four provinces or kingdoms : to the north, Ulster or Ultonia ; to
the south, Munster or Mommonia ; to the east, Leinster or Lagenia
;
to
the west, Connaught or Connocia. A distinct district, the antique Sacred
Middle of Ireland, represented by the counties of Meath and Westmeath,
surrounded the royal residence of Tara, celebrated in Moore's melodies,
and some ruins of which still remain. This district was exclusively de-
pendent on the supreme monarch. See the map annexed to this volume
102 ST COLUMBA,
despotism of the Tudors and Stuarts. Ten cen-
turies passed in such desperate struggles have not
weakened the traditions which link the saint whose
history we are about to tell to those champions of
an ancient faith and an outraged country. Even
under the reign of Elizabeth, the vassals of young
Hugh O'Donnell, called Eed Hugh,
1
so renowned
in the poetical records and popular traditions of
Erin, and the most dangerous antagonist of English
tyranny, recognised in him the hero indicated in
the prophetic songs of Columb-kill, and thus placed
his glory and that of his ancestors under the wing
of the dove
of
the cells, as under a patronage at
once domestic and celestial.
2
1
Taken prisoner by the English hi his cradle, he died at the age of
twenty-nine, in 1602, at Simancas, where" he had gone to seek aid from
Spain. His brother, the heir of his power in Ireland, also died in exile
in Rome, where his tomb may still be seen in San Pietro in Montorio.
2
Reeves, Adamnau,
p.
34. O'Cukrv, Lectures on the Manuscript
Materials
of
Ancient Irish History, 1861, p.
328. The eight great races of
Ireland, sung by the bards and celebrated in the national history, are
these
:

O'Neill
)
O'Moore
^
The principality of Tyrconnell, confiscated by James I., contained
1,165,000
acres. "I would rather," said the most illustrious of the
O'Neills in 1597,
"
be O'Neill of Ulster than king of Spain." Neverthe-
less the chiefs of these two great races are generally described by the
annalists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as earls of Tyrconnell,
a title which had been conferred upon them by the English crown in the
hope of gaining them over. The articles upon the O'Neills and O'Don-
nells in Sir Bernard Burke's interesting work, Vicissitudes
of
Families,
O'Connor
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 103
The father of Columba was descended from one The kin-
of the eight sons of the great king Niall of the
Columba.
Nine Hostages,
1
who was supreme monarch of all
Ireland from 379 to 405, at the period when
Patrick was brought to the island as a slave.
Consequently he sprang from a race which had
reigned in Ireland for six centuries ; and in vir-
tue of the ordinary law of succession, might him-
self have been called to the throne.
2
His mother
belonged to a reigning family in Leinster, one of
the four subordinate kingdoms of the island. He
was born at Gartan. in one of the wildest districts
H
j
s irth.
/th Decem-
of the present county of Donegalwhere the slab
ber 521

of stone upon which his mother lay at the moment

of his birth is still shown. He who passes a night
upon that stone is cured for ever from the pangs of
nostalgia, and will never be consumed, while absent
or in exile, by a too passionate love for his country.
Such at least is the belief of the poor Irish emi-
grants, who flock thither at the moment when they
are about to abandon the confiscated and ravaged
soil of their country to seek their living in America,
moved by a touching recollection of the great mis-
sionary who gave up his native land for the love
of God and human souls.
should be read on this subject. The posterity of the O'Donnells still
flourishes in an elevated position in Austria.
1
Because he had received nine hostages from a king whom he had
conquered.
2
An ancient life of the saint, in Irish, emoted by Dr Reeves,
p.
269,
expressly states this fact, and adds that he gave up his right to the
throne only for the love of God.
104 ST COLUMBA,
Before his birth, his mother had a dream, which
posterity has accepted as a graceful and poetical
symbol of her son s career. An angel appeared to
her, bringing her a veil covered with flowers of
wonderful beauty, and the sweetest variety of
colours
;
immediately after she saw the veil carried
away by the wind, and rolling out as it fled over
plains, woods, and mountains : then the angel said
to her,
"
Thou art about to become the mother of
a son, who shall blossom for heaven, who shall be
reckoned among the prophets of God, and who shall
lead numberless souls to the heavenly country."
1
This spiritual power, this privilege of leading souls
to heaven, was recognised by the Irish people, con-
verted by St Patrick, as the greatest glory which
its princes and great men could gain.
Education The Irish legends, which are always distin-
ba.
guished, even amidst the wildest vagaries of fancy,
by a high and pure morality, linger lovingly upon
the childhood and youth of the predestined saint.
They tell us how, confided in the first place to the
care of the priest who had baptised him, and who
gave him the first rudiments of literary education,
he was accustomed from his earliest years to the
heavenly visions which were to occupy so large a
1
"
Quoddam mine pulcliritudinis peplum detulit, in quo veluti uni-
versorum decorosi colores floruni depicti videbantur. . . . Peplum a se
elongari volando videbat, camporumque latitudinem in majus crescendo
excedcre, montesque ct saltus majore sui mensura superare. . . . Talem
filium editura es floridum, qui quasi unus prophetarum Dei inter ipsos
comiumerabitur, innumerabiliumque animamm dux ad ccelestem a Deo
patriam est prsedestinatus."

Adamn., iii. 1.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 105
place in his life. His guardian angel often appeared
to him; and the child asked if all the angels in
heaven were as young and shining as he. A little
later Columba was invited by the same angel to
choose among all the virtues those which he would
like best to possess.
"
I choose." said the youth,
vision of
1
. .
the three
"
chastity and wisdom
;."
and immediately three
sisters<
young girls of wonderful beauty, but foreign air,
appeared to him, and threw themselves on his neck
to embrace him. The pious youth frowned, and re-
pulsed them with indignation.
"
What
!"
they said;
"
then thou dost not know us
?
"
"
No, not the least
in the world."
"
We are three sisters whom our
father gives to thee to be thy brides."
"
Who, then,
is your father
?
"
"
Our father is God, he is Jesus
Christ, the Lord and Saviour of the world."
"
Ah,
you have indeed an illustrious father. But what
are your names
?" "
Our names are Virginity, Wis-
dom, and Prophecy ; and we come to leave thee no
more, to love thee with an incorruptible love."
1
From the house of the priest, Columba passed
into the great monastic schools, which were not only
a nursery for the clergy of the Irish Church, but
1
"
Ergo ne angeli omnes ita juvenili getate floretis, ita splendide vestiti
ornatique inceditis ? . . . Age ergo, quid eligis ediscere. . . . Tres ad-
stitere virgines admirandi decoris et peregrini vultus, quas statim in ejus
amplexus et oscula iniproviso ruentes, pudicitise cultor contracta fronte
. . . abigebat. Ergo ne nos non agnoscis quarum basia et amores viliter
aspernas ? . . . Prorsus quae sitis ignore . . . Tres sumus sorores et
sponsai tibi nuper a patre nostro desponsatre. . . . Ecquis vero est vester
pater? . . . Magni estis profecto parentis filioe
;
pergite, quseso, etiam
nomina vestra recludere."

O'Donnell, Vita quinta S.

Colamhce, i.
30,
37, 38,
ap. Colgax, Trias Thaamaturga,
p. 39L
106 ST COLUMBA,
where also young laymen of all conditions were
educated. Columba, like many others, there
learned to make his first steps in that monastic life
to which he had been drawn by the call of God. He
devoted himself not only to study and prayer, but
also to the manual toil then inseparable, in Ireland
and everywhere else, from a religious profession.
Like all his young companions, he had to grind
overnight the corn for the next day's food : but
when his turn came, it was so well and quickly
done that his companions suspected him of having
jealousy
been assisted by an angel.
1
The royal birth of
ra<ies.
e m
Columba procured him several distinctions in the
schools which were not always to the satisfaction
of his comrades. One of the latter, named Kieran,
who was also destined to fill a great place in Scotic
legend, became indignant at the ascendancy of Co-
lumba: but while the two students disputed, a celes-
tial messenger came to Kieran and placed before
him an auger, a plane, and an axe, saying,
"
Look at
these tools, and recollect that these are all thou hast
sacrificed for God, since thy father was only a car-
penter
;
but Columba has sacrificed the sceptre of
Ireland, which might have come to him by right
of his birth and the grandeur of his race.""
1
"
Ordinari.e illis epulse cibarius panis
;
labor vero in singulos per vices
distributus,
nocturna lucubratione grana emolere, ex quibus lmjusmodi
panis pro comnmni omnium victu conficeretur. Id labori cum Columbre,
quia contubernalis
esset, sa-pius obtigisset, prompte et lmmillime accep-
tavit."

O'Donnell, i. 42.
2 "
Delapsus e codo bonus genius . . . terebram, asciam et securini
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 107
We learn from authentic documents that
The two
Finnians.
Columba completed his monastic life under the
Monastic
1
school of
direction of two holy abbots, both bearing the
cionard,
name of Finnian. The first, who was also a bishop,
ordained him deacon, but seems to have had him
for a shorter time under his authority than the
second Finnian, who, himself trained by a disciple
of St Patrick, had long lived in Cambria, near St
David. Columba's first steps in life are thus con-
nected with the two great monastic apostles of
Ireland and Cambria, the patriarchs of the two
Celtic races which up to this time had shown the
most entire fidelity to the Christian faith, and the
greatest predilection for monastic life. The abbot
Finnian who ordained Columba priest, ruled at
Clonard the monastery which he had founded,
and of which we have already spokenone of
those immense conventual establishments which
were to be found nowhere but among the Celts,
and which recalled to recollection the monastic
towns of the Thebaid. He had made of his mon-
astery one great school, which was filled with the
Irish youth, then, as always, consumed by a thirst
for religious instruction ; and we again find here
the favourite number, so often repeated by Celtic
tradition, of three thousand pupils, all eager to
Kierano prsesentans. Hsecce, inquit, aliaque hujusniodi, quibus tuus
pater carpentariam exercebat, pro Dei aniore reliquisti. Columba vero
Hibernise sceptrum avito suo et generis potentia sperancluin antequam
oli'erretur abrenuiitiavit.
"

O'Donnell, i. 44.
108 ST COLUMBA,
receive the instructions of him who was called the
Master of Saints.
1
Theassas-
While Columba studied at Clonard, being still
siu of a
m
young giri
only a deacon, an incident took place which has
falls dead
J 1
before him.
]jeen proved by authentic testimony, and which
fixed the general attention upon him by giving a
first evidence of his supernatural and prophetic in-
tuition. An old Christian bard (the bards were
not all Christians), named Gemmain, had come to
live near the Abbot Finnian, asking from him, in
exchange for his poetry, the secret of fertilising the
soil. Columba, who continued all his life a passion-
ate admirer of the traditionary poetry of his nation,
determined to join the school of the bard, and to
share his labours and studies. The two were read-
ing together out of doors, at a little distance from
each other, when a young girl appeared in the dis-
tance pursued by a robber. At the sight of the
old man the young fugitive made for him with all
her remaining strength, hoping, no doubt, to find
safety in the authority exercised throughout Ireland
by the national poets. Gemmain, in great trouble,
called his pupil to his aid to defend the unfortunate
1
Varin, Deuxihnc MemoIre,
p.
47.
"
Magister sanctorum Hibernise,
habuit in sua schola de Cluain-Evaird tria millia sanctorum."

Martyrol.
Ihuujal, ap. Moore, History
of
Ireland, vol. i. ch. 13. The holy abbot
Finnian died in 549. The other Finnian, the first master of Columb-
Kill, is also known under the name of Finnbar, and was abbot at Magh-
bile (Down), and died in 579. It is believed that he was St Fredianus
(Frediano), bishop and patron of Lucca, where, there is a fine and curious
church under his invocation. Colgan has published the lives of both, 28th
February and 18th March, Acta Sanctorum Hibemice. The two saints
are frequently confounded.Compare Adamnan, i.
1;
ii.
1;
iii. 4.
THE AFOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 109
child, who was trying to hide herself under their
long robes, when her pursuer reached the spot.
Without taking any notice of her defenders, he struck
her in the neck with his lance, and was making off,
leaving her dead at their feet. The horrified old
man turned to Columba.
"
How long," he said,
"
will God leave unpunished this crime which
dishonours us
?
"
"
For this moment only," said
Columba, "not longer; at this very hour, when
the soul of this innocent creature ascends to hea-
ven, the soul of the murderer shall go down to
hell." At the instant, like Ananias at the words
of Peter, the assassin fell dead. The news of
this sudden punishment, the story goes, went over
all Ireland, and spread the fame of the young
Columba far and wide.
1
It is easy to perceive, by the importance of the
His foun.k-
monastic establishments which he had brought into
Ireland,
being even before he had attained the age of man-
hood, that his influence must have been as precoci-
ous as it was considerable. Apart from the virtues
of which his after life afforded so many examples,
it may be supposed that his royal birth gave him
1
"
Carminator . . . habens secum carmen magnificum."

Vita S.
Finniani, ap. Colgan, Acta SS.,
p.
395. "Senex perturbatus tali subi-
tatione Columbam eminus legentem advocavit, ut ambo in quantum va-
luissent filiam a persequente defenderent. . . . Filiam sub vestimentis
eorum jugulavit, et, relinquens jacentem mortuam super pedes eorum,
abire ccepit . . . Quanto, sancte puer Columba, hoc scelus temporis spa-
tio inultum fieri judex justus patietur. . . . Eadem hora qua interfectre
ab eo filise anima ascendet ad ccelos, anima ipsins interfectoris descendet
ad inferos."

Adamxax, ii. 25.

110 ST COLTJMBA,
an irresistible ascendancy in a country where, since
the introduction of Christianity, all the early saints,
like the principal abbots, belonged to reigning
families, and where the influence of blood and the
worship of genealogy continue, even to this day, to
a degree unknown in other lands. Springing, as
has been said, from the same race as the monarch
of all Ireland, and consequently himself eligible
for the same high office, which was more fre-
quently obtained by election or usurpation than
inheritancenephew or near cousin of the seven
monarchs who successively wielded the supreme
authority during his lifehe was also related by
ties of blood to almost all the provincial kings.
1
Thus we see him, during his whole career, treated
on a footing of perfect intimacy and equality by
all the princes of Ireland and of Caledonia, and
exercising a sort of spiritual sway equal or superior
to the authority of secular sovereigns.
Before he had reached the age of twenty-five he
had presided over the creation of a crowd of monas-
teries. As many as thirty-seven in Ireland alone
recognised him as their founder. The most ancient
and important of these foundations were situated,
as was formerly that of St Bridget at Kildare,
2
in
vast oak-forests, from which they took their name.
The first, Durrow (Dair-mach, Roboreti campus),
where a cross and well bearing the name of Co-
1
See the genealogical tables, Dr Reeves's Appendix.
2
See ante, vol. ii.
p.
394.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. Ill
lumba are still to be seen, was erected in the central
region called the umbilical, or sacred middle of Ire-
land. The other, Deny (Doire-chalgaich, Robor-
etum Calgachi), is situated in the northern part of
the island, in Columba's native province, in the hol-
low of a bay of that sea which separates Ireland
from Scotland. After having long been the seat of
a great and rich Catholic bishopric, it became, under
its modern name of Londonderry, one of the princi-
pal centres of English colonisation, and was, in 1690,
the bulwark of the Protestant conquest against the
powerless efforts of the last of the Stuart kings.
1
But nothing then indicated the possibility of those
1
Dr Reeves gives in his Appendix G a detailed enumeration of the
thirty-seven foundations of Coliimb-Kill in Ireland. In the north of the
island, and in his native province, we remark the name of Raphoe, until
lately the seat of a diocese, and Tory, in an isle of the coast of Donegal
;
in the central district Sord, now Swords, seven miles from Dublin, which
has retained, like Toiy, its round tower ; and Kells, which gained cele-
brity only in 807 as the refuge of the monks driven from Iona by the
threats of the Norsemen. This monastery was completed in 814, and
from that day became the headquarters of the Columbian monks. Here
is still to be seen one of the finest round towers of Ireland (seventy feet
high)
;
an oratory called St Columb-KiWs house
; a cemetery-cross with
this inscription on the plinth

Crux Patricii et Columbe. Two celebrated

Gospels of the Trinity College Bible at Dublin are called the Book
of
Kells and the Book
of
Durrow. .
In the important work of Dr Petri
e,
called Inquiry into the Origin and Uses
of
the Round Towers
of
Ireland,
1845, 2d ed.,
p.
430, will be found an engraving of a building near the
cemetery of Kells, called St Columba's house. It is a square building
23 feet long, 21 broad, and 38 feet high, but not vaulted. The walls
are 4 feet in thickness
;
the roof is of stone, with two gables. It has
little circular windows at a height of 15 feet. It was formerly divided
into three chambers and two storeys. In one of these chambers is to be
seen a great flat stone 6 feet long, which is called the bed of Columba.
The roof of this building is entirely covered with ivy. In the isle of Tory
a round tower, belonging to the monastery constructed by Columba, still
remains. Petrie
(p.
389) also recognises round towers in the buildings
112 ST COLUMBA,
lamentable changes, nor of the miserable triumphs
of inhuman force and wicked persecution.
The young Columba was specially attached to
Derry, where he habitually lived. He superintended
with care not only the discipline and studies of his
community, but external matters, even so far as to
watch over the preservation of the neighbouring
forest. He would never permit an oak to be cut
down. Those which fell by natural decay, or were
struck down by the wind, were alone made use of
for the fire which was lighted on the arrival of
strangers, or distributed to the neighbouring poor.
The poor had a first right, in Ireland as every-
where else, to the goods of the monks ; and the
Monastery of Derry fed a hundred applicants every
day with methodical regularity.
1
His songs At a more advanced age our saint gave vent to
of Derrv. his tenderness for his monastic creations in songs,
an echo of which has come down to us. The text
of these songs, such as has been preserved, is pro-
bably later than Columba ; but it is written in the
oldest Irish dialect, and it expresses, naturally
enough, the sentiments of the founder and his
disciples
:

"
Were all the tribute of Scotia
2
mine,
From its midland to its borders,
quoted in connection with the two miracles told by Adamnan, c. 15, in
which mention is made of bells and belfries.
1
O'DONNELL, ap. Colgan,
p.
397, 398.
2
Let us repeat here that the names of Scotia,, Scotti, when they occur
in works of the seventh to the twelfth century, arc almost exclusively ap-
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. LIS
I would give all for one little cell
In my beautiful Deny.
For its peace and for its purity,
For the white angels that go
In crowds from one end to the other,
1 love my beautiful Deny.
For its quietness and its purity,
For heaven's angels that come and go
Under every leaf of the oaks,
I love my beautiful Deny.
My Derry, my fair oak grove,
My dear little cell and dwelling,
Oh God in the heavens above !
Let him who profanes it be cursed.
Beloved are Durrow and Derry,
Beloved is Baphoe the pure,
Beloved the fertile Drumhome,
Beloved are Sords and Kells !
But sweeter and fairer to me
The salt sea where the sea-gulls cry
When I come to Derry from far,
It is sweeter and dearer to me

Sweeter to me."
1
Nor was it only his own foundations which he
thus celebrated : another poem has been preserved
plied to Ireland and the Irish, and were extended later to Scotland proper,
the north and west of which were peopled by a colony of Irish Scots,
only at a later period. From thence comes the name of Erse, Erysche, or
Irish, retained up to our own day, by the Irish dialect, otherwise called
Gaelic. In Adamnan, as in Bede, Scotia means Ireland, and modern
Scotland is comprehended in the general title of Britannia. At a later
period the name of Scotia disappeared in Ireland, and became identified
with the country conquered and colonised by the Scots in Scotland, like
that of Anglia in Britain, and Francia in Gaul.
1
See Reeves,
pp.
288, 289. The origin and continuation of this poem
will be seen further on.
VOL. III. H
114 ST COLUMBA.
which is attributed to him, and which is dedicated
to the glory of the monastic isle of Arran, situated
upon the western coast of Ireland, where he had
gone to venerate the inhabitants and the sanctua-
ries.
1
"
0 Arran, my sun
;
my heart is in the west with thee.
To sleep on thy pure soil is as good as to be buried in the land
of St Peter and St Paul. To live within the sound of thy
bells is to live in joy. 0 Arran, my sun, my love is in the
west with thee,"'
2
These poetic effusions reveal Columba to us under
one of his most attractive aspects, as one of the
minstrels of the national poetry of Ireland, the inti-
mate union of which with the Catholic faith,
8
and
its unconquerable empire over the souls of that
His taste
generous people, can scarcely be exaggerated. Co-
foi poetry,
wag on
iy
himse]f a
p
0et
?
but lived always
in great and affectionate sympathy with the bards
who, at that time, occupied so high a place in the
social and political institutions of Ireland, and who
were to be met with everywhere, in the palaces and
monasteries, as on the public roads. What he did
for this powerful corporation, and how, after having
1
"Irivisit aliquando S. Endeum aliosque sanctos, qui plurimi in Ara
insula angelicam vitani ducebant ... in ea insula quam sanctorum
vestigiis tritam et monumentis inelytam magno affectu venerabatur."

0'
Donnell, book i. c. 105, 106. (Compare Colgan, Act. SS. Hibemice,
vol. i.
p.
704-714. There were still thirteen churches on this island in
1645, with the tombs of St Enda and of a hundred and twenty other
saints.
2
Quoted in the Transactions
of
the Gaelic Society, ].
183.
3
See ante, vol. ii.
p.
391.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 115
been their brother and friend, he became their pro-
tector and saviour, will be seen further on. Let us
And his
connection
merely state at present that, himself a great travel-
with the
ler, he received the travelling bards in the differ-
ent communities where he lived
;
among others, in
that which he had built upon an islet
1
of the lake
which the Boyle traverses before it throws itself
into the Shannon. He confided to them the care of
arranging the monastic and provincial annals, which
were to be afterwards deposited in the charter-chest
of the community
;
but, above all, he made them
sing for his own pleasure and that of his monks
;
and the latter reproached him energetically if he
permitted one of those wandering poets to depart
without having asked to hear some of his chants,
accompanied by his harp.
2
The monk Columba was, then, a poet. After
Ossian and his glorious compeer of the Vosges, he
opens the series of two hundred Irish poets, whose
memories and names, in default of their works, have
remained dear to Ireland. He wrote his verses not
only in Latin, but also and more frequently in
Irish. Only three of his Latin poems survive
;
but two centuries ago eleven of his Irish poems
1
The ruins of a church attributed to Columba are still to be seen there.
Two miles from this island, on the banks of a cascade formed by the
Boyle, as it throws itself into the lake (Loch Key), rises another monas-
tery founded by him, and which became, in 1161, a Cistercian abbey of
some celebritythe Abbey of Boyle.
2
"
Quidam Scoticus poeta. . . . Cur a nobis regredienti Cronano poet*
aliquod ex more sua
1
artis canticum non postulasti laudabiliter decan-
tari ?
"
Apamxax, book i. c. 42.
116 ST COLUMBA,
were still in existence,
1
which have not all perished,
and the most authentic of which is dedicated to
the glory of St Bridget, the virgin slave, patroness
of Ireland and foundress of female religious life in
the Isle of Saints. She was still living when Co-
lumba was born.
2
Through the obscure and halting
efforts of this infantine poetry, some tones of sincere
and original feeling may yet be disentangled
:

"
Bridget, the good and the virgin
Bridget, our torch and our sun,
Bridget, radiant and unseen,
May she lead us to the eternal kingdom !
May Bridget defend us
Against all the troops of hell,
And all the adversities of life
;
May she beat them down before us.
All the ill movements of the flesh,
This pure virgin whom we love,
Worthy of honour without end,
May she extinguish in us.
Yes, she shall always be our safeguard,
Dear saint of Lagenia
;
After Patrick she comes the first,
The pillar of the land,
1
"
Diversa poemata S. Columbse patrio idiomate scripta exstant penes
me."

Coloan, Trias Thaumaturga,

p.
472. He gives the title and
quotes the first verse of each Irish poem. Dr Reeves has given in his
Appendix F the Irish text and English translation of two of these pieces,
the MS. of which has passed from the hands of the Franciscans of Lou-
vain, where the pious and patriotic Colgan wrote, to the library of Bour-
gogne at Brussels. They are also to he found in the Bodleian at Oxford,
in a MS. which contains thirty-six Irish poems attributed to Columha.
2
He was born in 519, and she died in
523,
according to the chronology
of Colgan.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 117
Glorious among all glories,
Queen among all queens.
When old age comes upon us,
May she he to us as the shirt of hair,
May she fill us with her grace,
May Bridget protect us."
1
It seems thus apparent that Columba was as much
a bard as a monk during the first part of his life; he
had the vagabond inclination, the ardent, agitated,
even quarrelsome character of the race. Like most
Irish saints and even monks whom history has kept
in mind, he had a passionate love for travelling;'
2
and to that passion he added another which brought
him more than one misadventure. Books, which
were less rare in Ireland than everywhere else, were
nevertheless much sought after, and guarded with
jealous care in the monastic libraries, which were
their sole depositories. Not only an excessive
value was put upon them, but they were even sup-
posed to possess the emotions and almost the pas-
sions of living beings. Columba had a passion for
His passion
& & 1
for MSS.
1
"
Nos defendamur omni tempore
Per meam sanctam de Lagenia
Suppar colunma regrii,
Post Patrieium primarium :
Quae decor decorum
Qua? regina regia. . . .
Erit post senium
Nostrum corpus in cilicio :
Ejus gratia respergamur.
Nos protegat Brigicta."
Trias Tfoaumah,
p.
606.
2
"
Omnes regni provincias continuo peragrans, urbes, oppida, paga
circumiens."

O'Donnell, p.
398.
118 ST COLUMBA,
fine manuscripts, and one of his biographers attrib-
utes to him the laborious feat of having transcribed
with his own hand three hundred copies of the
Gospel or of the Psalter.
1
He went everywhere in
search of volumes, which he could borrow or copy,
often experiencing refusals which he resented
bitterly. There was then in Ossory, in the south-
west, a holy recluse, very learned, doctor in laws
Longarad and in philosophy, named Longarad with the white
with the
.
hairy legs,
legs, because in walking barefoot his legs, which
were covered with white hair, were visible. Columba
having gone to visit him asked leave to examine
his books. The old man gave a direct refusal
;
then Columba burst forth in denunciations

" May
thy books no longer do thee any good, neither to
thee nor to those who come after thee, since thou
takest occasion by them to show thy inhospitality."
This curse was heard, according to the legend. As
soon as old Longarad died his books became unin-
telligible. They still exist, says an author of the
ninth century, but no man can read them. The
legend adds that in all the schools of Ireland, and
even in Columba's own cell, the leathern satchels in
which the monks and students carried their books,
unhooked themselves from the wall and fell to the
ground on the day of the old philosopher s death.
2
A similar narrative, more authentic but not less
1
O'Donnbll, ap. Colgan, p.
438. The same number has been seen
above attributed to Dega. Irish narratives know scarcely any numerals
but those of three hundred and three thousand.
8
Festilogium of Angus the Culdec, quoted by O'Curry.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. Ill)
singular, serves as an introduction to the decisive contest
,
about the
event which changed the destiny of Columba, and
Psalter,
&
/
which
transformed him from a wandering poet and ardent
Columba

1
would have
bookworm into a missionary and apostle. While
c
pj
ed
.
J i
against his
visiting his ancient master, Finnian, our saint found
^L
ter s
means to make a clandestine and hurried copy of
the abbot's Psalter, by shutting himself up at night
in the church where the Psalter was deposited,
lighting his nocturnal work, as happened to I know
not what Spanish saint, by the light which escaped
from his left hand while he wrote with the right.
The abbot Finnian discovered what was going on
by means of a curious wanderer, who, attracted by
that singular light, looked in through the keyhole,
and while his face was pressed against the door had
his eye suddenly torn out by a crane, one of those
familiar birds who were permitted by the Irish
monks to seek a home in their churches.
1
Indignant
at what he thought a theft, Finnian claimed the
copy when it was finished, on the ground that a
copy made without permission ought to belong to
the master of the original, seeing that the tran-
scription is the son of the original book. Columba
refused to give up his work, and the question was
referred to the king in his palace at Tara.
King Diarmid, or Dermott, supreme monarch of
Ireland, was, like Columba, descended from the
1
"
Admoto ad januse fissuram oculo, mirari coepit. . . . Grus quaedam
eicurata, quae in ecclesia erat, incauti hominis oculum impeeto rostro
effodit."

O'Donnell, book ii. c. 1.

120 ST COLUMBA,
King Diar-
great kino- Niall, but by another son than he whose
mid, found-

& J
erofcion-
great-grandson Columba was. He lived, like all
macnoiae.
0 0
o33or548.
the princes of his country, in a close union with
the Church, which was represented in Ireland, more
completely than anywhere else, by the monastic
order. Exiled and persecuted in his youth, he
had found refuge in an island, situated in one of
those lakes which interrupt the course of the Shan-
non, the chief river of Ireland, and had there
formed a friendship with a holy monk called
Kieran, who was no other than the son of the car-
penter, the jealous comrade of Columba at the
monastic school of Clonard, but since that time his
generous rival in knowledge and in austerity. Upon
the still solitary bank of the river the two friends
had planned the foundation of a monastery, which,
owing to the marshy nature of the soil, had to be
built upon piles.
"
Plant with me the first stake,"
the monk said to the exiled prince,
"
putting your
hand under mine
;
and soon that hand shall be over
all the men of Erin
;
" and it happened that Diar-
mid was very shortly after called to the throne.
He immediately used his new power to endow
richly the monastery which was rendered doubly
dear to him by the recollection of his exile and of
his friend. This sanctuary became, under the name
of Clonmacnoise, oik
1
of the greatest monasteries
and most frequented schools of Ireland, and even of
Western Europe. It was so rich in possessions and
even in dependent communities, daughters or vassals
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 121
of its hierarchical authority, that, according to a
popular saying, half of Ireland was contained within
the enclosure of Clonmacnoisc. This enclosure
actually contained nine churches, with two round
towers ; the kings and lords of the two banks of
the Shannon had their burying-place there for a
thousand years, upon a green height which over-
looks the marshy banks of the river. The sadly
picturesque ruins may still be seen, and among them
a stone cross, over which the prince and the abbot,
holding between them the stake consecrated by the
legend, are roughly sculptured.
1
This king might accordingly be regarded as a
Judgment
?
. .

J
^
of King
competent judge in a contest at once monastic and
Diaimid.
literary ; he might even have been suspected of
partiality for Columba, his kinsmanand yet he
pronounced against him. His judgment was given
in a rustic phrase which has passed into a proverb
in Ireland

To every cow her

calf,
1
and, conse-
1
Clonmacnoise, which is situated on the eastern bank of the Shannon,
seven miles below Athlone, and was afterwards made a bishop's see, must
not be confounded with Cloyne, though the Latin designation, Cloncnsis
or Cluanensis, is the same. This great abbey is chiefly remarkable on
account of its abbot Tighernach (1088), a much quoted historian, whose
annals have been published in the second volume of Rerum Hiberv icarcm
Scrvptores by O'Connor. Within its vast enclosure was a community of
those lay monks called Ciddces, of whom we shall have occasion to speak
further on, who had been created by a lay brother of the monastery called
Conn
of
the poor, by reason of his great charity. Later in the twelfth
century it passed into the hands of the regular canons of St Augustin, who
retained it up to the general spoliation.

O'Curry,
p.
60. The Gentle-
man s Mtujazinc of February 1864, publishes a plan of the actual condition
of Clonmacnoise, with a very interesting notice of the architecture of the
ruins by Mr Parker.
1
"
Le (jack boin a boinin, le (jack leahhar a leabhran."
122 ST COLUMBA,
Protest oi
quently, to every book its copy. Columba pro-
tested loudly.
"
It is an unjust sentence/' he said,
"
and I will revenge myself." After this incident
a young prince, son of the provincial king of Con-
naught, who was pursued for having committed
an involuntary murder, took refuge with Columba,
but was seized and put to death by the king. The
irritation of the poet-monk knew no bounds. The
ecclesiastical immunity which he enjoyed in his
quality of superior and founder of several monas-
teries ought to have, in his opinion, created a sort
of sanctuary around his person, and this immunity
had been scandalously violated by the execution of
the youth whom he protected. He threatened the
king with prompt vengeance. "I will denounce,"
he said, "to my brethren and my kindred thy
wicked judgment, and the violation in my person
of the immunity of the Church
;
they will listen to
my complaint, and punish thee sword in hand.
1
Bad king, thou shalt no' more see my face in
thy province until God, the just Judge, has sub-
1
"
Scito, rex inique, quia amodo faciem tneam in tua provincia non
videbis donee. . . . Sicut me hodie coram senioribus tuis iniquo judicio
despexisti, sic te Deus oeternus in conspectu inimicorum tuornm te des-
piciet in die belli." Anon. ap. Usserium, DePrimord. Eccles. Brit, cited
by Colgan, p.
462. "Ego expostulabo cum fratribus et cognatis meis
iniquum
arbitrium tuum, et contemptam in me temeratamque Eeclesiai
immunitatem . . . et si non meam, at certe Dei regni atque Ecclesia'
causam ducto in te exercitu vindicabunt."

O'Donnell. book ii. c. 7.

This is assuredly a much modernised version of Columba's declaration of
w ar ;
but the true facts are to be found in the unanimous statements of
Irish tradition. Adamnan preserves a prudent silence upon all events
anterior to the saint's mission to Scotland.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 123
clued thy pride. As thou has humbled me to-
day before thy lords and thy friends, God will
humble thee on the battle day before thine ene-
mies." Diarmid attempted to retain him by foree
in the neighbourhood
;
but, evading the vigilance
of his guards, he escaped by night from the court
of Tara, and directed his steps to his native pro-
vince of Tyrconnell. His first stage was Monas-
terboyce, where he heard from the monks that the
king had planted guards on all the ordinary roads
to intercept him. He then continued his course
by a solitary pathway over the desert hills which
lay between him and the north of Ireland ; and as
he went upon his lonely way, his soul found utter-
ance in a pious song. He fled, chanting the Song He flies,
of
Trust, which has been preserved to us, and
thTson| of
which may be reckoned among the most authentic
relics of the ancient Irish tongue. We quote from
it the following verses
:

"
Alone am I on the mountain,
0 royal Sun
;
prosper my path,
And then I shall have nothing to fear.
Were I guarded by six thousand,
Though they might defend my skin,
When the hour of death is fixed,
Were I guarded by six thousand,
In no fortress could I be safe.
Even in a church the wicked are slain,
Even in an isle amidst a lake
;
But God's elect are safe
Even in the front of battle.
124
ST COLUMBA,
No man can kill me before my day,
Even had we closed in combat
;
And no man can save my life
When the honr of death has come.
My life !
As God pleases let it be
;
Nought can he taken from it,
Nought can he added to it :
The lot which God has given
Ere a man dies must he lived out.
He who seeks more, were he a prince,
Shall not a mite obtain.
A guard !
A guard may guide him on his way
;
But can they, can they, guard
Against the touch of death 1 . . .
Forget thy poverty a while
;
Let us think of the world's hospitality.
The Son of Mary will prosper thee,
And every guest shall have his share.
Many a time
What is spent returns to the bounteous hand,
And that which is kept hack
Not the less has passed away.
0 living God !
Alas for him who evil works !
That which he thinks not of conies to him,
That which he hopes vanishes out of his hand.
There is no Sreod
1
that can tell our fate,
Nor bird upon the branch,
Nor trunk of gnarled oak. . . .
Better is He in whom we trust,
The King who lias made us all,
1
An unknown Dmidical term, probably meaning some pagan .super-
stition of the same description as the flight of birds and the knots in the
trees, mentioned immediately alter.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 125
Who will not leave me to-night without refuge.
1 adore not the voice of birds,
Nor chance, nor the love of a son or a wife.
My Druid is Christ, the Son of God,
The Son of Mary, the great Abbot,
The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
My lands are with the King of kings
;
My order at Kells and at Moone."
1
"
Thus sang Columba," says the preface to this
Song
of
Trust, "on his lonely journey
;
and this
song will protect him who repeats it while he
travels."
Columba arrived safelv in his province, and lm- He raises
t

Tr
civil wav'
mediately set to work to excite against King
Diarmid the numerous and powerful clans of his
relatives and friends, who belonged to a branch of
the house of Niall distinct from and hostile to that
of the reigning monarch. His efforts were crowned
with success. The Hy-Niails of the North armed
eagerly against the Hy-Nialls of the South, of
whom Diarmid was the special chief.
2
They nat-
urally obtained the aid of the king of Connaught,
1
Moone, in the county of Kildare, where the abbatial cross of St
Columba is preserved. The translation here printed is from the version
given by Dr Reeves, with some slight modifications.

Translator''s note.
2
"
Contulit se ad domus Conalli, Gulbanis et Eugenii proceres carne
sibi propinquos, et coram eis de malis injuriis querelam instituit."

Col-
oan, Act. SS. Hibcrn., vol. i.
p.
645. Compare the genealogical table
of the descendants of Niall given by Dr Reeves,
p.
251. There were ten
supreme kings of the branch of Hy-Nialls of the North, or of Tyrconnell,
to which Columba belonged, and seventeen of the southern branch, of
which Diarmid was a member. These kings alternated for two centuries,
mutually killing and dethroning each other. See the notes of Kelly, to
Lynch, Cambrensis Eversus, vol. ii.
pp.
12, 15.
126 ST COLUMBA.
father of the young prince who had been exe-
cuted. According to other narratives, the struggle
was one between the Mails of the North and the
Picts established in the centre of Ireland. But
in any case, it was the north and west of Ireland
which took arms against the supreme king. Diar-
mid marched to meet them, and they met in battle
at Cool-Drewny, or Cul-Dreimhne, upon the bor-
Defeat of ders of Ultonia and Connacia. He was completely
while
beaten, and obliged to take refuge at Tara. The
Columba
prays
victory was due, according to the annalist
Tiffher-
against
J


hi,)l
-
nach, to the prayers and songs of Columba, who
had fasted and prayed with all his might to obtain
from Heaven the punishment of the royal inso-
lence,
1
and who, besides, was present at the battle,
and took upon himself before all men the responsi-
bility of the bloodshed.
As for the manuscript which had been the object
of this strange conflict of copyright elevated into a
civil war, it was afterwards venerated as a kind of
national, military, and religious palladium. Under
The Psalter
the name of Cathac, or Fighter, the Latin Psalter
of Battle.
u
transcribed by Columba, enshrined in a sort of
portable altar, became the national relic of the
O'Donnell clan. For more than a thousand years
it was carried with them to battle as a pledge of
victory, on the condition of being supported upon
1
"
Diem ineundi prselii jejunio et oratione praevertit, Deum afflicte
rogans ut regiae insolent* vindicibus sine suoruni damno annnat vic-
toriam."

O'Donnell, loc.
<-;t.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 127
the breast of a clerk pure from all mortal sin. It
has escaped as by miracle from the ravages of
which Ireland has been the victim, and exists still,
to the great joy of all learned Irish patriots.
1
Columba.
though victor, had soon to undergo
Synod of
f
Teilte
>
562-
the double reaction of personal remorse and the
Columba is
*
excom-
condemnation of many pious souls.
2
The latter
municated-
punishment was the first to be felt. He was ac-
cused by a synod convoked in the centre of the
royal domain at Teilte,
3
of having occasioned the
shedding of Christian blood, and sentence of excom-
munication was in his absence pronounced against
him. Perhaps this accusation was not entirely con-
fined to the war which had been raised on account of
the copied Psalter. His excitable and vindictive
character, and, above all, his passionate attachment
to his relatives, and the violent part which he took in
1
The annals of the Four Masters report that in a battle waged in 1497
between the O'Donnells and the MacDermotts, the sacred book fell into
the hands of the latter, who, however, restored it in 1499. It was pre-
served for thirteen hundred years in the O'Donnell family, and at pre-
sent belongs to a baronet of that name, who has permitted it to be exhi-
bited in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy, where it can be seen
by all. It is composed of fifty-eight leaves of parchment, bound in silver.
The learned O'Curry
(p.
322) has given a facsimile of a fragment of this
MS., which he does not hesitate to believe is in the handwriting of our
saint, as well as that of the fine copy of the Gospels called the Book
of
Kells, of which he has also given a facsimile. See Reeves's notes upon
Adamnan,
p.
250, and the pamphlet upon Mariauus Scotus,
p.
12.
2
"Cum illata regi Diermitio clades paulo post ad aures sanctorum
Hibernise pervenit, Columbam, quod tantse cladis vel auctor vel occasio
fuisset, taxabant."

O'Doxxell, ii. 5. "In synodo sanctorum Hibernian

gravis querela contra S. Columbam, tanquam auctorem tam multi san-
guinis effusi, instituta est."

Coloax. Act. SS. Hibern,,

p.
645.
3
Xow Teltown, a little village near Kells, in the county of Meath.
128
ST COLUMBA,
their domestic disputes and in their
continually
recurring rivalries, had engaged him in other strug-
gles, the date of which is perhaps later than that
of his first departure from Ireland, but the respon-
sibility of which is formally imputed to him
by
various authorities/ and which also ended in bloody
battles.
Other wars Columba was not a man to draw back before his
of Coluni-
.
ba.
accusers and judges. He presented himself before
St Brendan
. .
takes up
the synod which had struck without hearing him.
his defence.
J

He found a defender there in the famous Abbot Bren-
dan, the founder of the Monastery of Birr. When
Columba made his appearance, this abbot rose, went
up to him, and embraced him.
"
How can you give
the kiss of peace to an excommunicated man?"
said some of the other members of the synod.
"
You would do as I have done," he answered, "and
you never would have excommunicated him, had
you seen what I seea pillar of fire which goes
before him, and the angels that accompany him.
1
Especially by the argument in Irish of the Latin poem of Columba
called Alius prosator, which will be mentioned further on. This argu-
ment is quoted textually by Dr Eeeves,
p.
253. This author is of opinion
that the legendary writers have antedated all these troublesome occur-
rences out of consideration for the apostle of Caledonia, in order to con-
centrate all his eccentricities in the earlier part of his life before his
voluntary expiation. Adamnan, who follows no chronological order,
keeps silence on most of the events which preceded the voluntary exile of
the saint, and only mentions vaguely the synod by which he was excom-
municated
;
but he proves that after that exile Columba several times
returned to Ireland, where his influence was always very considerable.
"Cum a quodam synodo pro quibusdam venialibus et tarn excusabilibus
causis, non recte, ut post in fine claruit, excommunicaretur Columba
. . . ad eamdem contra ipsum collectam venit congregationem. . . . Hoc
tamen factum est in Teilte."Book iii. c. -3.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 129
I dare not disdain a man predestined by God to be
the guide of an entire people to eternal life."
Thanks to the intervention of Brendan, or to some
other motive not mentioned, the sentence of excom-
munication was withdrawn
;
but Columba was
charged to win to Christ by his preaching as many
pagan souls as the number of Christians who had
fallen in the battle of Cool-Drewny.
1
It was then that his soul seems first to have been He consults
.
several con-
trOUbled, and that remorse planted m it the germs
feasors.
at once of a startling conversion and of his future
apostolic mission. Sheltered as he was from all
vengeance or secular penalties, he must have felt
himself struck so much the more by the ecclesias-
tical judgment pronounced against him. Various
legends reveal him to us at this crisis of his life,
wandering long from solitude to solitude, and from
monastery to monastery, seeking out holy monks,
masters of penitence and Christian virtue, and ask-
ing them anxiously what he should do to obtain
the pardon of God for the murder of so many vic-
tims.
2
One of these, Froech, who had long been
his friend, reproached him with affectionate severity
for having been the instigator of that murderous
fight. "It was not I who caused it," said Columba
with animation
;
"
it was the unjust judgment of
King Diarmidit was his violation of ecclesiastical
1
Colgax, he. cit.,
p.
645.
2
"Petens . . . quo scilicet raodo post necem multorum occisorum,
benevolentiam Dei ac remissionem peccatorum obtincre mereretur."

Vita
S. Molassii, ap. Trias Thaumat.,
p.
461.
VOL. III.
1
130 ST COLUMBA,
immunity which did it all/
5
"
A monk/' answered
the solitary,
"
would have done better to hear the
injury with patience than to avenge it with arms
in his hands." "Be it so/' said Columba
;
"
but it
is hard for a man unjustly provoked to restrain
his heart and to sacrifice justice."
1
He was more humble with Abban, another
famous monk of the time, founder of many reli-
gious houses, one of which was called the Cell
of
Tears, because the special grace of weeping for sin
was obtained there.
2
This gentle and courageous
soldier of Christ was specially distinguished by his
zeal against the fighting men and disturbers of the
public peace. He had been seen to throw himself
between two chiefs at the moment when their
lances were crossed at each other's breasts
;
3
and on
another occasion had gone alone and unarmed to
meet one of the most formidable rievers of the
island, who was still a pagan and a member of a
sovereign family, had made his arms drop from his
hands, and had changed first into a Christian and
then into a monk the royal robber, whose great-
1
"
Non ego, sed iniqimm in me Diermitii regis arbitriuin, et pra?vavi-
catio ecclesiastic.e immunitatisisti praelio et malis hide secutis causam
prsebuit. . . . Fnestaret religioso viro injuriafii patienter perferre,
quam pugnaciter propulsare. Ita est, infit S. Columba, sed injuste pio-
vocato haud pronnm est erumpenteni animi motiim, pnvsertiin rum
Justus esse videtur, cohibere.
"

O'Donnell, Vita quiuta, ii. 8.

2
"Kt istud inonasteiiuin a multis vocatur Ccalt na nder, id est eellula
lacrymarum : eo quod hominibus ibi a Deo poenitentiales lacryma? . . .
donantur.*'

Vita S. Abbani, ap. CoLGAN, lil). i. ]>. 615.

''
"Tain aj>pi'0]>iii([uabat ad altcrutruin, ut laneeie eonun ante semixiee
essent invicem."

Ibid.,
p.
619.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 131
grandson has recorded this incident.
1
When Co-
lumba went to Abban, he said,
"
I come to beseech
thee to pray for the souls of all those who have
perished m the late war, which I raised for the
honour of the Church. I know they will obtain
grace by thy intercession, and I conjure thee to
ask
what is the will of God in respect to them from
the angel who talks with thee every day." The
aged solitary, without reproaching Columba, re-
sisted his entreaties for some time, by reason of his
great modesty, but ended by consenting; and after
having prayed, gave him the assurance that these
souls enjoyed eternal repose.
2
Columba, thus reassured as to the fate of the
victims of his rage, had still to be enlightened in
respect to his own duty. He found the light which
he sought from a holy monk called Molaise, famed
for his studies of Holy Scripture,
3
who had already
been his confessor, and whose ruined monastery is
still visible in one of the isles of the Atlantic.
4
This
1
"Quidam ex regali genere istius teme . . . heros et tyramius, qui
semper occidit et rapit et vivit in latrociniis . . . videntes comites S.
Abbani virum armigerum, horridissimuni in incessu et habitu, cum simili
turba militum . . . unusquisque hinc et inde crepit se abscondere. Vir
autem Dei fide armatus intrepidus viam ibat. . . . Ego autem qui vitani
S. Abbani collegi sum nepos ipsius filii quern baptizavit."

Vita S.
Abbani, ap. Colgan, lib. i.
p.
617.
2
"
Ut ores pro animabus illorum qui occisi fuerunt in bello commissi)
nuper nobis suadentibus, causa Ecclesise. . . . Et angelus ait : Ee-
quiem habebunt."

Ibid.,
p.
624, after the MS. of Salamanca, which is
more complete on this point than the ordinary text.
3
"
Visitavit S. Lasrianum confessorem suum. . . . Divinarum scrip-
turarum scruta tor.
"
4
Innishmurry, on the coast of Sligo.
132 ST COLUMBA,
Moiaise
severe hermit confirmed the decision of the synod
;
condemns
m a .
wm to
but to the obligation of converting to the Christian
perpetual
>

exile
-
faith an equal number of pagans as there were of
Christians killed in the civil war he added a new
condition, which bore cruelly upon a soul so pas-
sionately attached to country and kindred. The
confessor condemned his penitent to perpetual exile
from Ireland.
1
Columba bowed to this sentence
with sad resignation

" What you have com-

manded/' he said, "shall be done."
2
Devotion of He announced his future fate in the first place
Mochonnl.
to his relations, the warlike Nialls of Tyrconnell.
"An angel has taught me that I must leave Ireland
and remain in exile as long as I live, because of all
those whom you slew in the last battle, which you
fought on my account, and also in others which
you know of."
3
It is not recorded that any among
his kindred attempted to hold him back ; but when
he acquainted his disciples with his intended emi-
gration, twelve among them decided to follow him.
The most ardent of all was a young monk called
Mochonna, son of the provincial king of Ulster.
In vain Columba represented to him that he ought
not to abandon his parents and native soil.
"
It is
thou/' answered the young man, "who art my
father, the Church is my mother, and my country
1
Vita 8.
Molassii, ubi supra.
2
"Quod indictum est, inquitad Molassinm, fiet."

O'Donnell, ii. 5.
3
"MiM, juxta quod ab angelo praemonitus sum, ex Hibernia? migrandum
est, et dum vixero exsulandum, quod mei causa per vos plurimi extincti
sunt."

Ibid., ii. 4.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 133
is where I can gather the largest harvest for Christ."
Then, in order to render all resistance impossible,
he made a solemn vow aloud to leave his country
and follow Columba

" I swear to follow thee

wherever thou goest, until thou hast led me to
Christ, to whom thou hast consecrated me."
1
It
was thus, says his historian, that he forced himself
rather than offered himself as a companion to the
great exile in the course of his apostolical career
among the Pictsand he had no more active or
devoted auxiliary.
Columba accepted, though not without sadness,
as has been seen, the sentence of his friend. He
dedicated the rest of his life to the expiation of his
faults by a voluntary exile, and by preaching the
faith to the heathen. Up to this time we have had
difficulty in disentangling the principal events of
the first forty years of his life from a maze of con-
fused and contradictory narratives. We have fol-
lowed what has seemed to us the most probable
account, and one most calculated to throw light
upon the character of the saint, his people, and his
country. Henceforward we shall find a surer guide
in Aclamnan, who only touches very slightly upon
the first half of his hero's life, and who, with an
apparent contempt for the unanimous testimony of
1
"
Se peregrinationis socium non magis obtulit, quam obtrusit. . . .
Tu mihi pater es, Ecclesia mater, et patria ubi uberiorem bene merendi
segetem et majorem Christo deserviendi ansam invenero. . . . Te quo-
cumque ieris sequar, donee ad Christum perduxeris, cui me pridem con-
secraras."

O'Doxnell, Vita Columbcc, lib. iii. c.

24, 25, 26.
134 ST COLUMBA.
Irish witnesses, while agreeing that the departure of
the saint took place after the battle in which the
King of Ireland had been beaten by Columbas
kindred,
1
attributes his departure solely to his de-
sire for the conversion of the heathens of the great
neighbouring isle.
2
1 '
' Post bellum Cule Drebene . . . quo tempore vir beatus de Scotia
peregrinaturus primitus enavigavit."

Adamn., i. 7. "What is said of the

poem called Alius, the composition of which was suggested by the re-
morse of Columba after his three battles, will be seen further on,
p.
147.
2
"
De Scotis ad Britanniam pro Christo peregrinari volens, enavigavit."

Adamn., Prtcf. The MS. of Salamanca, quoted by Colgan, adds : "Ad

convertendos ad fidcm Pictos."
CHAPTER II.
COLUMBA AN EMIGRANT IN CALEDONIATHE HOLY
ISLE OF IONA.
Aspect of the Hebridean archipelago. Columba first lands at Oronsay,
but leaves it because Ireland is visible from its shores. Description
of Iona. First buildings of the new monastery. What remains
of it. Enthusiasm of Johnson on landing there in the eighteenth
century. Columba bitterly regrets his country. Passionate elegies
on the pains of exile. Note upon the poem of Altus. Proofs in his
biography of the continuance of that patriotic regret. The stork
comes from Ireland to Iona.
He who has not seen the islands and gulfs of the
western coast of Scotland and who has not been
tossed upon the sombre sea of the Hebrides, can
scarcely form any image of it to himself. Nothing-
can be less seductive at the first glance than that
austere and solemn nature, which is picturesque
without charm, and grand without grace. The tra-
veller passes sadly through an archipelago of naked
and desert islands, sowed, like so many extinct vol-
canoes, upon the dull and sullen waters, which are
sometimes broken by rapid currents and dangerous
whirlpools. Except on rare days, when the sun

that pale sun of the North

gives life to these

shores, the eye wanders over a vast surface of
136 ST COLUMBA,
gloomy sea, broken at intervals by the whitening
crest of waves, or by the foamy line of the tide, which
dashes here against long reefs of rock, there against
immense cliffs, with a forlorn roar which fills the air.
Through the continual fogs and rains of that rude
climate may be seen by times the summits of chains
of mountains, whose abrupt and naked sides slope
to the sea, and whose base is bathed by those cold
waves which are kept in constant agitation by the
shock of contrary currents, and the tempests of
wind which burst from the lakes and narrow rav-
ines farther inland. The melancholy of the land-
scape is relieved only by that peculiar configuration
of the coast, which has been remarked by the ancient
authors, and especially by Tacitusa configuration
which exists besides only in Greece and Scandinavia.
1
As in the fiords of Norway, the sea cuts and hol-
lows out the shores of the islands into a host of
bays and gulfs, of strange depth, and as narrow as
profound.
2
These gulfs take the most varied forms,
penetrating by a thousand tortuous folds into the
middle of the land, as if to identify themselves with
1
f<
Nusquam lathis dominari mare, multum fluminum hue atque illuc
ferre, nee littore terms adcrescere aut resorberi, sed infiuere penitus atque
ambire, etiam jugis atque montibus inseri velutin suo."

Tacitus, Agri-
colte Vita, c. 10.
"
Diversorum prolixioribus promontoriorum tractibus,
quae arenatis Oceani sinibus ambiuntur."

Gildas, vol. iii.

p.
11, ed.
Ste/ens.
2
"Mare, quo latus ingens
Dant scopuli, et multa litus se valle receptat."
Pekseus, Sat. vi.
These lines of Perseus upon the Riviera of Genoa deseribe still better
the western eoast of Seutland.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 137
the long and winding lakes of the Highland interior.
Numberless peninsulas, terminating in pointed head-
lands, or summits covered with clouds; isthmuses
so narrow as to leave the sea visible at both sides;
straits so closely shut between two walls of rock
that the eye hesitates to plunge into that gloom
;
enormous cliffs of basalt or of granite, their sides
perforated with rents
;
caverns, as at Staffa, lofty as
churches, flanked through all their length by pris-
matic columns, through which the waves of the ocean
dash with groans; and here and there, in contrast
with that wild majesty, perhaps in an island, perhaps
upon the shore of the mainland, a sandy beach, a
little plain covered with scanty prickling grass; a
natural port, capable of sheltering a few frail boats
;
everywhere, in short, a strangely varied combina-
tion of land and sea, but where the sea carries the
day, penetrates and dominates everything, as if to
affirm her empire, and, as Tacitus has said,
"
insert
velut in suo."
Such is the present aspectsuch must have been,
with the addition of the forests which have disap-
peared, the aspect of those shores when Columba
sought them to continue and end his life there. It
was from this point that he was to assail the Land
of Woods,
1
that unconquerable Caledonia, where the
Romans had been obliged to relinquish the idea of
1
In Gtelic, Cahjddon, land of forests, according to Augiistin Thierry
;
according to Camdeu tins name is derived from faded, which means hard
and wild.
138 ST COLUMBA,
establishing themselves, where Christianity hitherto
had appeared only to vanish, and which for long-
seemed to Europe almost outside the boundaries of
the world. To Columba was to fall the honour of
introducing civilisation into the stony, sterile, and
icy Escosse la Sauvage,
1
which the imagination of
our fathers made the dwelling-place of hunger, and
of the prince of demons. Sailing by these distant
shores, who could refrain from evoking the holy
memory and forgotten glory of the great mission-
ary ? It is from him that Scotland has derived that
religious spirit which, led astray as it has been since
the Reformation, and in spite of its own rigid nar-
rowness, remains still so powerful, so popular, so
fruitful, and so free.
2
Half veiled by the misty dis-
tance, Columba stands first among those original and
touching historical figures to whom Scotland owes
the great place she has occupied in the memory and
imagination of modern nations, from the noble
chivalry of the feudal and Catholic kingdom of the
Braces
and Douglases, down to the unparalleled
1
See the expressions of Jean de Meung, Froissart, and others, collected
by M. Franeisijue Michel, in his fine and learned work, Les Ecossais en
France et les Francais en Ecossc, printed by Gounonilhou, Bordeaux,
1862, p.
3-5. The words addressed by St Louis when sick to his son are
well known:
"
I pray thee to make thyself loved by the people of thy
kingdom ;
for if thou rulest ill, I had rather that a Scot came from Scot-
land and reigned in thy place."

Joinville,
p.
4.
2
This is evidenced by the wonderful outburst of the Free Kirk; produced
in 1843 by a local dispute upon the lay patronage of parishes, and which
has established in almost every village of Scotland a new community and
a new church, sustained by voluntary contributions in face of the official
Church, which continues to hold a portion of the ecclesiastical posses-
sions of Catholic times.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 139
misfortunes of Mary Stuart and Charles Edward,
and all the poetie and romantic recollections which
the pure and upright genius of AYalter Scott has
endowed with European fame.
A voluntary exile, at the age of forty-two, from
his native island, Columba embarked with his
twelve companions
1
in one of those great barks of
osier covered with hide which the Celtic nations
employed for their navigation. He landed upon a
columba
desert island situated on the north of the opening iona.
of that series of gulfs and lakes which, extending
from the south-west to the north-east, cuts the
Caledonian peninsula in two, and which at that
period separated the still heathen Picts from the
district occupied by the Irish Scots, who were
partially Christianised. This isle, which he has
made immortal, took from him the name of I-Colm-
Kill (the island of Columb-Kill), but is better
known under that of Iona.
2
A legend, suggested
by one of our saint's most marked characteristics,
asserts that he first landed upon another islet
called Oronsay,
3
but that, having climbed a hill near
the shore immediately on landing, he found that he
1
Sec their names in Appendix A of Reeves. Let us at present remark
two among tliem whom we shall meet again further on. Baithen, Colum-
ba's secretary, and his successor as abbot of Iona, and Diormit or Der-
mott, his minister (ministrator), the monk specially attached to his per-
son, after the young Mochonna, of whom mention has already been made.
2
The primitive name was Hij, Hii, or /that is to say, the isle, the isle
par excellence. Iona, according to various authors, means the blessed
isle. This last word is written Iova by Adamnan and the ancient
authors
;
but usage has turned it into Iona.
3
To the south of Colonsay, not far from the large island of Islay.
140 ST COLUMBAj
could still see Ireland, his beloved country. To see
far off that dear soil which he had left for ever,
was too hard a trial. He came down from the hill,
and immediately took to his boat to seek, farther
off, a shore from which he could not see his native
land. When he had reached Iona he climbed the
highest point in the island, and, gazing into the
distance, found no longer any trace of Ireland upon
the horizon. He decided, accordingly, to remain
upon this unknown rock. One of those heaps of
stones, which are called cairns in the Celtic dia-
lect, still marks the spot where Columba made this
desiredly unfruitful examination, and has long
borne the name of the Cairn of Farewell.
1
Description Nothing could be more sullen and sad than
of iona.
the aspect of this celebrated isle, where not a
single tree has been able to resist either the
blighting wind or the destroying hand of man.
Only three miles in length by two in breadth, flat
and low, bordered by grey rocks which scarcely rise
above the level of the sea, and overshadowed by the
high and sombre peaks of the great island of Mull,
2
1
Cam cut ri Erinliterally, the back turned on Ireland. ]\lany histo-
rians are of opinion that the isle had been formerly inhabited by Druids,
whose burying-place is still shown

Clachnan Druineach. O'Donnell

says that they resisted the landing of the Irish emigrants
;
but Dr
Reeves contests this idea with very strong arguments. His edition of
Adainnan contains a detailed map of Iona, with all the names of places
in Celtic.
2
"
Where a turret's airy head
O'erlooked, dark Mull ! thy mighty Sound,
Where thwarting tides, with mingled roar,
Part thy swarth hills from Morven's shore."
Walter Scott, Lord
of
the hies, i. 7.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 141
it has not even the wild beauty which is conferred
upon the neighbouring isles and shores by their
basalt cliffs, which are often of prodigious height
or which belongs to the hills, often green and
rounded at the summit, whose perpendicular sides
are beaten incessantly by those Atlantic waves,
which bury themselves in resounding caverns hol-
lowed by the everlasting labours of that tumul-
tuous sea. Upon the narrow surface of the island
white stretches of sand alternate with scanty pas-
tures, a few poor crops, and the turf-moors where
the inhabitants find their fuel. Poor as the cul-
ture is, it seems everywhere resisted and dis-
puted by the gneiss rocks, which continually crop
out, and in some places form an almost inextri-
cable labyrinth. The only attraction possessed by
this sombre dwelling-place is the view of the sea,
and of the mountains of Mull and the other
islands, to the number of twenty or thirty, which
may be distinguished from the top of the north-
ern hill of Iona.
1
Among these is Staffa, cele-
brated for the grotto of Fingal, which has been
known only for about a century, and which, in the
time of Columba, moaned and murmured in its
solitary and unknown majesty, in the midst of that
Hebridean archipelago which is at present haunted
by so many curious admirers of the Highland
shores and ruined feudal castles, which the great
1
This hill, the highest in the island, is only 320 feet above the level
of the sea.
142
ST COLUMBA,
bard of our century lias enshrined in the glory of
his verse.
1
The bay where Columba landed is still called the
bay
of
the osier bark, Port a Churraich
;
and a
long mound is pointed out to strangers as re-
presenting the exact size of his boat, which was
sixty feet long. The emigrant did not remain
in this bay, which is situated in the middle of
the isle
;
he went higher up, and, to find a little
shelter from the great sea winds, chose for his habi-
tation the eastern shore, opposite the large island of
Mull, which is separated from Iona only by a nar-
now channel of a mile in breadth, and whose highest
mountains,
2
situated more to the east, approach and
almost identify themselves with the mountain-tops
of Morven, which are continually veiled with clouds.
It was there that the emigrants built their huts of
branches, for the island was not then, as now, desti-
First estah- tute of wood.
3
When Columba had made up his
lishment of
,
the new
mind to construct for himself and his people a settled
monastery.
establishment, the buildings of the new-born mon-
astery were of the greatest simplicity. As in all
Celtic constructions, walls of withes or branches,
1
In the Lord
of
the Isles Scott has given a poetic itinerary of all the
archipelago so frequented by St Columba. The powerful Celtic dynasties
who, under the title of Lords of the Isles, ruled the Hebrides during the
middle ages, were of the clan Macdonald : their sway extended over the
district of Morven, which is the part of the mainland nearest to Iona.
2
The highest mountain in Mull is 3178 feet in height.
3
It is said that Columba retired in salt thus to pray. At present the
inhabitants of Iona have no other wood than that which is thrown by the
sea upon the beach. See in the Appendix No. 1 some notes upon the
present condition of Iona.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 143
supported upon long wooden props, formed the
principal element in their architecture. Climbing
plants, especially ivy, interlacing itself in the inter-
stices of the branches, at once ornamented and con-
solidated the modest shelter of the missionaries.
1
The Irish built scarcely any churches of stone, and
retained, up to the twelfth century, as St Bernard
testifies, the habit of building their churches of
wood. But it was not for some years after their
first establishment that the monks of Iona permit-
ted themselves the luxury of a wooden church
;
and when they did so, great oaks, such as the sterile
and wind-beaten soil of their islet could not pro-
duce, had to be brought for its construction from
the neighbouring shore.
2
Thus the monastic capital of Scotland, and the
centre of Christian civilisation in the north of Great
Britain, came into being thirteen
centuries ago.
Some ruins of a much later date than the days of
Columba, though still very ancient, mingled among
a few cottages scattered on the shore, still point out
the site.
"
We were now treading," said, in the eighteenth
century, the celebrated Johnson, who was the first
1
"Virgarum faseicnlos ad hospitium
construendum. . . . Binales
slides." Adamnax, ii. 3-7. Dr Beeves has put together several ancient
authorities upon the materials of chapels and churches in Wales and
Brittany.
"
Virgis torquatis muros perficientes . . . nrasco silvestri
solum et hederae nexibus adornato. . . . Virgas et fenum ad materiam
cella? construendpe . .
."
2
" Cum roboreee . . . duodecim currncis congregatis, materia? ad nos-
trum renovandum traherentur monasterium."
144 ST C0LUMBA,
to recall the attention of the British public to this
profaned sanctuary

" we were now treading that

illustrious island which was once the luminary of
the Caledonian regions, whence savage clans and
roving barbarians derived the benefits of know-
ledge, and the blessings of religion. To abstract
the mind from all local emotion would be impos-
sible, if it were endeavoured, and would be foolish,
if it were possible. Whatever withdraws us from
the power of our senses, whatever makes the past,
the distant, or the future predominate over the
present, advances us in the dignity of thinking
beings. Far from me, and from my friends, be
such frigid philosophy as may conduct us indiffe-
rent and unmoved over any ground which has
been dignified by wisdom, bravery, or virtue. That
man is little to be envied whose patriotism would
not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or
whose piety would not 'grow warmer among the
ruins of Iona
!
"
1
Columba, who had been initiated into classic
recollections, like all the monks of his time, had no
doubt heard of Marathon ; but certainly it could
never have occurred to him that a day would come
in which a descendant of the race he came to save
should place his humble shelter in the same rank
with the most glorious battle-field of Hellenic
history.
Far from having any prevision of the glory of
1
Boswell's Tour to the Hebrides.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 145
Iona, his soul was still swayed by a sentiment
which never abandoned himregret for his lost
country. All his life he retained for Ireland the
ateiy Re-
grets his
passionate tenderness of an exile, a love which
country,
displayed itself in the songs which have been
preserved to us, and which date perhaps from the
first moments of his exile. It is possible that their
authenticity is not altogether beyond dispute
;
and
that, like the poetic lamentations given forth by
Fortunatus in the name of St Radegund,
1
they
were composed by his disciples and contemporaries.
But they have been too long repeated as his, and
depict too well what must have passed in his heart,
to permit us to neglect them.
"
Death in faultless
Ireland is better than life without end in Albyn."
After this cry of despair follow strains more
plaintive and submissive. In one of his elegies
2
he laments that he can no longer sail on the lakes
and bays of his native island, nor hear the song of
the swans, with his friend Comgall. He laments
above all to have been driven from Erin by his
own fault, and because of the blood shed in his
battles. He envies his friend Cormac, who can
go back to his dear monastery at Durrow, and hear
the wind sigh among the oaks, and the song of the
blackbird and cuckoo. As for Columba, all is dear
to him in Ireland except the princes who reign
there. This last particular shows the persistence
1
See ante, vol. ii.
p.
300.
2
Published by Reeves, Appendix,
p.
275.
VOL. TIT. K
146 ST COLUMBA,
of his political rancour. No trace of this feeling,
however, remains in a still more characteristic
poem,
1
which must have been confided to some
traveller as a message from the exile of Iona to
his country. In this he celebrates, as always, the
delight of voyaging round the coast of Ireland, and
the beauty of its cliffs and beach. But, above all,
he mourns over his exile
:

"
What joy to fly upon the white-crested sea,
and to watch the waves break upon the Irish
shore ! what joy to row the little bark, and land
among the whitening foam upon the Irish shore !
Ah ! how my boat would fly if its prow were
turned to my Irish oak-grove ! But the noble sea
now carries me only to Albyn,
2
the land of ravens.
My foot is in my little boat, but my sad heart ever
bleeds. There is a grey eye which ever turns to
Erin ; but never in this life shall it see Erin, nor
her sons, nor her daughters.
3
From the high prow
I look over the sea, and great tears are in my
1
Reeves,
p.
285-87. The original text of this poem is in very ancient
Irish.
2
Alba, Albania, is the name generally applied by Irish writers to that
part of Great Britain which afterwards became Scotland. It is evidently
the same as Albion, and later took the form of Albany, which has been
always employed in the heraldic language of the two kingdoms as a title
borne by the princes of the royal house. Everybody knows that the
widow of Charles-Edward, when married a second time to Alfieri, called
herself Countess of Albany.
3
This seems to refer to a vow which he is said to have made at the
moment of his departure, to see neither man nor woman of his countiy

a vow which he evaded on his journey to the national assembly of Drum-

Ceitt by covering his eyes with a bandage, over which he drew his cowl.
Reeves.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 147
grey eye when I turn to Erinto Erin, where the
songs of the birds are so sweet, and where the clerks
sing like the birds ; where the young are so gentle,
and the old so wise
;
where the great men are so
noble to look at, and the women so fair to wed.
Young traveller, carry my sorrows with thee, carry
them to Comgall of eternal life. Noble youth, take
my prayer with thee, and my blessing

one part
for Irelandseven times may she be blessed ! and
the other for Albyn. Carry my blessing across the
seacarry it to the west. My heart is broken in
my breast : if death comes to me suddenly, it will
be because of the great love I bear to the Gael.'"
1
But it was not only in these elegies, repeated
His regret
J
.
lasts all his
and perhaps retouched by Irish bards and monks,
life-
but at each instant of his life, in season and out of
1
The Gaoidhil or Gaedhil. This was the name which the Irish gave
themselves before the Roman missionaries had given them the name of
Scoti. It is generally argued that the best known and most authentic,
though in our opinion the least interesting, of Columba's Latin poems,
dates from the first years of his sojourn at Iona. It is called by the
name of AIf us, from the first word of the first verse

"
Altus prosator vetustus dierum et ingenitus."
It is composed of twenty-four stanzas. The first word of each verse
begins with a different letter, in the order of the letters of the alphabet.
Each verse comments in very imaginative language on a text of Scripture,
indicated in the argument, on such subjects as the Creation, the Fall,
Hell, the Last Judgment, &c. The argument (in Irish) of this poem
expressly states that it was suggested to Columba by his desire to obtain
the pardon of God for his three battles. The text has been published by
Colgan. Dr Todd announces a more complete edition. Colgan states
formally that the poem was composed at Iona. He adds that, according
to some, the saint occupied some years in meditation on the subject
before he wrote it ; and that, according to others, he sent it to Pope
Gregory the Great, who received it with the most sympathetic respect.
148 ST COLUMBA.
season, that this love and passionate longing for his
native country burst forth in words and in musings;
the narratives of his most trustworthy biographers
are full of it. The most severe penance which he
could imagine for the guiltiest sinners who came to
confess to him, was to impose upon them the same
fate which he had voluntarily inflicted upon him-
selfnever to set foot again upon Irish soil.
1
But
when, instead of forbidding to sinners all access to
that beloved isle, he had to smother his envy of
those who had the right and happiness to go there
at their pleasure, he dared scarcely trust himself to
name its name ; and when speaking to his guests,
or to the monks who were to return to Ireland,
he could only say to them,
"
You will return to
the country that you love."
2
ms solid-
This melancholy patriotism never faded out of
stork which his heart, and was evidenced much later in his life
Ireland,
by an incident which shows an obstinate regret for
his lost Ireland, along with a tender and careful
solicitude for all the creatures of God. One morn-
ing he called one of the monks and said to him,
"
Go and seat thyself by the sea, upon the western
bank of the island ; there thou wilt see arrive from
the north of Ireland and fall at thy feet a poor
travelling stork, long beaten by the winds and
exhausted by fatigue. Take her up with pity, feed
1
See further on an incident related by Adamnan, i. 22.
'-'
"
In tua quam amas patria . . . per multos eris annos."

Adamn.
i. 17.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 149
her and watch her for three days
;
after three days'
rest, when she is refreshed and strengthened, she
will no longer wish to prolong her exile among us
she will fly to sweet Ireland, her dear country
where she was born. I bid thee care for her thus,
because she comes from the land where I, too, was
born." Everything happened as he had said and
ordered. The evening of the day on which the
monk had received the poor traveller, as he returned
to the monastery, Columba, asking him no questions,
said to him,
"
God bless thee, my dear child, thou
hast cared for the exile ; in three days thou shalt
see her return to her country." And, in fact, at
the time mentioned the stork rose from the ground
in her host's presence, and, after having sought her
way for a moment in the air, directed her flight
across the sea, straight upon Ireland.
1
The sailors
of the Hebrides all know and tell this tale ; and I
love to think that among all my readers there is
not one who would not fain have repeated or de-
served Columbas blessing.
1
"Nam de aquilonali Hiberniae regione qnsedam hospita grus, valde
fessa et fatigata, superveniet, coram te in litore cadens recumbet
;
quam
misericorditer sublevare curabis, ad propinquam deportabis domum
;
et
post expleto recreata triduo, nolens ultra apud nos peregrinari, ad priorem
Scotise dulcem, unde orta, remeabit regionem . . . quam ideo tibi sic
diligenter commendo, quia de nostra? paternitatis regione est oriunda.
. . . Benedicat te Deus, mi fili, quia peregrinae bene ministrasti hospita;
. . . quae post ternos soles ad patriam repedabit . . . paulisperque in
aere viam speculata . . . recti volatus cursu ad Hiberniam se repedavit
tranquillo."

Adamn., i. 48.
CHAPTER III.
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 Iona. His prayers
;
his work of tran-
scription. 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 Bushes. Columba encourages the despairing and unmasks the
hypocrites.

Monastic propaganda of Iona; 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.
Ambushes laid for his chastity. His connection with the Picts, who
occupied the north of Britain. The dorsum Br'dannice. 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 compan-
ions in that desert isle, from whence the Christian
faith and monastic life were about to radiate over
ST COLUMBA.
151
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 to maintain an author-
Change in
ity which was to increase with years, and which his pro-
does not seem ever to have been disputed, OVer the
spiritual
monasteries which he had founded in Ireland, he
applied himself at once to establish, on the double
basis of manual and intellectual labour, 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 inhab-
itants of the neighbouring districts, whom it was
needful to evangelise or confirm in the faith, before
thinking of carrying the light of the Gospel further
off to the north. He prepared himself for this
grand mission by miracles of fervour 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 His humm.
irritable, so warlike and vindictive, became little by
charity,
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 Iona, or before the monks
152 ST COLUMBA.
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 in-
different. He devoted himself to the solace of all
infirmities, all misery, and pain, weeping often over
those who did not weep for themselves.
1
These tears
became the most eloquent part of his preaching, the
means which he employed most willingly to sub-
due 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 straightfor-
ward souls, whom God had given him to subdue.
In the midst of the new community Columba in-
habited, 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 pil-
low but a stone. This hut was at once his study
Prayer and 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 labour of his monks,
2
like the least among them,
1
"Cum laborantibus laborabat, cum infirmantibus infirm abatuv, cum
flentibus semper, et cum non flentibus saepe flebat. . . . Quando vel per-
vicaces in nefarium aliquod faciuus ruentes cohibere not poterat . . . la-
crymas ubertim emittebat."

O'Donnell, lib. iii. c. 40.

2
"
Nullum hone momentulum transibat, quo non pic occupatuni repe-
riii potuerit. ... In manuali laboratione cum aliis
fratribus non seens
ac eoruno minimus, collaborabat."

O'Donnell, Vita quinta, iii.

37,
3D.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 153
to consecrate the rest of his time to the study of
Ho]y Scripture and the transcription of the sacred
text. The work of transcription remained until his
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 know-
ledge 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. It His crowd
was in the same hut that he received with unwear-
ied patience the numerous and sometimes impor-
tunate visitors who soon flowed to him, and of
whom sometimes he complained gentlyas of that
indiscreet stranger, who, desirous of embracing him,
awkwardly overturned his ink upon the border of
his robe.
1
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 neighbouring isles
of the establishment of the Irish monk, who was
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.
2
1 '
' Tuguriolum hospitiolum, in emihentiore loco fabricatum, in quo
vir beatus scribebat.- . . . Hospes molestus supervenit, sanctumque oscu-
landum appetens, ora vestimenti inclinatum effudit atramenti cornicu-
lum."

Adamxan, i. 25.
2
Adamnan has among the list of the first companions of the holy
154 ST COLUMBA.
His scrap-
Far from making efforts to attract or lightly act
ulous sever-

J
ity in the
examina-
tion of
monastic
vocations.
mitting these neophytes, nothing in his life is more
clearly established than the scrupulous severity with
which he examined into all vocations, and into the
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, hut a shelter from
human justice. On occasion he even blamed the
too great facility of his friends and disciples. One
of the latter, Finchan, had founded upon Eigg,
1
an-
other Hebridean island, a community resembling
that of Iona, and possibly dependent upon it : he
had there admitted to clerical orders, and even to
the priesthood, a prince of the clan of Picts estab-
lished in Ireland, Aedh or Aldus, called the Black,
a violent and bloodthirsty man, who had assassin-
ated 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 Iona 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 ecclesi-
astical law, upon the head of this son of perdition,"
abbot the names of two Saxons, one of whom was a baker, and also that
of a Briton, who died first of all the Iona monks. This was that Odhran
or Orain who has left his name to the bmying-ground, which is still
called Rcilig Orain. "Bonis actibus intentans qui primus apud nos in
hac insula mortuus est."

Adamnan, iii. 6.
1
To the north of Iona, near the large island of Skye.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA.
155
said Columba,
,k
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 assassin-
ated." This double prophecy was accomplished.
1
Let us lend an ear to the following dialogue which
Libran of
Columba held with one of those who sought shelter
under his discipline. It will explain the moral and
spiritual condition of that age better than many
commentaries, and will, besides, show the wonder-
ful 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 under-
taken 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
1
"
Fmchanus, Christi miles, Aidum . . . regio genere ortum, Cruthi-
nium gente, de Scotia ad Britanniam sub clericatus habitu secum adduxit.
. . . Qui valde sanguinarius homo et multorum fuerat trucidator. . . .
Darmitium totre Scotite regnatorem Deo auctore ordinatum interfecerat.
. . . Manas . . . contra fas et jus ecclesiasticum super caput filii perdi-
tioiris, mox computrescet.
"

Adamnan, i. 36.
ST COLUMBA,
confession, lie swore, still upon his knees, to ac-
complish 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 neighbouring 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,
when one of my relations, who is very rich, de-
livered me by paying the composition demanded.
I swore that I would serve him all the rest of my
life ; but after some clays 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. AVhen 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 w
r
orthy of it. The request of such an inter-
cessor should be granted freely. His blessing will
do more for us than any ransom." And imme-
diately he detached the girdle from his waist, which
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 157
was the ordinary formula in Ireland for the manu-
mission 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 laboured for seven years for the sal-
vation of his soul with the holy Columba." He
then returned to Iona, bringing with him the
sword which was to have been his ransom.
"
Henceforward thou shaft 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. Colum-
ba, touched by his despair, comforted him as
best he could, without, however, altering his sen-
tence. "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 Eushes, be-
cause he had passed many years in gathering rushes
the years probably of his penitence.
1
1
"
Libranus de Arundincto . . . plebeius nuper, sumpto clericatus
habitu . . . arl delenda in peregrinatione peccamina longo fatigaturn
itinere. . . . Cui sanctus, ut de sua? poenitudinis exploraret qualitate,
dura et laboriosa ante oculos nionasterialia proposuisset imperia. . . .
158 ST COLUMBA,
He en- This doctor, learned in penitence, became day by
courages
the peni-
day more gifted in the great art of ruling souls
;
tents, and
J
m
s rt
# .
thehypo
anc
^
a nand as prudent as vigorous, raised up
crites.
on one s[^e }ie mounded 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 temp-
tations of a woman, rushed from confessor to con-
fessor without ever finding himself sufficiently re-
pentant 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 hard enough to con-
vince him of the remission of his sin.
1
To another
sinner from Ireland, who, guilty of incest and frat-
ricide, had insisted, whether Columba pleased or
not, on taking refuge in Iona, he imposed perpet-
Paratus sum ad omnia quaecumque mihi jubere volueris, quamlibet duris-
sima, quamlibet indigna. . . . Surge et reside. . . . Quid agere oportet
de quodam meo falso juramento ? Nam in patria trucidavi homuncionem.
. . . Machserara belluinis ornatam dolatis dentibus. . . . Ut quid nobis
hoc accipere quod sanctus pretium misit Columba ? Hoc non sumus
digni . . . liberetur ei pins 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 septem
annos apud S. Columbam in Britannia salutem exercuit animae. . . . Tu
Libranus vocaberis quod sis liber.' . . . Qui ideo Arundineti est voeita-
tus, quia in arundineto multis annis arundines colligendo laboraverat."
His death occured long after that of Columba, at Durrow, one of the first
of the great abbot's foundations in Ireland. Adamnan, ii. 39.
1
"
Magna est, o frater, hallucinatio tua. Ego quindecim tibi annos in
pane et aqua jejunandos pro poenitentia injnngo, quo tibi vel ipsa poeni-
tentise gravitas persuadeat peccatum tuum esse remissum."

O'Donnell,
vol. i. c. 24.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA.
159
ual exile from his native country, and twelve years
of penance among the savages of Caledonia, pre-
dicting at the same time that the false penitent
would perish in consequence of refusing this expia-
tion.
1
Arriving one day in a little community
formed by himself in one of the neighbouring islets,
2
and intended to receive the penitents during their
time of probation, he gave orders that certain deli-
cacies 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 !
99
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 steal, and eat the veni-
son in the forests wherever thou goest." And this
prophecy too was fulfilled.
3
Notwithstanding these precautions, and his appa-
rent 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
1
"
Si duodecim annis inter Brittones cum fletu et lachrymis pceniten-
tiam egeris, nec ad Scotiam usque ad mortem reversus fueris, forsan Deus
peccato ignoscat tuo."

Adamxax, i. 22.
2
Himba, the modem name of which is unknown.
3
"
Ut etiam pcenitentibus aliqua pra;cipit consolatio indulgeretur. . . .
Erit tempus quo cum furacibus furtive carnem in sylva manducabis."
Adamnan, i. 21.
IGO ST COLUMBA,
labours, heard great cries addressed to tliem from
the other side of the narrow strait which separates
Iona from the neighbouring island of Mull. These
shouts were the understood signal by which those
who sought admission to Iona gave notice of their
presence, that the boat of the monastery might be
sent to carry them over.
1
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.
2
Monastic The narrow enclosure of Iona was soon too small
of iona
anda
for the increasing crowd, and from this little mon-
Founda-
>
. . .
tions of
astic colonv issued in succession a swarm of similar
Columba
^
in Scot-
colonies, which went forth to plant new communi-
land.
5
1
ties, daughters of Iona, in the neighbouring isles,
and on the mainland of Caledonia, all of which were
1
"Alia die, ultra freturn Ionae insuLe clamatum est, quem sanctus,
sedens in tuguriolo tabulis suffulto audiens, clamorem. . . . Mane eadeni
quarta feria, alius ultra fretum clamitabat proselytus. . . . Quadam die,
quemdam ultra fretum audiens clamitantem, sanctus. . . . Valde mise-
randus 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.
2
"
Apud me, ut dicitis, anni unius spatio peregrinari non poteritis,
nisi prins monacliicum promiseretis votum."

Adamnan, i. 32.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. IGl
under the authority of Columba. Ancient tradi-
tions attribute to him the foundation of three hun-
dred 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, ac-
cording to the custom of the time, monastic com-
munities must have been attached.
1
Traces of fifty-
three of these churches remain still in modern Scot-
land, unequally divided among the districts inhab-
ited by the two races which then shared Caledonia
between them.
2
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
1
Jocelyn, in his Vie de Saint 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 Iona as the only direct
foundations of Columba, and the others as proceeding from these two
:
"
Ex utroque monasterio plurima exinde monasteria per discipulos et in
Britannia et in Scotia propagata sunt." But he evidently is in the
wrong, so far at least as Deny is concerned. All the communities erected
under the supremacy of the abbot of Iona bore the name of Familia Co-
lumba-CUle.
2
The enumeration of Dr Reeves (Appendix H) might be much aug-
mented, according to what he himself says. The thirty-two churches or
monasteries inter Scottos comprehended those of the Hebridean isles, such
as Skye, Mull, 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 in-
cluded Inchcolm, an island near Edinburgh. These fifty-three, and the
thirty-seven already brought to light by Dr Reeves, make very nearly the
number of one hundred given by the author of the Vie de Saint Patrice.
VOL. III. L
162 ST COLUMBA,
the great missionary in the land of the Picts. The
most enlightened judges among the Scotch Pro-
testants agree in attributing to the teachings of
Columbato his foundations and his disciplesall
the primitive churches, and the very ancient paro-
chial division of Scotland.
1
Connection But it is time to tell what the population was
with the
whose confidence Columba had thus gained, and
popiilation
of Caie-
from which the communities of his monastic fam-
donia.
ily were recruited. The portion of Great Britain
which received the name of Caledonia did not in-
clude 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 Irish
the west and south-west, on the side where Columba,
colony of
pairiad-
landed, he found a colony of his own country and
racethat is to say, the Scots of Ireland, who were
destined to become the sole masters of Caledonia,
and to bestow upon it the name of Scotland.
2
ians m
Scotland.
1
See specially Cosmo lnnes, the modest and learned author of the
excellent works entitled Scotland in the Middle Ages, 1860, and Sketches
of
Early Scottish History, 1861.
2
We again repeat what it required all the learning of Ussher, White,
Colgan, and Ward to provenamely, that the holy and learned Scotia
of the ancients was Ireland. The name of Scotia became the exclusive
possession of the Scotchthat is to say, of the Irish colonists in Cale-
donia only in the eleventh or twelfth century, in the time of Giral-
dus Cambrensis, at the moment when the power of the true Scots de-
clined in Scotland under the influence of the Anglo-Norman conquest.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 163
More than half a century before, following in the 500-50.3.
train of many similar invasions or emigrations, a
colony of Irish, or, according to the name then in
use, of Scots, belonging to the tribe of Dalriadians,
1
had crossed the sea which separates the north-east
coast of Ireland from the north-west of Great
Britain, and had established itselfbetween 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
The Bollandists have applied the very appropriate name of Scotia Nova
or Hibcrno-Scotia to the Scotic colonies in Scotland. Vita S. Cadroe,
ap. Act. SS. Marti i, 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 succes-
sively noted in that part of Great Britain, the only one which has retained
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.
1
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 Evcrsus, of Lynch, vol. i.
pp.
436, 463, 495. In Columba*s
time they still occupied the counties of Antrim and Down.
164 ST COLUMBA,
belonged. Columba had also a very close tie of
kindred with the Dalriadians themselves, his pa-
ternal grandmother having been the daughter of
Lorn, the first, or one of the first kings of the
Columba is
colonv.
1
He was thus a relation of King Connal,
related to
their chiefs,
the sixth successor of Lorn, who, at the moment
of Columba's arrival, had been for three years the
chief of the Scotic emigrants in Caledonia. Iona,
where the abbot established himself, was at the
northern extremity of the then very limited domain
of the Dalriadians, and might be regarded as a de-
pendency 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.
2
He en-
These Scots who had left Ireland after the con-
and com-
version of the island by St Patrick were probably
pletes their
...
imperfect
Christians, like all the Irish, at least in name : but
Christian-
7
i1;
y-
no certain trace of ecclesiastical organisation or of
monastic institutions is visible among them before
Columba's arrival at Iona. The apostolate of
Ninian and of Palladius does not seem to have
produced a durable impression upon them any more
than upon the southern Picts.
3
A new apostolical
1
See the genealogical table of Reeves,
p.
8, note 4.
2
Tighernach, Annates
;
Adamnan, 574, i. 7.
3
This explains the name of apostates given by St Patrick to the Scots
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 165
enterprise by Celtic monks was necessary to renew
the work at which the Koman missionaries had
laboured a century before.
1
Columba and his
disciples neglected no means of fortifying and
spreading religion among their countrymen, 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, plant-
ing there the first foundations of monastic com-
munities. Many narratives, more or less legend-
ary, indicate that this people, even when Christian,
had great need to be instructed, directed, and estab-
lished 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 self-devo-
tion and unquestionable virtue.
Columba was still in the flower of his age when
he established himself at Iona
;
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 deport-
ment and person.
2
These external advantages,
and Picts of his time

"Socii Scotorum atque Pietorum apostatarum . .

pessimorum atque apostatarum Pietorum."
1
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 Hibernia in the name of Britain.

Varin, 2d paper.
2
"
Erat aspectu angelicas. . . . Omnibus carus, hilarem semper faciem
166 ST COLUMBA,
added to the fame of his austerities and the invio-
lable purity of his life, made a singular and varied
impression upon the pagans and the very imperfect
His chas- Christians of Caledonia. The Dalriadian king put
titv put to
. . ,
trial by the nis virtue to the proo! by presenting to him his
king and
r J r &
by a neigh-
daughter, who was remarkably beautiful, and
clothed in the richest ornaments. He asked if the
sight of a creature so beautiful and so adorned did
not excite some 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 honours and pleasures be secured to
me to the end of time, would I yield to my natural
weakness."
1
About the same time, a woman who
lived not far from Iona spread for him a more dan-
ostendens . . . cujus alta proceritas. . .
."

Adamn.,
Prcef.,
and i. 1.
"
Vir tantai deditus austeritati . . . tanien exteriori forma et corporis
habitu speciosus, genis rubicundus et vultu hilaris . . . semper appare-
bat et omnibus. . . . Colloquio affabilem, benignum, jucundum et
interior is lsetitisea Spiritu Sancto infusse indicia, hilari vultu prodentem
se semper exhibebat."

O'Donnell, Vita quintet, 1. iii. c. 43.

1
"Puellam valde speciosam purpura, auro, gemmis, aliisque id ge-
neris regii amictus ornamentis . . . exornatam . . . coram S. Columba
sistit. . . . Pereontatus an filia* et pulchritudo et ornatus placeant.
Respondit sanctus omnino placere. Iterum compellat an non etiam ejus
fornise ducatur complacentia. . . . Respondit se natura ad talem com-
placentiam propensum esse. Ecce, inqnit rex . . . hiceine est qui nullo
carnali desiderio inquinatus depnedicatur ? Tunc S. Columba ... 0
rex, sciat_ altitudo tua, et si insita carnis propensio meam naturam ad
proliibitas inclinet complacentias, pro universi tanien imperio, lionoribus
et voluptatibus, si usque mundi finem ad concederetur, me nolle talibus
complaccnter indulgere." O'Donnell, lib. ii. c. 39. The king who
figures in this anecdote does not appear to have been Aidan, as O'Donnell
would assert. Aidan began to reign over the Scotic colony only in 57
1,
eleven years after the arrival of Columba at Iona. It must have been his
predecessor Council.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 107
gerous and subtle snare. The celebrated and hand-
some 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 ad-
dressed 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.
1
But it was towards another race, very different
Commba
becomes
from his Scotic countrymen and much less acces-
the mis
-
sionary of
sible, that Columba felt himself drawn as much by
the
^.?
h
-
/
ern Picts.
the penance imposed upon him as by the necessities
5o5
~
575-
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 hea-
thens. Originally from Sarmatia, according to
The Picts.
Tacitusaccording to Bede, descendants of the
Scythiansthese primitive inhabitants of Great
Britain, who had remained untouched by Boman
1
"Ipsum in Ionam jam commorantem, multisque . . . percelebrem.
. . . Quamdam de vicino feminam S. viri concupiscentia inflammat
(antiquus serpens). . . . Deinde earn aucto crucis signo benedicens, ab
omni mox tentatione liberam diniisit. . . . Casto deinceps arnore, mag-
naque reverentia coluit, ipsa tandem sanctitate Celebris." O'Donnell,
lib. ii. c. 25.
108 ST
COLUMBA,
or Christian influences, owed their name to their
custom of fighting naked, and of painting their
bodies in various colours, which had been the wont
of all the ancient Britons at the time of Caesar's in-
vasion. We have already seen that the holy bishop
Ninian more than a century before had preached the
Christian faith to the Southern Picts
1
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 Pictsthose who inhab-
ited the vast tracts to the north of the Grampians,
into which no missionary before Columba had ever
dared to penetrate
2
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 num-
erous islands of northern Caledonia. There dwelt
a race, warlike, grasping, and bold, as inaccessible to
softness as to fear, only half clothed notwithstand-
ing the severity of the climate, and obstinately at-
tached to their customs, belief, and chiefs. The mis-
sionary had to preach, to convert, and even at need
to brave those formidable tribes, in whom Tacitus
1
Book viii. chap. 1.
2
"
Primus doctor fidei Christians transmontanis Pictis ad Aquilonem."

Bede,
v. 9. "Gentem illam verbo et exemplo ad tide m Christi
con-
vertit."

Ibid., iii. 4.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 169
recognised the farthest off of the earth's inhabitants,
and the last champions of freedom

" t errarum ac
libertatis extremes;" 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 whose descendants, after filling the history of
Scotland with their feats of arms, have given, under
the name of Highlanders, 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
Seaa range which the biographer of the saint calls
the backbone of Britain {dorsum Britannia), and
which separates the counties of Inverness and Ar-
gyll, as now existing, from the county of Perth, and
includes the districts so well known to travellers
under the names of Breadalbane, Atholl, and the
Grampians. This was the recognised boundary be-
tween the Scots and Picts,
1
and it was here that
1
Such at least is the assertion of Adamnan, ii. 46. But his contem-
porary Bede and all modern authors give another frontier. According to
the latter, the Scots extended through all the west of the Caledonian pen-
insula, 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.
"
Prredicaturus verbum Dei provinciis septentrionalium Pictor-
um, hoc est, eis qua; arduis atque horrentibus montium jugis ab australi-
bus eorum sunt regionibus sequestratse."

Bede, iii. 4.
170 ST COLUMBA.
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.
1
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 Iona, 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 lono*
round
by the Orcadian Isles. Thirteen centuries ago reli-
gion 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 skiff Loch Ness and the river which
issues from it ; he penetrated thus, after a long
and
painful journey, to the principal fortress of the Pict-
ish king, the site of which is still shown upon a rock
north of the town of Inverness. This powerful
and redoubtable monarch, whose name was
Bruidh
or Brude, son of Malcolm, gave at first a very in-
hospitable reception to the Irish missionary. The
1
Walter Scott, History
of
Scotland, c. !
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 171
companions of the saint relate that, priding himself He over-
.
n
. -.
comes the
upon the royal magnificence of his fortress, he gave
resistance
orders that the gates should not be opened to the
Bruidh.
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 en-
couraging words, and from that moment gave him
every honour.
1
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
Iona, 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
1
"
Bridio rege potentissimo." Bede, iii. 4. "In prima sancti fati-
gatione itineris ad regem Brudeum ... ex fastu elatus regio munitionis
suse superbe agens . . . homo Dei, cum comitibus, ad valvas portarum
accedens . . . tunc manum pulsans contra ostia, qua? continuo sponte,
retro retrusis fortiter seris, cum omni celeritate aperta sunt. Eex cum
senatu valde pertimescunt."

Adamn., i. c. 35. It is supposed that this

royal fortress occupied the site of the vitrified fort of Craig Pharrick, on
a rock 1200 feet above the Ness, near its embouchure into the Moray-
Firth. These vitrified wallsthat is to say, walls the stones of which have
been dipped, instead of cement, into a vitreous substance produced by
the action of fire are to be found in some districts of Brittany and of
Maine, and are everywhere imputed to the Celtic period.
172 ST COLUMBA,
placed under the double protection of the two
powers which shared Caledonia between them.
1
struggles But the favour of the king did not bring with it
Druids in
that of the heathen priests, who are indicated by
their last
refuge.
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 either to have taught or practised the worship
of idols, but rather that of natural forces, and espe-
cially of the sun and other celestial bodies. They
followed or met the Irish preacher in his apos-
tolic journeys, less to refute his arguments than to
hold back and intimidate those whom his preach-
ing gained to Christ. The religious and supernat-
ural 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, salu-
tary 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.
2
But they used no actual violence
against the stranger whom their prince had taken
1
"
Quse videlicet insula ad jus quidem Britannice pertinet, sed dona-
tione Pictoruin qui illas Britanni;e plagas incolunt, jamdudum monachis
Scotorura tradita, eo quod illis pnedicantibus ficlein Christi perceperint.
. . . Unde et Columba . . . prsefatam insulani ab eis in possessionem mon-
asterii faciendi accepit."

Bede, iii.
3, 4. Compare Eeeves,
p.
76.
2
Adamnan, ii. 2.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 173
under his protection. One clay, when Columba and
his monks came out of the enclosure of the fort
in which the king resided, to chant vespers accord-
ing to the monastic custom, the Druids attempt-
ed 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 menm verbum 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.
1
But he did not confine himself to chanting in
He preach-
es by an
Latin
;
he preached. The dialect of the Picts, how-
interpreter,
ever, being different from that of the Scots, and
unknown to him, it was necessary to employ the
services of an interpreter.
2
But his words were not
the less efficacious on this account, though every-
where 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
1
"
Dum cum paucis fratribus extra regis mmritionem vespertinales Dei
laudes ex more celebraret, quidam Magi."
2
"Verbum vitse per interpretatorem sancto pradicante viro."

Adamx.,
ii. 32. Bede states that there were five different languages spoken in
Great Britain, and compares them with the five books of the Pentateuch.
"
Anglorum videlicet
"
(that is to say, the Anglo-Saxons),
"
Britonum,
Scottorum, Pictorum et Latinorum qua? meditatione Scripturarum cseteris
omnibus est facta communis."

Hist. Fed., i. 1. This 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.
174 ST COLUMBA
in the struggles of his youth ; and ties of tender
intimacy, active and never appealed to in vain,
were soon formed between himself and his con-
verts. 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 re-
ceived 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
friends aid : when he arrived the child had just ex-
pired. As soon as he had done all that in him lay
to console the father and mother, he asked to be al-
lowed to enter alone into the place where the body
of the child was. There he kneeled 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.
1
1
"Quidam plebeius
"
(this term is always used by Adamnan to express
a layman, but at the same time a man either rich or of consideration). . . .
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 175
While thus preaching faith and the orace of God II is respect
.
_ .for natural
by the voice of an interpreter, he at the same time
virtue,
recognised, 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 super-
natural o'ift 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 apostolical career went on. One day
while labouring in his evangelical work in the
principal island of the Hebrides, the one which lies
nearest to the mainland,
1
he cried out all at once,
"
My sons, to-day you will see an ancient Pictish Baptism of
chief, who has kept faithfully all his life the
Pictish
chief in
precepts of the natural law, arrive in this island
;
the isle of
he comes to be baptised and to die." Immediately
after, a boat was seen to approach the shore with
a feeble old man seated in the prow, who was re-
cognised as the chief of one of the neighbouring
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 baptised
;
and
"
Magi parentibus ssepe cum magna exprobratione cceperunt illudere, suos-
que quasi fortiores magnificare deos, Christianorum Deo quasi infirmiori
derogare. . . . Hoc noster Columba cum Elia et Eliseo. . . . Petro et
Paulo et Joanni . . . habebat sibi commune virtutis miraculum."

Adamnan, ii. 32.

1
Skye, the same in which Charles-Edward took refuge in 1746, after
the defeat of Culloden, and where he met Flora Macdonald.
176 ST COLUMBA,
immediately after breathed his last breath, and was
buried in the very spot where he had just been
brought to shore.
1
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 whole life to extreme old age : we
And in
must baptise him before he dies." Then hastening
hart!
Urqu
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,
Avas baptised, and with joyful serenity gave up to
God the soul which was awaited by those angels
whom Columba saw.
2
1
"
O filii, hodie in hac temila quidam gentilis senex naturale per
totam bonum custodiens vitam, et baptizabitur et morietur. . . . Navicula
cujus in prora advectus est decrepitus senex Geonte primarius cohortis,
quern bini juvenes de navi sublevantes, ante beati conspectum viri
deponunt. . . . Verbo Dei a sancto per interpretem recepto. . .
."

Adamnan, i. 33.
2 "
Ultra Britannia? dorsum iter agens. . . . Properemus Sanctis obvia in
angelis qui de cadis ad prseferendam alicujus gentilici animam emissi ncs
illuc expectant, ut ipsum naturale bonum per totam vitam usque ad
extremam senectutem conscrvantem, priusquam moriatur, opportune
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 177
111 tins generous heart humanity claimed its His
rights no less than justice. It was in the name of
humanity/ his biographer expressly tells us, that
he begged the freedom of a young female slave,
born in Ireland, and the captive of one of the prin-
cipal Druids or Magi. This Druid was named
Bro'ichan, and lived with the king, whose foster-
father
2
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, Broichan, 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 steps towards that river Ness
which appears so often in his history. But he was
baptizemus. . . . Sanctus sen ex in quantum potuit comites festinus
prrecedebat . . . et credens baptizatus est et eontinuo Isetus et securus,
cum angelis observantibus, ad Deum commigravit.
"

Adamnan, iii. 14.

1
"
Scoticam postulavit servam . . . humanitatis miseratione liberan-
dam."

Ibid., ii. 33.

2
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 1662, 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, 162) that at
the Council of Trent the Irish bishop of Raphoe, Donald MacCongal,
demonstrated that fosterage and yossvprecl (cognatio spirituals) were the
principal safeguard of the public peace in Ireland.
VOL. III. M
178 ST COLUMBA,
soon overtaken by two horsemen who came from
the king to tell him that Broichan, 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.
1
The Druid, though healed, was not thereby ren-
dered less hostile to the apostle. Like the magi-
cians of Pharaoh, he attempted to raise nature and
her forces against the new Moses. On the day
fixed for his departure, Columba found, on reach-
ing, 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 Broichan had
threatened, which the Druids exulted to see. But
Columba, entering his boat, bade the frightened
rowers set the sail against the wind, and the
assembled people saw him proceed rapidly on his
1
"
Scito, Broichane, scito quia si mini hanc peregrinam liberare
captivam nolueris, priusquam do hac revertar provineia, citius morieris.
. . . Nunc formidabiliter correptus ancillulam liberare est paratus
. . . eademque hora liberata fanmla sancti legatis viri assignatur."

Adamnan, ii. 33.

THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 179
course, as if borne by favourable breezes, towards
the south end of the lake, by which he returned to
Iona. But be left only to make a speedy return, He com-
and came so often as to accomplish the conversion &s lifethe
,
-
conversion
of the Pictish nation, by destroying for ever the
ofthePicts.
authority of the Druids in this last refuge of Celtic
paganism.
1
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 moun-
tains, their savage moors, and scarcely inhabited
islands, with churches and monasteries.
Columba's assistants, in his numerous missions His feUow-
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 civilisers
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 was Malruve (642-
722
2
),
a kinsman of Columba, and like him de-
1
"Ventum tibi contrarium caliginemque umbrosara superinducam.
. . . Christum invocat, cymbulamque ascendens nautis haesitantibus,
ipse constanter factus velum contra ventum jubet subrigi . . . omnique
inspectante turba, navigium flatus contra adversos mira occurrit velo-
citate."

Adamnan, ii. 34. The place where he landed is at present

occupied by Fort-Augustus, at the commencement of the Caledonian
Canal.
2
W. Reeves, St Maclrubha, his History and Churches. Edinburgh,
861. Compare Act. SS. Holland., vol. vi. August,
p.
132.
180 ST COLUMBA,
scencled 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
Iona. He must have long survived Columba, for
he was for fifty-one years abbot of a community at
Apercrossan,
1
upon the north-west coast of Cale-
donia, opposite the large island of Skye, before he
met his death, which was, according to local tradi-
tion, by the sword of Norwegian pirates.
Upon the opposite shore, in that striking pro-
montory 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 mor-maer
or chief of the country had at first refused them his
permission to settle there, but his son fell danger-
ously ill, and he hastened after the missionaries,
offering them the land necessary for their founda-
tion, 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
1
At present Applecross. Twenty-one parishes in the north of Scot-
land were in primitive times dedicated to this saint.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 181
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 The Monas-
tcry of
Monastery of Tears
1
and the great abbey which
Tears,
lasted a thousand years upon that spot always
retained the name.
"
He who sows in tears shall
reap in joy."
1
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 dis-
covered in Cambridge, and is of the ninth century. It is about to be
published under the name of the Book
of
Deir. Cosmo Inner, Scotland
in the Middle Ages,
p.
325. Whitley Stokes, Saturday Review, 8th
December 1860. 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 frag-
ments 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 this powerful house began to diminish,
and finally fell in 1715 in the Stuart rebellion.
CHAPTER IV.
COLUMBA CONSECRATES THE KING OF THE SCOTS.
HE GOES TO THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY OF IRE-
LAND, DEFENDS THE INDEPENDENCE OF THE
HIBERNO-SCOTIC COLONY, AND SAVES THE COR-
PORATION OF BARDS.
Passionate solicitude of Columba for his relatives and countrymen. He
protects King Aldan in his struggle with the Anglo-Saxons of North-
umbria. The same king is crowned by Columba at Iona ; the first
example of a Christian consecration of- kings. The Stone of Destiny :
the descendants of Aldan. Synod or parliament of Drumceitt in Ire-
land. Aedh, king of Ireland, and Aldan, king of the Irish colonists
in Scotland. The independence of the new Scottish kingdom is recog-
nised through the influence of Columba.He interposes in favour of
the bards, whom the king had proposed to outlaw. Power and ex-
cesses of that corporation.
By
means of Columba, the good grain is
not burned with the weeds. The bards' song of gratitude in honour
of their saviour. Columba, reproved by his disciple, desires that this
song should not be repeated during his life. Superstitious regard at-
tached to it after his death. Intimate union between music, poetry,
and religion in Ireland. The bards, transformed into minstrels, are the
first champions of national independence and Catholic faith against the
English conquest. Fiercely assailed, they yet continue to exist up to
our own day. Moore's Irish Melodies. The Celtic muse at the ser-
vice of the vanquished in the Highlands of Scotland as in Ireland.
It would not, however, be natural to suppose that
the mission of Columba among the Picts could
entirely absorb his life and soul. That faithful
Love for his race and country which had moved
ST COLUMBA. 183
liim with compassion for the young Irish girl in
captivity among the Picts did not permit him to
remain indifferent to the wars and revolutions
which were at the bottom of all national life
among the Irish Scots as well as the Irish colony
in Scotland. There was not a more marked feature
in his character than his constant solicitude, his
compassionate sympathy, as well after as before his
removal to Iona, for the bloody struggles in which
his companions and relatives in Ireland were so
often engaged. Nothing was nearer to his heart Anxious
than the claim of kindred ; for that reason alone
of coiumba
for his rela-
he occupied himself without cease with the affairs
tives and
country-
of individual relatives. "This man," he said to
men-
himself,
"
is of my race
;
I must help him. It is
my duty to pray for him, because he is of the same
stock as myself. This other is of kin to my
mother," &c. And then he would add,
"
My
friends and kindred, who are descended like
me from the Malls, see how they fight!"
1
And
from the far distance of his desert isle he fought
with them in heart and thought, as of old he had
aided them in person. He breathed from afar the
air of battle ; he divined the issue by what his
companions considered a prophetic instinct, and
told it to his monks, to his Irish countrymen,
and to the Caledonian Scots who sought him in his
new dwelling. With better reason still his soul
1
"
Quia est milii cognationalis, et ex mete matris parentela. . . . Mei
cognationales amici. . . . Xellis nepotes."Adamx., ii. 40
;
i. 49
;
i. 7.
184 ST COLUMBA,
kindled within him when he foresaw any struggle in
which his new neighbours the Dalriadian colonists
were to be engaged, either with the Picts, whom they
were one day to conquer, or with the Anglo-Saxons.
The beii of One day towards the end of his life, being alone
for the

with Diarmid his minister (as the monk attached
battle be-
scoteanl
^
P
ersonal service was called), he cried out all
their ene-
at once

xhe bell ! let the bell be rung instantly!"
nnes.
7

J
The bell of the modest monastery was nothing better
than one of the little square bells made of beaten
iron, which are still shown in Irish museums, ex-
actly similar to those which are worn by the
cattle in Spain and the Jura. It was enough for
the necessities of the little insular community.
At its sound the monks hastened to throw them-
selves on their knees around their father.
"
Now/'
said he, "let us praylet us pray with intense
fervour for our people, and for King Aidan
;
for at
this very moment the battle has begun between
them and the barbarians." When their prayers
had lasted some time, he said,
"
Behold, the bar-
barians flee ! Aidan is victorious I"
1
1
"
Subito ad suum dicit ministratorem Diormitium, Cloccampulsa. . . .
Nunc intente pro hoc populo et Aidano rege oremus
;
liac cum hora inci-
piunt bellum. . . . Nunc barbari in fugani vertuntur, Aidanoque quan-
quara infelix concessa victoria.
"

Adamn., i. 8. This quanquam infelix

refers to the fact that in this battle, de hello Miathorum (as this chap-
ter of Adamnan is entitled), the king lost three hundred and three
men and two of his sons. 1 1 is third son also fell in battle against the
Saxons : "In Saxonia Celtica in strage."

Ibid., c. 9. Adamnan speaks

of the war as dc hello Miathorum, but he does not explain if these Miathi,
or Mccetcc, who are always associated with the Caledonians, were the
allies or the enemies of the Dalriadian Scots.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 185
The barbarians, against whom Columba rang his
bells and called for the prayers of his monks, were
the Anglo-Saxons of Northumbria, who were still
pagans, and whose descendants were destined to
owe the inestimable blessings of Christianity to
the monks of Iona and the spiritual posterity of
Columba. But at that time the invaders thought
only of taking a terrible revenge for the evils
which Britain, before they conquered it, had en-
dured from Scoto-Pictish incursions, and of extend-
ing their power ever farther and farther on the
Caledonian side. As for King Aidan,
1
he had re- Aidan,
placed his cousin-german, King Connall, who had cSedoniin
guaranteed to Columba the possession of Iona, as
chief of the Dalriadian colony in Argyll. His ac-
cession to the throne took place in 574, eleven
years after the arrival of Columba ; and nothing
proves more fully the influence acquired by the
Irish missionary during this short interval than
Aidans resolution to have his coronation blessed
by the Abbot of Iona. Columba, though his
friend, did not wish him to be king, preferring his
brother ; but an angel appeared to him three times
in succession, and commanded him to consecrate
Aidan according to the ceremony prescribed in a
book covered with crystal which was left with him
for that purpose.
2
Columba, who was then in a
1
"vEdan, rex Scottorum qui Britanniam inhabitant."

Bede, i. 34.
2
"Qui in inanu vitreum ordinationis regum habebat libruin."

Adamn., iii. 5. This is the famous Vitreus Codex which, according to a

186 ST COLUMBA,
neighbouring island, went back to Iona, where he
conse-
was met by the new king. The abbot, obedient to
crated by
...
Coiumba.
the celestial vision, laid his hands upon the head of
Aidan, blessed him, and ordained him king.
1
He
inaugurated thus not only a new kingdom, but a
new rite, which became at a later date the most
august solemnity of Christian national life. The
coronation of Aidan is the first authentic instance
known in the West. Coiumba thus assumed, in
respect to the Scotic or Dalriadian kingdom, the
same authority with which the abbots of Armagh,
successors of St Patrick, were already invested in
respect to the kings of Ireland. That this supreme
authority and these august functions were conferred
upon abbots instead of bishops, has been the cause
of much surprise. But at that period of the eccle-
siastical history of Celtic nations the episcopate was
entirely in the shade ; the abbots and monks alone
appear to have been great and influential, and the
successors of St Coiumba long retained this sin-
gular supremacy over the bishops.
The stone
According to Scotch national tradition, the new
of Fate.

king Aidan was consecrated by Coiumba upon a
great stone called the Stone of Fate. This stone was
afterwards transferred to Dunstaffnage Castle, the
narrative given by Reeves, was only shown to Coiumba by the angel, and
did not remain in his hands.
1
"
Aidanum, iisdem adventantibus diebus. regem, sicut erat jussus, or-
dinavit . . . imponensque nianum super caput ejus, ordinans benedixit."
Martene (J)c Antiquis Mitibus Ecclestee, vol. iii. 1. ii. c. 10, in the treatise
JM Sol&mm/L Eegum Benedidione) says that the consecration of Aidan is the
first known example of that solemnity.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 187
ruins of which may be seen upon the coast of
Argyll, not far from Lona ; then to the Abbey
of Scone, near Perth ; and was finally carried
away by Edward I., the cruel conqueror of Scot-
land, to Westminster, where it still serves as a
pedestal for the throne of the kings of England on
the day of their coronation. The solemn inaugura-
tion of the kingdom of Aiclan marks the historical
beginning of the Scotch monarchy, which before
that period was more or less fabulous. Aidan was
the first prince of the Scots who passed from the
rank of territorial chief to that of independent
king, and head of a dynasty whose descendants
were one day to reign over the three kingdoms of
Great Britain.
1
But to secure the independence of the new Scot-
tish royalty, or rather of the young nation whose
stormy and poetic history was thus budding under
the breath and blessing of Columba, it was neces-
1
Aldan married a British wife, a daughter of those Britons who occu-
pied the banks of the Clyde, and were neighbours of the Scots. With them
for his allies, he made war vigorously, though unfortunately, as will be
afterwards seen, upon the Anglo-Saxons. He survived Columba, and died
in 606, after a reign of thirty-two years. His direct descendants reigned
up to 689. They were then replaced by the house of Lorn, another branch
of the first Dalriadian colony, whose most illustrious prince, Kenneth
Macalpine, reduced the Picts to recognise him as their king in 842. The
famous Macbeth and his conqueror Malcolm Canmore, the husband of St
Margaret, were both descended from Aldan, or of the lineage of Fergus.
The male line of these Scottish kings of Celtic race ended only with
Alexander III. in 1283. The dynasties of Bruce and Stuart were of the
female line. According to local and domestic traditions, the great modern
clans of Macquarie, Mackinnon, Mackenzie, Mackintosh, Macgregor,
Maclean, Macnab, and Macnaughten, are descended from the primitive
Dalriadians.
188 ST COLUMBA,
sary to break the link of subjugation or vassalage
which bound the Dalriadian colony to the Irish
kings. All this time it had remained tributary
to the monarchs of the island which it had left
nearly a century before to establish itself in Cale-
donia. To obtain by peaceable means the abolition
of this tribute, Columbawho was Irish by heart as
well as by birth, yet who at the same time was,
like the Dalriadians, his kinsmen, an emigrant in
Caledonia, and, like the new king, descended from
the monarchs of Irelandmust have seemed the
mediator indicated by nature. He accepted the
mission, and returned to Ireland, which he had
thought never to see again, in company with the
king whom he had just crowned, to endeavour to
come to an agreement with the Irish monarch and
the other princes and chiefs assembled at Drum-
keath. His impartiality was above all suspicion
;
for
the very day of the coronation of Aidan he had an-
nounced to him, in the name of God, that the pros-
perity of the new Scotic kingdom depended upon
peace with Ireland, its cradle. In the midst of the
ceremony he had said aloud to the king whom he
had crowned,
"
Charge your sons, and let them
charge their grandchildren, never to expose their
kingdom to be lost by their fault. The moment
that they attempt any fraudulent enterprise against
my spiritual descendants here, or against my coun-
trymen and kindred in Ireland, the hand of God
will weigh heavily upon them, the heart of men
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 189
will be raised against them, and the victory of their
enemies will be assured.'"
1
The king of Ireland, Diarmid, who was, like Co-
lumba, of the race of Niall, but of the Nialls of the
North, and whom our saint had so violently re-
sisted, had died immediately after the voluntary
exile of Columba. He perished, as has been men-
tioned, by the hand of a prince called Black Aedh,
chief of the Antrim Dalriadians, who remained
in Ireland when a part of their clan emigrated
to Scotland. Some time afterwards the supreme
throne of Ireland fell to another Aedh, of the south-
ern branch of the race of Niall, and consequently of
the same stock as Columba.
2
He was also the
1
Inter ordinationis verba . . . prophetare ccepit dicens : Tu filiis
coinmenda ut et ipsi filiis et nepotibus et posteris suis commendent lie per
consilia mala eorum sceptrum regni hujus de manibus suis perdant. . . .
In me et in posteros meos . . . aut adversus cognatos meos qui sunt in
Hibernia."

Adamn., iii. 5. Colgan, in remarking this passage in his

preface, cannot refrain from returning sadly upon the atrocities committed
in Ireland by the Scots and Britons of his time, under the last descend-
ants of the Dalriadian dynasty, James I. and Charles I.
"
Unde modern
i
Scoto-Britanni, qui cognatos sancti Columba? in Hibernia nostris diebus
ferro et flamma infestant, e suis sedibus pellunt et in ore crudelis gladii
mactant, debent prredictam vindictam ore veridico Dei prophetse preedic-
tam formidare, si inter posteros Aidani regis velint numerari ; si non,
certe non minus metuenda sunt ilia sacri eloquii oracula, quibus dicitur
Qui gladio perimit, gladio peribit."

Trias Thaum.,
p.
320.
2
The poet-historian, Thomas Moore, by a singular confusion, looks
upon Aedh the Black, the murderer of King Diarmid, and Aedh, son of
Aimnire, the king of the Drumkeath parliament, as the same person.

History
of
Ireland,
pp.
254, 263, Paris edition. I spare the reader all the
other Aedhs or Aldus, who are to be found mixed up with the history of
the age of Columba in the inextricable Irish genealogies. My learned
friend, M. Foisset, like a zealous Burgundian as he is, has pointed out to
me the resemblance between the name of Aedh, which occurs so often
among the Irish princes and kings, and that of the iEdni, the first inhab-
190 ST COLUMBA,
friend and benefactor of his emigrant cousin, to
whom he had given before his exile the site of
Derry,
1
the most important of his Irish foundations.
The first synod or parliament of Aedh's reign had
been convoked in a place called Drumceitt,
3
the
Whale s Back, situated in his special patrimony, not
far from the sea and the gulf of Lough Foyle, where
Columba had embarked, and at the further end of
which was his dear monastery of Deny. It was there
that he returned with his royal client, the new king
of the Caledonian Scots, whose confessor, or, as the
Irish termed it, friend
of
his soul, he had become.
3
Aedh, The two kings, Aedh and Aidan, presided at this
Ireland,
assembly, which sat for fourteen months, and the
king of the
recollection of which has been preserved anions the
Irish in
# ...
Scotland,
Irish people, the most faithful nation in the world,
synod of
for more than a thousand years.
Drum-
*
keath.
The Irish lords and clergy encamped under tents
like soldiers during the entire duration of this par-
liament,
4
The most important question discussed
itants of Burgundy. He thinks, with reason, that the Celts of Gaul, con-
quered by Caesar, had also lived, like their brethren in Ireland and Scot-
land, in clans, and is persuaded that the MAxa. of Bibracte signified
originally the clan of the sons of Aedh.
1
Lynch's Cambrensis Eversus, vol. ii. c.
9, p.
10.
2
Dorsum Cetce in Latin, Drum Ceitt or Ccat in Irish, at present called
Drumkeath, near Newtown Limavaddy, in the county of Londonderry.
3
Irish MS. quoted by Keeves,
p.
lxxvi, note 4.
4
"
Condictum regum."

Adamnan.
"
Collectis totius regni optimat-
ibus, universoque clero ... ad instar militum per papiliones et tentoria
tunnatim dispersi."

O'Donnell, book iii. c. 2, 5.

"
Hibernia? proceri-
bus Drum-Keathian ad leges condendas coeuntibus et quatuordecim men-
sibus illic ha-rentibus."

Lynch, c. 9. Colgan, who lived in 1045, nar-

rates that the site of the assembly was then still frequented by numerous
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 191
among them was no doubt that of the tribute ex-
acted from the king of the Dalriadians. It does
not appear that the Irish king demanded tribute
on account of the new kingdom founded by his an-
cient subjects, but rather on account of that part of
Ireland itself, at present the county of Antrim, from
whence the Dalriadian colonists had gone, and which
was the hereditary patrimony of their new king.
1
This was precisely the position in which the Nor-
man princes, who had become kings of England,
while still dukes of Normandy, found themselves,
five centuries later, in respect to the kings of France.
Columba, the friend of both kings, was commissioned The inde-
to solve the difficulty. According to some Irish
of thenew
kingdom
authors, the Abbot of Iona, when the decisive mo-
recognised
by the in-
ment arrived, refused to decide, and transferred to
teirention
of Coluni-
another monk, St Colman, the responsibility of pro-
ba-
nouncing the judgment. At all events, the Irish
king renounced all suzerainty over the king of the
Dalriadians of Albania, as Scotland was then called.
Independence and freedom from all tribute were
granted to the Albanian Scots, who, on their side,
promised perpetual alliance and hospitality to their
Irish countrymen.
2
Columba had another cause to plead at the par-
pilgrims, and that a procession was formerly celebrated there on the day
of All-Saints : "cum summo omnium vicinarum partium accursu."

Acta Sanctorum Hibcrnice, vol. i.

p.
204. The site is still to be seen upon
an elevation at Roe Park, near Newtown Limavaddy.

Reeves,
p.
37.
1
Moore's History
of
Ireland, vol. i. c.
12, p.
256.
2
Reeves,
pp.
lxxvi. and 92.
192 ST COLUMBA,
He inter- liament of Drumceitt, which was almost as dear to
poses in
.
favour of
his heart as the independence of the Scotic kingdom
the bards.
%
1

and colony of which he was the spiritual head.
The question in this case was nothing less than
that of the existence of a corporation as powerful
as, and more ancient and national than, the clergy
itself : it concerned the bards, who were at once
poets and genealogists, historians and musicians, and
whose high position and popular ascendancy form
one of the most characteristic features of Irish his-
tory. The entire nation, always enamoured of its
traditions, its fabulous antiquity, and local and do-
mestic glory, surrounded with ardent and respectful
sympathy the men who could clothe in a poetic dress
all the lore and superstitions of the past, as well as
the passions and interests of the present. In the
annals of Ireland, as far back as they can be traced,
the bards or ollambh, who were regarded as oracles of
knowledge, of poetry, history, and music, are always
Power and
to be found. They were trained from their infancy
excesses of
.
this cor-
with the greatest care in special communities, and
poration.
0
so greatly honoured that the first place at the royal
table, after that of the king himself, was reserved
for them.
1
Since the introduction of Christianity,
the bards, like the Druids of earlier times, whose
successors they are supposed to have been, con-
tinued to form a powerful and popular band. They
were then divided into three orders : the Fileas,
1
Eugene O'Curry's Lectures on the MS. Materials
of
Irish History.
Dublin, 1801.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 193
who sang of religion and of war; the Brehons, whose
name is associated with the ancient laws of the
country, which they versified and recited;
1
the
Seanachies, who enshrined in verse the national
history and antiquities, and, above all, the gene-
alogies and prerogatives of the ancient families
who were specially dear to the national and warlike
passions of the Irish people. They carried this
guardianship of historical recollections and relics
so far as to watch over the boundaries of each
province and family domain.
2
They took part,
like the clergy, in all the assemblies, and with
still greater reason in all the fights. They were
overwhelmed with favours and privileges by the
kings and petty princes, on whom their songs
and their harp could alone bestow a place in his-
tory, or even a good name among their contem-
poraries. But naturally this great power had pro-
duced many abuses, and at the moment of which
we speak, the popularity of the bards had suffered
an eclipse. A violent opposition had been raised
against them. Their great number, their insolence,
their insatiable greed, had all been made subjects of
1
The code known under the name of Laws
of
the Brehons continued to
regulate the civil life of the Irish even under the English conquest ; it
was only abolished under James I. at the beginning of the seventeenth
century
;
it had lasted, according to the most moderate calculations, since
the time of King Cormac, in 266that is to say, fourteen centuries.
2
"
Rei antiquariae professores et poetas . . . quos tempore gentilismi
Druidas, Vates, et Bardos . . . vocabant. . . . His ex officio incumbebat
. . . familiarum nobilium et preerogativas studiose observare
;
regionum
agrorumque metas ac limites notare acdistinguere." 0'DoxNELL,bookiii.
c. 2 and 7.
VOL. III.
X
194 ST COLUMBA,
reproach; and, above all, they were censured for
having made traffic and a trade of their poetry

of lavishing praises upon the nobles and princes

who were liberal to them, and making others the
subject of satirical invectives, which the charm of
their verse spread but too readily, to the great
injury of the honour of families. The enmities
raised against them had come to such a point, that
whom
Kino; Aedh felt himself in sufficient force to propose
KingAedh
to
t .
proposes to
to the assembly of Drumceitt the radical abolition
proscribe.
^
of this dangerous order, and the banishment, and
even outlawry, if not, as some say, the massacre, of
all the bards.
It is not apparent that the clergy took any
part whatever in this persecution of a body which
they might well have regarded as their rivals. The
introduction of Christianity into the country of
Ossian, under St Patrick, seems scarcely, if at all,
to have affected the position of the bards. They
became Christians without either inflicting or suf-
fering any violence, and they were in general the
auxiliaries and friends of the bishops, monks, and
saints. Each monastery, like each prince and lord,
possessed a bard, whose office it was to sing the
glory, and often to write the annals, of the com-
munity.
1
Notwithstanding, it is apparent, throng]1
many of the legends of the period, that the bards
represented a pagan power, in the eyes of many
1
Hersart de la Vj llemarquk, La Poesie des CloUres Celtiques, Cor*
respondant du 25 Novembre 18G3.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 195
ecclesiastical writers, and that they were willingly
identified with those Druids or Magi who had been
the principal enemies of the evangelical mission of
Patrick in Ireland and of Columba in Scotland.
1
Even in the legend of Columba
2
it is noted that some
among them had determined to make him pay for
his ransom according to their custom, and had for
this end addressed to him importunate solicitations,
threatening, if he refused, to abuse him in their verse.
Notwithstanding, it was Columba who saved
them. He who was born a poet and remained a
poet to the last day of his life, interceded for them,
and gained their cause. His success was not with-
out difficulty, for King Aedh was eager in their
pursuit ; but Columba, as stubborn as bold, made
head against all. He represented that care must The good

grain mm
be taken not to pull up the good corn with the
not be
1
.
burned
tares : that the general exile of the poets would
with the

1
weeds.
be the death of a venerable antiquity and of that
poetry which was so dear to the country and so
useful to those who knew how to employ it.
3
The
ripe corn must not be burned, he said, because of
the weeds that mingle with it. The king and the
1
"Poete impudentes," says the legend of St Colman, Boll. Act. SS.
Junii, vol. ii.
p.
27.
2
"Cum aliquot vernacular seu Hibernicfle poeseos professores, quos bar-
dos vocant, eum nihil turn ad raanum habentem, non importune tantum,
sed improbe divexassent, nescio quod donativum ab eo sub intermina-
tione invectivi poematis contendentes."

O'Donnell, book i. c. 57.

3
"Ne inter Antiquariormn vitia extirpanda, simul et interiret vene-
randa? antiquitatis stadium. . . . Artem regno et recte usuris valde pro-
ficuam.
"
O'Donnell.
196 ST COLUMBA,
assembly yielded at length, under condition that
the number of bards should be henceforward
limited, and that their profession should be put
under certain rules determined by Columba him-
self. It was his eloquence alone which turned
aside the blow by which they were threatened
;
and knowing themselves to be saved by him, they
showed their gratitude by exalting his glory in
their songs and by leaving to their successors the
charge of continuing his praise.
1
Columba himself had a profound pleasure in this
poetical popularity. The corporation of bards had
a chief, Dalian Fergall, who was blind, and whose
violent death (he was murdered by pirates) has
given him a place among the holy martyrs, of whom
Song of
there are so few in Ireland. Immediately after
from the the favourable decision of the assembly, Dalian
honour of
composed a
son<r in honour of Columba, and came
their
1 &
savioiir.
to sing it before him. At the flattering sounds of
this song of gratitude the Abbot of Iona could not
defend himself from a human sentiment of self-
satisfaction. But he was immediately reproved by
one of his monks, Baithen, one of his twelve
original companions in exile, and who was destined
to be his successor. This faithful friend was not
afraid to accuse Columba of pride, nor to tell him
1
All the authorities of Irish history, printed or in manuscript, confirm
this tradition (see Reeves,
p.
79, and Moore,
p.
257). Adamnan alone
says nothing of it
;
but he speaks of numerous songs in the Scotic lan-
guage in honour of Columba, which circulated everywhere in Scotland
and in Ireland.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 197
that he saw a sombre cloud of demons flying
and playing round his head. Columba profited by
the warning. He imposed silence upon Dalian,
1
reminding him that it was only the dead who
should be praised, and absolutely forbade him to
repeat his song.
2
Dalian obeyed reluctantly, and
awaited the death of the saint to make known his
poem, which became celebrated in Irish literature
under the name of Ambhra, or the Praise
of
St
Columbcille. It was still sung a century after Supersti-
his death throughout all Ireland and Scotland, tion with
and even the least devout of men repeated it with
song was
regarded.
tenderness and fervour, as a safeguard against the
dangers of war and every other accident.
3
It even
1
"
Oomposuit patrio sermone rhythmum ilium . . . qui in scholis
Antiquariorum publice perlegi et scholiis ac commentariis exponi con-
suevit."

O'Donnell, book i. c. 6. This poem, which has been the subject

of innumerable commentaries, still exists in MS., and is to be published
with all the Liber Hymnorum by Dr Todd. Colgan possessed a copy
which seemed to him almost unintelligible :
"
Est penes me exmplar
hujus operis egregie scriptum, sed seclusis fusis, quos habet annexos, com-
mentariis, hodie paucis, iisque peritissimis, penetrabile."

Ubi supra.
2
Vita Sancti Dallani Martyris, ap. Colgan, Acta Sanctorum Hiber-
nice,
p.
204.
3
"
Ejusdem beati viri per qmedam Scoticse lingua? laudum ipsius car-
mina, et nominis commemorationem, quidam, quamlibet sceleratis laica?
conversationis homines et sanguinarii, ea nocte qua eadem decantave-
rant cantica, de manibus inimicorum qui eamdem eorumdem cantorum
domum circumsteterant, sunt liberati. . . . Pauci ex ipsis, qui easdem
sancti viri commemorationes, quasi parvi pendentes, canere noluerant de-
cantationes . . . soli disperierunt. Hujus miraculi testes . . . centeni
et amplius. Hoc idem ut contigisse probatur non in uno loco aut tem-
pore, sed diversis locis et temporibus in Scotia et Britannia, simili tamen
modo et causa liberationis factum fuisse. Usee ab expertis uniuscujusque
regionis, ubicumque res eadem simili contigit miraculo, indubitanter didi-
cimus."

Adamxan, i. 1. Let us add that the disciples of Columba con-

tinued to cultivate music and poetry after his death. A modern poet,
198 ST COLUMBA,
came to be believed that every one who knew this
Ambhra by heart and sang it piously would die a
good death. But when the unenlightened people
came so far as to believe that even great sinners,
without either conversion or penitence, had only to
sing the Ambhra of Columbcille every day in order
to be saved, a wonder happened, says the historian
and grand-nephew of the saint, which opened the
eyes of the faithful, by showing to them how they
ought to understand the privileges accorded by God
to his saints. An ecclesiastic of the metropolitan
church of Armagh, who was a man of corrupt life,
and desired to be saved without making any change
in his conduct, succeeded in learning the half of the
famous Ambhra, but never could remember the other
half. It was in vain that he made a pilgrimage
to the tomb of the saint, fasted, prayed, and spent
the entire night in efforts to impress it upon his
memorythe next morning he found that, though
he had at length succeeded in learning the latter
half, he had completely forgotten the first.
1
The gratitude of the bards to him who had
preserved them from exile and outlawry, has cer-
tainly had some share in the wonderful and lasting
popularity of Columba's name. Shrined in the
national and religious poetry of the two islands, his
James Hogg, lias written some English verses, in themselves insignifi-
cant, to an old air which had been sung by the monks of Iona.

White-
law, The Book
of
Scottish Soikj. Glasgow, 1857.
1
Vicomte de la Villemaik^ue, Pocsie dcs Clottrcs Celthjues, after
Coluan and O'Donnell, ubi supra.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 109
fame has not only lasted in full brilliancy in Ire-
land, but it has survived even the Reformation

which has destroyed almost all other traces of their

past history as Christiansin the memory of the
Celts of Scotland.
On the other hand, the protection of Columba Intimate
certainly confirmed the popularity of the bards in
of poetry
J
. . .
and nnisic
the heart of the Irish nation. All opposition be-
with reli
-
1 1
gion in
tween the religious spirit and the bardic influence
Irelaud-
disappeared from his time. Music and poetry
after that period identified themselves more and
more with ecclesiastical life. Among the relics of
the saints the harps on which they had played
found a place. At the first English conquest, the
bishops and abbots excited the surprise of the in-
vaders by their love of music, and by accompanying
themselves on the harp.
1
Irish poetry, which was
in the days of Patrick and Columba so powerful
and so popular, has long undergone in the country
of Ossian the same fate as the religion of which
these great saints were the apostles. Eooted like
it in the heart of a conquered people, and like it
proscribed and persecuted with unwearying vehe-
mence, it has come ever forth anew from the bloody
furrow in which it was supposed to be buried. The
bards became the most powerful allies of patriotism,
the most dauntless prophets of national indepen-
1
"
Hinc accidit ut episcopi et abbates et sancti in Hibernia viri citharas
circumferre et in iis modulando pie delectari consueverint. . . . Sancti
Kevini citliara ab indigenis in reverentia non modica et pro reliquiis virtuo-
siset magnis usijue hodie habetur.
"

Giv.\iA)x:s,CambriaiDcscriptio,
c. 12.
200 ST COLUMBA,
dence, and also the favourite victims of the cruelty
of spoilers and conquerors. They made music
and poetry weapons and bulwarks against foreign
oppression, and the oppressors used them as they
had used the priests and the nobles. A price was
set upon their heads. But while the last scions of
the royal and noble races, decimated or ruined in
Ireland, departed, to die out under a foreign sky
amid the miseries of exile, the successor of the
bards, the minstrel, whom nothing could tear from
his native soil, was pursued, tracked, and taken like
a wild beast, or chained and slaughtered like the
most dangerous of rebels.
The bards, In the annals of the atrocious legislation directed
formed into
by the English against the Irish people, as well
minstrels,
J

&
...
are the
before
1
as after the Reformation, special penalties
chief cham-
1 x
national
a
g
amst the minstrels, bards, rhymers, and gene-
denceTiid
ulogists, who sustained the lords and gentlemen
in their love of rebellion and of other crimes,
2
are to be met at every step. An attempt was
made, under the sanguinary Elizabeth, to give
pecuniary recompense to those who would celebrate
"
her Majesty's most worthy praise." The bargain
was accepted by none. All preferred flight or
death to this salary of lies. Wandering over hill
and dale, hidden in the depths of the devastated
country, they perpetuated there the poetic tradi-
the Cath(
lie faith.
1
For instance, at the parliament of Kilkenny under Edward I.
2
These are the words of an act of the time of Elisabeth, quoted by
Moore,
p.
257.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA.
201
tions of their condemned race, and sang the glory of
ancient heroes and new martyrs, the shame of apos-
tates, and the crimes of the sacrilegious stranger.
In order the better to brave tyranny in the midst
of a subdued and silent people, they had recourse to
allegory and the elegies of love. Under the figure
of an enslaved queenor of a woman loved with
an everlasting love and fought for with despairing
faithfulness, in face of the jealous fury of a step-
motherthey celebrated again and again the Irish
Fatherland, the country in mourning and tears, once
queen and now a slave.
1
The Irish, says a great
historian of our own day, loved to make of their
country a real being whom, they loved, and avIio
loved them. They loved to address her without
naming her name, and to identify the austere
and perilous devotion which they had vowed to
her with all that is sweetest and most fortunate
in the affections of the heart, like those Spartans
who crowned themselves with flowers when about
to perish at Thermopylae.
2
Up to the time of the ungrateful Stuarts, this
Proscribed
.
with vehe-
proscription of the national poets was permanent,
mence.
increasing in force with every change of reign and
every new parliament. The rage of the Cromwel-
lian Protestants carried them so far as to break,
wherever they met with them, the minstrels harps
3
1
"
Erin of the sorrows, once a queen, now a slave."
2
Augustin Thierry, Dix Ans d? Etudes Historiques.
3
"
Efferati quidem excursores in obvias quasque lyras earum proscis
202 ST COLUMBA,
which were still to be found in the miserable cottages
of the starving Irish, as they were eleven centuries
before, at the time when the courageous and charit-
able Bridget saw them suspended on the wall of the
king's palace.
1
Nevertheless the harp has remained
the emblem of Ireland even in the official arms of
the British empire ; and during all last century
the travelling harper, last and pitiful successor of
the bards protected by Columba, was always to be
found at the side of the priest to celebrate the holy
Theynev- mysteries of the proscribed worship. He never
fvtliclcss
lasted up
ceased to be received with tender respect under
to our own
_ _
.
day.
the thatched roof of the poor Irish peasant, whom
he consoled in his misery and oppression by the
plaintive tenderness and solemn sweetness of the
music of his fathers.
The continuance of these distinctive features of
Irish character through so many centuries is so
striking, and the misfortunes of that noble rare
touch us so nearly, that it is difficult to resist the
temptation of leaving behind us those distant ages,
and of following through later generations the
sione multis in locis immaniter srcviant."

Lynch, Cambrcnsis Uvcrsus,

book i. c.
4, p.
316. This author, who wrote in 1662, feels himself
obliged to give a detailed description of the harp, lest the instrument
should disappear in the general ruin of Ireland.
"
Quare operre me
pretium facturum existimo, si ljToe formam lectori ob oculos ponam, ne
illius memoris gentis excidio . . . innexa obliteretur." Charles II., as
soon as he was established on the throne, permitted the passing of an
act of Parliament "against the vagabond minstrels, to repress their
rhymes and scandalous songs."
1
"
Et vidit citharas in domo regis, et dixit : Citharizate nobis citharis
vestrisJ"Tertia Vita Sancton Brigitw, c.
75, p. 536,
ap. Colgan.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 203
melancholy relies of all that lias been discovered or
admired in the most ancient days. We may be par-
doned for adding that, if the text of those poetic and
generously obstinate protests against the enslave-
ment of Ireland have perished, the life and spirit
of them has survived in the pure and penetrating
beauty of the ancient Irish airs. Their harmonies
and their refrains, which are inimitably natural,
original, and pathetic, move the depths of the soul,
and send a thrill through all the fibres of human
sensibility. Thomas Moore, in adapting to them
words which are marked with the impression of a
passionate fidelity to the proscribed faith and op-
pressed country, has given to the Irish Melodies
a popularity which was not the least powerful
among those pleas which determined the great
contest of Catholic Emancipation.
The genius of Celtic poetry has, however, sur- The Celtic
i i t i i * i p
mUSe at tlie
vived not only m Ireland, m the country oi Co-
service of
J J
thevan-
lumba and of Moore, but has found a refuse in
fished
in
7
to
Scotland
the glens of the Scottish Highlands, among those
JJ
Ire
-
vast moors and rugged mountains, and beside the
deep and narrow lakes, which Columba, bearing the
light of the faith to the Caledonian Picts, had so
often traversed. In those districts where, as in a
great part of Ireland, the Erse or Gaelic language
is still spoken, the Celtic muse, always sad and
always attached to the cause of the people, has
been found in recent times, at the most prosaic
moment of modern civilisation, in the eighteenth
204 ST COLUMBA.
century itself, inspiring the warlike songs and
laments which the Highlanders have consecrated
to the conquered Pretender and his followers slain.
And if we may believe a competent and impartial
judge,
1
the last effusions of the soul of the Gaelic
race surpass, in plaintive beauty and in passionate
feeling, even those delicious Anglo-Scottish songs
which no traveller can hear without emotion, and
which have assured the palm, at least of poetry, to
the cause of the Stuarts, which has been so sadly
represented by its princes, and so ill served by
events, but which the popular and national muse
has thus avenged, even for the irremediable defeat
of Culloden.
1
Charles Mackay, The Jacobite Songs and Ballads
of
Scotland
from
1688 to 1746, Introduction,
p.
18.
CHAPTER Y.
COLUMBA'S RELATIONS WITH IRELANDCONTINUED.
Cordial intercourse of Columba with the Irish princesProphecy upon
the future of their sons. Domnall, the king's son, obtains the privi-
lege of dying in his bed. Columba visits the Irish monasteries.

Popular enthusiasm. Vocation of the young idiot afterwards known

as St Ernan. Solicitude of Columba for the distant monasteries and
monks.He protects them from excessive labours and accidents.
He exercises authority over laymen. Baithen, his cousin-german
and principal assistant. The respect shown to both in an assembly
of learned men.
In the national parliament of Drumceitt which
^eSourse
saved the bards, and where all the ecclesiastical
coSba
chiefs of the Irish nation, along with their
iSshprin-
princes and provincial kings, were assembled, Co-
ces*
lumba, already invested by his apostolical labours
with great power and authority, found himself
surrounded by public homage, and tokens of
universal confidence. To all the kings, whose
kinsman and friend he was, he preached peace,
concord, the pardon of affronts, and the recall of
exiles, many of whom had found shelter in the
island monastery which owed its existence to his
20G ST COLUMBA,
own exile,
1
Nevertheless, it was not without
trouble that he obtained from the supreme monarch
the freedom of a young prince, named Scandlan,
son of the chief of Ossory, whom Aedh detained
in prison, in contempt of his sworn faith, and of
an agreement to which Collimba himself had been
Prophecies a witness. The noble abbot went to the prisoner
of the
.
L
future.
in his dungeon, blessed him, and predicted to him
that he should be twice exiled, but that he should
survive his oppressor, and reign for thirty years in
his paternal domain. The king yielded on this
point, but with a bad grace ; he feared the in-
fluence of the illustrious exile, and had seen him
return to Ireland with dissatisfaction. His eldest
son had publicly ridiculed the monks of Iona, and
had thus drawn upon himself the curse of Columba,
which brought misfortune, for he was afterwards
dethroned and assassinated. But the kind's second
son Domnall, who was still young, took openly the
part of the Abbot of Iona, who predicted for him
not only a long and glorious reign, but the rare
privilege of dying in his bed, on the condition of re-
ceiving the Holy Communion every eight days, and
of keeping at least one in seven of his promises
2

a
somewhat satirical limit, which betrays either the
old contradictory spirit of the converted Niall, or
the recollection of his own legitimate resentment
against certain princes. His prophecy, extremely
improbable as it was, in a country where all the
1
Adamnan, i. 11, 13.
2
Irish MS. quoted by Reeves,
p.
38.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 207
princes perished on the battle-field or by a violent
death, was nevertheless fulfilled. Domnall, who
was the third successor of his father, following
after two other kings who were destroyed by
their enemies, had a long and prosperous reign
;
he gained numerous victories, marching to battle
under a banner blessed by St Columba, and died,
after an illness of eighteen months, in his bed, or,
as Columba specified, with a precision which marks
the rareness of the occurrence, on his down-bed.
1
His father, although reconciled to Columba, did not
escape the common law. The great abbot bestow-
ed upon him his monastic cowl, promising that it
should always be to him as an impenetrable cuirass.
After this, he never went into battle without put-
ting on his friend s cowl above his armour. But
one day when he had forgotten it, he was killed in
a combat with the King of Lagenia or Leinster.
2
Columba had previously warned him against wag-
ing war with the people of Leinster, which was the
country of his mother, and which he loved with
that impassioned clan or family affection which
is so distinctive a feature in his character. The
Lagenians had not lost the opportunity of working
upon this sentiment : for one day, when he was at
his Abbey of Durrow, upon their boundary, a numer-
ous assembly of all ages, from children to old men,
1
"Super plumatiunculam."

Adamnan, i. 15. Compare c. 10.

2
Lynch, Cambrensis Eversus, with Kelly's notes, 17,
19. O'Dox-
n ell, book i. c. 60.
208 ST COLUMBA,
came to him, and, surrounding him, pleaded with
such animation their kindred with his mother, that
they obtained from him the promise, or prophecy,
that no king should ever be able to overcome them,
so long as they fought for a just cause.
1
He visits
There is no doubt that, after the assembly of
monas- Drumceitt, Columba made many journeys to Ire-
teries.
land. The direction of the various monasteries
which he had founded there before his voluntary
exile, and of which he had kept the government in
his own hands, must have led him often back
;
but
after that assembly, his visits were always made
notable by miracles of healing, prophecy, or revela-
tion, and still more by the tender solicitude of his
paternal heart. Sometimes, towards the decline of
his life, while traversing a hilly or marshy country,
he travelled in a car, as St Patrick had done ; but
the care with which his biographers note this fact,
proves that formerly the greater part of his jour-
neys had been made on foot.
2
He did not limit
himself to communities of which he was the supe-
rior or founder ; he loved to visit other monastic
sanctuaries also, such as that of Clonmacnoise,
whose importance has already been pointed out.
3
And on such occasions the crowding and eagerness
1
"Id prolixe alllicteque allegata cognatione ftagitantes."

O'Donnell,
loc. cit. Compare Reeves,
p.
221.
2
"Per loca aspera et inaquosa. . . . Pergunt sic tota die per loca
aspera, ccenosa et saxosa."

O'Doxnell, book iii. c. 17. Compare

Adamnan, ii. 43.
3
See ante-,
p.
120.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 209
of the monks to pay their homage to the holy and
beloved old man was redoubled; they left their out-
door work, and, crossing the earthen intrenchment,
which, like the vallum of Eoman camps, enclosed
the Celtic monasteries, came to meet him, chanting
hymns. When they came up to him, they prostrated
themselves on the ground at his feet, ere they em-
braced him
;
and in order to shelter him from the
crowd during the solemn processions which were
made in his honour, a rampart of branches was
carried like a dais by four men, who surrounded
him, treading with equal steps.
1
An ancient
author even goes so far as to say, that on the
occasion of his return and prolonged stay in his
native country, he was invested with a sort of
general supremacy over all the religious of Ireland,
both monks and nuns.
2
During the iourney from Durrow to Clonmac-
Vocation of

J J
.
the idiot
noise, Columba made a halt at one of his own
afterwards
known as
monasteries, where a poor little scholar,
"
of thick
st Eman-
speech, and still more heavy aspect," whom his
superiors employed in the meanest services, glided
into the crowd, and, stealthily approaching the
great abbot, touched the end of his robe behind
1
Undique ab agellulis monasterio vicinis . . . congregati . . . egressi
. . . vallum monasterii, unanimes pergunt. . . . Quamdam de lignis
pyramidem erga sanctum deambulantem constringentes . . . ne sanc-
tus senior fratrum multitudinis constipatione molestaretur.
"

Adamxan,
i. 3.
2
Vita S. Farannani Confcssoris, 15th February, c.
3, in Colgax,
Acta SS. Hibemice,
p.
377. This author, who wrote only in the thirteenth
century, cannot be considered of great authority.
VOL. IIL
O
210 ST COLUMBA,
him, as the Canaanitish woman touched the robe of
our Lord. Columba, perceiving it, stopped, turned
round, and, taking the child by the neck, kissed
him. "Away, away, little fool !
"
cried all the spec-
tators.
"
Patience, my brethren/' said Columba :
then turning to the boy, who trembled with fear,
"
My son," he said,
"
open thy mouth, and show
me thy tongue/' The child obeyed, with increas-
ing timidity. The abbot made the sign of the
cross upon his tongue, and added,
"
This child,
who appears to you so contemptible, let no one
henceforward despise him. He shall grow every
day in wisdom and virtue
;
he shall be reckoned
with the greatest among you
;
God will give to
this tongue, which I have just blessed, the gift of
eloquence and true doctrine.
7
'
1
The boy grew to
manhood, and became celebrated in the churches
of Scotland and Ireland, where he was venerated
under the name of St Ernan. He himself told this
prophecy, so well justified by the event, to a con-
1
"
Valde despectus vultu et habitu . . . cervicem pueri tenet, ipsum-
que trahens ante faciem snam statuit. Omnibus dicentibns. . . .
Dirnitte, dimitte, quare hunc infelieem et injuriosum retines puermn.
. . . Sinite, fratres, hunc. ... 0 fili, aperi os et porrige linguam . . .
cum ingenti tremore. ... In hae vestra congregatione grandis est
futurus et lingua ejus salubri et doctrina et eloquentia a Deo donabitur.
Hie erat eminens . . . postea per omnes Scotifle ecelesias famosus et
valde notissimus : qui liaec omnia supra scripta verba Segineo abbati
de se prophetata enarravit, nieo decessore Failbeo intentius audiente
. . . cujus revelatione et ego ipse eognovi hajc eadeni quai enarravi."

ADAMNAN, i. 3. St Ernan died in 635. M. de la Villemarque" has

cited this incident in his LSgende Critique, as a type of the initiation
of the children of barbarians into intellectual life by means of the
monasteries.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 211
temporary of Adamnan, who has preserved all the
details for us.
These journeys, however, were not necessary to Tender cave
prove Columba s solicitude for the monks who filled for his dis-
m
iii i
tant monks
his monasteries. He showed the same care when
and monas-
teries.
distant as when at hand, by the help of that mira-
culous foresight which came to the assistance of
his paternal anxiety in all their spiritual and tem-
poral necessities. One day, after his return from
Ireland, he was heard to stop suddenly short in the
correspondence or transcription in which he had
been engaged in his little cell in Iona, and cry
with all his strength,
"
Help, help !
"
This cry was
addressed to the guardian angel of the community,
and the appeal was made on behalf of a man who
had fallen from the top of the round tower which
was then being built at Durrow, in the centre of
Irelandso great was his confidence in what he
himself called the indescribable and lightning
speed of the flight of angels
;
and greater still
was his trust in their protection.
1
Another time,
at Iona, in a day of chilly fog, such as occurs often
in that sombre climate, he was suddenly seen to
burst into tears. When asked the reason of his dis-
tress, he answered, "Dear son, it is not without
reason that I weep. At this very hour I see my
1
"In tuguriolo suo scribens. . . . Auxiliare, auxiliare. . . . Duo
fratres ad januam sancti . . . causam talis subitae vocis interrogans
. . . Angelo qui nunc inter vo.s stabat, jussi. . . . Valcle mirabilis et
pene indieibilis est angelici volatus pernicitas, fulgure ut sestimo, celeritati
paritas."

Adamxax, iii. 15.

212 ST COLUMBA,
dear monks of Durrow condemned by their abbot
to exhaust themselves in this dreary weather build-
ing the great round tower of the monastery, and
the sight overwhelms me." The same day, and
at the same hour, as was afterwards ascertained,
Laisran, the abbot of Durrow, felt within himself
something like an internal flame, which reawakened
in his heart a sentiment of pity for his monks. He
immediately commanded them to leave their work,
to warm themselves, and take some food, and even
forbade them to resume their building until the
weather had improved. This same Laisran after-
wards came to deserve the name of Consoler of the
Monks, so much had he been imbued by Columba
with that supernatural charity which, in monastic
life, as in every other Christian existence, is at
once a light and a flame, ardens et lucens.
1
Authority Columba not only retained his superior jurisdic-
overthe
c
tion over the monasteries which he had founded
in Ireland, or which had been admitted to the
privileges of his foundations, but he also exercised
a spiritual authority, which it is difficult to ex-
plain, over various laymen of his native island.
1
"
Quanta animi teneritudine . . . et quam mirabili divinitus infiisse
sciential dono . . . non secus ac si oculis pnesentes essent, intucbatur.
"

0'
Donnell, ii. 65. "Quadam brumali et valde frigida die, niagno
molestatus mcerore, flevit. . . . Non immerito, riliole, ego hac in liora
contristor, meos videns monachos quos Laisrannus nunc gravi fatigatos
labore in alicujus majoris donius fabrica molestat . . . eodem momento
home Laisrannus . . . quasi quadam pyra intrinsecus succensus."

ADAMNAN, i. 29. Compare book iii. c. 15 for a similar incident relating

to the same Monastery of Durrow and its round tower. Abbot Laisran
was a near relative of Columba, and became his third successor at Iona.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 213
On one occasion, he is known to have sent his
cousin, friend, and principal disciple to the centre
of Ireland, to Drum-Cuill, to pronounce sentence
of excommunication against a certain family, whose
crime, however, is not specified. This disciple was
Baithen, whom we have seen to be one of Colum-
ba's companions from the moment of his exile, and
who warned his superior against the fumes of
pride, at the time when the bards began to express
their enthusiastic gratitude. The gentle Baithen,
when he had arrived at the appointed place, after
having passed the whole night in prayer under
an oak, said to his companions,
"
No, I will not
excommunicate this family before making sure
that it will not repent. I give it a year's re-
spite, and during the year, the fate of this tree
shall be a warning to it/' Some time after the
tree was struck by lightning ; but we are not in-
formed if the family thus warned was brought to
repentance.
Baithen was a man of tender soul, of Avhom we Baithen,
t n n

-i
i i

p

kis princi-
would lam speak at greater length, it it were not
pal feiiow-
5 ,
&
.
worker.
needful to circumscribe the wide and confused re-
cords of Celtic hagiography. Columba compared
him to St John the Evangelist ; he said that his
beloved disciple resembled him who was the beloved
disciple of Christ, by his exquisite purity, his
penetrating simplicity, and his love of perfection.
1
1
"
Nolo hac vice hanc familiam excommunieare donee sciam an ad
pcenitentiam convertatur, an non. . . . Dicebat quod ... in innocentia
214 ST COLUMRA,
And Columba was not alone in doing justice to
the man who, after having been his chief lieuten-
ant in his work, was to become his first successor.
Testimony One day, in an assembly of learned monks, pro-
to tllG cllil-
meter of
bably held in Ireland, Fintan, a very learned and
both from
anassem-
very wise man,
1
and also one of the twelve com-
bly of
J
men
ied
panions of Columba's exile, was questioned upon
the qualities of Baithen. "Know," he answered,
"
that there is no one on this side of the Alps who
is equal to him in knowledge of the Scriptures, and
in the greatness of his learning."
"
What !
"
said
his questioners

" not even his master, Columba ?

"
"I do not compare the disciple with the master/'
answered Fintan.
"
Columba is not to be com-
pared with philosophers and learned men, but with
patriarchs, prophets, and apostles. The Holy
Ghost reigns in him ; he has been chosen by God
for the good of all. He is a sage among all sages,
a king among kings, an anchorite with anchorites,
a monk of monks ; and in order to bring himself
to the level even of laymen, he knows how to be
sineerissima et in simplicitate prudentissiina, et in disciplina rigoris
perfectorum operum non dissimiles fuerunt."

Act. SS. Bolland., vol. ii.

June, p.
238. Let us add what these Actcs relate of his incessant
fervour in prayer : "Cum iter aliquod faceret aut alioquin alloqueretur
. . . manus suas sub vestimento suo ad orandum Deuin menti alacri in-
terim dirigebat. . . . Inter duas particulas ori appositas, simul inter duo
sorbitiuncula . . . et quod difficilius est, tempore metendi cum manipu-
lum in terra collectum portaret ad cervieem, alterna brachia ad ecelum
extendens, Tonantem interpellabat."

Ibid.,
p.
237.
1
So much so, that the Bollandists suppose this Fintan, described as
films
Lappani in the Acts of St Baithen, to be the same as the Fintan,
films
Audi, of Adamnan, book ii. c. 32. Compare Keeves,
p.
144.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 215
poor of heart among the poor
;
1
thanks to the
apostolic charity which inspires him, he can rejoice
with the joyful, and weep with the unfortunate.
And amid all the gifts which God's generosity has
lavished on him, the true humility of Christ is so
royally rooted in his soul, that it seems to have
been born with him." It is added that all the
learned hearers assented unanimously to this en-
thusiastic eulogium.
1
"
Scitote quod nullus ultra Alpes compar illi in cognitione Scriptu-
rarum divinarurn et in magnitudine sciential reperitur. . . . Numquid
ille sapientior est quara sanctus Columba nutricius illius ? Ille enim non
tarn sapientibus litteratis, sed patriarcliis et prophetis Dei et apostolis
magis comparandus est. . . . Vera humilitas Christi robustissime in eo
regnat, tanquam a natura ei hsereret. . . . Cuin hoc testimonium vir
sanctus in medio sapientum proferret. . . . Ille enim sapiens cum sapien-
tibus, rex cum regibus, anachoreta cum anachoretis, et monachus cum
monacliis . . . et pauper corde cum. pauperibus."

Act. S. Bolland.,
vol. ii. June,
p.
238.
CHAPTER VI.
COLUMBA THE PROTECTOR OF SAILORS AND AGRI-
CULTURISTS, THE FRIEND OF LAYMEN, AND
THE AVENGER OF THE OPPRESSED.
His universal solicitude and charity during all his missionary life.

The sailor-monks : seventy monks of Iona form the crew of the

monastic fleet ; their boats made of osiers covered with hides. Their
boldness at sea : the whirlpool of Corryvreckan.Columba's prayer
protects them against sea-monsters. Their love of solitude leads
them into unknown seas, where they discover St Kilda, Iceland,
and the Faroe Isles. Cormac in Orkney, and in the icy ocean.

Columba often accompanies them : his voyages among the Hebrides.

The wild boar of Skye.-He subdues tempests by his prayer :
he invokes his friend St Kenneth. He is himself invoked dur-
ing life, and after his death, as the arbiter of winds. Filial com-
plaints of the monks when their prayers are not granted. The bene-
fits which he conferred on the agricultural population disentangled
i'rom the maze of fables : Columba discovers fountains, regulates
irrigations and fisheries, shows how to graft fruit-trees, obtains early
harvests, interferes to stop epidemics, cures diseases, and procures
tools for the peasants. His special solicitude for the monkish
labourers : he blesses the milk when it is brought from the cow : his
breath refreshes them on their return from harvest.

The blacksmith
carried to heaven by his alms. His relations with the layman whose
hospitality he claims : prophecy touching the rich miser who shuts
his door upon him. The live cows of his Lochaber host. The
poacher's spear.He pacifies and consoles all whom he meets. His
prophetic threats against the felons and reivers.Punishment in-
flicted upon the assassin of an exile. Brigands of royal blood put
down by Columba at the risk of his life. He enters into the sea up
to his knees to arrest the pirate who had pillaged his friend. The
standard-bearer of Caesar and the old missionary.
ST COLUMBA. 217
During all the rest of his life, which was to pass
Fatherly
solicitude
in his island of Iona, or in the neighbouring
and charity
'
.
the most
districts of Scotland which had been evangelised
a
?
ked
o
features or
by his unwearied zeal, nothing strikes and attracts
^
1
^e
sion
"
the historian so much as the generous ardour of
Columba's charity. The history of his whole life
proves that he was born with a violent and even
vindictive temper
;
but he had succeeded in subdu-
ing and transforming himself to such a point that
he was ready to sacrifice all things to the love of
his neighbour. It is not merely an apostle or a
monastic founder whom we have before usbeyond
and besides this it is a friend, a brother, a benefactor
of men, a brave and untiring defender of the la-
bourer, the feeble, and the poor : it is a man occu-
pied not only with the salvation but also with the
happiness, the rights, and the interests of all his
fellow-creatures, and in whom the instinct of pity
showed itself in a bold and continual interposition
against all oppression and wickedness.
Without losing the imposing and solemn char-
acter which always accompanied his popular fame,
he will now be revealed to us under a still more
touching aspect, through all the long succession of
his apostolic labours, and in the two principal
occupations

agriculture and navigationwhich

gave variety to his missionary life.
For navigation alternated with agriculture in Maritime
the labours of the cenobites of Iona. The same
monks of
Iona.
monks who cultivated the scanty fields of the holy
218 ST COLOIBA.
island, and who reaped and threshed the corn,
accompanied Columba in his voyages to the neigh-
bouring isles, and followed the sailor's trade, then,
it would seem, more general than now among the
Irish race.
1
Communication was then frequent,
not only between Ireland and Great Britain, but
between Ireland and Gaul. We have already
seen in the port of Nantes an Irish boat ready
to carry away the founder of Luxeuil.
2
The Gaul-
ish merchants came to sell or offer their wines as
far as to the centre of the island, to the Abbey
of Clonmacnoise.
3
In the life of our saint, sea-
faring populations
4
are constantly spoken of as
surrounding him, and receiving his continual visits
;
and exercises and excursions are also mentioned,
which associate his disciples with all the incidents
of a seafaring life. As a proof of this we quote
four lines, in very ancient Irish, which may be thus
translated
:

"
Honour to the soldiers who live at Iona
;
There are three times fifty under the monastic rule,
Seventy of whom are appointed to row,
And cross the sea in their leathern harks."
1
"Lugbeus quaJam ad Sanctum die post frugum veniens tritura-
tionem. . . . Idem simul cum sancto viro ad Caput Regionis {Caniyrc)
pergens, nauclerum et nautas adventantis bareae interrogans."

Adamnan, i. 28.
2
Vol. ii.
p.
427.
"
Navis qua; Scotorum commercia vexerat," says
the biography of St Columbanus.
a
Vita S. Kiarani, c. 31, cited by Reeves,
p.
57.
4
"
Nautae, navigatores, remiges, nautici."
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 210
These boats were sometimes hollowed out of the
Boats of
trunks of trees, like those which are still found edwith
buried in the bogs or turf-mosses of Ireland ; but
most generally they were made of osier, and covered
with buffalo-skins, like those described by Caesar.
1
Their size was estimated by the number of skins
which had been used to cover them. They were
generally small, and those made of one or two
skins were portable. The abbot of Iona had one
of this description for the inland waters when he
travelled beyond the northern hills (dorsum Bri-
tannice), which he crossed so often to preach among
the Picts.
2
At a later period the community
possessed many of a much larger size, to convey
the materials for the reconstruction of the primitive
monastery at Iona, and the timber which the sons
of Columba cut down and fashioned in the vast
1
"Corpus naviuni viminibus contextum coriis integebatur."

Belt.
Civil., i. 54.
"
Prinium cana salix, niadefacto viminn, parvam
Texitur in puppim csesoque iucluta juvenco."
Lucan., iv.
These boats were called in Celtic Curach, from which comes curruca
or currica in monkish Latin. These osier canoes are still in use, under
the name of coracle, in the Welsh seaports. They are composed of a
light construction of willow lathes, covered either with skin or with
tarpaulin. After their day's work the fishers put the coracle to dry
;
and, taking it on their backs, carry it to their cottage door. This has
been seen by M. Alphonse Esquiros at Caermarthen.

Revue cles Deux

Mondes, 15th February 1865.
2
"
Mitte te in navim unius pellis. . . . Carabum ex duobus tantum
coriis et demidio factum. . . . Nunc, nunc celerius nostram quam ultra
rivuni naviculam posuistis in domum, hue citius advehite, et in viciniore
domuncula ponite."

Adamnan, i. 34.
220 ST COLUMBA,
oak forests which then covered the whole coun-
try, now so sadly deprived of wood. They went
like galleys, with sail or oar, and were furnished
with masts and rigging like modern boats. The
holy island had at last an entire fleet at its
disposal, manned and navigated by the monks.
1
Their bold-
In these frail skiffs Columba and his monks
ness at sea.
ploughed the dangerous and stormy sea which dashes
on the coasts of Scotland and Ireland, and pene-
trated boldly into the numberless gulfs and straits
of the sombre Hebridean archipelago. They knew
the perils to which their insular existence exposed
them ; but they braved those dangers without fear,
accustomed as they were to live in the midst of
storms,
2
upon an isle which the great waves of ocean
1
This passage of Adamnan is very important for the history of the
primitive Celtic navigation.
"
Cum dolatae per terram pineaj et roboreoe
trahereutur longai trabes et magnce navium paritcr et domus materia:
eveherentur. . . . Ea die qua nostri nautse, omnibus proeparatis, supra
memoratarum ligna materiarum proponunt scaphis per mare et curucis
trahere. . . . Per longas et obligas vias tota die properis rlatibus, Deo
propitio famulantibus, et plenis sine ulla retardatione velis, ad Ionam
insulam omnis ilia navalis emigratio prospere evenit.'' ii. 45. The words
in Italics are the text given by the Bollandists [Acta Sanctorum,
Junii,
vol. ix.
p.
275),
which seems to us preferable to that of the MS. followed
by Dr Reeves. There is here question of three kinds of boats : naves,
scapJm, and curucai; and it is evident that there must have been a workshop
on the island for the building of the larger vessels, because great logs of
wood were carried there destined to be employed in the building of boats
as well as for the monastic buildings. In another passage (Adamnan,
ii.
35),
a transport boat, oneraria navis, is spoken of, manned by
monks, and laden with osiers which the abbot Columba had sent for
to a neighbouring property :
"
Virgarum fasciculos ad hospitinm con-
struenduni."
2
"Die fragosic tempestatis et intolcrabilis undarum magnitudinis. . . .
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 221
threatened continually to swallow up. Not less The whM-
alarming was their position when the winds carried
Corry-

>
vreckan.
them towards the terrible whirlpool, named after a
prince of the Mall family, who had been drowned
there, the Caldron of Brechan, and which there
was always a risk of being driven upon while cross-
ing from Ireland to Scotland. The winds, when
blowing from certain directions, hollow out in their
whirl such terrible abysses about this spot, that
even to our own time it has continued the terror
of sailors. The holiest of Columba's guests passed
it by with trembling, raising their hands towards
heaven to implore the miracle which alone could
save them.
1
But he himself, who one day was
Quis, ait (sanctus), hac die valde ventosa et nimis periculosa, licet breve,
fretum prospere transnavigare potest
? "

Adamnan, i. 4. This recalls

the lines of the poet

"Quid rigor seternus coeli, quid frigora possunt,

Ignotumque fretum ?
"
Claudian, in Consulat. III. Honor., v. 54.
1
"Nunc in undosis Charybdis Brecani restibus valde periclitatnr, am-
basque ad ccelurn, in prora sedeiis, palmas elevat."

Adamnan, i. 5.
"
Est vorago periculosissiraa marina, in qua, si qua navis intrat, non
evadit."

Vita Sancti Kiarani, apud Reeves, 263. Compare Giraldus

Cambkensis, Topogr. Hibernice, ii. 41. Walter Scott has not omitted
this spot in his poetical itinerary

"
I would
That your eye could see the mood
Of Corryvreckan's whirlpool rude,
When dons the Hag her whitened hood. . . .
And Scarha's isle, whose tortured shore
Still rings to Corryvreckan's roar."
It must be remarked that as the name of Scotia has been transferred
from Ireland to Scotland, the name of the abyss so feared by the sailors
of Iona has also been transferred to the whirlpool whicli tourists see in the
distance between the isles of Scarba and Iona, in the much-frequented
route from Oban to Glasgow.
222 ST COLUMBA,
almost swallowed up in it, and whose mind was
continually preoccupied by the recollection of his
kindred, imagined that he saw in this whirlpool a
symbol of the torments endured in purgatory by
the soul of his relative who had perished at that
spot, and of the duty of praying for the repose of
that soul at the same time as he prayed for the
safety of the companions of his voyage.
1
Coiumba's Columba's prayers, his special and ardently de-
prayers
protect
sired blessing, and his constant and passionate in-
them
. .
against the
tercession for his brethren and disciples, were the
sea-mon-
1
sters.
grand safeguard of the navigators of Iona, not only
against wind and shipwrecks, but against other
dangers which have now disappeared from these
coasts. Great fishes of the cetaceous order swarmed
at that time in the Hebridean sea. The sharks
ascended even into the Highland rivers, and one of
the companions of Columba, swimming across the
Ness, was saved only by the prayer of the saint, at
the moment when he was but an oar's length from
the odious monster, which had before swallowed one
of the natives.
2
The entire crew of a boat manned
by monks took fright and turned back one day on
meeting a whale, or perhaps only a, shark more
formidable than its neighbours ; but on another
occasion, the same Baithen who was the friend and
1
"
Ilia sunt ossa Brecani oognati nostri, quae voluit Christus ita nobis
ostendi, ut pro defuncti refrigerio, ac pro nostro a praesenti periculo liber-
atione simul apud Dominum mtercedamus.
"

O'Donnell, ii. 21, apud

Colgan,
p.
434.
2
Adam nan, ii. 27.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 223
successor of Columba, encouraged by the holy abbot's
blessing, had more courage, continued his course,
and saw the monster bury itself in the waves.
"
After all," said the monk,
"
we are both in the
hands of God, both this monster and I."
1
Other
monks, sailing in the high northern sea, were panic-
struck by the appearance of hosts of unknown shell-
fish, who, attaching themselves to the oars and sides
of the boat, made holes in the hide with which the
framework was covered.
2
It was neither curiosity nor love of gain, nor
The love of
n
, , . , solitude
even a desire to convert the pagans, which stimu- sends them
lated Columba's disciples to dare all the clangers of
known seas,
navigation in one of the most perilous seas of the
world ; it was the longing for solitude, the irresist-
ible wish to find a more distant retreat, an asylum
1
"Ecce cetus mirse et immensre magnitudinis, se instar montis erigens,
ora aperuit patula nimis dentosa. . . . Remiges, deposito velo, valde per-
territi . . . illam obortam ex belluino motu fluctuationem vix evadere
potuerunt. . . . Cui Baitheneus : Ego et ilia bellua sub Dei potestate
sumus. . . . vEquor et eetum, ambabus manibus elevatis, benedicit in-
trepidus. . . . Bellua magna se sub fluctu immergens . . . nusquam
apparuit."

Adamnan, i. 19. Up to the eighteenth century whales

frequented these parts, and they have been seen to capsize fishing-boats.

Martin's Western Islands,

p.
5. The whales have disappeared, as have
also the seals, which as late as 1703 supplied food to the Hebridean
islands. The Monastery of Iona kept a flock of them in a neighbouring
island: "Parvam insulam ubi marini nostri juris vituli generantur et
generant." A robber attempted to take them away, but sheep were
given up to him in preference.

Adamnan, i. 42.
2
"Quyedam, usque in id temporis invisse mare obtegentes occurrerant
tetra? et infestse nimis bestiolse qua? horribili impetu carinam et latera,
puppimque et proram ita forti ferebant percussura, ut pelliceum tectum
navis penetrale putarentur penetrare posse. Prope ranarum magnitudi-
nem aculeis permolestre, non volatiles, sed natatiles, sed et remorum pal-
mulas infestabant."

Adamnan, ii. 42.

224 ST COLUMBA,
still furtlier off than that of Iona, upon some un-
known rock amid the loneliness of the sea, where no
one could join them, and from which theynever could
be brought back. They returned to Iona without
having discovered what they were in search of, sad
yet not discouraged ; and after an interval of rest
always took to sea again, to begin once more their
Discovery anxious search.
1
It was thus that the steep and
the Faroe
' almost inaccessible island of St Kilda,
2
made famous
Isles, and
Iceland.
\)j
the daring of its bird-hunters, was first discover-
ed
;
then far to the north of the Hebrides and even
of the Orcades, they reached the Shetland Isles, and
even, according to some, Iceland itself, which is only
at the distance of a six days' voyage from Ireland,
and where the first Christian church bore the name
of St Columba. Another of their discoveries was
the Faroe Islands, where the Norwegians at a later
date found traces of the sojourn of the Irish monks,
1
"
Desertum in pelago intransmeabili invenire optantes." Adamnax,
ii. 42.
"
Baitheneus . . . benedici a sancto petivit cum ceteris, in
mari eremum qusesiturus, post longos per ventosa circuitus requora, eremo
non reperto, in patriam reversus."

Ibid., i. 20.
2
Several religious buildings of a very early date, and a church dedi-
cated to St Columba, were to be found in St Kilda as late as 1758. The
inhabitants of the island, though Calvinists, still celebrated the saint's
day by carrying all the milk of their dairies to the governor or farmer of
the isle, which belonged then to a chief of the clan Macleod. This farmer
distributed it in equal portions to every man, woman, and child in the
island. See History
of
St Kilda, by Kenneth Macaulay. This islet,
which is the most western spot in Europe, is celebrated for the exploits
of the bird-catchers, who are suspended by long cords over perpendicu-
lar cliffs. It has scarcely eighty inhabitants. The site of the chapel
called that of Columba is still shown, with a cemetery and some medi-
cinal and consecrated springs. St Columba's day is still observed by
the people.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 225
Celtic books, crosses, and bells.
1
Cormac, the bold-
est of these bold explorers, made three long, laborious
and dangerous voyages with the hope, always dis-
appointed, of finding the wilderness of which he
dreamed. The first time on landing at Orkney he
Cormac at
&
/
the Ork-
escaped death, with which the savage inhabitants
lie
.
vs-
of that archipelago threatened all strangers, only by
means of the recommendations which Columba had
procured from the Pictish king, himself converted,
to the still pagan king of the northern islanders.
2
On another occasion the south wind drove him for
fourteen successive days and nights almost into the
depths of the icy ocean, far beyond anything that
the imagination of man had dreamed of in those
days.
3
1
Landnamabok, ap. Antiq. Cclto-Scand.,
p.
14. Dicuil, who wrote in
795, states that a hundred years before the Faroe Islands had been inhab-
ited by "eremitce ex nostra Scotia navigantes.''Ed. Letronne,
p.
39.
Compare Ixxes, Scotland in
the Middle Ages,
p.
101, and Laxigax,
Eccles. History
of
Ireland, c.
3, p.
225, where the question of the first
discovery of Iceland is thoroughly investigated.
2
"
Brudeo regi, pryesenti Orcadum regulo, commendavit dicens : Ali-
qui ex nostris nuper emigraverunt, desertum in pelago intransmeabili
invenire optantes, qui si forte post longos circuitus Orcades devenerunt
insulas, huic regulo cujus obsides in manu tua sunt, diligenter commenda
. . . et propter supradictam S. viri commendationem, de morte in
Orcadibus liberatus est vicina."

Adamxax, ii. 42. This passage will

recall that of Ariosto, where he places in the Hebrides the scene of Olym-
piad deliverance by Roland, and attributes to the inhabitants of these
islands the habit of exposing their women to sea monsters
:

"Per distillgger quell' isola d'Ebuda

Che di quante il mar cinge e la piu cruda.
Voi dovete saper eh'oltre l'lrlanda,
Fra molte, che vi son, l'isola giace
Nomata Ebuda, che per legge manda
Rubando intorno il suo popol rapace.
"
Orlando Furioso, ix. 11-12.
"
Cormacus, qui tribus non minus vicibus eremum in Oceano laboriose
VOL. III. P
226
ST COLUMBA.
Columba, the father and head of those bold and
pious mariners, followed and guided them by his ever
vigilant and prevailing prayers. He was in some
respects present with them, notwithstanding the
distance which separated them from the sanctuary
and from the island harbours which they had left.
Prayer gave him an intuitive knowledge of the
dangers they ran. He saw them, he suffered and
trembled for them ; and immediately assembling
the brethren who remained in the monastery by the
sound of the bell, offered for them the prayers of the
community. He implored the Lord with tears to
grant the change of wind which was necessary for
those at sea, and did not rise from his knees until
he had a certainty that his prayers were granted.
This happened often, and the saved monks, on
returning from their dangerous voyages, hastened
to him to thank and bless him for his prophetic
and beneficent aid.
1
Often he himself accompanied them in their voy-
quaesivit, nec tamen invenit."

Adamnax, i. 6.
"
Fostquam a terris
per infinitum Oceanum plenis enavigavit velis . . . usque ad mortem
periclitari ccepit. Nam cum ejus navis a terris per quatuordeeim a>stivi
temporis dies, totidemque noctes, plenis velis, austro fiante vento, ad sep-
tentrionalis plagam cadi directo excurreret cnrsu, ejusmodi navigatio
ultra humani excursus modum et irremeabilis videbatur."

Ibid., ii. 42.

1
"
Eadem liora et sanctus noster, quamlibet longe absens corpore, spir-
itu tamen prisons in navi cum Cormaco erat. Unde . . . personante
signo fratres ad orationem convocant. . . . Ecce enim nunc Cormacus
cum suis nautis. . . . Christum intentius precatur : et nos ipsum orando
adjuvemus. . . . Et post orationem cito surgit, et abstergens lacrymas
. . . quia Dominus austrum nunc in aquilonarem convertit flatum, nos-
tros de periculis commembrcs retrahentem, quos hie ad nos iterum
reducat."

Adamnan, ii. 42.

THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 227
ages of circumnavigation or exploration, and paid His voy-
ages and
many visits to the isles of the Hebridean archipelago
visits to the
J
.
otner He-
discovered or frequented by the sailors of his
com-j^dean
munity, and where cells or little "colonies from the
great island monastery seem to have existed. This
was specially the case at Eigg, where a colony of
fifty-two monks, founded and ruled by a disciple of
the abbot of Iona, were killed by pirates twenty
years after his death.
1
This was a favourite spot
which he loved to visit, no doubt to enjoy the
solitude which was no longer to be found at Iona.
where the crowds of penitents, pilgrims, and peti-
tioners increased from day to day. And he took
special pleasure also in Skye, the largest of the
Hebridean isles, which, after the lapse of twelve
centuries, was recalled to the attention of the
world by the dangerous and romantic adventures
1
The tragedy of Eigg, which took place in 617, deserves special men-
tion. According to Irish annals, St Donnan, the founder of the com-
munity, was the friend and disciple of Columba . Desirous of finding a
more solitary retreat, he established himself with some companions in the
island of Eigg, which was then inhabited only by the sheep of the queen
of the country (many of the islets near Staffa are at present used as pasture)
.
The queen, informed of this invasion of her territory, commanded that all
should be killed. When the murderers arrived on the island it was the
eve of Easter, and mass was being said. Donnan begged them to wait until
mass was over. They consented, and when the service was at an end the
monks gave themselves up to the sword. According to another version
the queen or lady of the soil sent pirates (latrones) to kill them. They
were surprised singing psalms in their oratory, from whence they went
into the refectory, in order that they might die where the most carnal
moments of their life had been passed. There were fifty-two of them.
This is the version given by the Bollandists, vol. ii. April,
p.
487. As if
by the special blessing of these martyrs, this isle was still Catholic in
1703, and St Donnan was venerated. Martin's Journey to the Western
Islands,
p.
279.
228
ST COLUMBA,
of Prince
Charles-Edward and Flora Macdonald.
It was then scarcely inhabited, though very large
and covered by forests, in which he could bury
himself and pray, leaving even his brethren far
The wild behind him. One day he met an immense wild boar
boar of
skye.
pursued by dogs ; with a single word he killed the
ferocious brute, instead of protecting it, as in similar
cases the saints of the Merovingian legends were so
ready to do.
1
He continued during all the middle
ages the patron of Skye, where a little lake still
bears his name, as well as several spots, and monu-
ments in the neighbouring isles.
2
while sail-
Storms often disturbed these excursions by sea,
ing with
his monks
and then Columba showed himself as laborious and
he stills the
storms by
hold as the most tried of his monastic mariners.
prayer.
When all were engaged in rowing, he would not
remain idle, but rowed with them.
3
We have seen
him brave the frequent storms of the narrow and
1
"Cum in Scia insula aliquantis demoraretur diebus, paulo longius
solus, orationis intuitu, separatus a fratribus, silvam ingressus. . . .
Venatici canes. . . . Ulterius hue procedere noles : in loco ad quern de-
venisti morere."

AdAMNAN, ii. 26.

2
This lake has been drained by Lord Macdonald, the present proprietor
of the island. The memory and name of Columba are distinctly to be
found at Eilea Naombh, where a well which he had hollowed in the
rock, and the tomb of his mother Eithne, are still shown
;
and also at
Tiree, so often mentioned by Adamnan under the name of Terra Ethice.
In all the bleak islands of the western coast of Scotland, and especially of
the district of Lorn (Argyllshire), there are sculptured crosses of curious
and varied forms, tombstones, ruined chapels, buildings of coarse con-
struction and singular shape, Druidica] stones, and churches more or less
ancient, almost always dedicated to Columba. These are carefully de-
scribed in a small volume with engravings, which has been published
anonymously by Thomas Muir, a Leith merchant, entitled The Western
Islands; Edinburgh, 1861.
3
Vita S. C&mgelli, ap. Colgan,
p.
458.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 229
dangerous lakes in the north of Scotland.
1
At sea
he retained the same courageous composure in the
most tempestuous weather, and took part in all the
sailors' toils. During the voyage which he made
from Iona to Ireland, to attend with King Aidan
the parliament of Drumceitt, his vessel was in great
danger : the waves dashed into the boat till it was
full of water, and Columba took his part with the
sailors in baling it out. But his companions stop-
ped him. "What you are doing at present is of
little service to us," they said to him ;
"
you would
do better to pray for those who are about to
perish." He did so, and the sea grew calm from
the moment when, mounting on the prow, he raised
his arms in prayer.
With these examples before them, his com-
panions naturally appealed to his intercession
whenever storms arose during any of his voyages.
On one occasion he answered them,
"
It is not
my turn
;
it is the holy abbot Kenneth who must
pray for us." Kenneth was the abbot of a mon-
astery in Ireland, and a friend of Columba's who
came often to Iona to visit him. At the very
same hour he heard the voice of his friend echo
in his heart, and, warned by an internal voice, left
the refectory where he was, and hastened to the
church to pray for the shipwrecked, crying, "We
have something else to do than to dine when Co-
lumba is in danger of perishing at sea." He did
1
See mite, page 178.
230 ST COLUMBA,
not even take the time to put on both his shoes
before he went to the church, for which he received
the special thanks of his friend at Iona
;
1
an inci-
dent which recalls another Celtic legendthat of
the bishop St Paternus, who obeyed the call of his
metropolitan with a boot upon one foot only.'
2
He is iii- . Under all these legendary digressions it is evi-
everywhere
dent that the monastic apostle of Caledonia, apart
as the mas-
ter of the
from the prevailing efficacy of his prayers, had
made an attentive study of the winds and of all
the phenomena of nature which affected the lives
of the insular and maritime people whom he sought
to lead into Christianity. A hundred different
narratives represent him to us as the Eolus of those
fabulous times and dangerous seas. He Avas con-
tinually entreated to grant a favourable wind for
such or such an expedition ; it even happened one
day that two of his monks, on the eve of setting
1
"
In mari periclitari ccepit ; totum namque vas navis, yalde concus-
surn, magnis undarum cunmlis fortiter ferebatur. STautse turn forte
sancto sentinam cum illis exhaurire conanti aiunt : Quod nunc agis non
magnopere nobis proficit periclitantibus, exorare potins debes pro pereunti-
bus. Et intentans preceni . . . aquam cessat amaram exinanire . . . dul-
cera fimdere ccepit. Ssevanimis insistente et periculosa tempestate : Hue
in die non est meum pro vobis in periculo orare, sed est abbatis Cainnachi
sancti viri. . . . Spiritu revelante sancto, supradictam sancti ("olumbic
interiore cordis aure vocem audiens. . . . Non est tempus prandere
piando in mari perielitatur navis sancti Columbse. . . . Nunc valde
nobis proficit tuns ad ecclesiam velox cum uno calceamento cursus.
"

Adamnan, ii. 12, 13.

2
Vol. ii.
p.
273. Cainnach or Kenneth, a saint very popular in Scot-
land, whose name lias been borne by several Scottish kings, was abbot of
Aghaboe, in the diocese of Ossory. Born about 517, he died in 600, and
left his name to the neighbouring islet of Inch-Kenneth, near Iona,
which was visited by Johnson
.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 231
out in two different directions, came to him to ask,
the one a north wind, and the other a south wind.
He granted the prayer of both, but by delaying the
departure of the one who was going to Ireland
until after the arrival of the other, who went only
to the neighbouring isle of Tiree.
1
Thus it happened that from far and near Co-
lumba was invoked or feared by the sailors as the
master of all the winds that blew. Libran of the
Rushes, the generous penitent whose curious history
has been already recorded, wishing to return from
Ireland to Iona, was turned back by the crew of
the boat which was leaving the port of Derry for
Scotland, because he was not a member of the
community of Iona. Upon which the disappointed
traveller mentally invoked across the sea the help
of his absent friend. The wind immediately
changed, and the boat was driven back to land.
The sailors saw poor Libran still lingering upon
the shore, and called to him from the deck,
"
Per-
haps it is because of thee that the wind has
changed ; if we take thee with us, art thou dis-
posed to make it once more favourable?" "Yes,"
said the monk ;
"
the holy abbot Columba, who
imposed upon me seven years of penitence, whom
I have obeyed, and to whom I wish to return, will
obtain that grace for you." And the result was
1
"
Simul unanimes postulant ut ipse a Domino postulans impetraret
prosperum crastina die ventum sibi dari diversa emigraturis via."

Adamnax, ii. 15.

232 ST COLUMBA,
that he was taken on board, and the journey was
happily accomplished.
1
These events took place in his lifetime ; but
during at least a century after his death he re-
mained the patron, always popular and propitious,
of sailors in danger. A tone of familiar confidence,
and sometimes of filial objurgation, may be re-
marked in their prayers, such as may be found
among the Celts of Armorica and the Catholic
nations of the south of Europe. Adamnan con-
fesses that he himself and some other monks of
Iona, embarked in a flotilla of a dozen boats
charged with oaken beams for the reconstruction of
the monastery, were so detained by contrary winds
in a neighbouring island, that they took to accusing
their Columba.
"
Dear saint," they said to him,
"
what dost thou think of this delay ? We thought
up to this moment that thou hadst great favour
with God." Another time, when they were de-
tained by the same cause in a bay near the district
of Lorn, precisely on the vigil of St Columba's day,
they said to him,
"
How canst thou leave us to pass
thy feast to-morrow among laymen, and not in thine
own church ? It would be so easy for thee to ob-
tain from the Lord that this contrary wind should
1
"Clamitans de litore rogitat ut ipsum naut;e cum eis suseiperent navi-
gaturum ad Britaimiain. Scd ipsi refutaverunt eum, quia non erat de
monachis sancti Columba.'. . . . Videntes virum . . . secus flumen
cursitantem ... ad ipsum de navi elamitautes. . . . Qui statim, rate
ascensa : In nomine Omnipotentis, ait, cui sanctus Columba inculpabili-
ter servit, tensis mdentibus, levate velum."-

Adamnan, ii. 39.

THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 233
become favourable, and permit us to sing mass in
thy church I" On these two occasions their desires
were granted
;
the wind changed suddenly, and
permitted them to get to sea and make their way
to Iona in those frail boats whose spars, crossing
upon the mast, formed the august symbol of re-
demption. More than a hundred witnesses of these
facts were still living when the biographer of our
saint wrote his history.
1
This tender and vigilant charity, which lent it-
self to all the incidents of a sailor's and traveller's
life, becomes still more strongly apparent during all
the phases of his existence, in his relations with the
agricultural population, whether of Ireland, which
was his cradle, or of his adopted country Caledo-
nia, Amid the fabulous legends and apocryphal
and childish miracles with which Irish historians
have filled out the glorious story of the great mis-
sionary,
2
it is pleasant to be able to discover the
1 '
' Quodam modo quasi accusare nostrum Columbam coepimus. . . .
Placetne tibi, sancte, hrec nobis adversa retardatio ? hue usque a te, Deo
propitio, aliquod nostrorum laborum speravimus consolationum adjumen-
tum, te pestimantes alicujus esse grandis apud Deum honoris. . . .
Placetne tibi, sancte, crastinam tuse festivitatis inter plebeios et non in
tua ecclesia transigere diem ? . . . tui natalis missarum solemnia cele-
bremus. . . . Proinde orantes nautse vela subrigunt . . . turn nautaj
antennas, crucis instar, et vela protensis sublevans rudentibus, prosperis
et lenibus ventis eadera die appetentes insulam."

Adamnax, ii. 45.

2
The pious Franciscan Colgan, who has included in his collection of
Acta Sanctorum Hibemiaz (unhappily incomplete) so many fables, has,
notwithstanding, omitted a crowd of incredible narratives which his pre-
decessors had adopted.
"
Nonnulla . . . tanquam ex monurnentis vel
apocryphis, vel ex remni forte vere gestorum nimia exaggeratione speciem
fabula? pneferentibus, consulte omittenda duximus. . . . Quia nobis ap-
parent vel exegetum vel librariorum (qui miris mirabiliora immiscuerunt)
234 ST COLUMBA.
Benefits
unmistakable evidence of his intelligent and fruitful
conferred
. ,
uponagri-
solicitude for the necessities, the labours, and the
cultunsts.
sufferings of the inhabitants of the rural districts,
and his active intervention on their behalf. When
the legend tells us how, with one stroke of his crosier,
he made fountains of sweet waters spring in a hun-
dred different corners of Ireland or Scotland, in
arid and rocky districts, such as that of the penin-
sula of Ardnamurchan when it shows him lower-
ing, by his prayers, the cataracts of a river so that
the salmon could ascend in the fishing season, as
they have always done since, to the great bene-
fit of the dwellers by the stream,
2
we recognise in
licentiis et commentis ita essa depravata ut solum fabularum speciem
pneferant."Trias Thawmaturga, p.
441. The Bollandists protested
with still greater energy, and repeatedly, against the fables which they,
nevertheless, thought themselves obliged to reproduce.
"
Vitse hujus
auctor aliquid habere videtur de genio Hibernico, cui solet esse perquam
f'amiliare, ambulare in mirabilibus, in rebus, inquam, supra fidem prodi-
giosis, ne dicam portentosis.
"
Vol. iii. August,
p.
658. Compare the
same volume,
p.
742, and vol. ii. July,
p.
241 and 299.
1 "
Tergemino pedi in terrain ictu, tergeminos fontes erumpere fecit."

O'Donnell, book i. c. 86
;
Adamnan, i. 12, ii. 10.
2
"
Columba ratus earn fluminis sterilitatem a pnedicta cataracta deri-
vari, et in commune vergere accolarum dominorumque ejus ditionis
damnum, fluvium benedixit, rapique in Christi nomine jussit tantum
subsidere quantum opus esset ut pisces ultro citroque libere commearent.
Paruit confestim sancti viri imperio pra'fracta rupes et . . . facta est
demissior, ut exinde et confluentium illuc piscium, praesertim vero sal-
monum (quorum et frequentissima et copiosissima ab eo tempore per
universum fluvium fit captura) ascensui non obsistat, et nihilominus sub-
jecto vertici adeo promineat, ut videatur a naturalibus contra impetuose
mentis fiuvii ictum, magis sancti viri merito, quam innata agilitate con-
scendi."

O'Donnell, Vita Quintet, book ii. c.

92."
The river here spoken
of is the Erne, a river of Ulster, which throws itself into the sea after
having crossed the two great lakes called Lough Erne. In recollection of
this benefit the historian tells us that all the produce of the fisheries on
St Columba's day was left for the coarb that is to say, for the abbot,
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 235
the tale the most touching expression of popular
and national gratitude for the services which the
great monk rendered to the country, by teaching
the peasants to search for the fountains, to regulate
the irrigations, and to rectify the course of the
rivers, as so many other holy monks have done in
all European lands.
It is equally apparent that he had with zeal
and success established the system of grafting
and the culture of fruit-trees, when we read the
legend which represents him to us, at the begin-
ning of his monastic career in Durrow, the most
ancient of his foundations, approaching, in autumn,
a tree covered with sour and unwholesome fruit, to
bless it, and saying,
"
In the name of Almighty
God, let thy bitterness leave thee, 0 bitter tree,
and let thy apples be henceforward as sweet as up
to this time they have been sour !
991
At other times
he is said to have obtained for his friends quick
and abundant harvests, enabling them, for example,
to cut barley in August which they had sown in
who held the first rank among the successors of the saint in the monas-
teries he had founded.
1
"
Quredam arbor valde pomosa . . . de qua cum incorse loci quodda
haberent pro nimia fructus amaritudine querimonium. . . . Vident lignum
incassum abundos habere fructus qui ex eis gnstantes plus lsederent
quam delectarent. ... In nomine omnipotentis Dei, omnis tua amari-
tudo, o arbor amara, a te recedat ; tua hue usque amarissima nunc in
dulcissima vertantur poma. . . . Dicto citius eodemque momento, omnia
poma . . . in miram versa sunt dulcedinem."

Aijamxax, ii. 2.
"
Ar-
borem plenam fructu qui erat hominibus inutilis prse nimia amaritudine,"
it is said in a similar legend told of another Irish saint. Mochoenoroc.

Ap. Colgan, Acta Sanctorum Hibernian,

p. 592.
236
ST COLUMBA,
Junea thing which then seemed a miracle, but
is not without parallel in Scotland at the present
time.
1
Thus almost invariably the recollection of
a service rendered, or of a benefit asked or spon-
taneously conferred, weds itself in the legend to the
story of miracles and outbursts of wonder-working
prayerwhich, in most cases, were for the benefit
of the cultivators of the soil : it is evident that he
studied their necessities and followed their vicissi-
tudes with untiring sympathy.
His zeal In the same spirit he studied and sought reme-
epidemics,
dies for the infectious diseases which threatened
life, or which made ravages among the cattle of the
country. Seated one day upon a hillock in his
island, he said to the monk who was with him, and
who belonged to the Dalriadian colony,
"
Look at
that thick and rainy cloud which comes from the
north ; it has within it the germs of a deadly sick-
ness
;
it is about to fall upon a large district of our
Ireland, bringing ulcers and sores upon the body
of man and beast. We must have pity on our
brethren. Quick, let us go down, and to-morrow
thou shalt embark and go to their aid." The monk
obeyed, and, furnished with bread which Columba
had blessed, he went over all the district smitten
by the pestilence, distributing to the first sick per-
sons he met, water, in which the bread blessed
by the exiled abbot, who concerned himself so
anxiously about the lot of his countrymen, had
1
New Statistical Account, cited by Beeves,
p.
459.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 237
been steeped. The remedy worked so well, that
from all parts both men and beasts crowded round
the messenger of Iona, and the praises of Christ
and his servant Columba resounded far and wide.
1
Thus we see the saint continually on the watch
for those evils, losses, and accidents which struck the
families or nations specially interesting to him, and
which were revealed to him either by a supernatural
intuition or by some plaintive appeal. Sometimes
Ave find him sending the blessed bread, which was
his favourite remedy, to a holy girl who had broken
her leg in returning from mass ; sometimes curing
others of ophthalmia by means of salt also blessed
;
everywhere on his evangelical journeys, or other
expeditions, we are witnesses of his desire, and the
pains he took, to heal all the sick that were brought
to him, or who awaited him on the roadside, eager,
like the little idiot of Clonmacnoise, to touch the
border of his robean accompaniment which had
followed him during the whole course of his journey
to the national assembly of Drumceitt.
2
1
"
Hsec nubes valde nocua hominibus et pecoribus erit . . . velocius
transvolans super Scotia? portum . . . ptirulenta humanis in corporibus
et in pecorum uberibus nasci faciet ulcera. . . . Sed nos eorum miserati
subvenire languoribus, Domino miserante, debemus. Tu ergo, nunc
inecum descendens, navigationem praepara crastina die. . . . Cujus
rumor per totam illam morbo pestilentiore vastatam regionem cito divul-
gates, omnem morbidum ad sancti Columba? legatum invitavit populum
. . . homines cum pecudibus salvati Christum in sancto Columba lauda-
runt."Adamnan, ii. 7.
2
"
Maugina, sancta virgo . . . ab oratorio post missam domum reversa
titubavit. . . . Sorori et sua? nutrici profecturam quae ophthalmiae labo-
rabat valde gravi labore. . . . Diversoram languores infirmorum invocato
Christi nomine, sanavit ... ad regum pergens condictum in Dorsi Cete.
238 ST COLUMBA,
His entire life bears the mark of his ardent sym-
pathy for the labourers in the fields. From the
time of his early travels as a young man in Ireland,
when he furnished the ploughmen with ploughshares,
and had the young men trained to the trade of
blacksmith,
1
up to the days of his old age, when he
could only follow far off the labour of his monks,
his paternal tenderness never ceased to exercise on
their account its salutary and beneficent influence.
Seated in the little wooden hut which answered the
purpose of a cell, he interrupted his studies, and
put down his pen, to bless the monks as they came
back from the fields, the pastures, or the barns.
The younger brethren, after having milked the
cows of the community, knelt down, with their
pails full of new milk, to receive from a distance
the abbot's blessing, sometimes accompanied by an
The reapers exhortation useful to their souls.
2
During one of
perfumed
the last summers of his life, the monks, returning
and re-
freshed by
in the evening from reaping the scanty harvest of
their island, stopped short as they approached the
monastery, suddenly touched with strange emotion.
Aut sanctfe manus protensione . . . ant etiam fimbria* ejus tactu amphi-
bali."

Adamnan, ii.
5, 6, 7,
35.
1
"
Conquerentibus agrieolis deesse ad orandum ferramenta, amissum
aratri vomerem (restituit)
;
juvenem quemdam . . . nunquam alias fabri-
libus
assuetum solo verbo protinus ferramentorum fabrum effecit
;
qui
mox ad sancti imperium pro colonis vomerem, cultrumque faberrimr
cudit."

O'Donnell, Quinta Vita, i. 68.

2
"
Sedens in tugnriolo tabulis suffulto. . . . Juvenis ad januam
tugurioli in quo vir beatus scribebat, post vaccarum reversus mulsionem,
in dorso portans vasculum novo plenum lacte, dicit ad sanctum ut juxta
niorem tale benediceret onus."

Adamnan, i. 25, ii. 16, iii. 22.

THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 239
The steward of the monastery, Baithen, the friend
and future successor of Columba, asked them,
"
Are
you not sensible of something very unusual here
?
"
"
Yes," said the oldest of the monks,
"
every day, at
this hour and place, I breathe a delicious odour, as
if all the flowers in the world were collected here.
I feel also something like the flame of the hearth
which does not burn but warms me gently ; I ex-
perience, in short, in my heart a joy so unusual, so
incomparable, that I am no longer sensible of either
trouble or fatigue. The sheaves which I carry on
my back, though heavy, weigh upon me no longer
;
and I know not how, from this spot to the monas-
tery, they seem to be lifted from my shoulders.
What, then, is this wonder ?
"
All the others gave
the same account of their sensations.
"
I will tell
you what it is/
1
said the steward
;
"
it is our old
master, Columba, always full of anxiety for us, who
is disturbed to find us so late, who vexes himself
with the thought of our fatigue, and who, not
being able to come to meet us with his body, sends
us his spirit to refresh, rejoice, and console us."
1
1
"
Post messionis opera vespere ad monasterium redeuntes. . . .
Quamdam miri odoris fragrantiam ac si universorum florum in unum
sentio collectorum
;
quanquam quoque quasi ignis ardorem, non pcenalem,
sed quodam modo suavem
;
sed et quamdam in corde insuetam et incom-
parabilem infusam lsetificationem, quas me subito consolatur et Letificat
ita ut nullius moeroris, nullius laboris meminisse possim. Sed et onus
quod meo, quanquam grave, porto in dorso, ab hoc loco usque ad monaste-
rium, in tantum relevatur, ut me oneratum non sentiam. . . . Sic omnes
operarii sed singillatim profitentur. . . . Scitis quod senior noster Co-
lumba de nos anxie cogitet et nos ad se tardius pervenientes a?gre ferat
nostri memor laboris, et idcirco quia corporaliter obviam nobis non venit,
240 ST COLUMBA.
The tiack-
It must not be supposed, however, that he re-
smith car-
ried to hea-
served his solicitude for his monastic labourers
ven by his
aims.
alone. Far from that, he knew how to appreciate the
work of laymen when sanctified by Christian virtue.
"
See," he said one day to the elders of the monas-
tery, "at this moment while I speak, such a one
who was a blacksmith yonder in Irelandsee him,
how he goes up to heaven ! He dies an old man,
and he has worked all his life
;
but he has not
worked in vain. He has bought eternal life with the
work of his hands
;
for he dispensed all his gains
in alms
;
and I see the angels who are going for
his soul."
1
It will be admitted that the praise
of manual labour, carried to a silly length in our
days, has been rarely expressed in a manner so
solemn and touching.
His rela-
It is also recorded that he took pleasure in
tions with
.
the laymen
the society of laymen during his journeys, and
pitaiity he
lived among them with a free and delightful famil-
received.


iarity. This is one of the most attractive and in-
structive phases of his history. He continually
asked and received the hospitality not only of the
rich, but
also of the poor
;
and sometimes, indeed,
received a more cordial reception from the poor than
from the rich. To those who refused him a shelter
he predicted prompt punishment,
"
That miser,"
spiritus ejus nostris obviat gressibus, qui taliter nos consolans hetificat."

Adamnan, i. 37.
1
"
Faber ferrarius non incessum laboravit, qui de propria mammm labo-
ratione suarum prremia felix comparait aeterna, Ecce nunc anima ejus
vehitur a Sanctis angclis ad ccelestis patriae gaudia." Adamnan, iii. 9.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDOXIA. 241
he said, "who despises Christ in the person of a
traveller, shall see his wealth diminish from day to
day and come to nothing; he will come to beggary,
and his son shall go from door to door holding out
his hand, which shall never be more than half
filled."
1
When the poor received him under their
roof, he inquired with his ordinary thoughtfulness
into their resources, their necessities, all their little
possessions. At that period a man seems to have
been considered very poor in Scotland who had
only five cows. This was all the fortune of a Loch- The five
aber peasant in whose house Columba, who con-
host at
Lochaber.
tinually traversed this district when going to visit
the king of the Picts, passed a night, and found a
very cordial welcome notwithstanding the
poverty
of the house. Next morning he had the five little
cows brought into his presence and blessed them,
predicting to his host that he should soon have five
hundred, and that the blessing of the grateful mis-
sionary should go down to his children and grand-
children a prophecy which was faithfully ful-
filled.
2
1
"De quodam viro divite tenacissimo . . . qui sanctum Columbam
despexerat nec cum hospitio receperat . . . et illius avari divitise, qui
Christum in peregrinis hospitibus sprevit. . . . Ipse mendicabit, et Alius
cum semivacua de domo in domum perula discurret."

Adamxan, ii. 20.

2
"
Hie Nesanus cum esset vakle inops . . . hospitaliter et secundum
vires unius noctis spatio ministrasset . . . ab eo inquirit cujus boculas
numeri haberet . . . quinque. . . . Ab hac die ture paucre vaccula?
crescent usque ad centum et quinque vaccarum numerum. Nesanus
homo plebeius erat cum uxore et filiis. . . . Vir sanctus, quadam nocte
quum apudsupramemoratum . . . inopem bene hospitaretur, mane primo
de quantitate et qualitate substantias plebeium hospitem interrogate

VOL. III.
Q
242 ST COLUMBA,
Gift of a In the same district of Lochaber, which is still
blessed
.
speartothethe
scene of those great deer-stalking: expeditions
poacher.
<

.
in which the British aristocracy delight, our saint
was one day accosted by an unfortunate poacher,
who had not the means of maintaining his wife
and children, and who asked alms from him.
"
Poor
man," said Columba, "go and cut me a rod in the
forest." When the rod was brought to him, the
abbot of Iona himself sharpened it into the form
of a spear. When he had done this he blessed
the improvised javelin, and gave it to his suppliant,
telling him that if he kept it carefully, and used it
only against wild beasts, venison should never be
wanting in his poor house. This prophecy also was
fulfilled. The poacher planted his blessed spear in
a distant corner of the forest, and no day passed
that he did not find there a hart or doe, or other
game, so that he soon had enough to sell to his
neighbours as well as to provide for all the neces-
sities of his own house.
1
Columba thus interested himself in all that he
Adamnax, ii. 21. The district of Lochaber, celebrated in the modern
wars of Scotland, is situated upon the borders of the counties of Argyle
and Inverness, on the way from Iona to the residence of the Pictish
king, and was consequently often crossed by Columba.
1
"
Plebeius pauperrimus, mendicus . . . quo unde maritam et parvulos
cibaret non habebat quadam nocte. . . . Miselle homuncio, tolle de
silva contulum vicina et ad me cujus defer. . . . Quern sanctus exci-
piens in veru exacuit propria manu, benedicens et illi assignans inopi. . .
Quamdiu talom habebis sudem, nunquam in domo tua cervime carnis
cibatio abundans deerit. Miser mendiculus . . . valde gavisns . . .
veru in remotis infexit terrulae locis, quae silvestres frequentabant force
. . . nulla transire poterat dies in quo non aut cervum aut cervam repe-
riret in veru infixo cecidisse."

Adamnan, ii. 37.

THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 243
saw, in all that went on around him, and which
he could turn to the profit of the poor or of his
fellow-creatures ; even in hunting or fishing he
took pains to point out the happy moment and
most favourable spot where the largest salmon or
pike might be found.
1
Wherever he found himself
in contact with the poor or with strangers, he drew
them to himself and comforted them even more by
the warm sympathy of his generous heart than by
material benefits. He identified himself with their
fears, their dangers, and their vexations. Always a He pacifies
peacemaker and consoler, he took advantage here of
soles all
those whom
the night's shelter given him by a rich mountaineer
he meets,
to end a dispute between two angry neighbours
;
2
and there made a chance meeting in a Highland
gorge with a countryman an occasion for reassuring
the peasant as to the consequences of the ravages
made in his district by Pictish or Saxon invaders.
"
My good man," he said,
"
thy poor cattle and thy
little all have fallen into the hands of the robbers
;
but thy dear little family is safe

go home and be
comforted."
3
Such was this tender and gentle soul. His charity
1
Adamnan, ii. 19.
2
"
In domo cujus plebeii divitis. . . . Fortgini nomine . . . ubi cum
sanctus liospitaretur, inter rusticanos contendentes duos . . . recta judi-
catione judicavit.
"

Ibid., ii. 17.

3
"
Ubi, ait, habitas . . . tuam quam dicis provinciolam nunc barbari
populantur vastatores. Quo audito, miser plebeius maritam et filios
deplangere ccepit. Valde mcerentem consolans inquit : Vade, homun-
cule, vade, tua familiola tota in montem fugiens evasit : tua vero omnia
pecuscula . . . omnemque supellectilem cum prseda ssevi raptores ra-
puere."

Ibid., i. 46.
244 ST COLUMBA,
might sometimes seem to have degenerated into
feebleness, so great was the pleasure he took in all
the details of benevolence and Christian brother-
hood
;
but let there appear an injustice to repair,
an unfortunate individual to defend, an oppressor
to punish, an outrage against humanity or mis-
fortune to avenge, and Columba immediately
awoke and displayed all the energy of his youth.
The former man reappeared in a moment ; his
passionate temperament recovered the mastery

his distinctive character, vehement in expression

and resolute in action, burst forth at every turn
;
and his natural boldness led him, in the face of
all dangers, to lavish remonstrances, invectives,
and threats, which the justice of God, too rare-
ly visible in such cases, sometimes deigned to
fulfil.
Among the many sufferers whom he found on his
way, it is natural to suppose that the exiles, who
were so numerous in consequence of the discords
which rent the Celtic races, would most of all call
forth his sympathy. Himself an exile, he was the
natural protector of all who were exiled.
1
He took
under his special guardianship a banished Pict, of
noble family, probably one of those who had received
him with kindness, and listened to his teachings
1
"Alums pater, exsulum et depressoram pius patronus," says Manns
O'Donnell (b. ii. c.
3),
who was at once the grandnephew and biographer
of the saint, with a sentiment only too natural in a scion of one of those
great Irish families which have always preferred exile and destitution to
apostasy.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 245
at the time of his first missions in Northern Cale-
donia. Columba confided, or, as the historian says,
recommended, assigned in manum, according to
the custom which came to be general in feudal
times, his banished friend to a chief called Fera-
dagh, who occupied the large island of Islay, south
of Iona, praying him to conceal his guest for some
months among his clan and dependents. A few
days after he had solemnly accepted the trust, this
villain had the noble exile treacherously murdered,
no doubt for the sake of the articles of value he
had with him. When he received the news, Co- Punish-

mewt of
lumba cried, It is not to me, it is to God, that
exile's
assassin.
this wretched man, whose name shall be effaced
out of the book of life, has lied. It is summer
now, but before autumn comesbefore he can eat
of the meat which he is fattening for his tablehe
shall die a sudden death, and be dragged to hell."
The indignant old man's prophecy was reported to
Feradagh, who pretended to laugh at it, but never-
theless kept it in his mind. Before the beginning
of autumn, he ordered a fattened pig to be killed
and roasted, and even before the animal was entirely
cooked gave orders that part of it should be served
to him, in order to prove, at the earliest possible
moment, the falsehood of the prophesied vengeance.
But scarcely had he taken up the morsel, when, be-
fore he had carried it to his mouth, he fell back and
died. Those who were present admired and trembled
to see how the Lord God honoured and justified
246 ST COLUMBA,
His prophet
;
1
and those who knew Columba's life
as a young man recalled to each other how, at the
very beginning of his monastic life, the murderer of
the innocent maiden had fallen dead at the sound
of his avenging voice.
2
Robbers of In his just wrath against the spoilers of the poor
royal lace.
^persecutors of the Church, he drew back be-
fore no danger, not even before the assassin s dagger;
Among the reivers who infested Scottish Caledonia,
making armed incursions into their neighbours'
lands, and carrying on that system of pillage which,
up to the eighteenth century, continued to charac-
terise the existence of the Scottish clans, he had
distinguished the sons of Donnell, who belonged to
a branch of the family which ruled the Dalriadian
colony. Columba did not hesitate to excommunicate
them. Exasperated by this sentence, one of these
powerful ill-doers, named or surnamed Lamm-Dess
(Right-hand), took advantage of a visit which the
great abbot paid to a distant island, and undertook
1
"
Quemdam de nobili Pictorum genere exsulem, in manum alicujus
Feradachi divitis viri . . . diligenter assignans commendavit, ut in ejus
comitatu, quasi unus de amicis, aliquos menses conversaretur. Quern
cum tali commendatione de sancti maim viri commendatum suscepisset
. . . trucidavit. ... Non mihi, sed Deo infelix homunculus mentitus
est, cujus nomen de libro vita? delebitur. . . . Antequam de suilla de-
gustet came arboreo saginata fructu. . . . Despiciens irrisit sanctum.
Scrofa nucum impinguata nucleis jugulatur . . . de qua celeriter ex in-
terita partem sibi in veru celerius assari prajcipit, ut de ea impatiens
prsegustans beati viri prophetationem destrueret ... ad quam extensam
manum priusquam ad os converteret . . . mortuus retro in dorsum ceci-
dit. . . . Valde tremefacti, admirantes, Christum in sancto propheta
honorificantes glorificarunt."

Adamnan, ii. 23.

2
See ante, page 108.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 247
to murder him in his sleep. But Finn-Lugh, one
of the saint's companions, having had some suspi-
cion or instinctive presentiment of danger, and de-
siring to save his father s life by the sacrifice of his
own, borrowed Columba s cowl, and wrapped him-
self in it. The assassin struck him whom he found
clothed in the well-known costume of the abbot,
and then fled. But the sacred vestment proved
impenetrable armour to the generous disciple, who
was not even wounded. Columba, when informed
of the event, said nothing at the moment. But a
year after, when he had returned to Iona, the abbot
said to his community,
"
A year ago Lamm-Dess
did his best to murder my dear Finn-Lugh in my
place ; now at this moment it is he who is being-
killed." And, in fact, the news shortly arrived
that the assassin had just died under the sword of
a warrior, who struck the fatal blow while invoking
the name of Columba, in a fight which brought
the depredations of these reivers to an end.
1
Some time before, another criminal of the same
family, called Joan, had chosen for his victim one
of the hosts of Columba, one of those poor men
whom the abbot had enriched by his blessing in
exchange for the hospitality which even in their
1
"In insula Himba comraoratus. . . . Ille vero sceleratus, civjus no-
men latine Manus clextera dicitur. . . . Usque in hanc diem integratus est
annus ex quo Lamm Dess in quantum potuit Finn Lughum meum meo
jugulavit vice
;
sed et ipse, ut sestimo, hac in hora jugulatur. In aliqua
virorum utrinque acta belligeratione, Cronani filii Baithani jaculo trans-
fixus in nomine, ut fertur, sancti Columbfe, emisso, interimit, et post
ejus interitum viri belligerare cessarunt."

Adamnan, ii. 24.

248 ST COLUMBA,
poverty they had not refused. This poor man lived
on the wild and barren peninsula of Ardnamurchan,
a sombre mass which rises up out of the waves of
the Atlantic, and forms the most western point of
the Scottish mainland. The benediction of the mis-
sionary had brought him good fortune, as had been
the case with the peasant of Lochaber, and his five
cows, too, had multiplied, and were then more than
a hundred in number. Columba was not satisfied
with merely enriching his humble friend, but gave
him also a place in his affections, and had even be-
stowed upon him his own name ; so that all his
neighbours called him Columbain, the friend of St
Columba. Three times in succession, Joan, the
princely spoiler, had pillaged and ravaged the house
of the enriched peasant, the friend of the abbot of
Iona ; the third time, as he went back with his
bravos, laden with booty, to the boat which awaited
him on the beach, he met the great abbot, whom he
had supposed far distant. Columba reproved him
for his exactions and crimes, and entreated him to
give up his prey
;
but the reiver continued his
course, and answered only by an immovable silence,
until he had gained the beach and entered his boat.
As soon as he was in his vessel, he began to answer
the abbot's prayers by mockeries and insults. Then
the noble old man plunged into the sea, up to his
knees, as if to cling to the boat which contained
the spoils of his friend ; and when it went off he
remained for some time with his two hands raised
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 249
towards
heaven,
praying with ardour. When his
prayer was ended, he came out of the water, and
returned to his companions, who were seated on a
neighbouring mound, to dry himself. After a pause,
he said to them,
"
This miserable man, this evil-
doer, who despises Christ in His servants, shall never
more land upon the shore from which you have
seen him departhe shall never touch land again.
To-day a little cloud begins to rise in the north,
and from that cloud comes a tempest that shall
swallow him up, him and his ; not one single soul
shall escape to tell the tale." The day was fine, the
sea calm, and the sky perfectly serene. Notwith-
standing, the cloud which Columba had announced
soon appeared ; and the spectators, turning their
eyes to the sea, saw the tempest gather, increase,
and pursue the spoilers. The storm reached them
between the islands of Mull and Colonsay, from
Avhose shores their boat was seen to sink and perish,
with all its crew and all its spoils.
1
1
"
Columbarium, quern de paupere virtus benedictionis ejus ditem fecit,
valde diligebat. . . . Quidam malefactor homo, bonorum persecutor
. . . prosequebatur sancti amicum Columbse. . . . Accidit ut tertia vice
. . . beatum virum, quern quasi longius positum despexerat, ad navem
revertens mceste obviam haberet. . . . Immitis et insuadibilis
permaneus
. . . navimque cum prreda ascendens, beatum virum subsamiabat et de-
ridebat. Quern sanctus ad mare usque prosecutus est, vitreasque intrans
aquas usque ad genua sequoreas, levatis ad ccelum ambis manibus, Christum
intente precatur. . . . Hie miserabilis homuncio, qui Christum in suis
despexit servis, ad portum, a quo nuper coram vobis emigravit, nunquam
revertetur ; sed nec ad alias quas appetit, terras . . . cum suis perveniet
malis cooperatoribus. Hodie, quam rnox videbitis, de nube a borea orta
immitis immissa procella eum cum sociis submerget : nec de eis etiam
uuus remanebit fabulator. . . . Die serenissima, et ecce de mari oborta,
250 ST COLUMBA.
We have all read in Caesar's Commentaries how,
when he landed on the shores of Britain, the stan-
dard-bearer of the tenth legion threw himself into
the sea, up to the knees in water, to encourage his
comrades. Thanks to the perverse complaisance of
history for all feats of force, this incident is im-
mortal. Caesar, however, moved by depraved am-
bition, came but to oppress a free and innocent
race, and to bring it under the odious yoke of
Roman tyranny, of which, happily, it has retained
no trace. How much grander and more worthy of
recollection, I do not say to every Christian, but to
every upright soul, is the sight offered to us at
the other extremity of the great Britannic Isle, by
this old monk, who also rushed into the sea up to
his kneesbut to pursue a savage oppressor, in the
interest of an obscure victim, thus claiming for
himself, under his legendary aureole, the everlast-
ing greatness of humanity, justice, and pity !
sicut sanctus dixerat, nubes cum magno fragore venti emissa, raptorem
cum prseda inter Maleam et Colonsam insulas inveniens . . . submer-
sit."

Adamnan, ii. 22.

CHAPTER VII.
COLUMBA'S LAST YEARS HIS DEATH HIS
CHARACTER.
Columba the confidant of the joys and consoler of the sorrows of domes-
tic life. He blesses little Hector with the fair locks. He prays for
a woman in her delivery
;
he reconciles the Avife of a pilot to her hus-
band. Vision of the saved wife who receives her husband in heaven.
He continues his missions to the end of his life. Visions before
death. The Angels' Hill. Increase of austerities. Nettle-soup his
sole food.A supernatural light surrounds him during his nightly work
and prayers. His death is retarded for four years by the prayers of
the community. When this respite has expired, he takes leave of the
monks at their work
;
he visits and blesses the granaries of the monas-
tery. He announces his death to his attendant Diarmid. His fare-
well to his old white horse. Last benediction to the isle of Iona
;
last
work of transcription
;
last message to his community. He dies in
the church. Review of his life and character.
By the side of the terrible acts of vengeance which
have just been narrated, the student loves to find
in this bold enemy of the wicked and the oppressor
a gentle and familiar sympathy for all the affections
as well as all the trials of domestic life. Rich and
poor, kings and peasants, awoke in his breast the
same kindly emotion, expressed with the same ful-
ness. When King Aldan brought his children to
him, and spoke of his anxiety about their future
252
ST COLUMBA,
lives, he did not content himself with seeing the
eldest. "Have you none younger V said the abbot
;
"bring them alllet me hold them in my arms
and on my heart!" And when the younger chil-
dren were brought, one fair-haired boy, Hector
(Eochaidh Buidhe), came forward running, and
threw himself upon the saint's knees. Columba
held him long pressed to his heart, then kissed his
forehead, blessed him, and prophesied for him a
long life, a prosperous reign, and a great posterity.
1
Let us listen while his biographer tells how
he came to the aid of a woman in extremity,
and how he made peace in a divided household.
One day at Iona he suddenly stopped short while
reading, and said with a smile to his monks,
"
I
must now go and pray for a poor little woman who
is in the pains of childbirth and suffers like a true
daughter of Eve. She is down yonder in Ireland,
and reckons upon my prayers, for she is my kins-
woman, and of my mother s family." Upon this
he hastened to the church, and when his prayer
was ended returned to his brethren, saying

" She
1
"Sed nunc si alios juniores habes, ad me veniant, et quem ex eis ele-
gerit Dominus regem, subito super meum irruit gremium . . . quibus
accessis. . . . Echodius Buidhe adveuiens in sinu ejus recubuit. Sta-
timque sanctus eum oseulatus beiiedixit."ADAMNAN, i. 9. Columba
bad predicted that none of the four elder sons of the king should
succeed him, and that they should all perish in war. The three eldest
were actually killed in the battle for which Columba had rung the bells of
his new monastery (see page 184), and the fourth also died sword in hand
"
in Saxonia belliea, in strage." The kings of Scotland, whose lineage
is traced to the Dalriadians, were probably descendants of the fair-haired
Hector.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 253
is delivered. The Lord Jesus, who deigned to be
born of a woman, has come to her aid ; this time
she will not die."
1
Another day, while he was visiting an island on He recon-
J
...
cilesa
the Irish coast, a pilot came to him to complain of his
pilot's wife
L x
with her
wife, who had taken an aversion for him. The abbot
husband,
called her and reminded her of the duties imposed
upon her by the law of the Lord.
"
I am ready to
do everything," said the woman

" I will obey you

in the hardest things you can command. I do
not draw back from any of the cares of the house.
I will go even, if it is desired, on pilgrimage to
Jerusalem, or I will shut myself up in a nunnery

in short, I will do everything except live with him."

The abbot answered that there could be no ques-
tion of pilgrimage or of a convent so long as her
husband lived; "but," he added, "let us try to pray
God, all three, fasting

you, your husband, and

myself."
"
Ah," said the woman,
"
I know that you can
obtain even what is impossible from God." How-
ever, his proposal was carried outthe three fasted,
and Columba passed the whole night in prayer
1
"A lection e surgit et subridens ait : Nunc adoratorium milii properan-
dum est ut pro quadam niisellula deprecer femina, qure nunc in Hibernia no-
men hujus inclamitans commemorat Columbre, in magnis parturitionis, ut
filia Eva;, difficillimre torta punitionibus . . . quia et mihi cognationis est
. . . de parentela matris meae. ... Ad ecclesiam currit. . . . Nunc pro-
pitius Dominus Jesus, de muliere progenitus, opportune miseroe subve-
niens, prospere prolem peperit ; nec hac vice morietur. Eadem horn,
nomen ejus invocans, absoluta salutem recuperavit. Ita ab aliquibus
postea de Scotia et de eadem regione ubi mulier inhabitabat, transrnean-
tibus, intimatum est."

Adamn ax, ii. 40.

254 ST COLUMBA,
without ever closing his eyes. Next morning he
said to the woman, with the gentle irony which he
so often employed,
"
Tell me to what convent are
you bound after your yesterday's projects?" "To
none," said the woman ;
"
my heart has been
changed to-night. I know not how I have passed
from hate to love." And from that day until the
hour of her death she lived in a tender and faithful
union with her husband.
1
But Columba fortunately was connected with
other households more united, where he could ad-
mire the hapi^iness of his friends without feeling
himself compelled to make peace. From his sanc-
tuary at Iona his habitual solicitude and watchful
sympathy followed them to their last hour. One
day he was alone with one of the Saxons whom he
had converted and attached to his community, and
who was the baker of the monks ; while this stranger
prepared his bread, he heard the abbot say, looking
up to heaven

" Oh ! happy, happy woman ! She

1
"
De quodam guberneta. . . . De sua querebatur uxore quae . . .
eum ad mavitalem nullo modo admittebat concubitum. . . . Omnia
qusecumque mihi prseceperis, sum parata, quamlibet sint valde laboriosa,
adimplere, excepto uno, ut me nullo modo in uno lecto dormire cum
Lugneo. Omnera domus curam exercere non recuso, aut etiam si jubeas,
maria transiens in aliquo puellarum monasterio permanere. . . . Scio
quod tibi impossibile non erit ut ea qua . . . vel impossibilia videmus,
a Deo impetrata donentur. . . . Nocte subsequent^ sanctus insomnia
pro eis deprecatus est. ... 0 femina, si, ut hesterna dicebas die, parata
hodie es ad feminarum emigrare monasteriolum ? . . . Nunc quern heri
oderam, hodie amo : cor enim meum hac nocte praiterita, quo modo ignoro,
in me immutatum est de odio in amorem. . . . Anima ejusdem maritse
indissociabiliter in amore conglutinata est mariti, ut ilia maritalis con-
iiibitus debita . . . nullo mode deinceps recusaret."

Adam nan, ii. 41.

THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 255
goes into heaven with a guard of angels." Exactly
a year after, the abbot and the Saxon baker were
again together. "I see the woman," said Columba,
"
of whom I spoke to thee last year coming down
from heaven to meet the soul of her husband, who
has just died. She contends with powerful ene-
mies for that dear soul, by the help of the holy
angels : she gains the day, she triumphs, because
her goodman has been a just manand the two
are united again in the home of everlasting conso-
lation."
1
This vision was preceded and followed by many
others of the same description, in which the blessed
death of many bishops and monks, his friends and
contemporaries, were announced to him. They seem
to have been intended to give him a glimpse of that
heaven into which Grod was shortly to call him.
Nor was it only at Iona that these supernatural
graces were accorded to him, for he did not limit
his unwearied activity to the narrow enclosure of
that island, any more in the decline of his life than
in the earlier period of his emigration. Up to old
age he continued to have sufficient strength and
courage to return to the most northern regions
1
"
Quidam religiosus frater, Genereus nomine, Saxo, pistor, opus pis-
torum exercens. . . . Felix mulier, felix bene morata, cujus animam
nunc angeli Dei ad paradisum evehunt. . . . Ecce mulier, de qua te
prsesente dixeram pra?terito anno. Nunc mariti sui religiosi cujusdam
plebeii in aere obviat anima?, et cum Sanctis angelis contra aemulas pro
eo belligerat potestates
;
quorum adminiculo ejusdem homuncionis justitia
suffragante, a dsemoniacis belligerationibus erepta, ad seternse refrigera-
tionis locum anima ipsius est perducta."

Adamnan, iii. 10.

256
ST COLUMBA,
where he had preached the faith to the Picts ; and
it was in one of his last missionary journeys, when
upon the banks of Loch Ness, to the north of the
great line of waters which cuts Caledonia in two,
at a distance of fifty leagues from Iona, that he was
permitted to see the angels come to meet the soul
of the old Pict, who, faithful during all his life to the
law of nature, received baptism, and with it eternal
salvation, from the great missionary's hands.
1
At this period the angels, whom he saw carry-
ing to heaven the soul of the just and penitent,
and aiding the believing wife to make an en-
trance there for her husband, continually ap-
peared to him and hovered about him. Making
all possible allowance for the exaggerations and
fables which the proverbial credulity of Celtic
nations have added to the legends of their saints,
2
no Christian will be tempted to deny the verified
narratives which bear witness, in Columba's case as
well as in that of the other saints, to supernatu-
ral appearances which enriched his life, and espe-
1
See ante, page 176. "Ultra Britannia? Dorsum iter agens, secus
Nisoe fluminis lacum . . . sanctus senex."

Adamnan, iii. 14.

2
Let us quote on this point, from the most illustrious of hagiographers,
Bollandus himself, in his prefatory remarks to the life of the first Irish
saint who came before him:
"
Multa continet admiranda portenta, sed
usitata apud gentem illam simplicem et sanctam
;
neque sacris dogmati-
bus aut Dei erga electos suos suavissimai providentiai repugnantia
;
sunt
tamen fortassis nonnulla imperitorum libratorum culpa vitiata aut ampli-
ficata. Quod in gentilium suorum rebus gestis animadverti oportere nos
docuit Henricus Fitzsimon societatis nostra? theologus, egregio rerum usu
prccditus. . . . Satis est lectorem monuisse ut cum discretione ea legat
(mac prodigiosa, et crebro similia miracula commemorant, nisi ab sapien-
tibus scripta auctoribus sunt."

Acta Sanctorum, January, vol. i.

p.
43.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 257
cially his old age. Those wonderful soldiers of
virtue and Christian truth needed such miracles to
help them to support the toils and live through the
trials of their dangerous mission. They required to
ascend from time to time into celestial regions to find
strength there for their continual struggle against
all obstacles and perils and continually renewed
temptationsand to learn to brave the enmities, the
savage manners, and blind hatreds of the nations
whom it was the aim of their lives to set free.
"
Let no one follow me to-day/' Columba said
one morning with unusual severity to the assembled
community :
"
I would be alone in the little plain
to the west of the isle." He was obeyed; but a
brother, more curious and less obedient than the
rest, followed him far off, and saw him, erect and
motionless, with his hands and his eyes raised to
heaven, standing on a sandy hillock, where he was
soon surrounded by a crowd of angels, who came
to bear him company and to talk with him. The
hillock has to this day retained the name of the
Angels' Hill.
1
And the citizens of the celestial
country, as they were called at Iona, came often
to console and strengthen their future companion
during the long winter nights which he passed in
prayer in some retired corner, voluntarily exposed
to all the torments of sleeplessness and cold,
2
1
Cnocan Ahigel (colliculus Angelorum), in the map of the island by
Graham.
2
"Cumingenti animadversione dixit: Hodie . . . solus exire cnpio,
VOL. III.
R
258 ST C0LUMBA,
For as he approached the end of his career this
great servant of God consumed his strength in
vigils, fasts, and dangerous macerations. His life,
which had been so full of generous struggles, hard
trial, and toil in the service of God and his neigh-
bour, seemed to him neither full enough nor pure
enough. In proportion as the end drew near he
redoubled his austerities and mortifications. Every
night, according to one of his biographers, he plung-
ed into cold water and remained there for the time
necessary to recite an entire psalter.
1
One day,
when, bent by age, he sought, perhaps in a neigh-
bouring island, a retirement still more profound
than usual, in which to pray, he saw a poor woman
gathering wild herbs and even nettles, who told
him that her poverty was such as to forbid her all
other food. Upon which the old abbot reproached
himself bitterly that he had not yet come to that
point.
"
See," he said,
"
this poor woman, who
finds her miserable life worth the trouble of being
thus prolonged ; and we, who profess to deserve
heaven by our austerities, we live in luxury
!
"
When he went back to his monastery he gave orders
nemo itaque ex vobis me sequatur. . . . Ccelestis patriae cives . . .
sanctum virum orantem circumstare . . . albatis induti vestibus, et post
aliquam sermocinationem cum beato viro. . . . Quantse et quales ad
beatum virum in hyemalibus plerumque noctibus insomnem, et in locis
remotioribus, aliis quiescentibus, orantem, angelicse fuerint et suaves
frequentationes." Adamnan, iii. 16.
1
O'Donnell, iii. 37. This incredible power of supporting cold in the
damp and icy climate of the British Isles is one of the most marked feat-
ures in the penances which the Irish saints inflicted on themselves.

See Coloan, Ada SS. Hiberriice,

THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 259
that lie should be served with no other food than
the wild and bitter herbs with which the beggar
supported her existence
;
and he severely reproved
his minister, Diarmid,
1
who had come from Ireland
with him, when he, out of compassion for his mas-
ter's old age and weakness, threw a little butter
into the caldron in which this miserable fare was
cooked.
2
The celestial light which was soon to receive a super-
him began already to surround him like a garment
light sur-
rounds him
or a shroud. His monks told each other that the
during his
nocturnal
solitary cell in the isle of Himba, near Iona, which
workand
J
7 1
prayers.
he had built for himself, was lighted up every
night by a great light, which could be seen through
the chinks of the door and keyhole, while the abbot
chanted unknown canticles till daybreak. After
having remained there three days and nights
without food, he came out, full of joy at having
discovered the mysterious meaning of several texts
of Holy Scripture, which up to that time he had
not understood.
3
When he returned to Iona to die,
1
MS. quoted by Reeves,
p.
245,
Appendix. The name of Diarmid or
Diormidthe same as that of the king against whom Columba raised a
civil warwas at a later date changed into that of Dermott, which is
still to be found among the Irish.
2
"
Cum senio jam gravatus in quodam secessu ab aliis remotiori ora-
tioni vocali intentus deambularet. . . . Ecce paupercula hfec femina. . .
Et quid nos qui . . . laxius vivimus ? . . . Diermitius . . . qui debebat
earn misellam escam parare . . . per fistulam instillatoriam modicum
liquefacti butyri et ollse . . . infudit. ... Sic Christi miles ultimam
senectutem in continua carnis maceratione usque ad exitum . . . per-
duxit."

O'Doxnell, Vita Quintet, iii. 32.

3
"
De qua domo immense claritatis radii, per rimulas valvarum et
clavium foramina, erumpentes, nortu videbantur. Carmina quoque
260 ST COLUMBA,
continuing faithful to his custom of spending a great
part of the night in prayer, he bore about with
him everywhere the miraculous light which already
surrounded him like the nimbus of his holiness.
The entire community was involuntarily agitated
by the enjopnent of that foretaste of paradise.
One winter's night, a young man who was destined
to succeed Columba as fourth abbot of Iona re-
mained in the church while the others slept : all
at once he saw the abbot come in preceded by a
golden light which fell from the heights of the
vaulted roof, and lighted all the corners of the
building, even including the little lateral oratory
where the young monk hid himself in alarm.
1
All
who passed during the night before the church,
while their old abbot prayed, were startled by this
light, which dazzled them like lightning.
2
Another
of the young monks, whose education was specially
directed by the abbot himself, resolved to ascertain
whether the same illumination existed in Columba s
cell ; and notwithstanding that he had been ex-
pressly forbidden to do so, he got up in the night
and went groping to the door of the cell to look
spiritalia et ante inaudita decantari ab eo audiebantnr. . . . Scriptura-
rum . . . queeque obscura et difficillima, plana et luce clarius aperta,
mundissimi cordis oculis patebant."

Adamnan, iii. 18.

1
"
Simulque cum eo (ingreditur) aurea lux, de cceli altitudine descen-
dens, toturn illud ecclesia) spatium replens . . . et penetrans usque in
illius exedriola? separatum conclave ubi se Virgnous in quantum potuit
latitare conabatur . . . exterritus."

Adamnan, iii. 19. Virgnous,

or Fergna Brit, fourth abbot of Iona, from 605 to 625. He told this
incident to his nephew, by whom it was told to Adamnan.
2
"
Fulguralis lux."Ibid, iii. 20.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 261
in, but fled immediately, blinded by the light that
filled it.
1
These signs, which were the forerunners of his
deliverance, showed themselves for several years
towards the end of his life, which he believed and
hoped was nearer its termination than it proved to
be. But this remnant of existence, from which he
sighed to be liberated, was held fast by the filial
love of his disciples, and the ardent prayers of so
many new Christian communities founded or minis-
tered to by his zealous care. Two of his monks, one
Irish and one Saxon, of the number of those whom
he admitted to his cell to help him in his labour
or to execute his instructions, saw him one day
change countenance, and perceived in his face a
sudden expression of the most contrary emotions :
first a beatific joy, which made him raise to heaven
a look full of the sweetest and tenderest gratitude
;
but a minute after this ray of supernatural joy gave
place to an expression of heavy and profound sad-
ness. The two spectators pressed him with questions
which he refused to answer. At length they threw
themselves at his knees and begged him, with
tears, not to afflict them by hiding what had been
revealed to him.
"
Dear children," he said to them,
"I do not wish to afflict you. . . . Know, then,
that it is thirty years to-day since I began my
1
"
Cuidam suo sapientiam discenti alumno . . . qui, contra interdic-
tum, in noctis silentio accessit . . . callide explorans . . . oculos ad
clavium foramina posuit. . . . Repletum hospitiolum coelestis splendore
claritudinis, quam non sustinens intueri, aufu^it."

Adamnan, iii. 20.

262 ST COLUMBA,
pilgrimage in Caledonia. I have long prayed God
to let my exile end with this thirtieth year, and
to recall me to the heavenly country. When you
saw me so joyous, it was because I could already
see the angels who came to seek my soul. But all
at once they stopped short, down there upon that
rock at the farthest limit of the sea which sur-
rounds our island, as if they would approach to
take me, and could not. And, in truth, they could
not, because the Lord has paid less regard to my
ardent prayer than to that of the many churches
which have prayed for me, and which have obtained,
against my will, that I should still dwell in this
body for four years. This is the reason of my sad-
ness. But in four years I shall die without being
sick ; in four years, I know it and see it, they will
come back, these holy angels, and I shall take my
flight with them towards the Lord."
1
He takes At the end of the four years thus fixed he arrang-
monks at
ed everything for his departure. It was the end of
their work.
\ ,
May, and it was his desire to take leave of the
monks who worked in the fields in the only fertile
part of Iona, the western side. His great age pre-
1
"
Fades ejus subita, mirifica et la;titica hilaritate effloruit. . . . In-
comparabili repletus gaudio, valde hetificabatur. Turn ilia sapida et
suavis Lctificatio in mcestam convertitur tristifieationem. . . . Duo . . .
qjii . . . ejus tugurioli ad januam stabant . . . illacrymati, ingemis-
culantes. . . . Quia vos, ait, amo, tristificari nolo. . . . Usque in hunc
prresentem diem, mex. in Britannia peregrinationis terdeni eonipleti sunt
anni. . . . Sed ecce nunc, subito retardati, ultra nostra} fretum insula?
stant in rape . . . cum Sanctis mihi obviaturis illo tempore, ad Domi-
num lffitus emigrabo."ADAMNAN, iii. 22.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 263
vented him from walking, and he was drawn in a
car by oxen. When he reached the labourers he
said to them, "I greatly desired to die a month
ago, on Easter-day, and it was granted to me ; but
I preferred to wait a little longer, in order that the
festival might not be changed into a day of sadness
for you." And when all wept he did all he could
to console them. Then turning towards the east,
from the top of his rustic chariot he blessed the
island and all its inhabitantsa blessing which,
according to local tradition, was like that of St
Patrick in Ireland, and drove, from that day, all
vipers and venomous creatures out of the island.
1
On Saturday in the following week he went,
leaning on his faithful attendant Diarmid, to bless
the granary of the monastery. Seeing there two
great heaps of corn, the fruit of the last harvest,
he said,
"
I see with joy that my dear monastic
family, if I must leave them this year, will not
at least suffer from famine."
"
Dear father," said
Diarmid,
"
why do you thus sadden us by talk-
ing of your death 1
" "
Ah, well," said the abbot,
"here is a little secret which I will tell thee if
thou wilt swear on thy knees to tell no one before
I am gone. To-day is Saturday, the day which the
1
"Ad visitandos fratres operarios senex senio fessus, plaustro vectus,
pergit. ... In occidua insulse Ionse laborantes parte . . . ut erat in ve-
hiculo sedens, ad orientem suam convertens faciem, insulam cum insulanis
benedixit habitatoribus. ... Ex qua die, viperarum venena trisulcarum
linguarum usque in hodiernam diem nullo modo aut homini aut pecori
nocere potuere."

Adamxax, ii. 28, iii. 53.

264 ST COLUMBA,
Holy Scriptures call Sabbath or rest. And it will
be truly my clay of rest, for it shall be the last of
my laborious life. This very night I shall enter
into the path of my fathers. Thou weepest, dear
Diarmid, but console thyself; it is my Lord Jesus
Christ who deigns to invite me to rejoin Him; it is
He who has revealed to me that my summons will
come to-night."
1
His fare- Then he left the storehouse to return to the mon-
well to the
1 -i / t
old white
astery, but when he had gone nan-way stopped to
rest at a spot which is still marked by one of the
ancient crosses of Iona.
2
At this moment an an-
cient and faithful servant, the old white horse which
had been employed to carry milk from the dairy
daily to the monastery, came towards him. He
came and put his head upon his master's shoulder,
as if to take leave of him. The eyes of the old horse
had an expression so pathetic that they seemed to
be bathed in tears. Diarmid would have sent the
animal away, but the good old man forbade him.
"
The horse loves me," he said,
"
leave him with
me ; let him weep for my departure. The Creator
has revealed to this poor animal what he has hidden
from thee, a reasonable man." Upon which, still
1
"Quod cum benedixisset et duos in eo frugum sequestratos acervos.
. . . Valde congratulor meis familiaribus monachis, quia hoc etiam anno
si a vobis emigrare me oportuerit, annum sufticientem habebitis. . . .
Aliquem arcanum habeo sermusculum (sic). . . . Et mini vere est sabba-
tum men hodierna dies ... in qua post meas laborationum molestias
sabbatizo. . . . Jam enim Dominus meus Jesus Christus me invitave
dignatur."

Adamxax, iii. 23.

2
The monument called Maclean s Cross.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 265
caressing the faithful brute, he gave him a last
blessing.
1
When this was clone he used the rem-
nants of his strength to climb to the top of a hillock
from which he could see all the isle and the monas-
tery, and there lifted up his hands to pronounce
a prophetic benediction on the sanctuary he had
created.
"
This little spot, so small and low, shall
be greatly honoured, not only by the Scots kings
and people, but also by foreign chiefs and barbarous
nations ; and it shall be venerated even by the
saints of other Churches."
After this he went down to the monastery, en-
tered his cell, and began to work for the last time.
He was then occupied in transcribing the Psalter.
When he had come to the 33d Psalm and the verse,
Inquirentes autem Dominum non
deficient
omni
bono, he stopped short, "I must stop here," he said,
"
Baithen will write the rest." Baithen, as has been
seen, was the steward of Iona, and was to become its
abbot, After this the aged saint was present at the
vigil service before Sunday in the church. When
he returned to his cell he seated himself upon the
naked stones which served the septuagenarian for
bed and pillow, and which Avere shown for nearly a
1 '
' Media via ubi postea crux molari lapide infixa, hodieque stans . . .
in margine cernitur vise. . . . Senio fessus, paululum sedens. . . . Ecce
albus occurrit caballus, obediens servitor . . . caput in sinu ejus ponens
. . . dominum a se suum mox emigraturum . . . ccepit plangere uber-
umque quasi homo fundere et valde spumeas flere lacrymas. . . . Sine
hune, sine nostri amatorem, ut in hunc meum sinum fletus effundat
amarissimi plangoris. . . . Mcestum a se equum benedixit ministratorem."

Adamnan, iii. 23.

266 ST COLUMBA,
century near his tomb.
1
Then he intrusted to his
only companion a last message for the community :
"
Dear children, this is what I command with my
last wordslet peace and charity, a charity mutual
and sincere, reign always among you ! If you act
thus, following the example of the saints, God who
strengthens the just will help you, and I, who shall
be near Him, will intercede on your behalf, and you
shall obtain of Him not only all the necessities of
the present life in sufficient quantity, but still more
the rewards of eternal life, reserved for those who
keep His law."
2
These were his last words. As soon as the mid-
night bell had rung for the matins of the Sunday
festival, he rose and hastened before the other monks
to the church, where he knelt down before the altar.
Diarmid followed him, but as the church was not
yet lighted he could only find him by groping and
crying in a plaintive voice,
"
Where art thou, my
father
?
" He found Columba lying before the
altar, and, placing himself at his side, raised the old
abbot's venerable head upon his knees. The whole
1
"
Monticellum monasterio supereminentem ascendens, in vertice ejus
paululum stans, elevatis manibus, benedixit ceenobium : Huic loco, quam-
libet angusto et vili, non tantum Scotorum reges cum populis, sed etiam
barbararum et exterarum gentium regnatores cum plebibus suis. . . .
Sedebat in tugurio Psalterium scribens. . . . Post talem perscriptum
versum paginae, ad vespertinalem dominicse noctis missain
"
(note this
singular expression for vigilcs) "ingreditur ecclesiam. Qua consummata,
ad hospitiolum revertens, in lectulo residet pernox, ubi pro stramine
nudam habebat petram et pro pulvillo lapidem, qui bodie quasi quidam
juxta sepulcrum ejus titulus stat monumenti."

Adamnan, iii. 23.

2
"
Hsec vobis, o filioli, novissima commendo verba, ut inter vos mu-
tuam et non fictam habeatis charitatem, cum pace."

Ibid.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 267
community soon arrived with lights, and wept as
one man at the sight of their dying father. Co-
lumba opened his eyes once more, and turned them
to his children on either side with a look full of
serene and radiant joy. Then with the aid of He dies in
-j
the church
Diarmid he raised, as best he might, his right hand
9th June
597.
to bless them all ; his hand dropped, the last sigh
came from his lips ; and his face remained calm
and sweet like that of a man who in his sleep had
seen a vision of heaven.
1
Such was the life and death of the first great ap-
ostle of Great Britain. We have lingered, perhaps,
too long on the grand form of this monk, rising up
before us from the midst of the Hebridean sea, who,
for the third part of a century, spread over those
sterile isles, and gloomy distant shores, a pure and
1
"Post quae conticuit. . . . Vix media nocte pulsata personante
clocca, festinus surgens ad ecclesiam pergit, citiorque ceteris currens,
solus introgressus juxta altare. Diorniitius ecclesiam iiigrediens flebili
ingeminat voce : Ubi es, pater ? Et uecdum allatis fratrum lucernis,
per teuebras palpans, sanctum ante altarium recubantem invenit : quern
paululum erigens et juxta sedens sanctum in suo gremio posuit caput.
Et inter haec coetus monachorum cum luminaribus accurrens, patre viso
moriente, ccepit plangere. Et, ut ah aliqutbus qui prcesentes inerant
didicimus, sanctus, necdum egrediente animo, apertis sursum oculis, ad
utruinque latus cum mira vultus hilaritate et lfetitia circumspiciebat
;
sanctos scilicet obvios intuens angelos. Diormitius turn sanctam sub-
levat ad benedicendum sancti monachorum chorum dexteram manum. Sed
et ipse venerabilis pater in quantum poterat, simul suam movebat manum.
Et post sanctam benedictionem taliter significatam, continuo spiritum
exhalavit. Facies rubens, et mirum in modum angelica visione exhila-
rata, in tantum remansit, ut non quasi mortui, sed dormientis videretur
viventis."

Adamnan, iii. 23. The narrative of Adamnan is an almost

literal reproduction of that of Cummian, the first known biographer of
the saint.
268 ST COLUMBA,
fertilising light. In a confused age and unknown
region he displayed all that is greatest and purest,
and, it must be added, most easily forgotten in hu-
man genius : the gift of ruling souls by ruling him-
self.
1
To select the most marked and graphic in-
cidents from the general tissue of his life, and those
most fit to unfold that which attracts the modern
readerthat is, his personal character and influence
upon contemporary eventsfrom a world of minute
details having almost exclusive reference to matters
supernatural or ascetical, has been no easy task. But
when this is done, it becomes comparatively easy to
represent to ourselves the tall old man, with his fine
and regular features, his sweet and powerful voice,
the Irish tonsure high on his shaven head, and his
long locks falling behind, clothed with his monastic
cowl, and seated at the prow of his coracle, steering
through the misty archipelago and narrow lakes of
the north of Scotland, and bearing from isle to isle
and from shore to shore, light, justice, and truth,
the life of the conscience and of the soul.
One loves above all to study the depths of that
soul, and the changes which had taken place in it
since its youth. No more than his namesake of
Luxeuil, the monastic apostle of Burgundy, was he
of the Picts and Scots a Columba. Gentleness was
of all qualities precisely the one in which he failed
1
"
Animarum dux," said the angel who announced his birth to his
mother. This expression is also found in Adamnan (i.
2),
but placed in
the mouth of Columba, and applied by him to another saint.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 269
the most. At the beginning of his life the future
abbot of Iona showed himself still more than the
abbot of Luxeuil to be animated by all the vivacities
of his age, associated with all the struggles and dis-
cords of his race and country. He was vindictive,
passionate, bold, a man of strife, born a soldier rather
than a monk, and known, praised, and blamed as a
soldierso that even in his lifetime he was invoked
in fight;
1
and continued a soldier, insulanus miles,
2
even upon the island rock from which he rushed
forth to preach, convert, enlighten, reconcile, and
reprimand both princes and nations, men and wo-
men, laymen and clerks.
He was at the same time fall of contradictions and
contrastsat once tender and irritable, rude and
courteous, ironical and compassionate, caressing and
imperious, grateful and revengefulled by pity as
well as by wrath, ever moved by generous passions,
and among all passions fired to the very end of his
life by two which his countrymen understand the
best, the love of poetry and the love of country.
Little inclined to melancholy when he had once
surmounted the great sorrow of his life, which was
his exile ; little disposed even, save towards the end,
to contemplation or solitude, but trained by prayer
and austerities to triumphs of evangelical exposi-
tion
;
despising rest, untiring in mental and manual
toil;
3
born for eloquence, and gifted with a voice so
See ante, page 247, note.
2
Adamnan, Prvcfat.
'
' Nullum etiam unius hora? intervallum transire poterat, quo non
270 8T COLUMBA.
penetrating and sonorous that it was thought of af-
terwards as one of the most miraculous gifts that
he had received of God
;
1
frank and loyal, original
and powerful in his words as in his actionsin
cloister and mission and parliament, on land and
on sea, in Ireland as in Scotland, always swayed by
the love of God and of his neighbour, whom it was
his will and pleasure to serve with an impassioned
uprightness. Such was Columba. Besides the
monk and missionary there was in him the makings
of a sailor, soldier, poet, and orator. To us, looking
back, he appears a personage as singular as he is
lovable, in whom, through all the mists of the past
and all the cross-lights of legend, the man may still
be recognised under the sainta man capable and
worthy of the supreme honour of holiness, since he
knew how to subdue his inclinations, his weakness,
his instincts, and his passions, and to transform
them into docile and invincible weapons for the
salvation of souls and the glory of God.
orationi, aut lectioui, vel scriptioni, vel etiam alicui operatiorii, in-
cumberet. Jejunationum et vigilarum indefessis laboribus, sine ulla in-
termissione, die noctuque ita occupatus, ut supra humanam possibilitatem
pondus uniuscujusque videretur specialis opens. Et inter hsec omnibus
carus, hilarem semper faciem ostendens, spiritus sancti gaudio intimis
Letificabatur pnecordiis."

Adamnan, Prcef. ii.

1
"Ab expertis qnibusdam de voce beati psalmodiae viri indubitanter
traditum est. Quae vox in ecclesia cum fratribus decantatis, aliquando
per quingentos passus . . . aliquando per mille incomparabiliter elevata
modo audiebatur. Mirum dictu ! Nec in auribus eorum qui secum in
ecclesia stabant vox ejus modum humanse vocis in clamoris granditate
excedebat. . . . Similiter enim in auribus prope et longe audientium per-
sonabat."

Adamnan, i. 37. In another passage he calls it

"
sermon*'
nitidus."
CHAPTER VIII.
SPIRITUAL DESCENDANTS OF ST COLUMBA.
is 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 Iona.

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
Iona over the Celtic churches of Caledonia and the north of Ireland.
Singular privilege and primacy of the abbot of Iona in respect to
bishops.

The ecclesiastical organisation of Celtic countries ex-

clusively 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 pre-
cepts 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 govern-
ing principle of Scottish monasticism. Baithen and the eleven first
successors of Columba at Iona were all members of the same race.

The two lines, lay and ecclesiastical, of the great founders. The head-
quarters of the order transferred from Iona 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 know-
ledge and piety. Each monaster}
7,
a school. The transcription of
manuscripts, which had been one of Columba's favourite 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.

272 ST COLUMBA,
Propagation of Irish monasticism abroad. Irish saints and monas-
teries in France, Germany, and Italy. The Irish saint Cathal vener-
ated in Calabria under the name of San Cataldo. Monastic univer-
sity of Lismore : crowd of foreign students, especially of Anglo-
Saxons, in Irish monasteries. Confusion of temporal affairs in Ire-
land.

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 Kentigern in the country between the Clyde
and the Mersey. His meeting with Columba. His connection with
the king and queen of Strath-Clyde. Legend of the queen's ring.

Neither Columba 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 in-
creasing after his death. The supernatural charac-
ter of his virtues, the miracles which were attri-
buted 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
Miraculous
went to prove it would fill a volume. On the
visions on
of hh
ght
n^ht> and at the very hour, of his death, a holy
death.
old man in a distant monastery in Ireland, one
of those whom the Celtic chroniclers call the vic-
torious soldiers of Christ,
1
saw with the eyes of
his mind the isle of Iona, which he had never
1
"Sanctus senex, Christi miles . . . justus et sapiens . . . cuidam
ieque Christiano militi . . . suam enarravit visionem. . . . Christi
victor miles."
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 273
visited, flooded with miraculous light, and all the
vault of heaven full of an innumerable army of
shining angels, who went, singing celestial can-
ticles, to bring away the holy soul of the great
missionary. Upon the banks of a river,
1
in Colum-
ba's native land, another holy monk, while occu-
pied 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.
2
Thus began the long succession of wonders by
which the worship of Columba's holy memory is
characterised among the Celtic races. This wor-
1
The Finn, which, after having marked the boundary between the
two counties of Tyrone and Donegal, throws itself into the Foyle, which
flows by Deny.
2
"
Hac prseterita nocte media, . . . et in hora beati exitus ejus Ionam
insulam, ad quam corpore nunquam perveni, totam angelorum claritudine
in spiritu vidi irradiatam, totaque spatia aeris usque ad eethera ccelorum
eorumdem angelorum claritate illustrata
;
qui ad sane ipsius animam pre-
ferendam, de ccelis missi descenderunt innumeri. Altisona carminalia
et valde suavia audivi angelicorum ccetuum cantica eodem momento
egressionis inter angelicos sanctoe ipsius animae ascendentes choros. . . .
Ego et alii mecum viri laborantes in captura piscium in valle piscosi
fluminis Fendse subito totum aerei illustratum coeli spatium vidimus
. . . et ecce, quasi qusedam pergrandis ignea apparuit columna, qua? in
ilia nocte media sursurn ascendens ita nobis videbatur mundum illustrare
totum sicuti sesteus et meridianus sol, et postquam ilia penetravit
columna coelum, quasi post occasum solis tenebrse succedunt. Non tan-
tum nos . . . sed et alii multi piscatores, qui sparsim per diversas
fluminales piscinas ejusdem fiuminis piscabantur, sicut nobis post re-
tulerunt, simili apparitione visa, magno pavore sunt perculsi." Adamnan
takes pains to prove that he received the account of those nocturnal
visions, the first, from old monks at Iona, 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.
VOL. III. S
274 ST COLUMBA,
ship, which seemed at one time concentrated in
Rapid ex- one of the smallest islets of the Atlantic, ex-
tension of
.
i *

i i
his
wor-
tended m less than a century after his death, not
ship even
to Rome,
only throughout all Ireland and Great Britain, but
into Gaul, Spain, and Italy, and even to Kome,
1
which some legends, insufficiently 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.
2
1
"
Et hrec etiam eidem beatse memorise viro a Deo non mediocris est
collata gratia qua nomen ejus non tantum per totam nostram Scotiam et
omnium totius orbis insularum maximam Britanniam, clare divulgari
promeruit, in hac parva et extrema oceani Britannici commoratus (sic)
insula ; sed etiam ad trigonam usque Hispaniam, et Gallias, et ultra
Alpes Penninas Italiam sitam pervenire, ipsam quoque Romanam civita-
tem, quaa caput est omnium civitatum."

Adamnan, in
finem.
2
According to an account given by Colgan
(p.
473),
the famous hymn
Alius Prosator was composed by Columba while the envoj's of St
Gregory the Great were at Iona, and was sent by him to the Pontiff, who
listened to it standing up, in token of respect. We are obliged to ac-
knowledge the same want of proof in the tradition which connects the
holy abbot of Iona 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, has undertaken to restore to an honour-
able condition the profaned grave of his greatest predecessor, by rebuilding
the basilica which covers that glorious sepulchre. According to the nar-
rative 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 situa-
tion 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 him-
self 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 Iona, and that he afterwards became
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA.
2*75
It was expected that all the population of the His funeral
neighbouring districts would hasten to Iona and
grave at
fill the island during the funeral of the great
abbot ; and this had even been intimated to him
before he died. But he 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 tra-
veller, this apostle of an entire nation which, during
a thousand years, was to honour him as its patron
saint, lay solitary upon his bier, in the little church
of his island retirement ; and his burial was wit-
nessed 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 fountainhead.
bishop of Tours. This alone is sufficient to disprove the narrative, since
at the only period 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.
276 ST COLUMBA,
The remains of Columba rested here in peace
up to the ninth century, until the moment when
Iona, like all the British isles, fell a prey to the
ravages of the Danes. These cruel and insati-
able 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 Cale-
donia. 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
Removal
Ireland. And it is the unvarying tradition of
of his re-
,
mams to
Irish annals that it was deposited finally at Down,
Down, in
1 J
Ireland
[n an episcopal monastery not far from the western
where they
L 1 J
bathos* of
snore 0I
*
the island, between the great Monastery of
and"?
Bangor on the north, from which came Columbanus
Bridget.
o Luxeuil, and Dublin, the future capital of Ire-
land, 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 Iona
;
But, by the will of the living God,
It is at Dun that I shall rest in my grave,
"With Patrick and with Bridget the immaculate.
Three bodies in one grave."
1
1
See Reeves,
pp.
lxxix.
313, 317, 462;
compare CoLGAN, p.
446.
These three bodies were found at Down in 1185, after the disasters of
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 277
The three names have remained since that time
inseparably united in the dauntless heart and fer-
vent tenacious memory of the Irish people. It is
to Columba that the oppressed and impoverished
Irish seem to have appealed with the greatest con-
fidence in the first English conquest in* the twelfth
century. The conquerors themselves feared him,
Columba
J 1
feared by
not without reason, for they had learned to know
g
e Angi<>
' J
Norman
his vengeance. John de Courcy, a warlike Anglo-
barons-
Norman baron, he who was called the Conqueror
{Conquestor) of Ulster, as William of Normandy
of England, carried always with him the volume
of Columba's prophecies
;
1
and when the bodies
of the three saints were found in his new posses-
sions in 1180, he prayed the Holy See to celebrate
their translation by the appointment of a solemn
festival. Eichard Strongbow, the famous Earl of
Pembroke, who had been the first chief of the in-
vasion, 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, whose churches he had destroyed. He him-
self said, when at the point of death, that he saw
the sweet and noble Bridget lift her arm to pierce
the first English conquest, and again united in one tomb by the bishop
Malachi, and by John de Courcy, one of the great Anglo
-
Norman
barons, conqueror {conquestor, according to the office) of LTlster. A
special holiday was instituted by the Holy See in memory of this trans-
lation. The office for this festival, printed first at Paris in 1620, has
been given by Colgan at the beginning of his precious work, Trias TJiau-
maturya.
1
Kelly, note to Lynch, Cambrcasis Evcrsus, vol. i.
p,
386.
278 ST COLUMBA,
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 chron-
icler, while he was engaged in building a castle
to the injury of the abbey which Columba had
founded, and loved so much.
1
A century after,
this vengeance was still popularly 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
be called, not St Columba, but St Quhahne
2
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 suf-
ficed to light with a fugitive gleam the long; night
of the conquest, with all its iniquities and crimes.
Happy are the people among whom the everksting
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 pos-
terity the memory of their indignation against all
injustice.
As long as the body of Columba remained in his
island grave, Iona, consecrated henceforward by
the life and death of so great a Christian, con-
tinued to be the most venerated sanctuary of the
1
O' Donovan's Four Masters, vol. i.
pp.
25, 75.
2
Quhahne in Anglo-Saxon meant sudden death, from whence the
modern English word qualm.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 279
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.
1
During these two cen-
turies, she retained an uncontested supremacy over
all the monasteries and churches of Caledonia, as
over those of half Ireland
;
2
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 touch-
ing heroines of Scotland and Christendom, the
holy 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
1
"
JRosse. Where is Duncan's body ?
Macduff. Carried to Colmes-Kill,
The sacred storehouse of his predecessors,
And guardian of their bones."
Shakespeare, Macbeth.
2
"
Plurima exinde monasteria per discipulos ejus in Britannia et in
Hibernia propagata sunt : in quibus omnibus idem monasterium insul-
anum, in quo ipse requiescit corpore, principatum tenet."

Bede, iii. 4.
"
Cujus monasterium in cunctis pene septentrionalium Scotorum et
omnium Pictorum monasteriis non parvo tempore arcem tenebat regen-
disque eorum populis prseerat."

Ibid., iii. 3.
280 ST COLUMBA,
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.
1
Let us here reconsider the privilege which gave
to the abbots of lona a sort of jurisdiction over the
bishops of the neighbouring districts
2
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 ano-
maly it must be understood that in Celtic countries,
especially in Ireland and in Scotland, ecclesiastical
1
Orderic Vital, L 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 re-
stored by order of the Queen. She is the Christian Minerva of that Acro-
polis of the North.
2
"
Habet insula rectorem semper abbatem presbyterum, cujus jura om-
nis provincia, et ipsi etiam episcopi, ordine inusitato, debeant esse sub-
jecti."

Bede, 1. iii. 4. Compare Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ad an. 565,

ed. Giles. "In Scotia insula Hibernia depositio sancti Coluinbse, cog-
nomento apud suos Columb-Killi, eo quod multarum cellarum, id est
monasteriorum vel ecclesiarum institutor, fundator et rector exstiterit :
adeo ut abbas monasterii, cui novissime praefuit et ubi requiescit, contra
morem ecclesiasticum primus omnium Hibernensium habeatur episcopo-
rum."

Notker Balbulus, Martyrologium. Mabillon quotes the char-

ter of the Irish Abbey of Honau in Germany, where the signature of the
abbot precedes those of seven bishops, all bearing Celtic names.

An-
nales Bcnedictini, vol. ii. Appendix,
p.
70. Who were the bishops subject
to the primacy of lona ? If Colgan is to be believedin Prccf., Triad.
Thaum.,
* 1
prserogativo forte jure pari legimus concessum, quod ejus abbas
primatum et pra?cedentiam habeat ante omnes Scotorum episcoj^os
"
it
must be supposed that all the bishops of Ireland and Scotland were under
its authority.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 281
organisation rested, in the first place, solely upon con-
ventual life. Dioceses and parishes were regularly
constituted only in the twelfth century. Bishops,
it is true, existed from the beginning, hut either
without any clearly fixed territorial jurisdiction, or
incorporated as a necessary but subordinate part of
the ecclesiastical machinery with the great monas-
tic bodies ; and such was specially the case in Ire-
land. 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.
1
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 ut-
most 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 Iona.
2
At the same time
the abbots scrupulously abstained from all usurpa-
tion of the rank, privileges, or functions reserved to
bishops, to whom they had recourse for all the or-
1
See the curious incident narrrated by Adamnan (i.
36), where a "bishop
hesitated to confer the priesthood on Aldus the Black before_having the
authority of the abbot of Tiree, an insular cella dependant upon Iona.

"
Episcopus non ausus est super caput ejus mamnn imponere, nisi prius
presbyter Findchanus . . . suam capiti ejus pro confirmatione imponeret
dextram."
2
"Quidam proselytus ad sanctum venit qui se in quantum potuit oc-
cultabat humiliter, ut nullus sciret quod esset espiscopus."

Adamnan,
i. 44.
282 ST COLUMBA,
dinations celebrated in the monasteries.
1
But as
most of the bishops had been educated in monastic
schools, they retained an affectionate veneration for
their cradle, which, in regard to Iona especially,
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 Iona 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
evangelised by himan influence which was only
increased by his death,
was Co-
Did the great abbot of Iona, like his namesake
lumba the
author of
0f Luxeuil, leave to his disciples a monastic rule
a special
x
ruie
?
0f nis 0WIlj distinct from that of other Celtic monas-
teries ? This has been often asserted, but without
positive proofand in any case no authentic text
of such a document exists.
2
That which bears the
1
"Accito episcopo . . . apud supradictum Findchanum presbyter
ordinatus est."

Adamnan, i. 36.
2
Colgan (Trias Tliaum.,
p.
471) and Hoeften (Disquisitiones Monas-
ticce, 1. i. tr.
8, p.
84) had in their hands the text of a rule attributed to
Columba, and reprinted by Eeeves in 1850, but both have acknowledged
that it would be applicable only to anchorites.
0'
Curry, Lectures,
pp.
374, 612. The only proof of the existence of a cenobitical rule originated
by Columba, is the mention made of it by Uede in the address of Wilfrid
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 283
name of the Rule
of
Columb-ktll, and which has
been sometimes attributed to him, has no reference
in any way to the cenobites of Iona, and is only
applicable to hermits or recluses, who lived perhaps
under his authority, but isolated, and who were
always very numerous in Ireland.
1
A conscientious and attentive examination of
all the monastic peculiarities which can be dis-
covered in his biography
2
reveals absolutely no-
thing in respect to observances or obligations dif-
ferent from the rules borrowed by all the religious
communities of the sixth century from the tradi-
tions of the Fathers of the Desert. Such an
examination brings out distinctly, in the first
place, the necessity for a vow
3
or solemn pro-
fession to prove the final admission of the monk
into the community after a probation more
at the celebrated conference of Whitby between the Benedictines and the
Celtic monks, which will be discussed hereafter :
"
De Patre Vestro Co-
lumba et sequacibus ejus, quorum sanctitatem vos iinitari et Regulam ac
preecepta ccelestibus 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. Peeves 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.
1
The recluses or anchorites, who passed their life in a little cell con-
taining 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 long time in Ireland. Sir Henry Piers has proved the exist-
ence of one of these recluses, and described his cell in the county of West-
meath in 1682.

Reeves, Memory
of
the Church
of
St Duilech, 1859.
2
See the Appendix N to the volume of Peeves, entitled Institutio Hy-
C7isis. It is an excellent epitome of all the monastic customs of the period.
3
"Votum monachiale voverunt . . . votum monachicum devotus
vovit."

Adamnax, i. 31, ii. 39.

284 ST COLUMBA,
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. Autho-
rities 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.
1
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 pre-
judice 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-
1
To prove our assertion we indicate several passages from Ad amnan :
Auricular Confession is expressly pointed out in the history of Li-
branus, 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, 40.
The celebration
of
festivals and
offices
in their honour.
The real presenceAll the elements of the Eucharist.
"
A sancto jussus
Christi corpus conficere. . . . Eucharistise mysteria celcbrare pro anima
sancta."

Colgan, Vita Prima, c. 8

;
Adamnan, iii. 12.
Solemn mass on Sunday, iii. 12
;
on other days, i. 40.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 285
Saxon missionaries, no trace of them is to be dis-
covered in the acts or words of Columba. There is
no mention of the tiresome disputes about the ton-
sure, 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.
1
If Columba made no rule calculated, like that order
of St Benedict, to last for centuries, he never- cXmba!
theless left to his disciples a spirit of life, of His suc-
cessors.
union, and of discipline, which was sufficient to
maintain in one great body, for several centuries
after his death, not only the monks of Iona, 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,
2
and still longer the Family of Columb-kill.
It
was governed by abbots, who succeeded
Columba
as superiors of the community of Iona. 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 deatli
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
1
Adamnan, i. 3.
2
"
Cujus ordo dicebatur pulchrae societatis."

Vita Sancti Kierani,

apud Hceften, op. cit.)
pp.
61, 64.
286 ST COLUMBA,
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;
and, although separated from us as to the obser-
vance of Easter, which is caused by their distance
from all the rest of the world, ardently and closely
devoted to the observance of those laws of piety
and chastity which they have learned in the Old
and New Testaments."
1
These praises are justified
by the great number of saints who have issued
from the spiritual lineage of Columba;
2
but they
should be specially applied to his successors in
the abbatial see of Iona, and, in the first place, to
his first successor, whom he had himself pointed
out, the holy and amiable Baithen, who 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.
3
The cruel sufferings of his last
1
"
Qualiseunque fuerit ipse, nos hoc de illo certum tenemus, quia re-
liquit successores magna continentia et divine- amore regulseque monas-
tics insignes . . . pietatis et castitatis opera diligenter observantes.
"

Bede, iii. 4.
2
The number maybe seen in Colgan, who names as many as a hundred
and twelve, the most part of whom are commemorated in the Irish mar-
tyrologies.
3
During his short abbacy, it is apparent that all was not unanimous
adhesion and enthusiasm. A certain Bevan, described as a persecutor of
the Churches, once sent to ask the remains of the meal which the monks
of Iona had just eaten, in order to turn them into derision.
"
Nec ob
aliud hoc postulabat, nisi ut causam blasphemiae ac despectionis fratrum
inveniret." Baithen sent to him what remained of the milk which had
made the repast of the brethren. After he had drunk it, the scoffer was
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 287
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 Iona who succeeded him
were of the same race.
The family spirit, or, to speak more truly, the Preponder-
..
P1-I--T-I1
aIlCe f
clan spirit, always so powerful and active m Ireland,
clan in the
constitu-
and which was so striking a feature in the character
tion of cei-
0
tic monach-
of Columba, had become a predominating influence
ism-
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 elec-
tion 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. Spe-
cial reasons were necessary for breaking through
this rule. Thus it is apparent that the eleven first
abbots of Iona 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.
1
Every
great monastery became thus the centre and appan-
age of a family, or, to speak more exactly, of a clan,
and was alike the school and the asylum of all the
seized with such suffering, that he was converted, and died confessing his
repentance.Act. SS. Bolland., vol. ii. June,
p.
238.
1
See the genealogical table given by Dr Reeves, at page 313 of his edi-
tion of Adanman.
288 ST COLOIBA,
founder's kindred. At a later period a kind of suc-
cession, purely laic and hereditary, developed itself
by the side of the spiritual posterity, and was in-
vested with the possession of most of the monastic
domains. These two lines of descendants, simul-
taneous but distinct, from the principal monastic-
founders, are distinguished in the historical gene-
alogies of Ireland under the names of ecclesiastica
progenies and ofpleoilis'progeri ies? After the ninth
century, in consequence of the relaxation of discip-
line, the invasion of married clerks, and the increas-
ing value of land, the line of spiritual descent con-
founded 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 founda-
tion 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 Iona, where the abbatical
succession was always perfectly regular and unin-
terrupted up to the invasions and devastations of
the Danes at the commencement of the eighth cen-
tury. From the time of those invasions the abbots
1
Dr Reeves has thoroughly examined this curious question in a special
paper, On the Ancient Abbatial Succession in Ireland, ap. Proceedings of
the Royal Irish Academy, vol. vii., 1857.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 289
of Iona began to occupy an inferior position. The
radiant centre from which Christian civilisation
had shone upon the British Isles grew dim.
1
The
headquarters of the communities united under the
title of the Family or Order
of
Columh-Jdll, were
transferred from Iona to one of the other founda-
tions of the saint at Kells, in the centre of Ireland,
where a successor of Columba, superior-general of
the order, titulary abbot of Iona, Armagh, or some
other great Irish monastery, and bearing the dis-
tinctive title of Coarb, resided for three centuries
more.
2
We have lingered too long over the great and
touching figure of the saint whose life 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.
This influence is especially evident in the Irish Posthum-
Church, which seems to have been entirely swayed
ence of
1
Magnus, king of Norway, after having conquered the Hebrides, visited
Iona in 1097, and annexed the islands to the bishopric of Sodor and Man
(Sodorensis), under the metropolitan of Drontherin, which destroyed the
ancient ecclesiastical tradition in the island. In 1203, an abbot of Iona,
who came from Ireland, and belonged to the family of Columba, is men-
tioned for the last time . In 1214, there is mention of a prioiy of the
order of Cluny, the origin of which is unknown.

Laxigax, vol. iv.

p.
347
;
Cosmo Innes,
p.
110. The temporal sovereignty fell to the famous
Lords
of
the Isles, immortalised by Walter Scott, and whose tombs may
still be seen there.See Appendix A.
2
See the detailed chronology of the forty-nine successors of Columba,
and of their arts and laws, from 597 to 1219, in the Chronicon Hyense of
Reeves, from page 359. These Coarbs have been strangely confounded
by Ussher, Ware, Lanigan, and other writers, with the chorepiscopi of the
continent.
VOL. III. T
290 ST COLUMBA,
coiumba by his spirit, his successors, and his disciples, dur-
upon the
Irish
ing the time which is looked upon as the Golden
Church.
...
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 re-
Lex Co-
collections or institutions of Coiumba. The words
lumhcille.
Lex Columbcille are found on many pages of its
confused annals, and indicate sometimes the mass
of traditions preserved by its monasteries, some-
times 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.
1
The continued influence of the great abbot
of Iona was so marked, even in temporal affairs,
that more than two centuries after his death, in
817, the monks of his order, Congregatio Columb-
cille, went solemnly to Tara, the ancient capital
of Druidical Ireland, to excommunicate there the
supreme monarch of the island, who had assassi-
nated a prince of the family of their holy chief.
2
Great in-
It has been said, and cannot be sufficiently re-
tellectual
J
m(mto?'the
P
eatec
l
that Ireland was then regarded by all Chris-
/istries
011
^
an Europe as the principal centre of knowledge
and piety. In the shelter of its numberless monas-
teries a crowd of missionaries, doctors, and preach-
ers were educated for the service of the Church and
1
This occurred in
753, 757, and 778.
2
Annals
of
Ulster, ann. 817.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA.
291
the propagation of the faith in all Christian coun-
tries. A vast and continual development of liter-
ary and religious effort
1
is there apparent, superior
to anything that could be seen in any other coun-
try of Europe. Certain artsthose of architecture,
carving, metallurgy, as applied to the decoration
of churcheswere successfully cultivated, without
speaking of music, which continued to flourish both
among the learned and among the people. The
classic languages not only Latin, but Greekwere
cultivated, spoken, and written with a sort of pas-
sionate pedantry, which shows at least how pow-
erful was the sway of intellectual influences over
these ardent souls. Their mania for Greek was
even carried so far that they wrote the Latin of
the church books in Hellenic characters.
2
And in
Ireland more than anywhere else, each monastery
was a school, and each school a workshop of
transcription, from which day by day issued new
copies of the Holy Scriptures and the Fathers
of the primitive Churchcopies which were dis-
persed through all Europe, and which are still to
be found in Continental libraries. They may easily
be recognised by the original and elegant character
of their Irish writing, as also by the use of the
1
"
Scripturarum tarn liberalium quam ecclesiastiearum."
2
Reeves's Adamnan,
pp.
158, 354. In a MS. life of St Brendan this
curious passage occurs : "Habebat . . . niissalem librum scriptuni Grrecis
litteris. . . . Et positus est ille liber super altare. . . . Illico jam lit-
teras Grsecas scivit sanctus Brendanus, sicuti Latinas quas didicit ab in-
fantia. Et ccepit raissam cantare."
292
ST COLUMBA,
Calli-
graphy in
alphabet common to all the Celtic races, and after-
wards employed by the Anglo-Saxons, but to which
in our clay the Irish alone have remained faithful.
Columba, as has been seen, had given an example
Cohunba
1

f
^
^is unwearie(1 labour to the monastic scribes
;
his example was continually followed in the Irish
cloisters, where the monks did not entirely limit
themselves to the transcription of Holy Scripture,
but reproduced also Greek and Latin authors, some-
times in Celtic character, with gloss and commen-
tary in Irish, like that Horace which modern learn-
ing has discovered in the library of Berne.
1
These
marvellous manuscripts, illuminated with incom-
parable ability and patience by the monastic family
of Columba, excited, five hundred years later, the
declamatory enthusiasm of a great enemy of Ire-
land, the Anglo-Norman historian, Gerald de Barry
;
and they still attract the attention of archaeologists
and philologists of the highest fame.
2
Historic Exact annals of the events of the time were also
made out in all the monasteries. These annals re-
1
Orelli, in liis edition of Horace, says that this Codex of Berne, with
its Irish gloss, is of the eighth or ninth century :
"
Scotice scriptus, anti-
quissimus omnium quotquot adhuc innotuerunt."
2
'
' Haec equidem quanto frequentius et diligentius intueor, semper quasi
novis obstupeo, seinperque magis et magis admiranda conspicio."

Giral-
DUS Cambrensis, Topogr. Iliber., ii. c. 38. Most of these admired and
quoted MSS. in Continental or Anglo-Saxon libraries, are of Irish origin,
as has been proved by Zeuss, Keller, and Reeves. The MSS. used by the
celebrated philologist Zeuss in the composition of his Grammatica Celtica
(Lipsiaj, 1853) contain Irish glosses upon the Latin text of Priscian, at
St Gall, on St Paul's epistles, at Wurzburg, on the commentary of St Co-
lumbanus upon the Psalms, which has been brought from Bobbio to
Milan, and on Bede, brought from Eeichenau to Carlsruhc.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 293
placed the chronicles of the bards ; and so far as
they have been preserved, and already published or
about to be so, they now form the principal source
of Irish history.
1
Ecclesiastical records have natu-
rally a greater place in them than civil history.
They celebrate especially the memory of the saints,
who have always been so numerous in the Irish
Church, where each of the great communities can
count a circle of holy men, issued from its bosom
or attached to its confraternity. Under the name
of sanctilogy or festilogij (for martyrs were too lit-
tle known in Ireland to justify the usual term of
martyrology), this circle of biographies was the
spiritual reading of the monks, and the familiar
instruction of the surrounding people. Several of
these festilogies are in verse, one of which, the
most famous of all, is attributed to Angus, called Angus, the
the Culdee, a simple brother, miller of the Monas-
tery of Tallach.
2
In this the principal saints of
other countries find a place along with three hun-
dred and sixty-five Irish saints, one for each day of
the year, who are all celebrated with that pious
and patriotic enthusiasm, at once poetical and
moral, which burns so naturally in every Irish
heart.
1
These precious collections were continued by the more recent Orders
after the English conquest, and even after the Keformation, up to the
seventeenth century. See especially the valuable collection entitled An-
nals
of
the Four Masters, that is to say, of the four Franciscans of Done-
gal, which come down to 1634.
2
See the analysis made of it by O'Curry, Lectures, &c,
pp.
364, 371,
and, after him, M. de la Villemarqu6, in his Poesie des CloUres Celti/pics.
29-1 ST COLUMBA,
TheCni- The name of Culdee leads us to point out in
dees.
passing the absurd and widespread error which has
made the Culdees be looked upon as a kind of
monkish order, married and indigenous to the soil,
which existed before the introduction of Christian-
ity into Ireland and Scotland by the Koman mis-
sionaries, and of whom the great abbot of Iona was
the founder or chief. This opinion, propagated by
learned Anglicans, and blindly copied by various
French writers, is now universally acknowledged as
false by sincere and competent judges.
1
The Cul-
1
According to Dr Reeves, the name of Culdee or Cc'ile Dei, answering to
the Latin term Servus Dei, appeared for the first time in authentic his-
tory with the name of this Angus, who lived in 780. It was afterwards
applied to the general body of monks, that is to say, to all the clerks liv-
ing under a monastic rule in Ireland and Scotland. According to the
lamented O'Curry, the Culdees were nothing more than ecclesiastics or
laymen, attached to the monasteries, and whose first founder was a St
Malruain, who died in 787 or 792. This information, which the author
has derived from the two princes of Irish erudition, agrees perfectly with
the conclusions of Dr Lanigan in his very learned and impartial ecclesi-
astical history of Ireland, vol. iv.
p.
295-300 ; as also with those of the new
Bollandists, vol. viii. of October,
p.
86,
Disqvisitio in Culdeos, ap/Acta S.
Reguli. According to the worthy continuators of the Acta Sanctorum, the
Culdees were not monks, but secular brothers, or rather canons, and ap-
peared at soonest in the year 800. At the same time our learned contem-
poraries remit to the ninth century that translation of the relics of the
apostle St Andrew, who became the patron saint of Scotland in the mid-
dle ages, which the legends have attributed to the fourth or sixth. This
translation, made by a bishop named Regulus (Rule), occasioned the foun-
dation of the episcopal see and town of St Andrews on the east coast of
Scotland, in the county of Fife, which was made metropolis of the king-
dom in 1472, and possesses a university, which dates from 1411. Very fine
ruins of the churches destroyed by the Reformers in 1559 are still to be
seen there. Since the preceding note was written, a new publication, by
Br Reeves, The Culdees
of
the British Islands as they appear in History,
-with an appendix
of
Evidences, Dublin, 1864, has summed up and ended
all controversy upon this long-disputed question, and given the last blow
to the chimeras of sectarian erudition.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 295
dees, a sort of third order, attached to the regular
monasteries, appeared in Ireland, as elsewhere, only
in the ninth century, and had never anything more
than a trifling connection with the Columban com-
munities.
1
Still more striking than the intellectual develop- Missionary
i*i i t*i

efforts of
ment oi which the Irish monasteries were at this
the Irish
monks out
period the centre, is the prodigious activity dis-
of Ireland,
played by the Irish monks in extending and multi-
plying themselves over all the countries of Europe
here to create new schools and sanctuaries among
nations already evangelisedthere to carry the
light of the Gospel, at peril of their lives, to the
countries that were still pagan. We should run
the risk of forestalling our future task if we did
not resist the temptations of the subject, which
would lead us to go faster than time, and to follow
those armies of brave and untiring Celts, always
adventurous and often heroic, into the regions
where we shall perhaps one day find them again.
Let us content ourselves with a simple list, which
has a certain eloquence even in the dryness of
its figures. Here is the number, probably very
incomplete, given by an ancient writer, of the
monasteries founded out of Ireland by Irish
monks, led far from their country by the love of
souls, and, no doubt, a little also by that love of
travel which has always been one of their special
distinctions
:

1
Keeves's Aclamnan,
p.
368.
296
ST COLUMBA,
Thirteen in Scotland,
Twelve in England,
Seven in France,
Twelve in Armorica,
Seven in Lorraine,
Ten in Alsatia,
Sixteen in Bavaria,
Fifteen in Ehetia, Helvetia, and Allemania
;
without counting many in Thuringia and upon the
left bank of the Lower Khine
;
and, finally, six in
Italy.
And that it may be fully apparent how great
was the zeal and virtue of which those monastic
colonies were at once the product and the centre,
let us place by its side an analogous list of saints
of Irish origin, whom the gratitude of nations con-
verted, edified, and civilised by them, have placed
upon their altars as patrons and founders of those
churches whose foundations they watered with
their blood
:

A hundred and fifty (of whom thirty-six were martyrs)

in Germany,
Forty-five (of whom six were martyrs) in Gaul,
Thirty in Belgium,
Thirteen in Italy,
Eight, all martyrs, in Norway and Iceland.
1
In the after part of this narrative we shall meet
many of the most illustrious, especially in Ger-
many. Let us confine ourselves here to pointing
1
Stephen White, Apologia, in Haverty's History
of
Ireland.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 297
out, among the thirteen Irish saints honoured with
public veneration in Italy, him who is still invoked
at the extremity of the peninsula as the patron of
Tarento under the name of San Cataldo.
His name in Ireland was Cathal, and before he San catai-
do, bishop
left his country to go on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem,
of Tarento.
and to become a bishop at Tarento, he had presided
over the great monastic school of Lismore,
1
in the
south of Ireland.
2
Thanks to his zeal and know-
ledge, this school had become a sort of university,
to which he attracted an immense crowd of stu-
dents, not only Irish, but foreigners, from Wales,
England, France, and even from Germany. When
their education was concluded, a portion of them
remained to increase the already numerous commu-
nities in the holy and lettered city of Lismore
;
the
others carried back with them to their different
countries a recollection of the advantages which
they owed to Ireland and her monks.
3
For it is
1
See Ms acts, in Colgan,
p.
542-562, and the Bollandists, vol. ii.
May,
p.
569-578. Lanigan (vol. iii.
p.
121-128) quotes a life of this
saint in Latin verse by Bonaventura Moroni. His father, St Donatus, is
supposed to have been bishop of Lecce, in the same province as Tarento.
2
See the legend of the founder of Lismore, Book VIII. chap. iii.
3
"
Egregia jam et sancta civitas est Lismor, cujus dimidium est asy-
lum, in quo nulla mulier audet intrare, sed plenum est cellis et monas-
teriis Sanctis : et multitudo virorum sanctorum semper illi manet.
!
Viri
enim religiosi ex omni parte Hibernian, et non solum ex Anglia et Brit-
annia confiuunt ad earn, volentes ibi migrare ad Christum."

Act. Sanct.
Bolland., vol. iii. May,
p.
388. "Ad earn brevi excellentiam pervenit,
ut ad ipsum audiendum Galli, Angli, Scoti, Teutones aliique finitarum
regionum quam plurimi Lesmorium conveniunt."

Officium 8. Cataldi,
ap. Lanigan, loco cit. This monastic town of Lismore, the seat of a
bishopric since united with that of Waterford, must not be identified
with another bishopric called Lismore, situated in an island of the He-
298 ST COLUMBA,
crowd oi
important to prove that, while Ireland sent forth
foreign
students,
her sons into all the regions of the then known
especially

of Anglo-
world, numberless strangers hastened there to seat
Saxons, in
0
cioistera
themselves at the feet of her doctors, and to find
in that vast centre of faith and knowledge all
the remnants of ancient civilisation which her in-
sular position had permitted her to save from the
flood of barbarous invasions.
The monasteries which gradually covered the
soil of Ireland were thus the hostelries of a foreign
emigration. Unlike the ancient DruidicaJ colleges,
they were open to all. The }Door ancl the rich, the
slave as well as the freeman, the child and the old
man, had free access and paid nothing. It was not,
then, only to the natives of Ireland that the Irish
monasteries, occupied and ruled by the sons of
Columba, confined the benefits of knowledge and
of literary and religious education. They opened
their door with admirable generosity to strangers
from every country and of every condition ; above
all, to those who came from the neighbouring
island, England, some to end their lives in an Irish
cloister, some to search from house to house for
books, and masters capable of explaining those
books. The Irish monks received with kindness
guests so greedy of instruction, and gave them
both books and masters, the food of the body and
bridean archipelago. The Irish Lismore is now specially remarkable for
a fine castle of the Duke of Devonshire on the pictures*jue banks of the
Blackwater.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 299
the food of the soul, without demanding any re-
compence.
1
The Anglo-Saxons, who were after-
wards to repay this teaching with ingratitude so
cruel, were of all nations the one which derived
most profit from it. From the seventh to the
eleventh century English students flocked into Ire-
land, and for four hundred years the monastic
schools of the island maintained the great reputa-
tion which brought so many successive generations
to dip deeply there into the living waters of know-
ledge and of faith.
This devotion to knowledge and generous muni-
Terrible
confusions
ficence towards strangers, this studious and intel-
of exist-
0
ence in
lectual life, nourished into being by the sheltering
Ireland,
warmth of faith, shone with all the more brightness
amid the horrible confusion and bloody disasters
which signalise, in so far as concerned temporal
affairs, the Golden Age of ecclesiastical history in
Ireland, even before the sanguinary invasions of
the Danes at the end of the eighth century. It
has been said with justice that war and religion
have been in all ages the two great passions of
Ireland. But it must be allowed that war seems
1
"
Erant ibidem multi nobilium simul et mediocrium de gente An-
glorum qui . . . relicta patria, vel divinae lectionis, vel continentioris
vitas gratia illo secesserant. Et quidam mox se monastic conversationi
fideliter mancipaverunt, alii magis circumeundo per cellas magistrorum
lectioni operam dare gaudebant, quod omnes Scoti libentissime suscipi-
entea victum eis quotidianum siue pretio, aliis quoque ad legendurn et
inagisterium gratuitum prsebere curabant."

Bede, iii.
27, ad aim. 664.
There still existed in Armagh, in 1092, a locality called Trien-Saxon, in-
habited by Anglo-Saxon students. Colgan, Trias Thaum.,
p.
300
;
compare Lanigax, iii. 490, 493.
300 ST COLUMBA,
almost always to have carried the day over religion,
and that religion did not prevent war from degen-
erating too often into massacres and assassinations.
It is true that after the eighth century there are
fewer kings murdered by their successors than in
the period between St Patrick and St Columba
;
it
is true that three or four of these kin^s lived lono-
enough to have the time to go and expiate their
sins as monks at Armagh or Iona.
1
But it is not
less true that the annals of the monastic family of
Columba present to us at each line with mournful
laconism a spectacle which absolutely contradicts the
flattering pictures which have been drawn of the
peace which Ireland should have enjoyed. Almost
every year, such words as the following are re-
peated with cruel brevity
:

1
Bellum.
Bellum laerymabile.
Bellum magnum.
Vastatio.
Spoliatio.
1
These kings are, according to the Annals of Tigherneach

Comgall, who died a monk at Lotra (?

perhaps Lure) in 710.

Feailhbeartach, who abdicated in 729, and was a monk for thirty
years at Armagh.
Domhnall, or Donald III., who died at Iona in 764.
Niall Fiosach, who died at Iona in
777,
after having been a
monk for seven years.
The principal kings or monarclis of the island are alone mentioned
here. As for the provincial kings, or chieftains of clans, who took the
monastic habit, it would be impossible to count them. Many are named
in the Cambrcnsis Evcrsus of Lynch, c. 30.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 301
Violatio.
Obsessio.
Strages Magna.
Jugulatio.
And above all, Jugulatio. It is the word which
returns oftenest, and in which seems to be summed
up the destiny of those unhappy princes and
people.
Such an enumeration should give rise to the re-
flection, what this wild tree of Celtic nature would
have been without the monastic graft. We can
thus perceive with what ferocious natures Columba
and his disciples had to do. If, notwithstanding
the preaching of the monks, a state of affairs so
barbarous continued to exist, what might it have
been had the Gospel never been preached to those
savages, and if the monks had not been in the
midst of them like a permanent incarnation of the
Spirit of God ?
The monks were at the same time neither less
inactive nor more spared than the women, who
fought and perished in the wars precisely like the
men, up to the time when the most illustrious of
Columba s successors delivered them from that ter-
rible bondage. A single incident drawn from the
sanguinary chaos of the period will suffice at once
to paint the always atrocious habits of those Celtic
Christians, and the always beneficent influence of
monastic authority. A hundred years after the
death of Columba, his biographer and ninth succes-
302 ST COLUMBA,
Adamnan,
sor, Adamnan, was crossing a plain, carrying his
the ninth
' '

J &
ofcoium
^ mther on his back, when they saw two bands
hfs Law
of
%hting> and in the midst of the battle a woman
Itlfj
1710
'
dragging another woman after her, whose breast
she had pierced with an iron hook. At this hor-
rible spectacle the abbot's mother seated herself on
the ground, and said to him,
"
I will not leave this
spot till thou hast promised me to have women
exempted for ever from this horror, and from
every battle and expedition." He gave her his
word, and he kept it. At the next national assem-
bly of Tara, he proposed and carried a law which
is inscribed in the annals of Ireland as the Law
of
Adamnan, or Law
of
the Innocents, and which for
ever freed the Irish women from the obligation of
military service and all its homicidal consequences.
1
At the same time, nothing was more common
in Ireland than the armed intervention of the
monks in civil wars, or in the struggles between
different communities. We may be permitted to
believe that the spiritual descendants of Columba
reckoned among them more than one monk of cha-
racter as warlike as their great ancestor, and that
there were as many monastic actors as victims in
these desperate conflicts. Two centuries after
1
"
Lex Adamnani. . . . Adamnanus ad Hiberniam pergit et . . . dedit
legem innocentium populis."

Annates Ultonive, an. 696. Compare

Peteie's Tara,
pp.
147. Reeves,
p. 51, 53, 179. The assembly was com-
posed of forty ecclesiastics and thirty-nine laymen. They also decreed
an annual tribute to be collected over all Ireland for the benefit of the
abbot of Iona and his successors.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA.
Columba, two hundred monks of his abbey at Dur-
row perished in a battle with the neighbouring
monks of Clonmacnoise
;
and the old annalists of
Ireland speak of a battle which took place in 816,
at which eight hundred monks of Ferns were
killed. The Irish religious had not given up
either the warlike humour or the dauntless cour-
age of their race.
Nor is it less certain that the studious fervour Immortal
.
i i
,
patriotism
and persevering patriotism which were such marked
of the
features in the character of Columba remained the
monks,
inalienable inheritance of his monastic posterity

an inheritance which continued up to the middle

ages, to the time of that famous statute of Kil-
kenny, which is an ineffaceable monument of the
ferocious arrogance of the English conquerors, even
before the Keformation. This statute, after having
denounced every marriage between the two races as
an act of high treason, went so far as to exclude all
native Irish from the monasteriesfrom those same
monasteries which Irishmen alone had founded and
occupied for eight centuries, and where, before and
after Columba, they had afforded a generous hospi-
tality to the British fugitives and to the victorious
Saxons.
But we must not permit ourselves to linger on
the Irish coasts. We shall soon again meet her
generous and intrepid sons, always the first in the
field, and the most ready to expose themselves to
danger, among the apostles and propagators of
304 ST COLUMBA.
monastic institutions, upon the banks of the Scheldt,
the Ehine, and the Danube, where also they were
eclipsed and surpassed by the Anglo-Saxons, but
where their names, forgotten in Ireland, still shine
with a pure and beneficent light.
Influence The influence of Columba, so universal, undeni-
in scot-
able, and enduring in his native island, should not
land.
'

>
'
have been less so in his adopted countryin that
Caledonia which became more and more an Irish or
Scotic colony, and thus merited the name of Scot-
land, which it retained. Notwithstanding, his work
has perhaps left fewer authentic traces there. All
unite in attributing to him the conversion of the
Northern Picts, and the introduction or re-estab-
lishment of the faith among the Picts of the South
and the Scots of the West, It is also pretty gen-
erally agreed to date from his timeseven though
there is no evidence of their direct subordination to
Eemains
oflonathe great monasteries of Old Melrose,
1
of
Caledonian Abercorn, Tynninghame, and Coldingham, situated
between the Forth and the Tweed, and which after-
wards became the centres of Christian extension
among the Saxons of Northumbria. Further north,
but still upon the east coast, the round towers
which are still to be seen at Brechin and Aber-
nethy bear witness to their Irish origin, and conse-
quently to the influence of Columba, who was the
1
Old Melrose, which was the cradle of the great and celebrated Cis-
tercian Abbey of Melrose, whose ruins are admired by all travellers and
readers of Walter Scott. The site alone now remains.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 305
first and principal Irish missionary in these dis-
tricts. The same may be said of those primitive
and lowly constructions, built with long and large
stones laid upon each other, without cement, which
are to be found in St Kilda and other Hebridean
isles, and also upon certain points of the neighbour-
ing shore, resembling exactly in form the deserted
monasteries which are so numerous in the isles
of western Ireland.
1
Another relic of the primitive
Church is found in the caves, hollowed out or
enlarged by the hand of man, in the cliffs or moun-
tains of the interior, inhabited of old, as were the
grots of Subiaco and Marmoutier, and as the caves
of Meteores in Albania
2
are still, by hermits, or
sometimes even by bishops (as St Woloc, St Ee-
gulus
3
).
Kentigern, the apostle of Strathclyde, Apostie-
appears to us m the legend at the mouth oi his
Kentigern.
episcopal cave, which was hollowed out in the side
of a cliff, and where the people looked at him from
afar with respectful curiosity, while he studied the
direction of the storms at sea, and breathed in with
pleasure the first breezes of the spring.
This bishop, Welsh by birth, has already been
1
Studied carefully by Lord Dunraven and other members of the learned
company called The Irish Archfeological and Celtic Society.
2
Cukzon's Monasteries
of
the Levant.
3
See above, the note of the Bollandists upon the apostolic labours of
St Eegulus. An auge or lavatory in stone is still shown near the ruined
church of Strath Deveron, which is called St Woloc's bath, and where
mothers came to bathe their sick children. This holy bishop lived in a
house built like the first church of Iona.
"
Pauperculam casam ealamis
viminibusque contextam."

Breviarium Aberdonense, Propr. SS.,

p.
14.
vol. in.
u
306 ST COLUMBA,
mentioned in connection with the principality of
Wales, where, as we have already seen, he founded
an immense monastery during an exile, the cause
of which it is impossible to ascertain, but which
was the occasion of a relapse into idolatry among
his diocesans.
1
The district of Strathclyde or Cum-
bria, on the west coasts of Britain, from the mouth
of the Clyde to that of the Merseythat is to say,
from Glasgow to Liverpoolwas occupied by a
mingled race of Britons and Scots, whose capital
was Al-Cluid, now Dumbarton. A prince called
Boderick (Bydderch Hael), whose mother was Irish,
and who had been baptised by an Irish monk,
hastened, when the authority fell into his hands, to
recall Kentigern, who returned, bringing with him
a hive of Welsh monks, and established definitive-
ly the seat of his apostleship at Glasgow, where
Ninian had preceded him nearly a century before
without leaving any lasting traces of his passage.
Kentigern, more fortunate, established upon the
site of a burying-ground consecrated by Ninian the
first foundation of the magnificent cathedral which
still bears his name.
2
It was consecrated by an Irish bishop, brought
1
Acta SS. Bollancl., vol. i. January,
p.
819.
2
St Mungo's. This is the name borne by Kentigern in Scotland,
and means, dearest. Kentigern seems to be derived from Ken, which
means head, and Tiern, lord, in Welsh (Bolland.,
p.
820). The exist-
ing Cathedral of Glasgow was begun in 1124 by Bishop Jocelyn, a monk
of Melrose, who at the same time caused a life of his predecessor Kenti-
gern, derived from ancient authorities, to be written by another Jocelyn,
a monk of Furness.
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 307
from Ireland for the purpose, and who celebrated
that ceremony without the assistance of other
bishops, according to Celtic customs. Kentigern
collected round him numerous disciples, all learned
in holy literature, all working with their hands,
and possessing nothing as individualsa true mon-
astic community.
1
He distinguished himself dur-
ing all his episcopate by his efforts to bring back to
the faith the Picts of Galloway, which formed part
of the kingdom of Strathclyde ; and afterwards
by numerous missions and monastic foundations
throughout all Albyna name which was then
given to midland Scot] and. His disciples pene-
trated even to the Orkney Isles, where they must
have met with the missionaries of Iona.
2
The salutary and laborious activity of Kenti-
gern must often have encroached upon the regions
which were specially within the sphere of Columba.
But the generous heart of Columba was inaccessible
to jealousy. He was besides the personal friend
of Kentigern and of King Eoderick.
3
The fame
of the Bishop of Strathclyde's apostolic labours
drew him from his isle to do homage to his
rival. He arrived from Iona with a great train
1
"
Accito autem de Hibemia uno episcopo, more Britonum et Scotoruni,
in episcopum ipsum consecrari fecerunt. ... In singulis casulis, sicut
ipse sanctus Kentigernus, commorabantur. Uncle et singulares elerici a
vulgo Calhdei nuncupabantur.
"

Jocelyn, Vita S. Kentig. This last pas-

sage quoted by Reeves, The Culdees
of
the British Isles,
p.
27, is not in
the text given by the Bollandists.
2
See above,
p.
227.
3
Adamxax, i. 15.
308 ST COLUMBA,
His meet- of monks, whom lie arranged in three companies at
Coiumba.
the moment of their entrance into Glasgow. Ken-
tigern distributed in the same way the numerous
monks who surrounded him in his episcopal mon-
astery, and whom he led out to meet the abbot of
Iona. He divided them, according to tlieir age,
into three bands, the youngest of whom marched
first ; then those who had reached the age of man-
hood
;
and, last of all, the old and grey
-
haired,
among whom he himself took his place. They all
chanted the anthem In viis Domini magna est
gloria Domini, et via justomim
facta
est : et iter
sanctorum jyrcejparatum est. The monks of Iona,
on their side, chanted in choir the versicle, Ibunt
sancti cle virtute in virtutem : videbitur Dens
eorum in Sion. From each side echoed the Alle-
luia
;
and it was to the sound of those words of
Holy Scripture, chanted in Latin by the Celtic
monks of Wales and Ireland, that the two apostles
of the Picts and Scots met at what had been the
extreme boundary of the Eoman Empire and limit
of the power of the Caesars, and upon a soil hence-
forth for ever freed from paganism and idolatry.
They embraced each other tenderly, and passed
several days in intimate and friendly intercourse.
The historian who has preserved for us the ac-
count of this interview does not conceal a less edi-
fying incident. He confesses that some robbers had
joined themselves to the following of the abbot of
Iona, and that they took advantage of the general
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 309
enthusiasm to steal a ram from the bishop's flock.
They were soon taken ; but Kentigern pardoned
them. Columba and his fellow-apostle exchanged
their pastoral cross before they parted, in token of
mutual affection.
1
Another annalist describes them
as living together for six months in the monastery
which Columba had just founded at Dunkeld, and
together preaching the faith to the inhabitants of
Athol and the mountainous regions inhabited by
the Picts.
2
I know not how far we may put faith in another
narrative of the same author, which seems rather
borrowed from the Gallo-Breton epic of Tristan and
Iseult than from monastic legend, but which has
nevertheless remained Kentigern's most popular
title to fame. The wife of King Eoderick, led The legend

of the
astray by a guilty passion for a knight of her hus-
queen's
band's court, had the weakness to bestow upon him
a ring which had been given to her by the king.
When Eoderick was out hunting with this knight,
the two took refuge on the banks of the Clyde dur-
ing the heat of the day, and the knight, falling
asleep, unwittingly stretched out his hand, upon
1
"Sancti viri famam audiens, ad ilium venire, visitare et familiaritatem
ejus habere cupiebat . . . cam multa discipulorum turba. . . . Tntertia
turma senes decora canitie venerabiles. . . . Appropinquantes ad in-
vicem sancti in amplexus mutuos et oscula sancta ruunt. . . . Venerunt
cum sancto Columba quidam filii Belial ad furta et peccata assueti. . . .
In signum mutiise dilectionis alterius baculum suscepit."

Bolland.,
p.
821. The cross given by Columba to Kentigern was long preserved and
venerated in the Anglo-Saxon Monastery of Ripon, Yorkshire.
2
Hector Boetius, Hist. Scotorum, 1. ix.
310 ST COLUMBA,
which the king saw the ring which he had given
to the queen as a token of his love. It was with
difficulty that he restrained himself from killing the
knight on the spot ; but he subdued his rage, and
contented himself by taking the ring from his finger
and throwing it into the river, without awakening
the guilty sleeper. When he had returned to the
town he demanded his ring from the queen, and, as
she could not produce it, threw
T
her into prison, and
gave orders for her execution. She obtained, how-
ever, a delay of three days, and having in vain
sought the ring from the knight to whom she had
given it, she had recourse to the protection of St
Kentigern. The good pastor knew or divined all
the ring, found in a salmon which he had caught
in the Clyde, was already in his hands. He sent it
to the queen, who showed it to her husband, and
thus escaped the punishment which awaited her.
Roderick even asked her pardon on his knees, and
offered to punish her accusers. From this, however,
she dissuaded him, and, hastening to Kentigern,
confessed her fault to him, and was commanded to
pass the rest of her life in penitence. It is for this
reason that the ancient effigies of the apostle of
Strathclyde represent him as holding always the
episcopal cross in one hand, and in the other a sal-
mon with a ring in its mouth.
1
1
"
Contigit rcginam . . . pretiosum annnlum ob immensiim amorem
sibi a rege commendatum eidcm niiliti contulisse. . . . Discopulatis ca-
nibns. . . . Fatigatns autem miles extenso brachio dormire coepit. . . .
Qutun ilia secreto niiliti in vanuni mittens projerre non posset. . . . La-
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 311
But neither Kentigern, whose labours can scarcely Neither
be said to have survived him, nor Columba, whose
nor Coium-
ba affect
influence upon the Picts and Scots was so powerful
the Ang!-
* *
Saxons,
and lasting, exercised any direct or efficacious action
'v
.
ho con
-
o> J
tmue
upon the Anglo-Saxons, who became stronger and^g^
s
aud
more formidable from day to day, and whose fero
1
cious incursions threatened the Caledonian tribes
no less than the Britons. It is apparent, however,
that the great abbot of Iona did not share the re-
pugnance, which had hardened into a system of
repulsion, of the Welsh clergy for the Saxon race :
express mention, on the contrary, is made in the
most authentic documents connected with his his-
tory, of Saxon monks, who had been admitted into
the community of Iona, One of them, for instance,
had the office of baker there, and was reckoned
among Columba's intimates.
1
But nothing indi-
cates that these Saxons, who were enrolled under
the authority of Columba, exercised any influence
from thence upon their countrymen. On the con-
trary, while the Scotic-Briton missionaries spread
over all the corners of Caledonia, and while Co-
lumba and his disciples carried the light of the
crymosis precibus rem gestam sancto Kentigerno per nuntium exposuit.
. . . Contristatus rex pro illatis reginre injuriis, et veniain flexis genibus
petens."

Bolland.,
p.
820
;
compare
p.
815.
1
Cummineus (apud Colgan,
p.
320) mentions two Saxons:
"
Quidam
religiosus frater, Genereus nomine, Saxo natione, pictor opere." And
subsequently: "Duo ejus discipuli, Lugneus filius Bias et Pillo Saxo
genere." Adamnan (iii. 10-22) corrects the conclusions which some
authors have drawn from the word pictor by employing the words, ojms
pwtorium excrccns. See ante, page 153.
more for-
midable.
312 ST COLUMBA,
Gospel into the northern districts where it had
never penetrated, the Christian faith and the Catho-
lic Church languished and gave up the ghost in the
southern part of the island under the ruins heaped
up everywhere by the Saxon conquest.
Paganism and barbarism, vanquished by the
Gospel in the Highlands of the north, again arose
and triumphed in the southin the most popu-
lous, accessible, and flourishing districtsthrough-
out all that country, which was destined hereafter
to play so great a part in the world, and which
already began to call itself England. From 569 to
586
ten years before the death of Columba, and
at the period when his authority was best estab-
lished and most powerful in the norththe last
champions of Christian Britain were finally cast
out beyond the Severn, while at the same time new
bands of Anglo-Saxons in the north, driving back
the Picts to the other side of the Tweed, and cross-
ing the Humber to the south, founded the future
kingdoms of Mercia and Northumbria, It is true
that at a later period the sons of Columba carried
the Gospel to those Northumbrians and Mercians.
But at the end of the sixth century, after a hun-
dred and fifty years of triumphant invasions and
struggles, the Saxons had not yet encountered in any
of the then Christian, or at least converted nations
(Britons, Scots, and Picts), which they had assailed,
fought, and vanquished, either missionaries disposed
to announce the good news to them, nor priests
THE APOSTLE OF CALEDONIA. 313
capable of maintaining the precious nucleus of
faith among the conquered races. In 586 the two
last bishops of conquered Britain, those of London
and York, abandoned their churches and took re-
fuge in the mountains of Wales, carrying with
them the sacred vessels and holy relics which they
had been able to save from the rapacity of the idol-
aters. Other husbandmen were then necessary.
From whence were they to come ? From the same
inextinguishable centre, whence light had been
brought to the Irish by Patrick, and to the Britons
and Scots by Palladius, Ninian, and Germain.
And already they are here ! At the moment
when Columba approached the term of his long
career in his northern isle, a year before his death,
the envoys of Gregory the Great left Borne, and
landed, where Caesar had landed, upon the English
shore.
BOOK X.
ST AUGUSTIN OF CANTERBURY AND THE ROMAN
MISSIONARIES IN ENGLAND, 597-633.
'
Hodie illuxit nobis dies redemptionis novae, reparationis antiqiue, feli-
citatis seternaj."

Christmas
Office,
Roman Breviary.
CHAPTER I.
MISSION OF ST AUGUSTIN.
Origin and character of the Anglo-Saxons. They have not to struggle,
like the Franks, against the Roman Decadence.The seven kingdoms
of the Heptarchy. Institutions, social and political : government
patriarchal and federal
;
seigneury of the proprietors : the witena-
gemot or parliament; social inequality, the ceorls and the eorls; indi-
vidual independence and aristocratic federation
;
fusion of the two
races. The conquered Britons lose the Christian faith.Vices of the
conquerors : slavery; commerce in human flesh. The young Angles
in the Roman market seen and bought by the monk Gregory. Elected
Pope, Gregory undertakes to convert the Angles by means of the monks
of his Monastery of Mt. Coelius, under the conduct of the abbot Augustin.
Critical situation of the Papacy. Journey of the missionary monks
across Gaul ; their doubts
;
letters of Gregory. Augustin lands at
the same spot as Caesar and the Saxon conquerors in the Isle of
Thanet. King Ethelbert ; the queen, Bertha, already a Christian.
First interview under the oak ; Ethelbert grants Jeave to preach.

Entry of the missionaries into Canterbury.The spring-tide of the

Church in England. Baptism of Ethelbert. Augustin Archbishop
of Canterbury. The palace of the king changed into a cathedral.

Monastery of St Augustin beyond the walls of Canterbury. Dona-

tion from the king and the parliament.
AVho then were the Anglo-Saxons, upon whom
so many efforts were concentrated, and whose
conquest is ranked, not without reason, among
the most fruitful and most happy that the Church
has ever accomplished ? Of all the Germanic
318 ST AUGUSTIN
tribes, the most stubborn, intrepid, and inde-
pendent, this people seems to have transplanted
with themselves into the great island which owes
to them its name, the genius of the Germanic race,
in order that it might bear on this predestined soil
its richest and most abundant fruits. The Saxons
brought with them a language, a character, and in-
stitutions stamped with a strong and invincible
originality. Language, character, institutions, have
triumphed, in their essential features, over the
vicissitudes of time and fortunehave outlived all
ulterior conquests, as well as all foreign influences,
and, plunging their vigorous roots into the primitive
soil of Celtic Britain, still exist at the indestructible
foundation of the social edifice of England. Dif-
ferent from the Franks and Goths, who suffered
themselves to be speedily neutralised or absorbed
in Gaul, Italy, and Spain by the native elements,
and still more by the remains of the Eoman Deca-
dence, the Saxons had the good fortune to find
in Britain a soil free from imperial pollution.
Less alienated from the Celtic Britons by their
traditions and institutions

perhaps even by their

origin

than by the jealousies and resentments

of conquest, they had not after their victory to
struggle against a spirit radically opposed to their
own. Keeping intact and untamable their old
Germanic spirit, their old morals, their stern inde-
pendence, they gave from that moment to the free
and proud genius of their race a vigorous upward
OF CANTERBURY. 319
impulse which nothing has ever been able to bear
down.
Starting in three distinct and successive emiora-
The seven

kingdoms
tions from the peninsular region which separates
ge
^
rcliy
the Baltic from the North Sea, they had found in
the level shores of Britain a climate and an aspect
like those of their native country. At the end of
a century and a half of bloody contests they had
made themselves masters of all that now bears the
name of England, except the coast and the hilly
regions of the w^est. They had founded there, by
fire and sword, the seven kingdoms so well known
under the title of the Heptarchy, which have left
their names to several of the existing divisions of
that country, where nothing falls into irreparable
ruin, because everything there, as in nature, takes
a new form and a fresh life. The Jutes, the first
and most numerous immigrants, had established
in the angle of the island nearest to Germany,
the kingdom of Kent, and occupied a part of the
coast of the Channel (the Isle of Wight and Hamp-
shire). Then the Saxons, properly so called,
spreading out and consolidating themselves from the
east to the south, and from the south to the west,
had stamped their name and their authority on the
kingdoms of Essex, Sussex, and Wessex.
1
Finally,
the Angles laid hold of the north and the east, and
1
Saxons of the East, the South, and the West. The existing county
of Middlesex bears witness to the same origin
;
it is the region inhabited
by the Saxons of the Middle.
320 ST AUGUSTIN
there planted, first, the kingdom of East Anglia on
the coast of the North Sea, and next that of Mercia
in the unoccupied territory between the Thames
and the Humber
;
then, to the north of the latter
river, the largest of all the Saxon kingdoms,
Northumbria, almost always divided into two,
Deira and Bernicia, the confines of which stretched
away to join the Picts and Scots, beyond even the
limits which the Eoman domination had lately
reached.
Political This race of pirates and plunderers, hunters and
institutions
robbers of their kind, possessed nevertheless the
of the
. ,
Anglo-
essential elements of social order. They made this
Saxons.
clearly apparent as soon as they were able to settle
down, and to adjust their settlements on that insular
soil which the Britons had not been able to de-
fend against the Romans, nor the Romans against
the barbarians of the north, nor these last against
the hardy seamen from the east. The Anglo-
Saxons alone have been able to establish there an
immovable order of society, whose first foundations
were laid when the missionary monks came to
bring to them the lights of faith and of Christian
virtue.
At the end of the sixth century the Anglo-
Saxons already formed a great people, subject, as
the Celtic races had been, to the patriarchal and
federal rule, which so happily distinguished those
brave and free nations from the rabble corrupted
by the solitary despotism of Rome. But among
OF CANTERBURY. 321
them, as among all the Germanic races, this govern-
ment was secured by the powerful guarantee of
property. The wandering and disorderly clan, the
Property,
primitive band of pirates and pillagers, disappears,
or transforms itself, in order to make room for the
family permanently established by the hereditary
appropriation of the soil ; and this soil was not
only snatched from the vanquished race, but labo-
riously won from the forests, fens, and untilled
moors. The chiefs and men of substance of these
leading families formed a sovereign and warlike
aristocracy, controlled by the kings, assemblies,
and laws.
The kings all belonged to a kind of caste com-
The kings,
posed of the families which professed to trace their
descent from Odin or Woden, the deified monarch
of German mythology r
1
their royalty was elective
and limited : they could do nothing without the
consent of those who accepted them as chiefs, but
not as masters. The assemblies, which at first The assem-
blies
resembled those which Tacitus has recorded as
existing among the Germans, and composed of the
entire tribe (yolk-mot) were speedily limited to
the elders, to the wise men (ivitena-gemot), to the
chiefs of the principal families of each tribe or
kingdom, and to men endowed with the double
prerogative of blood and property. They were held
in the open air, under venerable oaks, and at stated
periods; they took part in all the affairs of the body
1
Ethelwerdi Chronic, lib. i.
p.
474,
cap. Savile.
VOL. III. X
322 ST AUGUSTIX
politic, and regulated with sovereign authority
all
rights that were established or defended by the
laws.
Laws.
The laws themselves were simply treaties of peace
discussed and guaranteed by the grand council of
each little nation, between the king and those on
whom depended his security and his power ; be-
tween the different parties in every process, civil
and criminal ; between different groups of free men,
all armed and all possessors of lands, incessantly
exposed to risk their life, their possessions, the
honour and safety of their wives, children, kindred,
dependants, and friends, in daily conflicts spring-
ing from that individual right of making war
which is to be found at the root of all German
liberty and legislation.
1
Social Disparity of rank, which was in ancient times
ties: Ceoris the inseparable companion of freedom, existed
and E&rls.
1 1
among the Saxons, as it did everywhere. The
class of freemen

ceorispossessors of land and of

political power, who constituted the vital strength
of the nation, had under them not only slaves, the
fruit of their wars and conquests, but in much
greater number servitors, labourers, dependants,
who had not the same rights as they possessed; but
they in their turn acknowledged as superiors the
1
Palgrave, Tlie Rise and Progress
of
the English Commonwealth,
London, 1832. Lappenrerg, Gcschichte von England, Hamburg, 1834.
Kemble, Codex Diplomatieus JEvi Saxonici (London, 1839-48), and
The Saxons in England, London, 1849. Baron D'Eckstein, various
notices and memoirs.
OF CANTERBURY. 323
nobles, the eorls, who were born to command, and
to fill the offices of priest, judge, and chief, under
the primary authority of the king.
1
Thus that part of Great Britain which has since
taken the name of England, was at this early period
made up of an aggregation of tribes and indepen-
dent communities, among which the exigencies of a
common struggle against their warlike neighbours
of the north and west helped to develop a gradual
tendency towards union. It settled into an aristo-
cratic federation, in which families of a reputedly
divine origin presided over the social and military
life of each tribe, but in which personal indepen-
dence was at the base of the whole fabric. This
independence was always able to reclaim its rights
when a prince more than ordinarily dexterous and
energetic encroached upon them. Its influence was
everywhere felt in establishing and maintaining
social life on the principle of free association for
mutual benefit.
2
All that the freemen had not
expressly given over to the chiefs established by
themselves, or to associates freely accepted by
them, remained for ever their own inviolable pos-
session. Such, at that obscure and remote epoch,
1
The Anglo-Saxon laws and diplomas, and particularly the charters of
monastic endowments, constantly repeat this distinction between ceorls
and eorls, which is found in the Scandinavian mythology, between the
Karls and the Jarls, the offspring of the intercourse of a god with two
different women. See the song of the first Edda, entitled Rigsmal. The
word ceorl is the parent of the ch url of modern English ; as eorl is per-
petuated in earl. The one has fallen in dignity, the other has risen.
2
Kemble, Saxons in England, vol. ii.
p.
312.
324 ST AUGUSTIN
as in our own clay, was the fundamental and glo-
riously unalterable principle of English public life.
The British population, which had survived the
fury of the Saxon Conquest, and which had not
been able or willing to seek for refuge in the
mountains and peninsulas of Wales and Cornwall,
seems to have accommodated itself to the new order
of things. When the Conquest was fully achieved,
in those districts where the indigenous race had
not been completely exterminated,
1
no traces of
insurrection or of general discontent are to be found
among the British ; and the opinion of those who
maintain that the condition of the mass of the Brit-
ish population remaining in the conquered regions
was not worse under the Saxon invaders than it had
been under the yoke of the Romans, or even under
that of their native princes, so reviled by their
compatriot the historian Gildas, may be admitted
as probable.
2
It may even be supposed that this
fusion of the conquerors and the conquered was
productive of great benefit to the former. It would
1
It has been already stated that in some districts the Saxons anni-
hilated the conquered population. But this was only in exceptional
cases. See on this subject the excellent summary of Burke in his
Abridged Essay on the History
of
Englanda work too much forgotten,
though altogether worthy of the greatest of Englishmen.
2
Such is, especially, the opinion of Kemble, who otherwise generalises
too freely upon the exaggerations of history in relation to the oppression
or extermination of vanquished nations. The events which since 1772
have occurred in Poland, in Lithuania, in Circassia, and elsewhere, prove
that it is very possible, even in the full light of modern civilisation, and
under princes consecrated before the altar of the living God, to proceed
with an invincible determination to the destruction of human races.
OF CANTERBURY. 325
be hard to say whether the heroic tenacity which
has become the distinctive characteristic of the
English may not have been derived mainly from
that vigorous race which, after having coped with
Caesar, proved itself the only one among all the
nations subjected to the Eoman yoke capable of
stru^glincr for two centuries against the invasion
of the barbarians.
1
But this assimilation of the two races could not
The van-
quished
but operate to the prejudice of the Christian faith.
Britons
-1 1 0
lose the
Unlike the barbarian invaders of the Continent, the
christian
;
faith.
Saxons did not adopt the religion of the people they
had subdued. In Gaul, Spain, and Italy, Chris-
tianity had flourished anew, and gained fresh
strength under the dominion of the Franks and
the Goths ; it had conquered the conquerors. In
Britain it disappeared under the pressure of the
alien conquest. No traces of Christianity remained
in the districts under Saxon sway when Eome sent
thither her missionaries. Here and there a ruined
church might be found, but not one living Christian
amongst the natives;
2
conquerors and conquered
alike were lost in the darkness of paganism.
It is not necessary to inquire whether, along with
this proud and vigorous independence, in which we
have recognised a rare and singularly advanced
condition of political intelligence and social vitality,
the Anglo-Saxons exhibited moral virtues of an
equally elevated order. Such an assertion no one
1
La Borderie,
p.
231.
2
Burke, Works, vol. vi.
p.
216.
326 ST AUGUST1N
would be disposed to believe. Certainly
"
there
existed under this native barbarism noble disposi-
tions unknown to the Roman world. Under the
brute the free man, and also the man of heart, might
always be discovered."
1
Even more, intermingled
with daily outbursts of daring and of violence there
might also be found miracles of heroic and simple
devotionof sincere and lofty enthusiasmwhich
vices of emulated or forestalled Christianity. But alongside
the con-
... . ,
querors.
of these wonders oi primitive virtue, Avhat miracles
of vice and crime, of avarice, lust, and ferocity
!
The religion of their Scandinavian forefathers, whose
primitive myths concealed no small amount of
traditional truth under symbols full of grace and
majesty, was only too soon corrupted or obscured.
It did not preserve them from any excess, super-
stition, or fetishism : perhaps not even from the
human sacrifices which were known to all other
pagan nations. What could be expected in point
of morality from people accustomed to invoke and
to Avorship Woden, the god of massacres, Freya, the
Venus of the North, the goddess of sensuality, and
all these bloody and obscene gods of whom one had
for his emblem a naked sword, and another the
hammer with which he broke the heads of his ene-
mies ?
2
The immortality which was promised to
them in their Walhalla but reserved for them new
1
Taixe, Histoirc cle la Littcrature A wjlaisc.
2
See the interesting chapter on the religion of the Germans in Oza-
nam's Germains avant le Christianiamc, 1817.
OF CANTERBURY.
327
days of slaughter and nights of debauch, spent in
drinking deep from the skulls of their victims.
And in this world their life was but too often only
a prolonged orgie of carnage, rapine, and lechery.
The traditional respect for woman which marked
the Germanic tribes was limited among the Saxons,
as elsewhere, by singular exceptions, and did not
extend beyond the princesses or the daughters of
the victorious and dominant race.
Such mercy as they ever showed to the van- slavery,
quished consisted only in sparing their lives in
order to reduce them to servitude, and sell them as
slaves. That frightful slave-traffic which has dis-
graced successively all pagan and all Christian
nations was among them carried on with a kind of
inveterate passion.
1
It needed, as we shall see,
whole centuries of incessant efforts to extirpate it.
Nor was it only captives and vanquished foes that
The trade
they condemned to this extremity of misfortune cattle,
and shame : it was their kindred, their fellow-
countrymen
;
even, like Joseph's brethren, those of
their own blood, their sons and daughters, that
they set up to auction and sold to merchants who
came from the Continent to supply themselves in
the Anglo-Saxon market with these human chattels.
It was by this infamous commerce that Great
Britain, having become almost as great a stranger
1
"
Venales ex Northumbria pueri, familiari et pene ingenita illi nationi
consuetudine, adeo ut, sicut nostra quoque siecula viderunt non dubitarent
arctissimas necessitudines sub prsetextu minimorum commodorum distra-
here."

Willelmus Malmesburiensis, DeGcstis Regurn Anglorum, i. 3.

328 ST AUGUSTIN
to the rest of Europe as she was before the days of
Caesar, re-entered the circle of the nations, making
herself known once more, as in the time of Caesar,
when Cicero anticipated no other profit to Rome
from the expedition of the proconsul than the pro-
duce of the sale of British slaves.
1
Nevertheless, it was from the depth of this
shameful abyss that God was about to evolve
the opportunity of delivering England from the
fetters of paganism, of introducing her by the
hand of the greatest of the Popes into the bosom of
the Church, and, at the same time, of bringing her
within the pale of Christian civilisation.
Anglo-
Who will ever explain to us how these traffickers
children in men found a market for their merchandise at
Rome.
Rome ? Yes, at Rome, in the full light of Chris-
tianity, six centuries after the birth of the Divine
Deliverer, and three centuries after the peace of
the Church ; at Rome, governed since Constantine
by Christian emperors, and in which was gradu-
ally developing the temporal sovereignty of the
Popes. It was so, however, in the year of grace
586 or 587,
under Pope Pelagius II. Slaves of
both sexes and of all countries, and among them
some children, young Saxons, were exposed for sale
in the Roman forum like any other commodity.
Priests and monks mingled with the crowd that
1
"
Britannici belli exitus exspectatur. . . . Illucl cognitum est, neque
argenti scripulum ullum esse in ilia insula, neque ullam spem prsedae nisi
ex maneipiis.
"

Ejnst. ad. Attic, iv. lb'.

OF CANTERBURY. 329
came to bid or to look on at the auction ; and
among the spectators appears the gentle, the
generous, the immortal Gregory.
1
He thus learned
to detest this leprosy of slavery which it was after-
wards given him to restrict and to contend against,
though not to extirpate it.
2
This scene, which the father of English history St Gregory
_
.
the Great
iound among the traditions of his Northumbrian
inquires
m
about, and
ancestors, and the dialogue in which are portrayed
j^
ms
with such touching and quaint originality the pious
and compassionate spirit of Gregory, and at the
same time his strange love of punning, has been a
hundred times rehearsed. Every one knows how,
at the sight of these young slaves, struck with the
beauty of their countenances, the dazzling purity of
their complexions, the length of their fair locks (pro-
bable index of aristocratic birth) he inquired what
was their country and their religion. The slave-
dealer informed him that they came from the island
of Britain, where every one had the same beauty of
complexion, and that they were heathens. Heav-
ing a profound sigh,
"
What evil luck," cried Gre-
gory,
"
that the Prince of Darkness should possess
beings with an aspect so radiant, aud that the
grace of these countenances should reflect a soul
1
"
Die quadam cum advenientibus nuper niercatoribus multa venalia
in forum fuissent collata, multique ad emendum conflnxissent, et ipsura
Gregorium inter alios advenisse, ac vidisse inter alia pueros venales
positos."

Bede, ii. 1.
2
Joax. Diac, Vita S. Grcgorii, iv.
45, 46, 47. S. Greg., Epist., iv.
9, 13 ; vii.
24, 38, and elsewhere.
330 ST AUGUSTIN
void of the inward grace ! But what nation are
they of?
" "
They are Angles/' "They are well
named, for these Angles have the faces of angels
;
and they must become the brethren of the angels
in heaven. From what province have they been
brought ?
" "
From Deira
"
(one of the two king-
doms of Northumbria).
"
Still good/' answered he.
"
De ira erutithey shall be snatched from the ire
of God, and called to the mercy of Christ. And
how name they the king of their country?" "Alle
or iElla." "So be it ; he is right well named, for
they shall soon sing the Alleluia in his kingdom."
1
It is natural to believe that the rich and chari-
table abbot bought these captive children, and that
he conveyed them at once to his own homethat
is to say, to the palace of his father, where he was
born, which he had changed into a monastery, and
which was not far from the forum where the young
Britons were exposed for sale. The purchase of
these three or four slaves was thus the origin of
the redemption of all England.
1
"
Nee silentio pnetereunda opinio quee de beato Gregorio traditione
majorum ad nos usque perlata est. . . . Candidi et lactei corporis,
venusti vultus, capillorum forma egregia . . . crine rutila. . . . Intimo
ex corde suspiria ducens . . . interrogavit mercatorem. . . . De Bri-
tannia; insula cujus incolaram omnis facies simili candore fulgescit. . . .
Heu proh dolor ! quod tarn lucidi vultus . . . tantaque gratia frontis-
picii. . . . Bene Angli quasi angeli, quia et angelicos vultus habent.
. . . Bene quia rex dicitur Aelle. Alleluia etenim in partibus illis
oportet decantari."

Bede, loc. cit . Paul Diac, Vita S. Grcgorii, c. 14.

Joan Diac, Vita S. Gregorii, i. 21. Gotselini, Historia Maior de Vita
S.
Augustini, c. 4. LArrENBEitG,
p.
138. The name of iElla fixes the
date of this incident to a period necessarily prior to the death of this
prince in 588.
OF CANTERBURY. 331
An Anglo-Saxon chronicler, a Christian but a
layman, who wrote four centuries later, but who
exemplifies the influence of domestic traditions
among that people by giving to his own genealogy
a very high rank in the history of his race,
1
says
expressly that Gregory lodged his guests in the
triclinium, where he loved to serve with his own
hand the table of the poor, and that after he had
instructed and baptised them, it was his desire to
take them with him as his companions, and to return
to their native land in order to convert it to Christ.
All authors unanimously admit that from that
moment he conceived the grand design of bringing
over the iVnglo-Saxons to the Catholic Church. To
this design he consecrated a perseverance, a devo-
tion, and a prudence which the greatest men have
not surpassed. We have already seen how, after this
scene in the slave-market, he sought and obtained
from the Pope permission to go as a missionary to the
Anglo-Saxons, and how, at the tidings of his depar-
ture, the Eomans, after overwhelming the Pope with
reproaches, ran after their future pontiff, and, over-
taking him three days' journey from Eome, brought
him back by force to the Eternal City.
2
Scarcely had he been elected Pope, when his great 590.
and cherished design became the object of his con-
stant thought. His intrepid soul dwells on it with
1
Ethelwerdi Chronic, lib. ii. c. 1. See his curious preamble to liis
cousin Matilda, in Savile, and the remarks of Lappenberg,
p.
55.
2
See ante, vol. ii.
p.
91.
332 ST AUGUSTIX
an unfailing interest, and his vast correspondence
everywhere testifies its existence.
1
While waiting
until he should discover the fit man to conduct this
special mission, he never forgot the English slaves
the heathen children whose sad lot had been the
means of revealing to him the conquest which God
had in store for him, and whose brothers were to be
found in the slave-markets of other Christian coun-
tries. He writes to the priest Candidius, who had the
management of the patrimony of the Eoman Church
in Gaul, "We charge you to lay out the money which
you have received, in the purchase of young English
slaves, of seventeen or eighteen years of age, whom
you shall train in the monastery for the service of
God. In this way the coins of Gaul, which are
not current here, will be put on the spot to a suit-
able use. If you can draw anything from the rev-
enues which they say have been withheld from us,
you must employ it equally either to procure cloth-
ing for the poor or to buy these young slaves. But
as they will yet be heathens, they must be accom-
panied by a priest, who may baptise them if they
fall sick by the way."
2
At last, in the sixth year
of his pontificate, he decided to select as the
1
Epist., ix. 108, ad Syagrium episc. Augustodunensem. "Cum pro
convertendis Anglis-Saxonibus, quemadmodum in monachatu suo propo-
suerat, assiduis cogitationum fluctibus urgeretur."

Joan Diac., ii. 33.

2
"
Volumus ut dilectio tua . . . quatenus solidi Galliarum qui in terra
nostra expendi non possuut apud locum proprium utiliter expeudantur.
. . . Sed quia pagani sunt . . . volo ut cum eis presbyter transmittatur
ne quid aegritudinis contingat in via, ut quos morituros conspexerit, de-
beat baptizare."

Epist., vi. 7.
OF CANTERBURY. 333
apostles of the distant island, whither his thoughts
continually carried him, the monks of the Monas-
tery of St Andrew, on Mount Ccelius, and to ap-
point as their leader Augustin, the prior ' of that
beloved house.
This monastery is the one which now bears the
The monas-
tery whence
name of St Gregory, and is known to all who
issued the

J
apostles of
have visited Kome. That incomparable city con-
England,
tains few spots more attractive and more worthy
of eternal remembrance. The sanctuary occupies
the western angle of Mount Coelius, and the site
of the hallowed grove and fountain which Roman
mythology has consecrated by the graceful and
touching fable of Numa and the nymph Egeria.
1
It is at an equal distance from the Circus Maxi-
mus, the baths of Caracalla, and the Coliseum, and
near to the church of the holy martyrs John and
Paul. The cradle of English Christianity is thus
planted on the soil steeped with the blood of many
thousands of martyrs. In front rises the Mons
Palatinus, the cradle of heathen Eome, still covered
with the vast remains of the palace of the Caesars.
To the left of the grand staircase which leads to
the existing monastery, three small buildings stand
apart on a plot of grass.
2
On the door of one you
read these words

Triclinium Pauperum; and

within is preserved the table at which every day
were seated the twelve beggars whom Gregory fed
1
Ampere, VHistoire Romaine d Rome,
pp. 4,
370, 498.
2
Gerbet, Esquisse de Rome Chretienne, vol. i.
p.
447.
334 ST AUGUSTIN
and personally waited upon. The other is dedi-
cated to the memory of his mother, Silvia, who
had followed his example in devoting herself to a
religious life, and whose portrait he had caused to
be painted in the porch of his monastery.
1
Between these two small edifices stands the
oratory dedicated by Gregory, while still a simple
monk, to the apostle St Andrew, at the time when
he transformed his patrimonial mansion into the
cloister whence were to issue the apostles of Eng-
land. In the church of the monastery, which now
belongs to the Camaldolites, is still shown the
pulpit from which Gregory preached, the bed on
which he took his brief repose, the altar before
which he must have so often prayed for the con-
version of his beloved English. On the facade of
the church an inscription records that thence set
out the first apostles of the Anglo-Saxons, and pre-
serves their names.
2
Under the porch are seen the
1
Joan Diac, Vita Grcgorii, iv. c. 83.
2
The following is the exact text of the inscription, transcribed by the
friendly hand of an eloquent monk of our time and country, Father Hya-
cinth, of the Barefooted Carmelites
:

EX HOC MONASTERIO
PRODIERVNT
S. GREGORIVS. M. FVNDATOR. ET. PARENS. S. ELVTHERIVS. AB.S. HILA-
lilON. AB.B. AVGVSTINVS. ANGLOR. APOSTOL S. LAVRENTIVS. CANTUAR.
ARCHIEP.S. MELLITVS. LONDINEN. EP. MOX. ARCHIEP. CANTVAR.S. JVSTVS
EP. ROFFENSIS. S. PAVLINVS. EP. EBORACS. MAXIMIANVS. SYRACVSAN.
EP.SS. ANTONIVS. MERVLVS. ET. JOANNES. MONACHI.S. PETRVS. AB.
CANTVAR.
HONORIVS. ARCHIEP. CANTVAR.MARINIANVS. ARCHIEP. RAVEN.PROBVS.
XENODOCHI. 1EROSOLYMIT. CURATOR. A. S. GBEGORIO. ELECT.SABINVS.
OF CANTERBURY. 335
tombs of some generous Englishmen who died in
exile for their fidelity to the religion which these
apostles taught them
;
and, among other sepulchral
inscriptions, this which follows may be remarked
and remembered :
"
Here lies Eobert Pecham, an
English Catholic, who, after the disruption of
England and the Church, quitted his country, un-
able to endure life there without the faith, and who,
coming to Eome, died, unable to endure life here
without his country."
1
Where is the Englishman worthy of the name
who, in looking from the Palatine to the Coliseum,
could contemplate without emotion and without
remorse this spot from whence have come to him
the faith and name of Christian, the Bible of which
he is so proudthe Church herself of which he has
preserved but the shadow ? Here were the en-
slaved children of his ancestors gathered together
and saved. On these stones they knelt who made
his country Christian. Under these roofs was the
grand design conceived by a saintly mind, in-
trusted to God, blessed by Him, accepted and car-
ried out by humble and generous Christians. By
these steps descended the forty monks who bore to
CALLIPOLIT. EP. FELIX. MESSANEN. EP.

GREGORI VS. DIAC. CARD. S.
EUSTACH.
HIC. ETIAM. DIU. VIXIT. M. GREGORII. MATER. S. SILVIA. HOC. MAXIME. CO-
LENDA. QVOD. TANTVM. PIETATIS. SAPIENTIAE. ET. DOCTRINAE.
LVMEN. PEPERERIT.
1
Quoted in the address of M. Augu.stin Cochin to the Congress at Ma-
lines, 20th August 1863.
336
ST AUGUSTIX
England the word of God and the light of the
Gosj)el along with Catholic unity, the apostolical
succession, and the rule of St Benedict. No coun-
try ever received the gift of salvation more directly
from popes and monks, and none, alas ! so soon
and so cruelly betrayed them.
Critical Nothing could be more sad and sombre than
papacy,
the state of the Church at the epoch when Gre-
gory resolved to put his project into execution.
This great man
by
turns soldier, general, states-
man, administrator, and legislator, but always, and
before all, pontiff and apostlehad need of more
than human boldness to take in hand distant
conquests, surrounded as he was by perils and
disasters, and at a moment when Eome, devastated
by plague, famine, and the inundations of the
Tiber, mercilessly taxed and shamelessly abandoned
by the Byzantine emperors, was struggling against
the agressions of the Lombards, which became
every day more menacing.
1
It is not without
reason that a writer more learned than enthusiastic
represents the expedition of Augustin as an act as
heroic as Scipio's departure for Africa while Han-
nibal was at the gates of Rome.
2
Journey of Absolutely nothing is known of Angustin's his-
the monk-
. ,
ish mission-
tory previous to the solemn days on which, m
aries across
Gaui.
obedience to the commands of the pontiff, who
had been his abbot, he and his forty comrades
1
See
ft'iitr, vol. ii.
p.
84.
2
Kemble, Saxons in England, vol. ii.
p.
357.
OF CANTERBURY. 337
tore themselves from the motherly bosom of that
community which was to them as their native land.
He must, as prior of the monastery, have exhibited
distinguished qualifications ere he could have been
chosen by Gregory for such a mission. But there
is nothing to show that his companions were at
that time animated with the same zeal Avhich in-
spired the Pope. They arrived without hindrance
in Provence, and stopped for some time at Lerins,
in that Mediterranean isle of the Saints where, a
century and a half before, Patrick, the monastic
apostle of the western isle of Saints, had sojourned
for nine years before he was sent by Pope Celestine
to evangelise Ireland. But, there or elsewhere, the
Roman monks received frightful accounts of the
country which they were going to convert. They
were told that the Anglo-Saxon people, of whose
language they were ignorant, were a nation of wild
beasts, thirsting for innocent blooda race whom
it was impossible to approach or conciliate, and to
land on whose coast was to rush to certain destruc-
tion. They took fright at these tales
;
and in place of
continuing their route, they persuaded Augustin to
return to Rome to beseech the Pope to relieve them
from a journey so toilsome, so perilous, and so useless.
1
Instead of listening to their request, Gregory sent
1
"Augustiiii sanctorunique fratrum a maternis visceribus monasterialis
ecclesue avulserunt. . . . Nuntiatur quod gens quam peterent immanior
belluis existeret."

Gotselixus, Historia Maior, c. 3, 6.

"
Perculsi
timore inerti . . . ne tam periculosam, tarn laboriosani, tam inutilem
prgedicationem adire deberent."

Bede, i. 23.
VOL. III. Y
338 ST AUGUST1N
Letters of
Augustin back to them with a letter in which they
the Pope.
, . .
were ordered to recognise him henceforth as their
abbotto obey him in everything, and, above all,
not to let themselves be terrified by the toils of the
23d July
way or by the tongue of the detractor.
"
Better were
it," wrote Gregory,
"
not to begin that good work
at all, than to give it up after having commenced
it. . . . Forward, then, in God's name ! . . . The
more you have to suffer, the brighter will your
glory be in eternity. May the grace of the Al-
mighty protect you, and grant to me to behold the
fruit of your labours in the eternal country; if I
cannot share your toil, I shall none the less rejoice
in the harvest, for God knows that I lack not good
will."
1
Augustin was the bearer of numerous letters of
the same date,
2
written by the Pope first of all to
the Abbot of Lerins, to the Bishop of Aix, and to
the Governor of Provence, thanking them for the
hearty welcome they had given to his missionaries
;
and next to the Bishops of Tours, of Marseilles, of
Vienne, and of Autun
;
and, above all, to Virgilius,
Metropolitan of Aries, warmly recommending to
them Augustin and his mission, but without ex-
plaining its nature or its aim.
He acted differently in his letters to the two
young kings of Austrasia and of Burgundy, and to
1
"
Quatenus etsi vobiscum laborare nequeo, siinul in gaudio retribu-
tionis invcniar, quia laborare scilicet volo."

Bepe, i. 23.
2
23d July 596.
OF CANTERBURY. 339
their mother, Brunehaut, who reigned in their name
over the whole of Eastern France. In appealing
to the orthodoxy which distinguished beyond all
others the Frank nation, he announces to them that
he has learned that the English were disposed to
receive the Christian faith, but that the priests of
the neighbouring regions (that is, of Wales) took
no pains to preach it to them ; wherefore he asks
that the missionaries sent by him to enlighten and
save the English may obtain interpreters to go
with them across the Straits, and a royal safe-con-
duct to guarantee their safety during their journey
through France.
1
Thus stimulated and recommended, Augustin
and his monks took courage and again set out
upon their way. Their obedience won the victory
which the magnanimous ardour of the great Gregory
had failed to secure. They traversed the whole of
France, ascending the Ehone and descending the
Loire, protected by the princes and bishops to whom
the Pope had recommended them, but not without
suffering more than one insult at the hands of the
lower orders, especially in Anjou, where these forty
men, in pilgrim garb, walking together, resting
sometimes at night under no other shelter than
that of a large tree, were regarded as were-wolves,
and were assailed (by the women particularly) with
yellings and abuse.
2
1
Epist., yi
53-59.
2
"
Tot homines peregrinos pedestri incessu et habitu humiles quasi tot
340 ST AUGUSTIN
Augustin After having thus traversed the whole of Frankish
lands
where pre-
Gaul, Augustin and his companions brought their
SiTnrst
nd
j
ourne
y
*
a clse on the southern shore of Great
dtamh
had
Britain, at the point where it approaches nearest to
barked.
Continent, and where the previous conquerors
of England had already landed : Julius Caesar, who
revealed it to the Eoman world ; and Hengist with
his Saxons, who brought to it with its new name
the ineffaceable impress of the Germanic race. To
these two conquests, a thirddestined to be the
lastwas now about to succeed. For it is impos-
sible to place in the same rank the victorious in-
vasions of the Danes and the Normans, who, akin
to the Saxons in blood and manners, have indeed
cruelly troubled the life of the English people, but
have effected no radical change in its social and
moral order, and have not been able to touch
either its language, its religion, or its national
character.
The new conquerors, like Julius Caesar, arrived
under the ensigns of Rome

but of Rome the

Eternal, not the Imperial. They came to restore
the law of the Gospel which the Saxons had drowned
in blood. But in setting, for ever, the seal of the
Christian faith upon the soil of England, they
struck no blow at the independent character and
powerful originality of the people, whom, in con-
lupos et ignota monstra repulere. Muliercube simul conglomerate tanta
. . . insania, tribulatu, despectu, subsannatione, derisione in sanctos
Dei sunt debacchatse. . . . Stabat juxta ulmus ampla . . . sub hac
sancti volentea ipsa nocte requiescere."

Gotselinus, c. 10.
OF CANTERBURY. 341
verting them to the true faith, they succeeded in
consolidating into a nation.
On the south side of the mouth of the river
Thames, and at the north-east corner of the county
of Kent, lies a district which is still called the Isle
of Thanet, although the name of isle no longer
befits it, as the arm of the sea which at one time
separated it from the mainland is now little better
than a brackish and marshy brook. There, where
the steep white cliffs of the coast suddenly divide
to make way for a sandy creek, near the ancient
port of the Eomans at Richborough, and between
the modern towns of Sandwich and Ramsgate,
1
the
Roman monks set foot for the first time on British
soil.
2
The rock which received the first print of
the footsteps of Augustin was long preserved and
venerated, and was the object of many pilgrim-
ages, in gratitude to the living God for having led
thither the apostle of England.
3
1
It is pleasant to know that in this same town of Ramsgate, on the
shore where the Abbot Augustin landed, the sons of St Benedict have been
able, after the lapse of thirteen centuries, to erect a new sanctuaiy, near
to a church dedicated to St Augustin, designed and built by the liberal-
ity of the great Catholic architect Pugin. This monastic colony belongs
to the new Benedictine province of Subiaco.
2
In a book entitled Historical Memorials
of
Canterbury, 1855, Dr
Stanley, Dean of Westminster, has examined and determined, with no
less enthusiasm than scrupulous exactness, the facts relative to the arrival
of St Augustin. He has confirmed the already old opinion which fixes the
very place of his landing at a farm now called Ebbsfleet, situated upon a
promontory, from which the sea has now withdrawn.
3
Stanley,
p.
14. Oakley,
Life of
St Augustin, 1844, p. 91. This
life forms part of the interesting series of Lives
of
the English
Saints,
published by the principal writers of the Puseyite school before their con-
version.
342 ST AUGUSTIN
Immediately on his arrival the envoy of Pope
Gregory despatched the interpreters, with whom he
had been provided in France, to the king of the
country in which the missionaries had landed, to
announce to him that they came from Rome, and
that they brought to him the best of newsthe
true glad tidingsthe promise of celestial joy, and
of an eternal reign in the fellowship of the living
and true God.
1
The king's name was Ethelbert, which means in
Anglo-Saxon noble and valiant? Great-grandson
of Hengist, the first of the Saxon conquerors, who
himself was supposed to be a descendant of one of
the three sons of Odin, he reigned for thirty-six
years over the oldest kingdom of the Heptarchy

that of Kentand had just gained over all the

other Saxon kings and princes, even to the confines
of Northumbria, that kind of military supremacy
which was attached to the title of Bretwalda, or
temporary chief of the Saxon Confederation.
3
Queen
It was to be supposed that he would have a natu-
Bertha.
ral prepossession in favour of the Christian religion.
It was the faith of his wife Bertha, who was the
daughter of Caribert, king of the Franks of Paris,
and grandson of Clovis, and whose mother was
1
"Mandavit se venisse de Roma et nuntium ferre optimum . . .
ajternain ccelis gaudia et regnum sine fine cum Deo vivo et vero futurum."
>
Bede, i. 25.
2
The root Ethel, which we shall find in almost all the names, male
and female, which we shall quote, corresponds to the German adjective
cdel, noble.
3
Bede, i.
25
; ii. 3, 5.
OF CANTERBURY. 343
that Ingoberga whose gentle virtues and domestie
troubles have been recorded by Gregory of Tours.
1
She had been affianced to the heathen king of the
Saxons of Kent only on the condition that she
should be free to observe the precepts and practices
of her faith, under the care of a Gaulo-Frankish
bishop, Liudhard of Senlis, who had remained with
her until his death, which occurred immediately
before the arrival of Augustin. Tradition records
the gentle and lovable virtues of Queen Bertha,
and her judicious zeal for the conversion of her
husband and his subjects. It is believed to have
been from her that Gregory received his informa-
tion as to the desire of the English to be con-
verted, with which he had enlisted the interest of
Brunehaut and her sons.
2
The great-granddaugh-
ter of St Clotilda seemed thus destined to be her-
self the St Clotilda of England. But too little is
known of her life : she has left but a brief and
uncertain illumination on those distant and dark
horizons over which she rises like a star, the herald
of the sun of truth.
Meanwhile King Ethelbert did not immediately
permit the Koman monks to visit him in the Roman
city of Canterbury where he dwelt. While pro-
1
Greg. Turon., Hist. Franc, iv. 26, ix. 26.
2
"Quam ea conducere a parentibus acceperat, ut ritum fidei ac reli-
gionis suae cum episcopo quern ei adjutorem fidei dederant, nomine Liud-
hardo, inviolatam servare licentiam haberet."

Bede, loc. cit. "Pervenit

ad nos Anglorum gentem ad fidem Christianam Deo miserante desider-
anter velle converti."

S. Gregorii Epist., vi. 58

;
compare Ejrist.,
xi. 29.
344 ST AUGUSTIN
viding for tlieir maintenance, he forbade their leav-
ing the island on which they had landed until he
had deliberated on the course he should pursue.
At the close of some days he himself went to visit
them, but he would not meet them except in the
open air. It is difficult to imagine what pagan
superstition made him dread foul play if he allowed
himself to be brought under the same roof with
the strangers. At the sound of his ap]3roach they
advanced to meet him in procession.
"
The history of the Church," says Bossuet,
1
"con-
tains nothing finer than the entrance of the holy
monk Auoristin into the kingdom of Kent with
forty of his companions, who, preceded by the
cross and the image of the great king our Lord
Jesus Christ, offered their solemn prayers for the
conversion of England/' At that solemn moment
when, upon a soil once Christian, Christianity found
itself once more face to face with idolatry, the
strangers besought the true God to save, with their
own souls, all those souls for whose love they had
torn themselves from their peaceful cloister at home,
and had taken this hard enterprise in hand. They
chanted the litanies in use at Eome in the solemn
and touching strains which they had learnt from
Gregory, their spiritual father and the father of
religious music. At their head marched Augus-
tin, whose lofty stature and patrician presence at-
tracted every eye, for, like Saul, "he was higher
1
Discours sur VHistoirc Universelle.
OF CANTERBURY. 345
than any of the people from his shoulders and
upwards/'
1
The king, surrounded by a great number of his
followers, received them seated under a great oak,
and made them sit down before him. After having
listened to the address which they delivered to him
and to the assembly, he gave them a loyal, sincere,
and, as we should say in these days, truly liberal
answer. "You make fair speeches and promises,"
he said,
"
but all this is to me new and uncertain.
I cannot all at once put faith in what you tell me,
and abandon all that I, with my whole nation, have
for so long a time held sacred. But since you have
come from so far away to impart to us what you
yourselves, by what I see, believe to be the truth
and the supreme good, we shall do you no hurt
:
on the contrary, we shall show you all hospitality,
and shall take care to furnish you with the means
of living. We shall not hinder you from preaching
your religion, and you shall convert whom you can."
By these words the king intimated to them his de-
sire to reconcile fidelity to the national customs,
with a respect for liberty of conscience too rarely
found in history. The Catholic Church thus met,
from her first entrance into England, that promise
of liberty which has during so many ages been the
first and most fundamental article of all English
charters and constitutions.
1
"
Beati Augustini formam et personam patriciam, statiiram proeeram
et arduam, adeo uta scapulis populo superemineret.
"

Gotsel.,F#, c. 45.
346 ST AUGUSTIX
Faithful to his engagement, Ethelbert allowed
the missionaries to follow him to Canterbury, where
he assigned them a dwelling, which still exists un-
der the name of the Stable Gate. The forty mis-
sionaries made a solemn entry into the town, carry-
ing their silver cross, along with a picture of Christ
painted on wood, and chanting in unison the re-
sponse of their litany,
"
We beseech Thee, 0 Lord,
by Thy pity, to spare in Thy wrath this city and
Thy holy house, for we have sinned. Alleluia/' It
was thus, says a monastic historian, that the first
fathers and teachers of the faith in England entered
their future metropolis, and inaugurated the trium-
phant labours of the cross of Jesus.
1
There was outside the town, to the east, a small
church dedicated to St Martin, elating from the
time of the Eomans, whither Queen Bertha was in
the habit of going to pray, and to celebrate the
offices of religion. Thither also went Augustin
and his companions to chant their monastic office,
to celebrate mass, to preach, and to baptise.
2
Here,
1
"
Ad jussionem regis resirlentes, verbum Dei vitre, una cum omnibus
qui aderant ejus comitibus, prtedicarent. . . . Pulchra sunt quidem verba
et promissa, sed quia nova sunt et iucerta. . . . Nec prohibemus quin
omnes quos potestis fidei vestra? religionis prredicando societis. . . . Cru-
cem pro vexilla ferentes argenteam et imaginem Domini salvatoris in
tabula depictam, lsetaniasque canentes. . . . Pro sua simul et eorum
propter quos et ad quos venerant salute seterna . . . consona voce."

Bede, i. 25.
"
Tali devotione proto-doctoribus et in fide Christi
proto-patribus Anglioe metropolim suam cum triumpbali crucis labore
ingredientibus : Aperitc portas," &c.

Gotselinus, Historia Minor de

Vita S. Aug., c. 12.
2
The existing church, rebuilt in the thirteenth century, occupies the
place of that which is for ever consecrated by the double memory of
OF CANTERBURY. 347
then, we behold them, provided, thanks to the
royal munificence, with the necessaries of life, en-
dowed with the supreme blessing of liberty, and
using that liberty in labouring to propagate the
truth. They lived here, says the most truthful
of their historians, the life of the apostles in the
primitive Churchassiduous in prayer, in vigils,
in fasts
;
they preached the word of life to all
whom they could reach, and, despising this world's
goods, accepting from their converts nothing be-
yond what was strictly necessary, lived in all
harmony with their doctrine, aud ever ready to
suffer or to die for the truth they preached. The
innocent simplicity of their life, and the heavenly
sweetness of their doctrine, appeared to the Saxons
arguments of an invincible eloquence
;
and every
day the number of candidates for baptism increased.
1
Such fair days occur at the outset of all great
undertakings. They do not last, thanks to the The spring-
lamentable and incurable infirmitv of all human
Church in
England.
things ; but yet they should never be forgotten,
nor remembered without honour. They are the
blossoming time of noble lives. History serves
no more salutary purpose than in transmitting their
perfume to us. The Church of Canterbury for a
Bertha the Queen and Augustin the Archbishop. The baptismal fonts
are shown there in which, according to tradition, King Ethelbert was
baptised by immersion.
1
"Paratum ad patiendum adversa quseque, vel etiam ad moriendum
animum habendo. . . . Mirantes simplicitatem innocentis vitai ac dulce-
dinem doctrinse eorum ccelestis."

Bede, i. 26.
348 ST AUGUSTIN
thousand years possessed unparalleled splendours
;
no Church in the world, after the Church of Rome,
has been governed by greater men, or has waged
more glorious conflicts. But nothing in her bril-
liant annals could eclipse the sweet and pure light
of that humble beginning, where a handful of
strangers, Italian monks, sheltered by the generous
hospitality of an honest-hearted king, and guided
by the inspiration of the greatest of the Popes,
applied themselves in prayer, and abstinence, and
toil, to the work of winning over the ancestors of a
great people to God, to virtue, and to truth.
Baptism of
The good and loyal Ethelbert did not lose sight
King
.
Ethelbert.
of them
;
soon, charmed like so many others by the
purity of their life, and allured by their promises,
the truth of which was attested by more than one
miracle, he sought and obtained baptism at the
hand of Augustin. It was on Whit Sunday,
1
in
the year of grace
597,
that this Anglo-Saxon king-
entered into the unity of the Holy Church of
Christ. Since the baptism of Constantine, and
excepting that of Clovis, there had not been any
event of greater moment in the annals of Chris-
tendom.
2
A crowd of Saxons followed the example of their
king, and the missionaries issued from their first
asylum to preach in all quarters, building churches
also here and there. The king, faithful to the last
to that noble respect for the individual conscience
1
2d June 597.
2
Stanley,
p.
19.
OF CANTERBURY. 349
of which he had given proof even before he was a
Christian, was unwilling to constrain any one to
change his religion. ' He allowed himself to show
no preference, save a deeper love for those who,
baptised like himself, became his fellow -citizens
in the heavenly kingdom. The Saxon king had
learned from the Italian monks that no constraint
is compatible with the service of Christ.
1
It was
not to unite England to the Roman Church, it was
in order to tear her from it, a thousand years after
this, that another king and other apostles had to
employ the torture and the stake.
In the meanwhile Augustin, perceiving that he
should henceforward be at the head of an import-
ant Christian community, and in conformity to the
Pope's instructions, returned to France in order to 25th Dec.
597.
be there consecrated Archbishop of the English by
the celebrated Metropolitan of Aries, Virgilius, the
former abbot of Lerins, whom Gregory had ajypoint-
ed his vicar over all the churches of the Frankish
kingdom.
On his return to Canterbury he found that the
example of the king and the labours of his com-
1
"Ipse etiam inter alios clelectatus vita mundissima sanctorum et
promissis . . . qute vere esse miraculorum quoque multorum ostensione
firmaverant. . . . Unitati se sanctse Ecclesia? Christi credendo sociare.
Quorum fidei et conversioni ita congratulatus esse rex perhibetur, ut
nullum tamen cogeret ad Christianismum : sed tantummodo credentes
arctiori dilectione, quasi concives sibi regni ccelestis, amplecteretur.
Didicerat enim a doctoribus auctoribusque suae salutis, servitium
Christi voluntarium, non coactitiurn esse debere."

Bede, i. 26. Yet

Bede himself speaks, farther on, of those who had embraced the faith,
"
vel favore, vel timore regio."ii. 5.
350 ST AUGUSTIN
panions had borne fruit beyond all expectation ; so
much so, that at the festival of Christmas in the
same year, 597,
more than 10,000 Anglo-Saxons
presented themselves for baptism
;
and that sacra-
ment was administered to them in the Thames at
the mouth of the Medway, opposite that Isle of
Sheppey, where is now situated one of the principal
stations of the British fleet, and one of the grand
centres of the maritime power of Great Britain.
1
The king's The first of the converts was also the first of the
verted into
benefactors of the infant Church. Ethelbert, more
a monastic
cathedral,
and more imbued with respect and devotion for the
faith which he had embraced, desired to give a
notable pledge of his pious humility, by transferring
to the new archbishop his own palace in the town
of Canterbury, and establishing henceforth his royal
residence at Reculver, an ancient Eoman fortress on
the adjacent shore of the island on which Augus-
tin had landed. Beside the dwelling of the king
thus transformed into a monastery for the arch-
bishop and his monks, and on the site of an old
church of the time of the Romans, a basilica which
was hereafter to become, under the name of
Christchurch, the metropolitan church of England,
was commenced. Of this church Augustin was at
once the first archbishop and the first abbot.
2
The Pope had at first designed, as the seat of
1
S. Gregor., Epist., viii. 30. Stanley, op. cit.,
p.
19.
2
The immense Cathedral of Canterbury, the reconstruction of which
was begun by Lanfranc in the eleventh century, occupies the site of
this earlier church and of the palace of Ethelbert.
OF CANTERBURY. 351
the new metropolis, the city of London, a Eoman
colony already famous from the time of the Em-
perors
;
whereas he had, perhaps, never heard the
name of the residence of the Saxon kings at Canter-
bury. But London was not within the kingdom
of Ethelbert, and the selection of the Pope could
not prevail against the motives which determined
Augustin to choose, as the head and centre of the
religious life of England, the capital of the king
who had become his proselyte and his friend,
standing, as it did, in the region where he had first
landed on British soil, and whose inhabitants
had
welcomed him with such genial sympathy.
1
But the splendours and the influence of the Abbey of
official metropolis were for long ages to be eclipsed,
tin at Can-
in the opinion of the English people, and of the
terbmy#
Christian world, by another foundation, equally
owing its origin to Augustin and Ethelbert,
the
first archbishop and the first Christian king
of
England. To the west of the royal city, and half-
way to that Church of St Martin whither the
queen went to pray, and where the king had been
baptised, Augustin, always on the outlook for any
traces which the old faith had left in Britain,
dis-
covered the site of a church which had been trans-
formed into a pagan temple, and encircled
with a
sacred wood. Ethelbert gave up to him the tem-
ple, with all the ground surrounding it. The
1
Gregor., EpisL, xi. 65. Willelm.
Malmesburiexsls, Be Gest.
Reg., i. c. 4, and Dc Borobcrnensibus Ejnscujns,
p.
111.
352 ST AUGUSTIN
archbishop forthwith restored it to its original use
as a church, and dedicated it to St Pancras, a
young Eoman martyr, whose memory was dear to
the Italian monks, because the Monastery of Mount
Ccelius, whence they had all come, and where their
father Gregory was born, had been built upon lands
formerly belonging to his family. Round this new
sanctuary Augustin raised another monastery, of
which Peter, one of his companions, was the first
abbot, and which he intended to be the place of
his own burial, after the Roman custom which
placed the cemeteries out of the towns, and by the
side of the highroads. He consecrated this new
foundation in the names of the apostles of Rome,
Peter and Paul ; but it was under his own name
that this famous abbey became one of the most
opulent and most revered sanctuaries of Christen-
dom. It was for several centuries the burying-
place of the kings and primates of England,
1
and
1
Ecclesiastical historians abound in testimonies of admiration for this
immense house, whose patrimony extended to 11,860 acres of land, and
whose facade was 250 feet long. Perhaps one could read on that facade
these verses quoted by a chronicler, and which recall the inscription on
the front of St John Lateran at Rome
:

"
Hoc caput Anglorum datui esse monastcriorum
Regura cuuctorum fons pontificuinque sacroram."
The abbot of St Augustin of Canterbury received from Pope Leo IX.
in 1055, the privilege of sitting in the first place after the abbot of
Mount Cassino, in the general councils. The Monasticon Anglicanum of
Dugdale, vol. i.
p. 23,
gives a very curious view of the state of the ruins
of this abbey, towards the middle of the seventeenth century ; a great
tower, called Ethelbert's, but built much later than his time, can still be
distinguished. In the Vestiges
of
Antiquities at Canterbury, by T. Hast-
ings,
1813, folio, there are plates representing in great detail the remains,
OF CANTERBURY. 353
at the same time the first and brightest centre of
religious and intellectual life in the south of Great
Britain.
Seven years were needed to complete the mon-
astery, the church attached to which could not
even be dedicated during the lifetime of him whose
name it was to assume and preserve. But some
months before his death, Augustin had the satis-
faction of seeing the foundation of the first Bene-
dictine monastery in England sanctioned by the
solemn ratification of the king and the chiefs of
the nation whom he had converted.
The charter of this monastery has been brought 9th Jan.
to light in our day as the oldest authentic record
of the religious and political history of England.
1
Our readers will thank us for quoting the text
J. o
and the signatures of the witnesses. The Anglo-
Saxon king appears in this transaction at once as a
Christian prince and as the chief of the aristocratic
still considerable, but cruelly profaned and neglected, which existed in
1812

the best preserved portion used as a brewery, and beside it a

tavern with an enclosure used for cock -fights. It has been restored re-
cently, to a certain extent, thanks to the munificence of Mr Beresford
Hope, and is used at present as a seminary for the Anglican missions.
The house has had several historians, among others William Thorne (dr
Spina), who was abbot about 1358, and chiefly Thomas de Elmham,
treasurer of the monastery in 1407, whose chronicle was edited by Mr
Hardwick in 1858, for the collection of Rerwrn Britanniearwm Medii JEvi
Scri'ptorcs.
1
The authenticity of this deed has been admitted by one of the most
learned and competent critics of our day, Sir Francis Palgrave, Rise
and Progress
of
the British Commonwealth, vol. ii.
p.
215-18. Kemble,
again, in his Codex Diplomaticus JEvi Saxonici, vol. i.
p.
2, has published
it with the asterisk which marks documents suspected or false
;
but he
nowhere enters into any justification of this sentence.
vol. nr. z
354 ST AUGUSTIN
assembly whose consent was necessary to the va-
lidity of all his deeds.
1
He begins thus
:

"
I, Ethelbert, king of Kent, with the consent of
the venerable archbishop Augustin, and of my
nobles, give and concede to God, in honour of St
Peter, a certain portion of the land which is mine
by right, and which lies to the east of the town of
Canterbury, to the end that a monastery may be
built thereon, and that the properties hereinafter
named may be in full possession of him who shall be
appointed abbot thereof. Wherefore I swear and
ordain, in the name of Almighty God, who is the
just and sovereign judge, that the land thus given
is given for everthat it shall not be lawful either
for me or for my successors to take any part of it
whatsoever from its possessors ; and if any one at-
tempt to lessen or to annul our gift, that he be in
this life deprived of the holy communion of the
body and blood of Christ, and at the day of judg-
ment cut off from the company of the saints.
"
t I, Ethelbert, king of the English, have con-
firmed this gift, by my own hand, with the sign of
the holy cross.
"
t I, Augustin, by the grace of God archbishop,
have freely subscribed.
"
t I, Eadbald, son of the king, have adhered.
1
"Convoeato ibidem coneilio communi, tam cleri quam populi, omnium
ct singulorum approbatione et consensu, monasterium . . . monacliis
hie perpetuo Deo servituris . . . cum dotation
e,
confinnatione ac per-
petua libertate donavit.
"

Elmham,
p.
111.
OF CANTERBURY. 355
"
t I, Hamigisile, duke, have approved.
"
t I, Hocca, earl, have consented.
"
t
I, Angenmndus, referendary, have approved.
"
t I, Graphio, earl, have said it is well.
"
t I, Tangisile, regis optimas, have confirmed.
"
t I, Pinca, have consented.
"
t I, Greddi, have corroborated/'
1
1
"
Ego Ethelbertus, rex Cantire, cnm consensu venerabilis archiepiscopi
Augustini," &c.

Kemblb, loc. cit. The deeds of gift executed by the

Anglo-Saxon kings always announce the consent ducum, comitmn, op-
timatumque, and are always signed by the counts and principal lords, or
by the bishops and abbots
;
the formula Favi, or consensi, or ajoprobavi,
often accompanies the proper name, which is always preceded by a cross:
f.
This cross did not occupy tbe place of the signature, as has been repre-
sented, nor did it at all indicate that the subscriber could not write.
Kemble, in a note to his preface,
p.
91, seems to indicate that the two
signatures of Angemundus and Graphio, with the accompanying qualifi-
cations, warrant him in ranking the whole deed in the list of apocry-
phal documents. Palgrave gives, after Somner's Canterbury,
p.
47,
another text with the same title, where the signatures, arranged in the
same order, are not accompanied with any qualification. He proves
elsewhere,
p.
214, that the most disputed of the Anglo-Saxon documents
have almost always some authentic deeds as their basis, the original authen-
ticity of which ought not to be called in question on account of real or
apparent anachronisms resulting from subsequent amplifications or altera-
tions. Almost all the Anglo-Saxon deeds that we can still read are
strongly confirmed, according to him, by what he calls their internal evi-
dence. These charters rest on history, which in its turn rests on them
;
each thus confirming the other.
CHAPTER II.
HOW POPE GREGORY AND BISHOP AUGUSTIN GOV-
ERNED THE NEW CHURCH OF ENGLAND.
Joy of Gregory on learning the success of the monks. His letters to
Augustin
;
to the patriarch of Alexandria; to Queen Bertha.

A
new monastic colony sent out. Letter to the king. Advice to
Augustin regarding his miracles. Opinion of Burke. Answer of
Gregory to the questions of Augustin.The Pope's arrangements for
the heathen
;
his admirable moderation. Supremacy over the British
bishops accorded to Augustin.Opposition of the Welsh Celts.

Nature of the dissensions which separated the British from the Roman
Church.Celebration of Easter.Origin and insignificance of the
religious dispute. It is increased and complicated by patriotic anti-
path
y
to the Saxons.

First conference between Augustin and the

British.Miracle of the blind man. Second conference
;
rupture.

The abbot of Bangor. Augustin's threatening prediction concerning

the monks of Bangor fulfilled by the fierce Ethelfrid of Northumbria.
Sequel of Augustin's mission.He is insulted by the fishermen of
Dorsetshire.Foundation of King Ethelbert. Bishops of Loudon and
of Rochester. Laws of Ethelbert ; the first reduced to writing. Guar-
antee given to the Church property. Death of Gregory and Augustin.
the success
of'liis
monks
Joy of st
Some time before this solemn national consecration
Gregory on
learning
0f hi s work, and after the first year of his mission,
Augustin had sent to Eome tAvo of his companions
Lawrence, who was to succeed him as arch-
bishop, and Peter, who was to be the first abbot of
the new monastery of St Peter and St Paulto
announce to the Pope the great and good news of
ST AUGUSTIN. 357
the conversion of the king, with his kingdom of
Kent
;
next, to demand from him new assistants in
the work, the harvest being great and the labourers
but few
;
and, lastly, to consult him on eleven im-
portant and delicate points touching the discipline
and the management of the new Church.
The joy of Gregory when, in the midst of the
perils and trials of the Church, and of his own suf-
ferings, material and moral, he saw the realisation
of his soul's most cherished dream, may be under-
stood. The boldest of his projects was crowned
with success. A new people had been brought
into the fold of the Church through his gentle but
persevering activity. Till the end of the world,
innumerable souls would owe to him their admis-
sion to the great brotherhood of souls here below

to the eternal joys that are above. He could not

foresee the great men, the famous saints, the im-
mense resources, the dauntless champions, that
England was to furnish to the Catholic Church
;
but neither had he the sorrow of foreknowing the
sad revolt which was yet to rob so much glory
of its lustre, nor that base ingratitude which has
dared to despise or to underrate, in his case as in
that of his subordiuates, the incomparable blessings
which he conferred on the people of England by
sending to them the light of the Gospel.
The joy of Gregory, as pure as it was natural,
infused its spirit into that vast correspondence in
which he has left us so faithful an image of his mind
358 ST AUGUSTIN
and of his life. To Augustin, as might have been
expected, its first overflow was directed.
"
Glory be
to God in the highest/' he writes

"glory to that God

who would not reign alone in heaven, whose death
is our life, whose weakness is our strength, whose
suffering cures our sufferings, whose love sends us
to seek even in the island of Britain for brothers
whom we knew not, whose goodness causes us to
find those whom we sought for while yet we knew
them not!
1
Who can express the exultation of all
faithful hearts, now that the English nation,
through the grace of God and thy brotherly labour,
is illumined by the Divine light, and tramples
under foot the idols which it ignorantly wor-
shipped, in order that it may now bow down before
the true God
?
" He then hastened to re-echo into
the East the happy news which had reached him
from the extreme AVest. He writes to the patri-
arch of Alexandria :
"
The bearer of your letters
found me sick and leaves me sick. But God
grants to me gladness of heart to temper the bit-
terness of my bodily sufferings.
2
The flock of the
holy Church grows and multiplies ; the spiritual
harvests gather in the heavenly garners. . . . You
announced to me the conversion of your heretics

the concord of your faithful people. ... I make

1
"
Ne solus regnaret in ccelo, cujus morte vivimus, cujus infirmitate
roboramur, cujus passione a passione eripimur, cujus amore in Britannia
fratres quammus quos ignorabamus
"

Eyiat.^ xi. 28.

2
"
yEgrum me reperit, ajgruni reliquit . . . quatenus mentis lsctitia
immanitatcm mece molestiae temperaret.
"

Epist., viii. 30, ad Euloginm.

OF CANTERBURY. 359
you a return in kind, because I know you will re-
joice in my joy, and that you have aided me with
your prayers. Know, then, that the nation of the
Angles, situated at the extremest angle of the
world,
1
had till now continued in idolatry, wor-
shipping stocks and stones. God inspired me to
send thither a monk of my monastery here, to
preach the Gospel to them. This monk, whom I
caused to be ordained bishop by the Frankish
bishops, has penetrated to this nation at the utter-
most ends of the earth
;
and I have now received
tidings of the happy success of his enterprise. He
and his companions have wrought miracles that
seem to come near to those of the apostles them-
selves, and more than
10,000
English have been
baptised by them at one time."
After having thus quickened the zeal of the
Egyptian patriarch by these tidings from England,
he turns to the queen of the newly converted
nationBertha, born a Christian, and the grand-
daughter of a saintto congratulate her on the
conversion to her own faith of her husband and
her people, and to encourage her to new efforts by
telling her that she was remembered in the prayers
of the faithful, not only at Eome, but at Constanti-
nople, and that the fame of her good works had
reached the ears of the most serene Emperor him-
self.
"
Our very dear sons, Lawrence the priest
1
"
Gens Anglorum, in mundi angulo posita suo."

Epist., viii.
30,
ad Eulogium. Always this singular taste for puns !
360 ST AUGUSTIN
and Peter the monk," he writes to her,
"
have re-
hearsed to me, on their arrival here, all that your
Majesty has done for our reverend brother and co-
bishop Augustinall the comfort and the charity
that you have so liberally bestowed on him. We
bless the Almighty, who has seen meet to reserve
for you the conversion of the English nation. Even
as He found in the glorious Helena, mother of the
most pious Constantine, an instrument to win over
the hearts of the Romans to the Christian faith, so
we feel assured will His mercy, through your agency,
work out the salvation of the English. Already,
for a long time, it must have been your endeavour to
turn, with the prudence of a true Christian, the heart
of your husband towards the faith which you profess,
for his own wellbeing and for that of his kingdom.
Well-instructed and pious as you are, this duty
should not have been to you either tedious or diffi-
cult. If you have in any wise neglected it, you
must redeem the lost time. Strengthen in the
mind of your noble husband his devotion to the
Christian faith
;
pour into his heart the love of
God ; inflame him with zeal for the complete con-
version of his subjects, so that he may make an
offering to Almighty God by your love and your
devotion. I pray God that the completion of your
work may make the angels in heaven feel the same
joy which I already owe to you on earth."
1
1
"
Qualis erga R. fratrem . . . gloria vestra exstiterit, quantaque illi
solatia vel qualcm charitatem impendent, retulcrunt. . . . Postquam
OF CANTERBURY. 361
About the same time, in revising his commen-
taries on the Scriptures, and his Exposition of the
Book of Job, he cannot help adding then this cry
of triumph :
"
Look at that Britain whose tongue
has uttered only savage sounds, but now echoes the
Hallelujah of the Hebrews ! Behold that furious
seait gently smoothes itself beneath the feet of
the saints ! These savage clans, that the princes of
the earth could not subdue by the swordsee them
enchained by the simple word of the priests ! That
people which, while yet pagan, defied undauntedly
the arms and the renown of our soldiers, trembles
at the speech of the humble and weak. It knows
fear now, but it is the fear of sin ; and all its de-
sires are centred on the glory everlasting."
1
Far, however, from resting indolently in this joy, a new
he remained to his latest day faithful to the warm
colony
sent on
and active interest with which his beloved England
had inspired him.
2
He sent to Augustin a new
et recta fide gloria vestra munita et litteris docta est, hoc vobis nec tar-
dum nec debuit esse difficile."

Epist., v. 29. It will be observed that

this letter is placed in the catalogue of the pontifical correspondence apart
from the other letters which Gregory addressed to the husband of Bertha,
as well as to the princes and bishops, in order to recommend to them the
new assistants of Augustin.
1
"
Ecce lingua Britannia; quae nil aliud noverat quam barbarum fren-
dere, jamdudum in divinis laudibus Hebrpeuin ccepit alleluia sonare. Ecce
tumidus quondam, jam substratus pedibus sanctorum, servit Oceanus.
. . . Qui catervas pugnantium infidelis nequaquam metuerat, jam nunc
fidelis humilium linguam timet . . . ut prave agere metuat ac totis de-
sideriis ad peternitatis gloriam pervenire concupiscat."S. Greg., Moral.,
book xxviii. c. 11.
2
"Semper pro amatisAnglis vigilantissimus."

Gotselinus, Hist. Ma-

ior, c. 24.
362 ST AUGUSTIN
monastic colony, provided with relics, sacred ves-
sels, priestly robes, the ornaments of the altar, and
all that was necessary to give effect to the pomp
of religious service. He sent also books, which
were intended to form the nucleus of an ecclesias-
tical library.
1
22dJune At the head of this new swarm of monks was
a man of noble birth, by name Mellitus, and his
companion Justus, who were to succeed each other
on the metropolitan throne of Canterbury, and with
them Paulinus, the future apostle of Northumbria.
The Pope provided them with very urgent let-
ters, all of the same date, for Queen Brunehaut, for
her grandsons, kings Theodebert and Theodoric
;
for their rival king Clotaire of Neustria,
2
who had
treated Augustin with great kindness, and heartily
seconded his enterprise ; and for the bishops of
Aries, Lyons, Gap, Toulon, Marseilles, Chalons,
Paris, Eouen, and Angersthus marking before-
hand the possible halting-places of the new mis-
sionaries.
3
1
'
' Nec non et codices plurimos.
"

Bede, i. 29. Many of the Looks

sent to Augustin by the hands of the abbot Peter were carefully pre-
served, and escaped the ravages of time for six centuries. In the days of
Henry VIII. Leland still speaks of them with admiration :
"
Majusculis
Uteris Romanis more veterum scriptis . . . incredibilem prae se ferentes
antiquitatis majestatem." An old catalogue of this first consignment of
books ends with these words :
"
This is the origin of the library of the
whole English Church."

a.d. 601. In the library of the college of Cor-

pus Christi, at Cambridge, a Latin MS. of the four evangelists is pre-
served, which, according to an old tradition, is the copy brought from
Rome by St Augustin in 596.
2
Epist.,xi.
61, ad Clotarium Francorum regem.
3
EpisL, xi. 54-62. Compare Bede, i. 29.
OF CANTERBURY. 363
In a special letter to Virgilius, the legate at Aries,
he recommends him most particularly to receive
their common brother, Augustin, with the greatest
affection, in the event of his visiting him ; and he
adds :
"
As it often happens that those who are at
a distance need to be made aware of disorders
which require to be repressed, if he should inform
you of faults on the part of his priests or others,
examine everything along with him with the min-
utest care, and act with the greatest strictness, but
ever be heedful that you do not let the innocent
suffer with the guilty.
1
The passionate yet intelligent and impartial ten-
derness towards his friends, which is one of the
most attractive features in Gregorys admirable
character, is nowhere more beautifully displayed
than in his relations
wit^j.
Augustin. We see him
ever engaged in extending and consolidating the
authority of his envoy
;
tbut not the less anxious
for the welfare of his soul, and resolute to give pre-
cedence before all else to the interests of the newly
Christianised country, jje intrusted to the new
missionaries a long letter addressed to King Ethel-
bert, in which, while ^congratulating him on his
conversion, and comparing him to Constantine, as
he had compared Bertha to St Helena, he exhorted
him to spread the faith among his subjectsto for-
1
"
Si communem fratreni Augustinum episcopum ad vos venire contige-
rit, ita ilium dilectio vestra, sicut decet, affectuose dulciterque suscipiat,
ut et ipsum consolationis suae bono refoveat, et alios, qualiter fraterna eha-
ritas colenda sit, doceat."JEpist., xi. 68.
364 ST AUGUSTIN
bid the worship of idols, to overthrow their temples,
and to establish good morals by exhortations,
kindnesses, and threats, but above all by his own
example. He adds :
"
You have with you our
very reverend brother, bishop Augustin, trained
according to the monastic rule, full of the know-
ledge of the Scriptures, abounding in good works
in the sight of God. Hearken devoutly to him,
and faithfully accomplish all that he tells you
;
for
the more you listen to what he will tell you on the
part of God, the more will God grant his prayers
when he prays to Him on your behalf. Attach
yourself, then, to him with all the strength of your
mind, and all the fervour of faith
;
and second his
efforts with all the force that God has given you.'
7
1
The same day, in a public letter, he confers on
Augustin the right of bearing the pallium in cele-
brating mass, as a reward for having established
the new English Church. This honour was to de-
scend to all his successors on the archiepiscopal
throne.
2
He constitutes him metropolitan of twelve
bishoprics, which he enjoins him to erect in south-
1
"
Fanoruni anlificia everte, subditorum mores ex magna vitas munditia,
exhortando, terrendo, blandiendo, corrigendo etboni operis exemplamon-
strando, sedifica. . . . Angosturas episcopus, in monasterii regnla edoc-
tus."

EpisL, xi. 66. It is surprising to find in this beautiful letter a para-

graph -warning the Saxon king that the end of the world is at handthat
he must watch for it day by day, and not be astonished, seeing that it is
near, at marvellous tilings which are about to happen in England as else-
where.
2
Since the schism of Henry VIII., the Anglican archbishops of Can-
terbury, by the strangest of anomalies, have still preserved this pallium
in the arms of their see.
OF CANTERBURY. 3G5
ern England. He gives him authority to appoint
whom he will metropolitan bishop in the ancient
Roman and episcopal city of York, subordinating
to the see of York twelve new bishoprics yet to be
erected, but reserving to Augustin during his life-
time the supremacy over the northern metropoli-
tan. Over and above all the bishops to be or-
dained by him or by the future bishop of York in
the conquered territory, Gregory places under the
jurisdiction of Augustin all the bishops of Britain,
"
in order," says the Pope,
"
that they may learn by
your word and by your life how they must believe,
and how they must live, in order to fulfil their
office and gain an inheritance in heaven."
1
He
here treats of the bishops who were established in
Wales, or who had fled thither for refugethe pre-
lates and teachers of the Christian Celtic popula-
tions which had escaped the Saxon yoke.
But while he thus openly evidenced the ful-
ness of his confidence and the authority with
which he invested Augustin, he addressed to him,
in secret, advices meant to preserve him from the
dangerous snare of pride.
"
In our joy," he wrote,
"
there is much to fear. I know, beloved brother,
that Cod has by thee wrought great miracles in
this nation. It is right to rejoice that the minds
of the English are drawn by visible miracles to
1
"
Quatenns ex lingua et vita tuoe sanctitatis, et recte credendi et bene
vivendi formani percipiant, atque officium fide ac moribus exsequentes, ad
ccelestia, cum Dominus voluerit, regna pertingant."

EjrisL, xi. 65.

366 ST AUGUSTIN
the invisible grace
;
but we ouglit to fear lest these
prodigies incline the weak mind to presumption, and
make the inner man fall to a worse depth through
vainglory than he is raised up outwardly. When
the disciples said to their divine Master,
'
Lord, in
thy name even the devils are subject unto us,' he
answered them,
'
Eejoice not because the devils
are subject to you, but rather rejoice because your
names are written in heaven/ The names of all
the elect are written there, and yet all the elect
work not miracles. And while God thus acts out-
wardly by thee, thou oughtest, brother beloved, to
judge thyself scrupulously within, and to know well
what thou art. If thou rememberest that thou hast
offended God by word or deed, have thy faults ever
present to thy memory to repress the vainglory
which may rise in thy heart. Eeflect that this
gift of miracles is not given to thee for thyself,
but for those whose salvation is committed to thee.
The reprobate have wrought miracles ; and we, we
know not even if we are among the elect. It is
needful, then, sternly to humble and subdue the
mind in the midst of all these prodigies and signs,
lest it should seek in them only its own glory and
its private advantage. God has given us but one
sign whereby we may know his elect : it is this,
that we have love one to another."
1
1
Fleury, in quoting this letter, says with justice,
"
Nothing proves
more completely the truth of St Augustin's miracles than these serious
counsels of Gregory."
OF CANTERBURY. 367
Immediately after, to reassure the friend whom
he had thus corrected, by a return to his wonted
tenderness and sympathy, he continues in these
terms :
"
I speak thus because I desire to subdue to
humility the soul of my dear hearer. But let even
thy humility have confidence. All sinful as I am,
I have a sure hope that all thy sins will be remitted
unto thee, inasmuch as thou hast been chosen to
bring to others the remission of their sins. If there
is joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth
more than over ninety and nine just persons that
need no repentance, what joy must not there be
over a great nation which, in coming to the true
faith, repents of all the evil it has done ! And it
is thou who hast given this joy to heaven."
1
In one of Gregory's former letters, addressed, not
to Augustin, but to his friend Eulogius, patriarch
of Alexandria, the Pope also refers to the miracles
which had signalised the mission of Augustin ; he
does not hesitate even to compare them to the
signs and wonders which accompanied the preach-
ing of the apostles.
2
Twelve centuries after Gre-
gory, the greatest genius that modern England has
produced, the immortal Burke, bows respectfully
before that tradition, misunderstood by his frivol-
1
"
Heec autem dico quia auditoris mei animuin in humilitate sternere
cupio. Sed ipsa tua lmmilitas habeat fiduciam suam. Nam peccator ego
spem certissimam teneo."

Ej)ist., xi. 28.

2
"
Tantis miraculis vel ipse vel hi qui cum ipso transmissi sunt in gente
eadem coruscant, ut apostolorura virtutes in signis, quae perhibent, imi-
tari videantur."

Epist., viii. 30.

368 ST AUGUSTIX
ous contemporaries. The introduction of Christi-
anity into any country whatsoever is, according to
him, the most inestimable benefit that can be con-
ferred on humanity. Why, then, in view of an
end so worthy, should not Providence itself some-
times directly interpose ? Miracles, of old time
accepted with a blind credulity, have been since
rejected witli "as undistinguishing a disregard."
"
But," adds the great orator,
"
it is the reality
or opinion of such miracles that was the principal
cause of the early acceptance and rapid progress
of Christianity in this island.''
1
It is singular
that neither Bede nor any other historian gives
the least detail of these wonders which awoke at
once the admiration, the gratitude, and the pru-
dent deprecations of St Gregory the Great. But
of all possible miracles, the greatest is assuredly
"
to have detached from paganism without violence
a violent people ; to have introduced it into the
Christian commonwealth, not man by man, and
family by family, but at one stroke, with its kings,
its warlike nobility, and all its institutions."'
2
This
king, who believes himself descended from the gods
of the Scandinavian paradise, yet who resigns his
capital to the priests of the crucified God
;
this
people, fierce and idolatrous, which by thousands
prostrates itself at the feet of a few foreign monks,
1
Burke, Essay towards an Abridgment
of
English History, book ii.
ch. 1.
8
Ozaxam,
p.
159.
OF CANTERBURY.
3G9
and by thousands plunges into the icy waters of
the Thames, in mid winter, to receive baptism from
these unknown strangers; this rapid and complete
transformation of a proud and victorious, and at
the same time sensual and rapacious race, by
means of a doctrine pre-eminently fitted to quell
lust, pride, and sensuality, and which, once received
into these savage hearts, rests for ever implanted
there,is not this, of all miracles, the most marvel-
lous, as it is the most indisputable ?
Finally, after all these letters, Gregory wrote a
Answer of
very long and very detailed answer to the eleven the ques-
questions which Augustin had put to him, as
toAugustm:
1
.
. ,

,
1
true law
the principal difficulties which he had encountered,
of Catholic
-1
-
^
x
missions.
or which he foresaw might still be met with in the
course of his mission. To convey a just idea of
this reply, which is an admirable monument of
enlightenment, of conciliatory reason, of gentle-
ness, wisdom, moderation, and prudence, and which
was destined to become, as has been most justly
said, the rule and the code of Christian mis-
sions,
1
it would have to be quoted entire
;
but
besides its extreme length, it embraces certain
details from which our modern prudery recoils.
Here, however, is the substance of its most import-
ant passages.
The Pope, consulted as to the use and the division
to be made of the offerings of the faithful, reminds
Angustin that the revenues of the Church should
1
Ozaxam, Civilisation Chretienne cliez les Francs,
p.
154.
VOL. III. 2 A
370 ST AUGUSTIN
be divided into four portions : the first for the
bishop and his family, because of the hospitality
which he ought to exercise ; the second for the
clergy; the third for the poor; the fourth for the
maintenance and repair of churches.
"
But you,"
he says to the archbishop

" you who have been

brought up in monastic discipline, ought not to
live apart from your clergy, but to initiate in the
new English Church the life in common which our
fathers practised in the primitive Church/'
1
"Why, asked Augustin, are there divers customs
in the Church, when the faith is one ? and why
does the liturgy according to which the mass is
celebrated in the churches of Gaul (which Bertha
probably followed in her oratory of St Martin),
differ from that of the Eoman Church ?
"
You, my brother," replies the Pope,
"
know the
usage of the Eoman Church, in which you cannot
forget that you were brought up. But if it should
happen that you find in the Church of Eome, or
in that of Gaul, or in any other, some usage which
you believe to be more pleasing to God, I enjoin
you to select it with care, and give it a place in
the new Church of England. For institutions are
not to be loved because of the places whence they
are derived ; but rather are places to be beloved
for the sake of the good institutions that exist
1
"
Interrogatio beati Angustini episcopi Cantuariorum Ecclesise. . . .
Respondit Gregorius papa urbis Romas, . . . Tua fraternitas monasterii,
rcgulis erudita, seorsum vivere 11011 debet a clericis suis.
"

Bede, i. 27.
Greg., Epist, xi. 64.
OF CANTERBURY. 371
therein. Choose therefore among the Churches
all that is pious and reasonable, and out of what
you thus collect form the use of the English
Church/'
1
In these words it is easy to recognise the pontiff
who had already braved the criticisms of some
petty spirits, by introducing at Rome various
usages that were believed to be borrowed from
Constantinople, and who had said to his critics,
"
I shall be always ready to deter my subordinates
from evil, but to imitate them in good, borrow-
ing it from it matters not what Church. He is
but a fool who could make his primacy a reason
for disdaining to learn whatever good can be
learnt."
2
Consulted as to the punishment to be inflicted
on sacrilegious robbers, and as to the administra-
tion of the Roman law, which imposed on the
robber a double or fourfold restitution, Gregory
advises that, in the punishment, the poverty or the
riches of the depredator be taken into account
;
1
"
Xovit fraternitas tua Romans Ecclesise consuetudinem in qua se
meminit eruditam. Sed mihi placet, sive in Romana, sive Galliarum,
sen in qualibet Ecclesia, aliquid invenisti quod plus omnipotenti Deo
possit placere, sollicite eligas, et in Anglorum Ecclesiae quse adhuc ad
fidem nova est, institutione pmecipua, quse de multis Ecclesiis colligere
potuisti, infundas. Non enim pro locis res, sed pro bonis rebus loci
amandi sunt. Ex singulis ergo quibusque Ecclesiis qu?e pia, qua? reli-
giosa, quse recta sunt, elige : et hrec quasi in fasciculum collecta, apud
Anglorum mentes in consuetudinem depone.''
2 '
' Si quid boni vel ipsa vel altera Ecclesia liabet, ego et minores meos
quos ab illicitis proliibeo in bono imitari paratus sum. Stultus est enim
qui in eo se prinium existimat, ut bona quse viderit discere contemnat."

Ejiist, x. 12, ad Joann., Syracus. Episc.

372 ST AUGUSTIN
and that it be administered always with a fatherly
love and a moderation which shall keep the mind
within the limits of reason. As to restitution

"
God forbid," said he,
"
that the Church should
seek to gain by what she has lost, and to draw a
profit from the folly of men."
1
Augustin had further inquired what rule he
should follow in regard to marriages within the
forbidden degrees, to the duties of the married
state, and how much ought to be retained of the
purifications prescribed to women by the Mosaic
law. Gregory, in reply, interdicts absolutely mar-
riages between mothers-in-law and sons-in-law,
Avhich were common among the Saxons ; as also
between brothers and sisters-in-law. But, for the
latter case, he does not require that converts, who
had contracted such marriages before their conver-
sion, should be deprived of the holy communion,
"
lest," he says,
"
you should appear to punish them
for what they have done in mere ignorance ; for
there are things which the Church corrects with
strictness, and there are others which, for kindness'
sake, she tolerates, or prudently overlooks ; but
always in such wise as to restrain the evil which
she bears with, or winks at." He would, in general,
treat the English as St Paul treated his converts

nourishing them not on solid food, but with milk,

1
"
Ita ut mens extra rationis regulam omnino nihil faciat. . . . Absit
ut Ecclesia cum augmento recipiat quod de terrenis rebus vieletur amit-
tere, et lucra de vanis quaerere."
OF CANTERBURY. 373
as newborn babes. Further on "lie prescribes to
the marriage bed these severe laws which secure
health and vigour and the fruitfulness of the Chris-
tian family."
1
He does not permit that the woman
who has just borne a child should be excluded
from the Church, and that thus her suffering should
be made a crime.
But he protests with energy against the un-
natural custom of mothers who will not be nurses,
and who disdain to suckle the children they have
brought forth. He sought thus to impress upon
the heart of the Saxon woman all a wife's duties,
while at the same time he marked her proper place
in the Christian family by exalting her dignity and
protecting her modesty.
2
Eeflection only served to confirm the Pope inNewcon-
1
.
_ cessions of
this wise and generous indulgence towards the
Gregory in
.
.
"
a letter to
new converts, allied* as it was in him, with a zeal
te Abl:,ot
'
Mellitus.
at once pure and ardent for the service and pro-
gress of the truth. Scarce had he addressed to
Ethelbert the letter in which he exhorted him to
destroy the temples of the ancient national worship,
when he reconsidered the matter, and a few days
1
Ozaxam, op. cit., 161.
2
"In hoc enim tempore sancta Ecclesia qusedam per fervorem corrigit,
qiuedam per mansuetudinem tolerat, qusedam per considerationem dissi-
niulat, atque ita portat et dissimulat, ut ssepe malum quod adversatur
portando et dissimulando compescat. ... Si enixam mulierem prohibe-
mus ecclesiam intrare, ipsam ei pcenam suam in culpam deputamus. . . .
Prava autem in conjugatorum moribus consuetudo surrexit, ut mulieres
. . . dum se continere nolunt, despiciunt lactare quos gignunt.
"

Ibid.
Compare Epist. xiv. 17, ad Felicem Messanensem Episcopum.
374 ST AUGUSTIN
later despatched entirely different instructions to
Mellitus, the chief of the new mission, whom he
had designated abbot, and to whom he had in-
trusted the letter for the kinghoping to over-
take him on his journey.
"
Since your depar-
ture and that of your company;*' he writes,
"
I
have been much disquieted, for I have learnt no-
thing of the success of your journey. But when
Almighty God shall have carried you in safety to
our most reverend brother Augustin, say to him
that, after having long revolved in my own mind
the affairs of the English, I have come to the con-
clusion that it is not necessary to overthrow all the
temples of the idols, but only the idols that are
in them. After having sprinkled these temples
with holy water, let altars and relics be placed in
them ; for if they are strongly built, it were well
that they were made to pass from the worship of
demons to the service of the true Godto the end
that the people, seeing that their temples are not
destroyed, may the more readily accept the reli-
gious change and come to adore God in the places
familiar to them. And as it is their custom to
slay many oxen in sacrifices to the demons, some
solemnity which should take the place of this sac-
rifice must be established. On the day of the
dedication, or on the feast of the martyrs whose
relics may be given to them, they may be per-
mitted to make huts of leaves around the temples
thus changed
into churches, and celebrate the feast
OF CANTERBURY. 375
with social repasts. But in place of sacrificing
beasts to a demon, they will kill them only to be
eaten with thankfulness to God who provides their
food ; and thus, by leaving to them some of the en-
joyments of the senses, they will be more easily
led to desire the joys of the soul. For it is impos-
sible to change all at once the whole habits of the
savage mind : a mountain is not climbed by leaps
and bounds, but step by step."
1
Among the enemies of the Roman Church, pe-
dants and hypercritics are found to accuse St
Gregory of having compromised matters with his
conscience in thus opening the entrance of the
sanctuary to paganism. Far from sympathising
with them, let us, on the contrary, learn to admire
the great and wise teacher who could so well dis-
tinguish the essential from the accidental, and who,
repudiating the pretensions of minute and vexa-
tious uniformity, and sacrificing the pettiness of
prejudice to the majesty of a great design, could
thus develop the worship of the truth even among
the superstitions of Germanic paganism. Let us
admire, above all,
"
a religion which penetrates thus
to the depths of human naturewhich knows
what needful combats against his passions it de-
1
"Post diseessum congregationis vestrse quse tecum est, valde sumus
suspensi redditi, quia nihil de prosperitate vestri itineris audisse uos con-
tigit. . . . Dicite ei quid diu mecum de causa Anglorum cogitans trac-
tavi. . . . Nam duris mentibus simul omnia abscidere impossibile esse
non dubium est, quia et is qui summum locum ascendere nitetur, gradi-
bus vel passibus, non saltibus elevatur."

Epist., xi. 76.

376 ST AUGUSTIN
mands from man, and which has no desire to
impose unnecessary sacrifices upon him. The only
way of knowing human nature is to love it, and it
can be won only at this price."
1
Supremacy In his last question Augustin had asked how he

ficcordcd to
Augustin
as yet the only bishop among the Englishshould
British
dear by the bishops of Gaul and Britain. Gregory
bishops.
.
admonishes him not to keep at a distance the
bishops of Gaul who might wish to be present at
his ordinations of new bishops in England,
"
for to
conduct successfully spiritual affairs it is lawful to
draw lessons from temporal affairs ; and as, in the
world, persons already married are invited together
to take part in the festivities of a wedding, so
nothing forbids the participation of bishops already
ordained in that ordination which is the espousal
of man with God." The Pope added :
"
We do not
assign to you any authority over the bishops of
Gaul, and you can reform them only through
persuasion and good example, except at the risk
of thrusting your sickle into another's harvest.
As to the British bishops, we commit them en-
tirely to your care, that you may instruct the
ignorant, strengthen the feeble, and correct the
evil/'
2
Gregory, who knew so well how to read the
hearts and win the minds of men, could have only
1
Ozanam, (Euvres, i. 167.
2
"
Nam in ipsis rebus spiritualibus ut sapienter et mature disponan-
tur, exemplum trahere a rebus etiam carnalibus possumus. . . . Britan-
norum omnes episcopos tuoe fraternitati comniittimus."

Jpid., xi. 64.

OF CANTERBURY. 377
a very imperfect knowledge of the geography as
well as of the political condition of Great Britain.
He seems to have held on that subject the anti-
quated notions which prevailed at Eome regarding
an island which had been the first to escape from
the imperial yoke. He evidently had no idea of
the national and only too legitimate antipathy
which inflamed the Christian Britons against the
heathen Saxons, who had for a century and a half
overrun, ravaged, and usurped their country. He
imagined that those Christians, always faithfully
united to the Boman Church, who had so ener-
getically repudiated Belagianism, and whose bishops
had sat in the ancient councils presided over by the
legates of Borne, would lend a cordial support to
the mission of the Boman monks, commissioned by
him to evangelise the Saxons. He did not know
the implacable hate of the conquered for the con-
querors
;
and he forgot certain points of differ-
ence which, though they did not touch the great
verities of the Christian faith, and were completely
removed from all idea of a national or schismatic
Church, raised, nevertheless, a formidable barrier
between the British clergy and his Boman mis-
sionaries.
It is evident that Augustin always showed him-
Augustin
self capable of understanding and applying the pre- with the
cepts of his friend and master. No incident of his
bishop
life, recorded in his history, indicates any opposition
to, or departure from, the rules laid down for him
378 ST AUGUSTIN
by the prudence and charity of Gregory. He was
faithful to these rules in his relations with the
British bishops placed by the Pope under his juris-
diction, as well as in all other respects. A rapid
survey of this conflict will even lead the reader to
protest against the unjust and calumnious accusa-
tions of which it has been the object, and will prove
that Augustin was exclusively guided by a natural
desire to put an end to dissensions which impaired
the unity of the efforts necessary for the conversion
of the Saxons.
Wherein, then, consisted those differences between
Home and the Celtic Christianity of Wales, of Ireland,
and of Caledonia, which occupy so prominent a
place in the religious history of the sixth and seventh
centuries, and which the irritable and haughty zeal
of St Columbanus carried over into France, and
with which he tried the patience of St Gregory;
1
while Augustin, on his side, found in them the
chief stumblingblock to his mission in Great Britain ?
It cannot be too often repeated, that they affected
none of the essential doctrines of Christianity, no
article of faith defined by the Church either before
or since that period, no question of morals, and,
above all, that they did not offer any opposition to
the supremacy of the Holy See, as it was then exer-
cised or accepted by the rest of the Christian world.
Modern research has finally dispersed all the
imaginary chimeras of certain English and German
1
See ante, vol. ii.
p.
408.
OF CANTERBURY. 379
writers who attributed these differences to a pre-
tended influence of Eastern Christianity on the
British Churches, of which no authentic trace exists
;
or more readily still, to a traditional repugnance
on the part of the Celtic population to the yoke of
Eomea repugnance belied by the history of the
past, as well as by the living testimony of the
races, the most tenacious and most illustrious
members of which, the Irish and the Armoricans,
have purchased/ at the cost of the most generous
and cruel sacrifices, the right of placing themselves
in the foremost rank of the faithful children of the
Church of Eome.
1
The principal difference turned on the question The clissen-
of the date of the festival of Easter. This nice Lg Easter,
questionthe bugbear of all who embark on the
study of the primitive annals of the Churchhas
already emerged in the course of our history, and
will often again recur.
2
From the earliest Christian ages prolonged dis-
cussions were raised regarding the day on which
the greatest festival of the Church should be cele-
brated. The Council of Nice fixed the date of
1
The most weighty writers of Protestant Germany in our day, such as
Gieseler and Schrcedl, have already abandoned this hypothesis, so long
accepted by their co-religionists. It has been learnedly refuted by the
illustrious Professor Dollinger in his Manual
of
Ecclesiastical History,
and it may be said annihilated by the two Memoirs of M. Varin on the
Causes
of
the Dissension bettveen the British and the Roman Church, pub-
lished by the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres, 1858. A
digest of the conclusions of these two Memoirs will be found in Appen-
dix II.
2
See ante, vol. ii. book vii.
380 ST AUGUSTIN
the Pascal solemnities for the Sunday after the full
moon of the vernal equinox, and that date, sanc-
tioned by the Eoman Church, had been received
along with the Christian faith by all the Churches
of Britain, and had been carried by St Patrick to
Ireland, and by St Columba to Caledonia. But the
Church of Alexandria, having discovered an astro-
nomical error, originating in the employment of the
ancient Jewish computation by the Christians, had
introduced a more exact calculation, which was
adopted by all the Eastern Churches ; and the
result was, that from the pontificate of St Leo the
Great (440-61) a difference of an entire month had
arisen between Easter-day at Borne and Easter-day
at Alexandria. Towards the middle of the sixth cen-
tury, the difference ceased to exist ; Bome adopted
the calculation of Denys le Petit, which demon-
strated clearly the error of the day fixed by the
Council of Nice, and from this date uniformity was
re-established in the Church. But the Saxon inva-
sion had interrupted the ordinary intercourse be-
tween Bome and the British Churches
;
they re-
tained the ancient Boman usage, and it was pre-
cisely their attachment to that usage which was
their argument against the more exact computa-
tion which Augustin and the Italian monks brought
with them, but which the British rejected as sus-
picious novelties, to receive which would be an in-
sult to the traditions of their fathers.
1
It was thus
1
Walter, Altc Wales,
p.
225. Dollixger, op. cit, i. 2d part, 216.
OF CANTERBURY.
381
from their very fidelity to the early teachings of
Home that they resisted the new Eoman mission-
aries.
This cause of dissension, by far the most import-
ant, was of a very recent date, and all the disputes
that can be made out on other points (except that
regarding the form of the tonsure) were equally new,
without being at all more essential. If it had been
otherwisehad there been the slightest difference
touching doctrine or morals between the British
and the Eoman Church Augustin would never
have been guilty of the folly of soliciting the aid
of the Celtic clergy in the conversion of the heathen
Saxons. This would have been but to sow the
seeds of confusion and discord in the new Church,
which it was his business to organise by means of
the energetic co-operation of the native Christians
and the envoys of Rome.
1
There is nothing more painful than to meet in
history with endless and passionate contentions
upon questions and causes which, after some time
has passed, are interesting or even intelligible to
no human creature. But it is not Christian anti-
quity alone that offers us such a spectacle : we
find it in all ages. And to those who profess to
be scandalised at the overweening importance that
the most pious minds of their time have attached
to equal trifles, it should be enough to recall the
determined obstinacy which prompted great na-
1
Dollingee,
p.
217. Rees, Welsh Saints,
p.
288.
382 ST AUGUSTIN
tions, such as the English and the Russians, to resist
the reform of the Gregorian calendarthe one for
nearly two centuries, the other amidst the com-
plete uniformity of the entire civilised world.
It is no less true that, by that obstinate fidelity
to a venerable, though false, computation, the
British set themselves at variance on this question
of Easter, not only with Rome and the whole West,
but also with the East, which celebrated that fes-
tival, like the Jews, on the precise day of the week
on which it fell, while the British, in common with
the whole Western Church, always held the cele-
bration on Sunday. But this Sunday was, or
might be, another day than that kept as Easter-
day at Rome.
Who could imagine that this pitiful and absurd
difference should have kept the two Churches for
two centuries on a footing of direct hostility ?
Since the British Celts received their ancient custom
from Rome itself, why could they not follow Rome
in her perfected reckoning as all the rest of the
West did ? Why should they have positively de-
cided to hold festival while the Romans fasted; and
to fast while at Rome they chanted the Hallelujah?
Was there not a more serious, a deeper cause for
this dissension, of which the Pascal controversy was
but the outward aspect
?'
It is impossible to doubt
it ; and of all causes it was the most natural and
excusable the instinct of national preservation,
exasperated by hatred of the triumphant enemy,
OF CANTERBURY.
and expressing itself in distrust of the stranger,
who seemed to be an accomplice of that enemy.
Augustin knew well that he needed the aid of
the Celtic Christians in order to carry on success-
fully the great work which the Papacy had in-
trusted to him. Trained in the conciliatory and
moderate school of St Gregory the Great, fresh from
his recent instructions, he was very far from being
exclusive in regard to local personages or customs
;
and in order to effect the conversion of the Saxons,
he claimed in all good faith the co-operation of the
numerous and powerful clergy who, for more than
a century, had been the very soul of the resistance
to the heathen, and who peopled those great clois-
ters of Wales, into which the sword of the invader
had never penetrated.
But the British resisted him with a jealous and
obstinate opposition. They would not join him in
evangelising their enemies
;
they had no wish to
open to them the gates of heaven.
1
Augustin, however, succeeded in obtaining the First con-
fcr6nc6
consent of the principal bishops and doctors of
between
Augustin
Wales to a conference with him. It was arranged
and t]*e

British
that they should meet on the confines of Wessex,
bishops,
near the banks of the Severn, which separated the
Saxons from the Britons. The interview, like that 509 ?-603 ?
of Augustin with Ethelbert, after his landing in
Kent, took place in the open air, and under an oak,
which for a long time afterwards was knoAvn as
1
Vabin, Memoir cited.
384 ST AUGUSTIX
Augustin's oak. He began, not by claiming the
personal supremacy which the Pope had conceded
to him, but by exhorting his hearers to live in
Catholic peace with him, and to unite their efforts
to his for the evangelisation of the pagansthat is
to say, the Saxons. But neither his entreaties, nor
his exhortations, nor his reproaches, nor the elo-
quence of his attendant monks joined to his own,
availed to bend the Britons, who persisted in ap-
pealing to their own traditions in opposition to
the new rules. After a long and laborious dis-
putation, Augustin at last said, "Let us pray God,
who maketh brethren to dwell together in unity,
to show us by a sign from heaven what traditions
we ought to follow. Let a sick man be brought
hither, and he whose prayers shall cure him shall
be the one whose faith is to be followed/' The
British consented reluctantly. An Anglo-Saxon
blind man was brought, whom the British bishops
could not cure. Then Augustin fell on his knees,
and implored God to enlighten the conscience of
many of the faithful, by giving sight to this man.
Immediately the blind man recovered his vision.
The
British were touched
}
they acknowledged
that Augustin's course was just and straightfor-
ward, but that they could not renounce their old
1
"
Ut pace catholica secum habita, communem evangelizandi gentibus
pro domino laborem susciperent. . . . Laboriosi atque longi certaminis
finem fecit. . . . Quidam de genere Anglorum, oculorum usu privatus.
. . . Confitentur intellexisse se veram esse viam justitioe quam pnedi-
caret Augustinus."

Bede, ii. 2.
OF CANTERBURY. 385
customs without the consent of their people, and
demanded a second assembly, in which their de-
puties should be more numerous.
The second conference was held soon after. Au-
gustin there found himself in the presence of seven
British bishops and of the most learned doctors of the
great Monastery of Bangor, which contained more
than 3000 monks, and which was, as we have seen,
the centre of religious life in Wales. Before this new
meeting, the Britons went to consult an anchorite,
much famed among them for his wisdom and his
sanctity, and asked him if they ought to give heed
to Augustin, and abandon their traditions.
"
Yes,"
said the hermit,
"
if he is a man of God."
"
But
how shall we know that
?
"
"
If he is meek and
lowly of heart, as says the Gospel, it is probable that
he carries the yoke of Jesus Christ, and that it is
His yoke he offers you
;
but if he is hard and proud,
he comes not from God, and you ought to give no
heed to his discourse. In order to prove him, let
him arrive the first at the place of council
; and if
he rises when you approach, you will know that he
is a servant of Christ, and you will obey him ; but
if he rises not to do you honour, then despise him,
as he will have despised you."
1
The instructions of the anchorite were obeyed.
Unfortunately, on arriving at the place of council
they found Augustin already seated, more Romano,
1
'
' Sin autem vos spreverit, nec coram vobis adsurgere voluerit, cum
sitis plures, et ipse spernatur a vobis."

Bede, ii. 2.
VOL. III. 2 B
386
ST ATJGUSTIX
says an historian, and he did not rise to receive
them.
1
This was enough to set them against him.
"
If this man," said they,
"
deigns not to rise at our
arrival now, how will he slight us when we shall
have acknowledged his authority
!
99
From that
hour they became intractable, and studied to thwart
him at every point. Neither then nor at the
first conference did the archbishop make any
effort to induce them to acknowledge his personal
authority. Let it be added, to the honour of
this headstrong race, and rebellious but earnest
and generous clergy, that Augustin did not re-
proach them with any of those infringements of
the purity of the priestly life which some authors
have imputed to them.
2
With moderation, in
scrupulous conformity to the instructions of the
Pope, he reduced all his claims to three main points.
"
You have," said he,
"
many practices which are
contrary to our usage, which is that of the univer-
sal Church ; we will admit them all without diffi-
culty, if only you will believe me on three points : to
celebrate Easter at the right time
;
to complete the
sacrament of baptism
3
according to the usage of the
1
"Cum ergo convenissent, ct Augustinus Romano more in sella residens
iis non assurrexisset.
"

Henr. Huntingdon, iii. 186, ed. Savile.

2
"
Errorem Bretonum . . . quo alia plura ecclesiastics castitati et
paci contraria gerunt."

Bede, v. 18. Compare Gildas, De Excidio,

p.
23.
Dollinger believes that lie refers here to the subintroductce, so often de-
nounced by the councils. He notices elsewhere that the British priests
alone have been the object of these accusations, which have never been
brought against the other branches of the Celtic Church.
:1
He referred probably to Confirmation.
OF CANTERBURY. 387
holy Eoman Church ; and to preach the word of
God alonsf with us to the English nation." To this
threefold demand the Celtic bishops and monks
offered a threefold refusal, and added that they
would never acknowledge him as archbishop.
1
In
thus refusing to recognise the personal supremacy
of Augustin, they in nowise rejected that of the
Holy See. What they dreaded was not a Pope at
a distance from them, impartial and universally re-
spected at Eome, but a kind of new pope at Can-
terbury, within the territory and under the influ-
ence of their hereditary foes, the Saxons.
2
And,
above all else, they objected to be told of the duty
of labouring for the conversion of the odious Saxons,
who had slaughtered their forefathers and usurped
their lands.
"
No/' said the abbot of Bangor,
"
we
will not preach the faith to this cruel race of stran-
1
"
Quia in multis quidem nostra? consuetudini, immo universalis Ec-
clesise contrarian geritis
;
et tamen si in tribus his mini obtemperare vultis
;
ut Pascha suo tempore celebretis, ut ministerium baptizandi, quo Deo
renascimur, juxta morem sanctse Romana? et apostolical Ecclesia?. com-
pleatis, ut genti Anglorum una nobiscum verbum Domini prsedicetis,
csetera qua? agitis, quamvis moribus nostris contraria, pequanimiter cuncta
tolerabimus.
"

Bede, v. 18.
2
Hook, the most recent English historian of the archbishops of Can-
terbury, acknowledges this fact with an impartiality which is not always
habitual to him. We shall be excused discussing the pretended anti-
papal reply of the orator of Bangor, an English invention, published
in the collections of Spelman and Wilkins, and complacently repeated
by M. Augustin Thierry. Lingard, Dollinger,
<yp.
tit.,
p.
218, and Pro-
fessor Walter, have demonstrated its falsity, already exposed by Turber-
ville in his Manuale Controversiarum
;
Rees, Stephenson, Hussey, and all
the modern English writers of any weight, have agreed to renounce it. Let
us recall here the learned and deeply-to-be-lamented Abbe Gorini's excel-
lent refutation of the inexcusable errors committed by M. Augustin Thierry
in his narrative of the mission of St Augustin.
388
ST AUGUSTIX
gers who have treacherously driven our ancestors
from their country, and robbed their posterity of
their heritage."
1
Threaten-
It is easy to see which of the three conditions
phecv of Augustin had most at heart by the threatening
against prediction with which he met the refusal of the
the monks
_
. .
of Bangor.
British monks.
"
Since you will not have peace
with brethren, you shall have war with enemies
:
since you will not show to the English the way of
life, you shall receive from their hands the punish-
ment of death."
613 ? This prophecy was only too cruelly fulfilled some
years later. The king of the northern English,
Ethelfrid, still a pagan, invaded the district of
Wales in which stood the great Monastery of Ban-
gor. At the moment when the battle began be-
tween his numerous army and that of the Welsh,
he saw at a distance, in an elevated position, a body
of men, unarmed and on their knees.
"
Who are
these
?
" he asked. He was told they were the
monks of the great Monastery of Bangor, who, after
fasting for three days, had come to pray for their
brethren during the battle.
"
If they pray to their
God for my enemies," said the king,
"
they are
fighting against us, unarmed though they be." And
he directed the first onslaught to be made against
them. The Welsh prince, who should have de-
fended them, fled shamefully, and 1200 monks
1
Welsh chronicle, entitled Brut Tysilio. and Galfrid. Monmoutho,
xi.
2,
ap. Walter, op. cit.,
pp.
225, 227.
OF CANTERBURY.
389
were massacred on the field of battle, martyrs of
Christian faith and of Celtic patriotism.
1
Thus
ended, say the annals of Ireland, the day of the
slaughter of the saints.
2
An old calumny, revived in our day, makes Au-
gustin answerable for this invasion, and accuses
him of having pointed out the Monastery of Bangor
to the Northumbrian heathens.
3
But the Vener-
able Bede expressly states that he had been for a
long time a saint in heaven when this invasion
took place. It is enough that Bede himself, much
more Saxon than Christian whenever he treats of
the British, applauds this massacre more than a
century afterwards, and sees in it Heavens just
vengeance on what he calls the infamous army of
the disloyal Welshthat is to say, on the heroic
Christians who, in defence of their hearths and
1
"
Cum videret sacerdotes . . . seorsum in loco tutiore consistere,
sciscitabatur quid esseut hi, quidve acturi illo convenissent. . . . Ergo
si adversum nos at Deum suum clamant, profecto et ipsi quamvis anna
non ferant contra nos pugnant. Itaque in hos prinium arma verti jubet,
et sic cseteras nefandse militia? copias . . . delevit . . . ut etiam temporalis
interitus ultione sentirent perfidi, quod oblata sibi perpetiue salutis con-
silia spreverant."

Bede, v. 18.
2
Annales Tighemach, ad ann. 606.
3
This false imputation can be traced back to Geoffro3
T
of Monmouth,
bishop of St Asaph in the twelfth century, and mouthpiece of the national
rancours of Wales. Certain obscure writers, unworthy descendants of the
Anglo-Saxons, such as Goodwin and Hammond, have adopted it out of
hatred of the Romish Church, and, not knowing how to reconcile it with
Bede's positive assertion of the prior death of Augustin, have pretended that
this passage of the Venerable historian had been interpolated. But all the
modern editors of Bede have been obliged to acknowledge that the con-
tested passage existed in all the MSS. of that author without exception.
Compare Lingard, Anglo-Saxon Churchy vol. i.
p. 74
;
Varin, Premier
Mhnoire,
p.
25-29
;
Gorini, op. cit., vol. ii.
p.
77.
390 ST AUGUSTIX
altars, fell beneath the sword of the pagan Anglo-
Saxons, under the orders of a chief who, according
to the testimony of Bede himself, slew more of the
native population than any of his predecessors.
1
After such an explosion of his own national an-
tipathies, he seems to be singularly little entitled
to reproach the Celts of Wales with the steadfast-
ness of their resentment, as he does in stating that
even in his time they made no account of the reli-
gion of the Anglo-Saxons, and would hold no more
communion with them than with pagans.
2
It is possible, as an ingenious critic has said, that
Augustin and his companions did not treat with
sufficient tact the national and insular pride of the
British, heightened by a long warlike resistance, by
the traditions of the monks,- and the patriotic songs
of the bards.
3
But nothing, I repeat, indicates the
slightest departure on his part from the counsel
and example of the glorious pontiff whose disciple
and emulator he was. Condemned by the obstinacy
of the British to deprive himself of their assistance,
he none the less continued his
"
hunt of men," as
his biographer calls it, by evangelising the Saxons,
who at least did not wear him out, like the Welsh,
with their wordiness and their endless discussions.
4
1
Bede, i. 34.
2
Bede, ii. 20. See the text already cited,
p.
75.
3 Ozanam,
p.
153.
4
"
Vix credideriin Augustinum a qucxpiam jpaganorum majori fatigatum
vcrborum ambage. . . . In occidentalem ab Aquiloni plagam divertit, non
tain viatoris quam venatoris ant aucupis morera gerens."

Gotseltnus,
Hist. Maior, c. 32,
41.
OF CANTERBURY.
391
And yet, even among the former he sometimes
encountered an opposition which expressed itself in
insult and derision, especially when he passed be-
yond the bounds of Ethelbert s kingdom. On one
occasion, while traversing that region of the country
of the West Saxons which is now called Dorset-
shire, he and his companions found themselves in
the midst of a seafaring population, who heaped
on them affronts and outrages. These heathen
savages not only refused to hear them, but even
drove them away with acts of violence, and in
hunting them from their territory, with a rude de-
rision truly Teutonic, fastened to the black robes
of the poor Italian monks, as a mark of contempt,
the tails of the fish which formed their livelihood.
1
Augustin was not a man to be discouraged by
such trifles. Besides, he found in other places
crowds more attentive and more impressible. And
thus he persevered for seven entire years, until his
death, in his apostolic journeystravelling after, as
well as before, his archiepiscopal consecration, like
a true missionary, always on foot, without carriage
or baggage, and adding to his unwearied preaching
good works and miracleshere making unknown
springs gush from the ground, there healing by his
touch the sick believed to be incurable or dying.
2
1
"
Plebs impia . . . tota ludibrioram et opprobriorum in sanctos debac-
chata . . . nec maim pepercisse creditur. . . . Fama est illos effulminan-
dos provenientes niarinorum piscium caudas Sanctis appendisse."

Gotse-
linus, c. 41.
2
"Tarn post praesulatum quam ante, semper pede, absque vehiculo>
392 ST AUGUSTIN
Founda-
Meanwhile Ethelbert did not fail in solicitude
Etheibert.
for and generosity to the Church of which he had
of London become the ardent disciple. Not content with the
ester.
gifts which he had bestowed on the two great mon-
asteries of Canterburyon that which surrounded
the metropolitan church, and on the Abbey of St
Peter and St Paul without the wallshe seconded
with all his might the introduction of Christianity
into a kingdom adjacent to his own and placed
under his suzeraintythat of the Saxons of the
East, or of Essex, the king of which was the son of
his sister, and which was only separated from Kent
by the Thames. Augustin having sent thither as
bishop the monk Mellitus, one of the new mission-
aries sent to him by Gregory, Ethelbert built
at London, the chief city of the West Saxons, a
church, dedicated to St Paul, intended for a cathe-
dral, which it still is. In his own kingdom of
Kent he authorised the erection of a second bishop-
ric, situated at Eochester, a Eoman city, twenty
miles west of Canterbury; Augustin placed there
as bishop another of the new missionaries, Justus
by name ; and the king caused a cathedral to be
patiens ambulando, liber et expeditus praedicationi evangelic*.
"
Elm-
ham, Hist. Monaster. S. Augustini,
p.
106. Compare Gotselinus, c. 44
and 49. This historian reproduces the story of an old man whose
grand-
father had, while still young, been a scoffer at the wonderful stranger
whom the crowd followed and surrounded as though he were an angel
from heaven, because he went about healing all their infirmities. "Cum
vero audissem ilium omnium debilium ac moribund orum curare corpora,
ampliori incredulus cachinnabam vesania." He ended, nevertheless, in
being baptised by the hand of Augustin himself.
OF CANTERBURY. 393
built there, which he named after St Andrew, in
memory of the Eoman monastery whence Pope
Gregory had drawn all the apostles of the Anglo-
Saxon race.
1
All these foundations, destined to last to our own
times in spite of so many strange and unhappy
changes, invest him with an imperishable claim on
the gratitude of Christian posterity ; and long after-
wards, when the Norman nobility had in their turn
seized upon the supreme power and changed the
aspect of the Church of England, King Ethelbert
became apparent to her as the first who had pro-
vided with seignorial strongholds, in the shape of
bishops' seats and monasteries, the kingdom which
he desired to hold in fee for the Lord God.
2
He did vet more for the Church of his countrv Laws of
i
_ . _ .
' Ethelbert
by securing lor her property and her liberties what
guarantee-
we may call, in modern rather than just terms, a
possessions
J

and peace
legal and parliamentary sanction. In one of those
^
T
e
ch
periodical assemblies of the sages and chief men of
the Saxon people, which bore the name of Witena-
gemot, and which were the origin of the modern
Parliament, he caused certain lawsthe text of
which is still preservedto be committed to writ-
ing and published in the Anglo-Saxon tongue.
They confirmed at once the old rights of the people,
and the new rights conceded to the new Church.
1
Bede, ii. 3.
2
"
Turn episcopia et monasteria tanquam dominica castella, quibus
Dominicum regnum teneatur, liberaliter ac regaliter passim machinatur."

Gotselinus, Hist. Maior, c. 23.

394 ST AUGUSTIX
The first of the ninety articles of that legislative
act enacts that those who should rob the goods of
the Church, of the bishops, or other orders of the
clergy, shall make restitution eleven or twelve times
beyond the value of the robbery.
1
The same article
sanctioned implicitly what the English have since
named the right
of
sanctuarythat is, the right of
asylum and protection recognised as belonging to
the precincts of churches and monasteries
by
visit-
ing the violation of that peace of the Church with
a penalty the double of that incurred by violation of
the public peace. The whole nation thus sanctioned
and ratified the work of its king by placing under
the safeguard of penal laws the property and safety
of the ministers of the religion which it had adopted.
2
These laws, long known by the name of Dooms or
Judgments
of
Ethelbert, are the first written laws
known to us, not only of the English, but perhaps
of any of the Germanic races. The best informed
critics attribute to the influence of the Eoman
monks on the Anglo-Saxon king, this commence-
1
"
Ut ecclesine peculium duodecies, episcopi undecies emendaretur."

According to the instructions given by Gregory to Augustin, this surplus

value of the restitution did not profit the Church, which was bound to be
content with the simple restoration of what had been taken.
2
"
Inter csetera bona quse genti suae conferendo conferebat, etiam
decreta illi judiciorum juxta exempla Romanorum, cum concilio sapien-
tium constituit. . . . Volens scilicet tuitionem eis quos et quorum doc-
trinam susceperat, pra>stare."

Bede, ii. 5. Compare Kemble, Saxons

in England, ii. 205
;
Hook,
qp.
cM.
f
p.
59
;
Wilkins, Concilia,
p.
25
;
THORPE, Ancient Laws and Institutes
of
England, 1840, c. 1. This last
publication, executed by order of the English Government, gives the Saxon
text of the laws of Ethelbert, with a very intelligent commentary.
OF CANTERBURY. 395
ment of the national, or rather penal code,
1
For its
enactments were chiefly penal, and we cannot but
admire the wisdom of those missionaries who, trained
in the traditions of Eoman jurisprudence, never-
theless established and sanctioned the principle of
pecuniary compensation universally adopted by the
Germanic races. In these laws of Ethelbert a clas-
sification of social position is clearly apparent from
the minutely exact enumeration of crimes commit-
ted against the life or safety of men, the honour of
women, religion, and public peace. Every trespass
is punished by a penalty proportionatefirst, to the
gravity of the offence, and next, to the rank of the
victim. In case of murder, the compensation is due
not only to the family of the deceased, but also to
the community of which he was a member, and to
the king who was his sovereign. This system, ap-
plied for the first time to the defence of the Chris-
tian Church by the Saxons of Kent, and for the first
time reduced to a written form under the guidance
of the Eoman monks, will be found in all the sub-
sequent legislation of the Saxon kingdoms, which
the bishops and monks, successors of Augustin,
continued to guide with a strong yet gentle hand
into the ways of Christian civilisation.
Great men, commissioned by God to begin works
which are to be truly great and enduring, seldom
1
Lappenberg, vol. i.
p.
142
;
Lingard, Hist,
of
England, c. 11
;
Lord Campbell, Lives
of
the Chancellors, art. Angemimdus
;
especially
Phillips, Geschichte des Angdsachsichschen Rechts,
p.
61.
396 ST AUGUSTIN
live to old age ; and when one of them disappears,
it often happens that he carries with him on his
way to a better world those who have been on earth
Death of his companions, servants, and friends. St Gregory
ancfof' the Great, whose pontificate has left an ineffaceable
impression upon the memory of Christendom, and a
peerless example in the annals of the Church, reigned
only fifteen years. He died in the early months of
605
12th March the year 605, and two months after Augustin fol-
12th May. lowed his father and friend to the tomb.
1
The
Eoman missionary was interred, after the Roman
custom, by the side of the public way, the great
Roman road which led from Canterbury to the sea,
and in the unfinished church of the famous monas-
tery which was about to assume and to preserve
his name.
The name of Gregory will remain always identi-
fied with that conversion of England which was the
labour of love of his whole life, and the greatest
glory of his pontificate. His large and tender heart
had been the first to conceive the thought of that
conquest. His patient and conciliating genius, at
once ardent and gentle, prudent and resolute, re-
vealed to him the conditions of success. It is to
him that the English raceat this day the most
numerous and powerful of all Christian races

owes the revelation of the light of the Gospel.

1
There has been much dispute about the date of the death of Augustin,
which Mabillon had fixed in 607. But the majority of English historians
are now agreed upon the date 605. Wharton would even place it as
early as 604.

Anglia Sacra, vol. i.

p.
91.
OF CANTERBURY. 397
He was the true apostle, the conqueror of Eng-
land for God, and, through England, of immense
countries which she has subjected to her laws, to
her language, and to her religion. It is, then, with
good reason that the first English historian claims
for him this title. "Called," says Bede, "to a
supreme pontificate over all the nations already
converted to the faith, to our nation which was in
bondage to idols, and out of which he has formed
a Christian Church, he has been something more.
We may well say of Gregory what Paul said of
himself to the Corinthiansthat if he has not been
the apostle of others, he has been our apostle. Yes,
we are the seal of his apostleship in the Lord

we, the people whom he rescued from the fangs of

the old enemy, to make us partakers of the eternal
freedom."
1
The nature of the means that Gregory employed
to accomplish his work, and the moral perfection
of the arrangements which he brought to bear on it,
are even more to be admired than the work itself
;

zeal, devotion, wisdom, moderation, love of souls,

and respect for their freedom, pity, generosity, vigi-
lance, indomitable perseverance, divine
gentleness,
intelligent patiencenothing was awanting in him.
We leave the history of his pontificate, and especially
of his intercourse with England, with no other regret
1
"
Quia etsi aliis non est apostolus, sed tamen nobis est ; nam signa-
culum apostolatus ejus nos sumus in Domino. . . . Quod nostram gen-
tem per prsedicatores quos hue direxit, de dentibus antiqui hostis eripiens,
aeternae libertatis fecit esse partieipem."

Bede, ii. 1.
398 ST AUGUSTIN
than that inseparable from witnessing the end of
so noble a life; and in losing sight of him, are left
uncertain which should be the most admiredhis
good sense or his good heart, his genius or his virtue.
The figure of St Augustin of Canterbury natu-
rally pales beside that of St Gregory the Great ; his
renown is, as it were, absorbed into the brilliant
centre of the Pontiff's glory. And recent Eng-
lish and German historians
1
have taken delight in
bringing out the inferiority of the man whom Gre-
gory chose for his vicegerent and his friend. They
have vied with each other in decrying his character
and services accusing him by turns of hauteur
and of feebleness, of irresolution and of obstinacy,
of softness and of vanity, trying, especially, to
heighten and magnify the indications of hesitation
and of self-seeking which they discover in his life.
Let it be permitted to these strange precisians to
reproach him with having stopped short of the
ideal of which they pretend to dream, and which
no hero of theirs has ever approached. To our
judgment, the few shadows which fall on the noble
career of this great saint are left there to touch the
hearts and console the spirits of those who are, like
him, infirm, and charged sometimes with a mission
which, like him, they judge to be beyond their
strength.
Among the workers of great works who have
changed the history of the world and decided the
1
Stanley, Hook, Lappenberg.
OF CANTERBURY. 399
fate of nations, one loves to meet with those infir-
mities, which give encouragement to the common
average of men.
Let us, then, preserve intact our admiration and
our gratitude for the first missionarythe first
bishop and abbot of the English people. Let us
give our meed of applause to that council which, a
century and a half after his death, decreed that his
name should be always invoked in the Litanies
after that of Gregory,
"
because it is he who, sent
by our father Gregory, first carried to the English
nation the sacrament of baptism and the knowledge
of the heavenly country/''
1
1
"
Qui genti Angloram a prsefato Papa et patre nostro missus . . .
scientiam fidei, baptism! sacramentum et ccelestis patriae notitiam primus
attulit."

Concilium Clovcshoviensc, auno 747.

CHAPTER III.
FIRST SUCCESSORS OF ST AUGUSTIN
PAGAN REACTION.
Special characteristics of the conversion of England. All the details of it
are known : it has had neither martyrs nor persecutions
;
it has been
the exclusive work of Benedictine or Celtic monks. All the Roman
missionaries were monks
;
their monasteries served for cathedrals and
parish churches.Laurence, first successor ofAugustin.Mellitus at the
council of Rome in 610
;
Pope's letter to Ethelbert ; monks of Saxon
origin. Efforts of Laurence to reconcile the British
;
his letter to the
Irish bishops. Conversion of the kings of East Anglia and Essex.

Foundation of Westminster
;
legend of the fisher
;
King Sebert the
first to be buried there
;
monastic burials
;
Nelson and Wellington.

Canterbury and Westminster, the metropolis and national necropolis

of the English, due to the monks.Death of Bertha and of Ethelbert
;
the abbot Peter drowned. Eadbald, the new king of Kent, remains a
pagan ; his subjects, as also the Saxons of the East, return to paganism.
Flight of the bishops of London and Rochester
;
Archbishop Laurence
held back by St Peter. Conversion of Eadbald. Apostasy of the
king of East Anglia
;
he admits Christ among the Scandinavian gods.
Mellitus and Justus, the second and third successors of Augustin.
Special
The preaching of the Gospel in England is marked
istics of the by several characteristics altogether peculiar to
conversion
. , . ,
-i

n
- .
of England,
itself, and distinguishing it from those revolutions
which introduced Christianity into the western
nations previously converted to the faith.
In Italy, Gaul, and Spain, the propagation of the
OF CANTERBURY. 401
Gospel and the extinction of paganism are surrounded
with such obscurity that it is impossible to be sure
of the date at which the first evangelists of most of
the dioceses lived. In England, on the other hand,
its details
known.
nothing is vague or uncertain. \ear by year, and
day by day, we witness the various phases of the
grand event. We take part, as it were, in the very
workthe conversion of a great countrywhich it
is so rarely possible to study in detail. We can
follow it in all its changes of fortune with the same
certainty and precision as if it were an incident in
our contemporary missions.
Moreover, in the great lands and illustrious
Neither
churches which have just been named, the baptism norp^e-

t
cutors.
of blood everywhere accompanied or preceded
the conversion of the people. Like the apostles at
Eome and in the East, the missionaries of the Gos-
pel in the West had, for the most part, to water
with their blood the first furrows that they were
honoured to draw in the field of the divine Husband-
man. Even after the great imperial persecutions
had come to an end, martyrdom often crowned the
apostolate of the first bishops or their auxiliaries.
In England there was nothing at all like this :
from the first day of St Augustin's preaching, and
during the whole existence of the Anglo-Saxon
Church, there was neither martyr nor persecutor
there. When brought within the circle of the pure
and radiant light of Christianity, and even before
they acknowledged and worshipped it, these fierce
VOL. III. 2 c
402 ST AUGUSTIN
Saxons, pitiless as they were to their enemies,
showed themselves very much more humanely dis-
posed and accessible to the truth than the enlight-
ened and civilised citizens of Imperial Borne. Not
one drop of blood was shed for the sake of religion,
or under any religious pretext ; and this wonder
occurred at a time when blood flowed in torrents
for the most frivolous motives, and in that island
where afterwards so many piles were to be lighted,
and so many scaffolds raised, to immolate the Eng-
lish who should remain true to the faith of Gregory
and Augustin.
The con- A third distinctive feature of the conversion of
exchxsive England is that it was exclusively the work of
monks,
monks; first, of Benedictine monks sent from Eome
and afterwards, as we shall see, of Celtic monks,
who seemed for a moment about to eclipse or sup-
plant the Italian monks, but who soon suffered
themselves to be absorbed by the influence of the
Benedictines, and whose spiritual posterity is in-
separably connected with that of the Roman mis-
sionaries in the common observance of the rule of
the great legislator of the monks of the West.
The monastic profession of these first missionaries
has been the subject of frequent and long dispute.
While it has been admitted that many were of the
order to which he himself belonged, it has been
denied that all the monks sent by St Gregory the
Great were Benedictines. But the unerring and
unrivalled learning of Mabillon has settled the
OF CANTERBURY.
403
question by irrefutable arguments.
1
It is possible
that some clerks or secular priests were to be found
among the assistants of the first Archbishop of
Canterbury ; but it is distinctly proved, by the
authority of Bede and of all the earliest records,
that Augustin himself and his successors, as well
as all the religious of his metropolitan church and
the great abbey which bore his name, followed the
rule of St Benedict, like the great Pope whose mis-
sion they carried out. Gregory, as has been seen,
1
In the preface of the first century of the Acta Sanctorum Ordinis S.
Benedicti, paragraph 8, Mabillon has completely proved against Baronius
and Marsham, one of the editors of the Monasticon Anglicanum, that
Gregory, Augustin, and their disciples belonged to the order of St Bene-
dict. The brethren of Saint-Maur, in the life of Gregory placed at the
beginning of their edition of his works, have completed the proof (book
iii. c.
5, 6, 7).
These brief but weighty pages say more on the subject
than the folio entitled Apostolatus Benedictinorum in Anglia, sive Discep-
tatio Historica de Antiquitate Ordinis Congrcgationisque Monachorum
Nigrorum in Regno Anglice, opera R. P. Clementts Reyxepj, Duaci,
1626. This ill-arranged and tedious compilation is nevertheless import-
ant for the later histoiy of England, on account of the numerous and
curious articles which it contains. One of the most curious is the note
asked and obtained by the author from the four most celebrated and
learned English Protestants of his time, Cotton, Spelman, Camden, and
Selden, who unanimously declare that all their researches have led them
to the conclusion that St Augustin, his companions, and his successors,
were Benedictines. The English text of this is to be found in Stevens,
Continuation
of
Dugdale, vol. i.
p.
171. A modern Anglican, Soames,
has recently asserted that the Benedictines did not arrive till the tenth
century with St Dunstan
;
but he has been refuted by the two most distin-
guished of modern English archaeologists, the Protestant Kemble and the
Catholic Lingard. The latter, however, is in error in supposing (History
and Antiquities
of
the Anglo-Saxon Church, vol. i.
p.
152) that Augustin
placed in the Cathedral of Canterbury clerks and not monks. He
has mistaken the early synonymy of the words clerici and monachi, in
modern times used to express two entirely distinct ideas, but which were
employed indifferently from the days of Gregory of Tours to those of the
Venerable Bede, and even later.
404 ST AUGUSTIX
was desirous of taking advantage of the new ecclesi-
astical organisation of England to introduce there
that close alliance of the monastic and ecclesiasti-
cal life which, to his mind, realised the ideal of the
apostolic church. For more than a century that
alliance was universal and absolute. Wherever the
pagan temples were transformed into churches

wherever the old churches of the time of the

Eomans and Britons rose from their ruinsthere
monastic life prevailed among the missionaries
who served the cures. The converted country was
thus, little by little, overspread by monasteries
;
the small ones for a long time held the place of
rural parish churches ; the large served for cathe-
drals, chapter-houses, and residences for the bishops,
who were all produced by the monastic orders.
Laurence, The first thirty-eight archbishops of Canterbury
successor
were all monks
;
and the first four successors of St
of Augus-
ts.
Augustin were taken from among the monks of the
605-619.
0

Monastery of St Andrew at Eome, whom Pope
Gregory had appointed to be his fellow-workmen.
During his life, Augustin had chosen as his suc-
cessor in the primacy his companion Laurence,
and had procured his consecration beforehand, thus
meaning, with fatherly anxiety, to make the best
provision for the frail fortunes of the new-born
Church of the English.
1
The new archbishop did
1
"
Xe se defuncto adime status ecelesise tarn rudis, vel ad horam pas-
tore destitutus, vacillare ineiperet."

Bede, ii. 4. The last historian of

the archbishops of Canterbury, Dr Hook, maintains that Laurence was
not a monk, taking as his ground the passage in which Bede describes
OF CANTERBURY. 405
honour to the choice which had honoured him. He
devoted himself nobly to the consolidation of the
Church which he had seen founded ; he conciliated
all hearts, and increased the number of the faithful
by the unwearied activity of his preaching no less
than by the saintly example of his life.
Laurence lived for ten years in an intimate union
606-616.
with the good king Ethelbert, and acted as the
medium of communication between that prince and
the Holy See. The third successor of Gregory,
Boniface IV.he who consecrated the Eoman Pan-
theon to Christian worship in memory of all the
martyrsexhibited towards the king and the mis-
sionary monks of the kingdom of Kent a goodwill
and confidence worthy of his illustrious predecessor.
Mellitus, the new bishop of the East Saxons,
was sent by Laurence to Rome to consult the Pope
upon different matters affecting the interests of
the Church of England. He was one of the mem- 27th Feb.
610
bers of the Council of Rome, in which were pro-
mulgated the canons which confirmed the rule of
St Benedict, and accorded to the monks the right
of administering the sacraments and of being ad-
mitted to all the grades of the priesthood.
1
Mel-
him as priest to distinguish him from his companion Peter the monk :
' 1
Misit continuo Romam Laurentium presbyterum et Petrum monachum.
"

i. 27. He forgets that this same Peter is himself described as priest

some pages farther on :
"
Primus ejusdem monasterii abbas Petrus pres-
byter fuit."--i. 33. The title of priest was not at all incompatible with
the monastic profession. That point was settled at the Council of Rome
in 610only then, as now, all monks were not in priest's orders.
1
"
Cum idem Papa cogeret synodum episcoporum Italia?, de vita
monachorum et quiete ordinaturus."

Bede, loc. cit.

406
ST AUGUSTIN
litus brought back to England the decrees of this
council, which he had himself signed along with
the other bishops ; he brought likewise very gra-
cious letters from the Pope to the archbishop and
to the king.
"
Glorious king," Boniface wrote to
Ethelbert,
"
we accord to you with right good will
that which you have demanded of the Apostolic
See through our co-bishop Mellitus : to wit, that
in the monastery which your holy teacher Augus-
tin, the disciple of Gregory, of blessed memory,
consecrated under the name of the Holy Saviour,
in your city of Canterbury, and over which our
very dear brother Laurence now presides, you
should establish a dwelling for monks, living to-
gether in complete regularity ; and we decree, by
our apostolic authority, that the monks who have
preached the faith to you may take this new mo-
nastic community into association with themselves,
and teach its members to live a holy life."
1
Through the obscurity of this language it seems
natural to conclude that the introduction of new
monks, probably of Saxon origin, into the Italian
community founded by Augustin, is here indicated.
1
"
Fili gloriose, quod ab Apostolica sede per coepiscopum nostrum
Mellituin postulatis, libeuti animo concedimus
;
id est, ut vestra benig-
nitas in nionasterio in Dorobernensi civitate constituto, quod sanctus doc-
tor vester Augustinus, beatse memorise Gregorii discipulus, sancti Salva-
toris nomini eonsecravit, cui ad prsesens prseesse dignoscitur dilcctissimus
frater noster Laurentius, licenter per omnia monachorum regulariter viv-
entium habitationem statuat, apostolica auctoritate decernentes ut ipsi
vestri prajdicatores monachi monachorum gregem sibi associent et eorum
vitam sanctitatum (sic) moribus exornent."

Guillelmus Malmesbuk.,
De Gcslis Pontificuni Anglorum, lib. i.
p.
118, ed. Savile.
OF CANTERBURY. 407
A century passed, however, ere an abbot born in
England could be chosen to preside over it.
Like Augustin, Archbishop Laurence was not Efforts of
.
< -i ci
Laurence
content to labour for the salvation of the Saxons
to bring
about the
with his monkish brethren only : his pastoral anxi-
^
n
t^
e
e
rsion
ety urged him to search for the means of bringing
Blitons-
the Christians of the ancient British race into unity
with Kome, so that he and they might work toge-
ther for the conversion of the pagans. His expe-
rience of the conditions under which the Christian
religion might be successfully extended made him
bitterly deplore the hostile attitude of the Celtic
monks, and the polemical rancour which broke out
in them whenever they sought or consented to dis-
cuss the matters in dispute. It was at the same
moment that the illustrious Columbanus impaired
the effect of the admirable example which he set to
France, Burgundy, and Switzerland, by his extra-
ordinary eccentricities. The rumour of them had
reached even Laurence, who could not forbear re-
ferring to it in an epistle which he addressed to the
bishops and abbots of all Scotiathat is to say,
of Irelandthe chief centre of the Celtic Church.
Having failed, like Augustin, in a direct advance
which, with his two suffragans, he had made to the
clergy of the "Welsh Britons, he sought to ascend to
the source of the evil by writing to their brethren
in the neighbouring island to expostulate with them
on their universal intolerance. His letter begins
thus
:

408 ST AUGUSTIN
"
To our very dear brethren, the lords, bishops,
and abbots of Ireland,
we, Laurence, Mellitus, and
Justus, servants of the servants of God, greeting.
The Holy See having directed us, as is its wont, to
these western regions, there to preach the faith to
the heathen, Ave have entered this island of Britain,
not knowing what we did. Believing that they
all followed the rules of the universal Church, we
held in great veneration the piety of the Britons
and the Scots. When we came to know the Bri-
tons, we thought the Scots were better than they.
But now, when the bishop Dagan has come to us
from Ireland, and when the abbot Columbanus has
betaken himself to Gaul, we know that the Scots
differ in nothing from the Britons ; for the bishop
Dagan has not only refused, to partake of our hos-
pitalityhe has not even deigned to eat in the
place which serves as our dwelling."
1
Dagan was
a monk of the great Irish Monastery of Bangor : he
had come to confer with the mission at Canterbury,
and he had undoubtedly been offended by the firm
determination of the Roman prelates to maintain
the conditions of liturgical unity. No trace has
survived of any overtures towards reconciliation
on his part, or on that of any other representative
of the Celtic Churches.
Conversion The Roman monks were for some time more
kings of
successful among
the Saxon settlements neigh-
East Anglia


and of
hours or vassals of the monarchy of Ethelbert, The
Essex.
J
1
Bede, loc. cit.
OF CANTERBURY. 409
most eastern district of the islandthat which,
lying between the Thames and the sandy outlets of
the Ouse, forms a sort of circular projection look-
ing towards Scandinaviawas occupied, towards
the north, by the tribe of East Angles, or English
of the East, Their king, Eedwald, who had paid
a visit to the king of Kent, received baptism like
him ; and his conversion awakened hopes of the
conversion of his peoplea population much more
numerous than that of the country already won for
Christ, occupying as it did the large modern coun-
ties of Norfolk and Suffolk, with a part of the
shires of Cambridge, Huntingdon, Bedford, and
Hertford. Between East Anglia and Kent lay the
kingdom of Essex, or of the Saxons of the East,
already converted during Angustin's life, thanks to
its king Sebert, the nephew of the Bretwalda Ethel-
bert. This kingdom was particularly important on
account of its capital, the ancient Boman colony of
London, where Mellitus had been appointed bishop
by Augustin.
He had founded there, as we have seen, on the
Foundation
ruins of an ancient temple of Diana, a monastic JLinstS
cathedral dedicated to St Paul. Soon after, to the
west of the episcopal city, and on the site of a
temple of Apollo, which had supplanted, after the
Diocletian persecution, a church occupied by the
first British Christians,
1
the new bishop of London
built, with the concurrence of Sebert the kino- an-
1
Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, vol. i.
p.
55.
410 ST AUGUSTIN
other church and a monastery dedicated to St Peter.
Thus on the banks of the Thames, as on those of
the Tiber, and in expressive and touching remem-
brance of Eome, the two princes of the apostles
found in these two sanctuaries, separate yet near, a
new consecration of their glorious brotherhood in
the apostolate and martyrdom.
This modest monastic colony established itself
on a frightful and almost inaccessible site,
1
in the
middle of a deep marsh, on an islet formed by an
arm of the Thames, and so covered with briars
and thorns that it was called Thorn
ey
Island.
From its position to the west of London it took
a new name, destined to rank among the most
famous in the worldthat of Westminster, or
Monastery of the West.
As far as our history can extend, it will always
find the national sanctuary of England encircled
with growing splendour and celebrity. But at
present our business is only to record the legend
which brightens its humble cradlea legend which
we have already met with among the British at
Glastonbury, and which we shall find among other
nations at the beginning of other great monastic
foundationsin France at that of St Denis, in
Switzerland at Einsiedlenand which has exer-
cised on the imagination of the English people an
influence more durable and powerful than is gener-
1
"
In loco terribili."Charter quoted by Kidgway, The Gem
of
Thorncy Island,
p.
4.
OF CANTERBURY. 411
ally produced by the best authenticated facts. Up
to the sixteenth century it was still told from gen-
eration to generation that in the night preceding
the day fixed for the consecration of the new
church, and while Bishop Mellitus, within his tent,
was preparing for the ceremony of the morrow, St
Peter, the great fisher of men, appeared under the
form of an unknown traveller to a poor fisherman
whose boat was moored on the bank of the Thames
opposite the Isle of Thorns. The water was rough,
and the river in flood. The stranger persuaded the
fisherman to row him across to the opposite bank,
and when he landed he made his way towards the
new church. As he crossed its threshold, the
fisherman with amazement saw the interior of the
edifice lighted up. From floor to roof, within and
without, a chorus of angelic voices filled the air
with a music such as he had never heard, and with
the sweetest odours. After a long interval the
music ceased, and all disappeared except the stran-
ger, who, returning, charged the fisherman to go
and tell the bishop what he had seen, and how he,
whom the Christians called St Peter, had himself
come to the consecration of the church which his
friend King Sebert had raised to him.
1
1
"
Ecce subito lux coelestis eraicuit. . . . Affuit cum apostolo multi-
tude) civium supernorum . . . aures angelicas voces mulcebat sonoritas,
nares iudicibilis odoris fragantia perfuudebat. . . . Nova Dei nupta, con-
secrante eo qui ccelum claudit et aperit, ccelestibus resplendet luminari-
bus. . . . Fixis tentoriis a dimidio milliario.
. . Rediit ad piscatorem
piscium egregius piscator hominum. . . . Ego sum quem Christian!
sanctum Petrum apostolum vocant, qui hanc ecclesiam meam hac nocte
412 ST AUGUSTIN
This King Sebert and his wife were buried at
Westminster ; and subsequently, through many
vicissitudes, the great abbey, becoming more and
more dear to the Church, to the princes, nobles,
and people, was the chosen burial-place of the
kings and the royal family. It is still, in our time,
as every one knows, the Pantheon of England, who
has found no nobler consecration for the memory
of her heroes, orators, and poets, her most glorious
children, than to give them their last resting-place
under the vaults of the old monastic sanctuary.
1
Near that sanctuary the royalty of England long
sojourned ; in one of its dependent buildings the
House of Commons held its first meeting
;
2
under
its shadow the English Parliament, the most ancient,
powerful, and glorious assembly in the world, has
Deo dedicavi . . . rpuam mihi ille meus amicus Sebertus fabricavit."

Eic. Cirencester., Speculum Hist, de Gestis Reg. Ancjl., ii. 27. Dugdale
quotes no less than four original versions of this miracle, extracted from
ancient English chronicles. Compare Baronius, Annal., an. 610, c.
10,
and Acta SS. Holland., January, i.
p.
246. Hook gives a plausible
enough explanation of the tradition.
1
Chatham, Pitt, Fox, Sheridan, Grattan, Canning, Peelall the great
modern orators and statesmen, the poets, the admirals, the generals slain
on the battle-fieldthere repose by the side of Edward the Confessor,
and the kings and heroes of the middle ages. The words of Nelson at
the moment of beginning the battle of Aboukir,
"
Now for a peerage or
Westminster Abbey
!"
will be remembered by our readers. In our day
the custom has been introduced of burying the great military chiefs at St
Paul's. Nelson and Wellington both rest in the vaults of the church
which bears the name and occupies the site of the first foundation of
Augustin's companion.
2
It was in the fine chapter
-
house of Westminster Abbey that the
Commons sat. Although their violent debates were lamented as disturb-
ing the monastic worship, they remained there till the Information
;
when St Stephen's Chapel, on the site of which the present House of
Commons is placed, was allotted to them.
OF CANTERBURY. 413
always flourished, and still remains. Never has
a monument been more identified with the history
of a people. Each of its stones represents a page
of the country's annals !
Canterbury embodies the religious life of Eng-
land, Westminster has been the centre of her poli-
tical life and her real capital ; and England owes
Canterbury, as she owes Westminster, to the sons
of .St Benedict.
Meanwhile a shadow was about to fall on the Death of
Queen
dawn of the faith in England. The noble grand-
Bertha,
daughter of Clotilda, the gentle and pious Queen
Bertha, was dead. She preceded her husband in
her death, as in her faith, and was buried beside
the great Koman missionary who had given her the
joy of seeing her husband's kingdom, and her hus-
band himself, converted to Christianity.
When the first successor of Augustin celebrated
613.
the solemn consecration of the great monastic
church which was to be the burying-place, or, as
they said then, the bed of rest [thalamus) for
Christian kings and primates, the remains of the
queen, and of the first archbishop of Canterbury,
were transferred thither ; those of the queen were
laid in front of the altar sacred to St Martin, the
great wonder-worker of Gaul, and those of the pri-
mate before the altar of his father and friend, St
Gregory.
1
Three years later, Ethelbert, who had
1
Guillelm Thorne, Chron. S. August,
p.
1765; Thomas de Elm-
ham, Hist. Monast. 8. August,
p.
432, ed. Hardivicke
;
Stanley, Me-
morials
of
Canterbury,
p.
26.
414 ST AUGUSTIX
And of
married again, also died, and was buried by Ber-
KingEth-
, '
J
.
7
.
eibert.
tha's side in the clmrcli of St Augustin. He reigned
24th Feb.
_
0 8
616
-
fifty-six years, twenty of which lie bad been a Chris-
tian.
"
He was," says Bede,
"
the first English king
who ascended to heaven, and the Church numbered
him among her saints."
1
Laurence thus remained the sole survivor of all
who had taken part, twenty years before, in the
famous conference in the Isle of Thanet, at which
the Saxon king and Frankish queen met the
Roman missionaries. His companion, Peter, the
first abbot of the monastery of St Augustin, was
drowned on the French coast, some time before,
while fulfilling a mission on which King Ethelbert
had sent him. Laurence had thus to encounter all
alone the storm which burst forth immediately after
the death of Ethelbert. The conversion of that
monarch had not insured that of all his people ; and
His sue-
Eadbald, his son who succeeded to the throne, had
Eadbaid, not embraced Christianity along with his father,
a pagan,

The looseness of his morals had helped to keep him
in.sti'_
r
at<
j
s
theapos-
in idolatry. When he became king he wished to
tasy of Ins
J
subjects.
marry his father's widow, the second wife whom
Ethelbert had married after the death of Bertha.
This kind of incest, with which ft Paul reproached
the first Christians of Corinth,
2
was only too con-
sonant with the usages of several of the Teutonic
races;
3
but such a case had been anticipated, and
1
Act. 88. Bolland, vol. iii. February,
p.
470.
2
1 Corinth, v. 1.
3
Kkmble, Saxons in England, ii. 407.
OF CANTERBURY. 415
formally forbidden in Gregory's reply to Augustin,
when consulted as to the matrimonial relations of
the Saxons. This was not Eadbald's only crime.
He gave himself up to such transports of fury that
he was commonly regarded as beside himself, and
possessed with a demon. But his example sufficed
to draw into apostasy those who had embraced
Christian faith and chastity only from motives of
fear, or from a desire to stand well with King
Ethelbert.
The tempest which threatened to engulf the re-
cent Christianity of England, became more and
more formidable when the death of Sebert, nephew
of Ethelbert, and founder of Westminster, raised to
the sovereignty of the kingdom of Essex his three
sons, who, like the son of the king of Kent, had
remained pagans. They immediately resumed the Reaction
public practice of the idolatry which they had but for
ism among
a short time foregone during the life of their father,
Saxons,
and gave full liberty to all their subjects to worship
idols. At the same time they still went occasionally
Expulsion
to witness the ceremonies of the Christian worship :
Bishop of
x
London".
and one day, when the bishop Mellitus was admin-
istering, in their presence, the communion to the
faithful, they said to him, with the freedom of their
barbarian pride, "Why do you not offer us that
white bread which you gave to our father, and
which you continue to give to the people in your
church
?
"
*
If you will be washed," answered the
bishop,
"
in the fountain of salvation, as your father
416 ST AUGUSTIX
was, you may, like him, have your share of the holy
bread
;
otherwise, it is impossible."
"
We have no desire," replied the princes,
"
to
enter your fountainwe have no need of it ; but
we want to refresh ourselves with that bread:" and
as they insisted on it, the bishop repeated again
that it was needful that they should be cleansed
from all sin before being admitted to the com-
munion. Then they flew into a rage, and ordered
him to quit their kingdom with all that belonged
to him :
"
Since you will not gratify us in a matter
so simple, you shall stay no longer in our country."
1
The Bishop of London thus driven away, crossed
the Thames, and came into the kingdom of Kent, in
order to confer with the Archbishop of Canterbury
and the Bishop of Eochester as to the course he
should pursue. These were the only three bishops
of the Christian Church in England, and all three
lost courage in presence of the new peril which
threatened them. They decided that it was
better that they should all return to their own
country, there to serve God in freedom, than that
they should remain uselessly among barbarians
Archbishop
who had revolted from the faith. The two bishops
wishes
10
.
6
were the first to fly, and crossed over to France.
England. Laurence prepared to follow them, but in the night
1
"
Auxit procellam hujus pertuvbationis mors Sabercti. . . . Barbari
inflati stultitia dicebant : Quare non et nobis panern nitidum porrigis. . .
Si vultis ablui fonte illo salutari. . . . Nolumus fontem ilium intrare
... si non vis adsentire nobis in tarn facili causa quam petimus, non
poteris jam in nostra provincia demorari."

Bede, ii. 5.
-
OF CANTERBURY.
41*7
before his intended departure, wishing to pray and
to weep without restraint over that English Church
which he had helped to found a quarter of a cen-
tury before, and which he was now obliged to
abandon, he had his bed placed in the church of
the monastery where reposed Augustin, Ethelbert,
and Bertha. Scarcely had he fallen asleep when St
Peter appeared to him, as Jesus Christ had erewhile
appeared to St Peter himself when the prince of
the apostles, flying from Nero's persecution, met on
the Appian Way his divine Master coming towards
Eome, there to be, in his default, a second time
crucified.
1
The prince of the apostles overwhelmed
with reproaches, and even scourged till the blood
came, the bishop who was ready to abandon Christ's
flock to the wolves, instead of braving martyrdom
to save it.
On the morrow Laurence showed his bruised and
bleeding sides to the king, who, at the sight, asked
who had dared thus to maltreat such a man as he.
"
It was St Peter," said the bishop,
"
who inflicted
on me all these blows and sufferings for your sal-
vation."
2
Eadbald, moved and terrified, renounced
1
Every one has seen at Rome, on the Appian Way, the church called
Domine quo vadis, built on the spot where, according to tradition, St
Peter put that question to the Lord, who answered him, Vado Romam
iterum crucifigi. S. Ambe., Contra Auxentium.
2
"
Flagellis arctioribus afficiens. . . . An mei, inquit, oblitus es exem-
pli qui pro parvulis Christi . . . vincula, verbera, carceres, afflictiones,
ipsam postremo mortem, mortem autem crucis, ab infidelibus et inimicis
Christi ipse cum Christo coronandus pertuli. . . . Retecto vestimento
. . . quantis esset verberibus laceratus ostendit. Qui . . . inquirens
quis tanto viro ausus esset plagas infligere."

Bede, ii. 6.
VOL. III. 2 D
418 ST AUGUSTIN
After the idolatry, gave up his incestuous marriage, and pro-
vision of
st Peter,
mised to do his best for the protection of the Church.
he is
retained
He called the two bishops. Mellitus and Justus, back
by King
A
Eadbaid,
from France, and sent them back to their dioceses
who is
7
converted.
to re-establish the faith in all freedom. After his
conversion he continued to serve God with his
people
;
he even built a new church dedicated to
the Holy Virgin, in the monastery founded by St
Augustin, where he reckoned upon being buried
beside his father and mother.
But he had not the same authority over the other
Saxon realms with which Ethelbert had been invest-
ed in his capacity of Bretwalda, or military chief
of the Saxon federation. He could not succeed in
restoring Mellitus to his diocese. The princes of
Essex who had expelled him had all perished in a
war with the Saxons of the West; but their subjects
persevered in idolatry, and the people of London
offered the most determined resistance to the re-es-
tablishment of the Eoman bishop, declaring that
they greatly preferred their idolatrous priests.
1
Defection
The kingdom of Essex seemed thus altogether
of East
~
.
ATi
Angiia.
lost to the iaitn
;
and as to East Anglia, the conver-
sion of its king, Kedwald, had not been serious and
permanent. No sooner had he returned from the
visit to Ethelbert, during which he received baptism,
1
"
Nec, licet auctoribus perditis, excitatum ad scelera vulgus potuit
recorrigi. . . . Londonienses episcopum recipere nolucrunt, idololatris
magis pontificibus servire gaudentes. Non enim tanta erat ei, quanta
patri ipsius regni potestas, ut etiam nolentibus ac contradicentibus pa-
ganis antistitem sua? posset ecclesiae reddere."

Bede, ii.
6, 7.
OF CANTERBURY. 419
than he allowed himself to be brought back to the
worship of his fathers by the influence of his wife
and his principal councillors
;
but he made the same
concession to the new religion which had been
already accorded to it by a Eoman emperor
a
concession much more worthy of a Caesar of the
Eoman decadence than of the impetuous instincts
of
a barbarian king. He vouchsafed to assign to
the Son of the only true God a place by the side of
his Scandinavian deities, and established two altars
in the same templethe one for the sacrifice of
Jesus Christ, and the other for the victims offered
to the idols.
1
Of all the conquests made by the envoys of Gre-
gory, there remained now only a portion of the
country and of the people of Kent surrounding
the two great monastic sanctuaries of Canterbury,

the metropolitan church dedicated to Christ,

and the abbey of St Augustin, then bearing the
names of St Peter and St Paul. Eoman mission-
aries, one after another, succeeded to the govern-
ment of these two monasteries, which were now the
only centres in which the fire of Christian life still
burned in England. During more than a century
all the abbots of St Augustin s monastery were
chosen from among the Eoman monks, and probably
1
"Rediens domum, ab uxore et quibusdam perversis doetoribus seduc-
tus, in eodem fano et altare haberet ad sacrificium Christi et arulam ad
victimas demoniorum."

Bede, iii. 15. Bede adds that in his lifetime

there was a king of East Anglia who in his childhood had seen that
temple still standing.
420 ST AUGUSTIN
from those who came from Mount Ccelius to follow
or join him.
1
Feb.
In the archiepiscopal see, Laurence, who died
three years after his reconciliation to the new king,
624.
was succeeded by Mellitus, who thus finally re-
nounced all idea of again settling among the Saxons
Meiiitus, of the east. After Mellitus, who, though tortured
Hononus
by the gout, showed an indefatigable devotion to
compan-
. . .
ions and
his apostolic duties, Justus, the bishop of Eochester,
successors
x A
tinat Can-
oecame archbishop. Like Augustin, he received
terbury.
pallium, along with the privilege of ordaining
bishops at his pleasure, a privilege conferred upon
him by the Pope Boniface V., careful, as his prede-
cessor Boniface IV. had been, to maintain the mis-
sion which Gregory had bequeathed to the special
charge of the Pontiff. The Pope had received letters
from King Eadbald which filled him with comfort
and hope ; and in placing under the jurisdiction
of Archbishop Justus the English not only of Kent
but of all the neighbouring kingdoms, he exhorted
him to persevere with commendable patience in the
work of the redemption of the English people.
2
1
The succession of these abbots, as given by Thomas Elmham in his
chronicle of the Abbey of St Augustin, is as follows : John,
f
618
;
Eufini-
anus, + 626
;
Gratiosus,
f
638
;
this last, Romanics natione, as well as his
successor Petronius,
f
654
;
Nathaniel, "quondam cum Mellito a Justo
a Roma ad Angliam destinatus," + 667
;
after him the celebrated Adrian,
the African, whose successor Albin, elected in 708, was the first de gente
'nostra, says the historian, and was, moreover, the disciple of Adrian, a
great Latinist, Hellenist, and collaborateur of Bede.
2
"Hoc ilia repensatione vobis collatum est, qua injuncto ministerio
jugiter persistentes, laudabili patientia redemptionem gentis illius expect-
astis."

Bedr, ii. 8.
OF CANTERBURY. 421
Justus occupied the archbishop s throne for three
624-627.
years only, and was succeeded by Honorius, also a
disciple of St Gregory and St Augustin, and the
last of the companions of the great missionary who
was to fill his place in the primacy of the new
Christian kingdom.
In the midst of these mistakes, perils, and diffi-
The Nor-
thumbrian
culties, and while the third successor of Augustin
Saxons,
maintained, as best he could, the remains of the
Eoman mission in the still modest and often menaced
metropolis of Canterbury, the horizon suddenly
brightened toward the north of England. An
event occurred there which seemed to realise the
first designs of St Gregory, and to open new and
vast fields for the propagation of the gospel. It is
in this northern region that the principal interest
of the great drama which gave England to the
Church is henceforth to be concentrated.
CHAPTER IV.
FIRST MISSION IN NORTHUMBRIA

ITS SUCCESSES
AND ITS DISASTER BISHOP PAULINUS AND
KING EDWIN.
Extent and origin of the Anglo-Saxon settlements in Northumbria
;
thanks to their compatriot Bede, their history is better known than
that of the others. Ida and Ella, founders of the two kingdoms of
Dei'ra and Bernicia
;
Bamborough and the Fair Traitress.

"War of the
Northumbrians and Britons : Ethelfrid the Ravager, conqueror of the
Welsh and of the Scots under A'idan, the friend of St Columba.Ed-
win, representing the rival dynasty, a refugee in East Anglia
;
on the
point of being delivered over to his enemies, he is saved by the queen
;
vision and promise. He becomes king of Northumbria and Bretwal-
da; list of Bretwaldas. He marries the Christian Ethelburga, daugh-
ter of the king of Kent.Mission of Bishop Paulinus, who accom-
panies the princess to York. Influence of women in the conversion
of the Saxons. Fruitless preaching of Paulinus
;
letters of Boniface
V. to the king and queen. Edwin saved from the poignard of an as-
sassin
;
birth of his daughter
;
war against the West Saxons. Hesi-
tation of Edwin
;
last effort of Paulinus. Edwin promises to accept
the faith after consulting his parliament. Speeches of the high priest
and of the chief captain. Baptism of Edwin and of his nobility.

Bishopric and monastic cathedral of York. The king and the bishop
labour for the conversion of the Northumbrians. General baptism by
immersion. Paulinus to the south of the Humber.Foundations of
Southwell and Lincoln. Consecration of Honorius, fourth successor of
Augustin at Canterbury. Letter of Pope Honorius to the two metro-
politans and to King Edwin.Prosperous reign of Edwin.Conversion
of East Anglia
;
foundation of Edinburgh
;
conquest of Anglesea
;
public security ; the woman and the foster-child ; the copper cups
;
the tufa of the Bretwalcla. League of the Saxons and Britons of Mer-
ST AUGUSTIN. 423
cia against the Saxons of Nortlmmbria : Cadwallon and Pcnda. Ed-
win is killed. Flight of Paulinns and Ethclburga. Overthrow of
Christianity in Nortlmmbria and East Anglia. Check of the Roman
missionaries ; their virtues and their faults. There remain to them
only the metropolis and the abbey of St Augustin at Canterbury,
which continue to be the two citadels of Roman influence.
Of all tlie settlements made by the Teutonic con- origin and
r -r

i riAi i i
ex^ent of
querors of Britain, that oi the Angles to the north
the king-
of the river Hnmber, which seems to divide into two
Northum-
bria.
parts the island of Great Britain, and from which
is derived the name of Nortlmmbria, was, beyond
comparison, the most important. This kingdom
occupied the whole eastern coast from the mouth
of the Humber to the Firth of Forth, including
the existing counties of York, Durham, and Nor-
thumberland, with all the south-eastern portion of
modern Scotland. To the west it extended to the
borders of the British territories of Cambria and
Strathclyde, and even approached, on the frontiers
of Caledonia, that new kingdom of the Scots of
Ireland which the great missionary Columba had
just inaugurated.
Northumbria was not merely the largest king-
its history
dom of the Saxon Heptarchyit is also that whose known
history is the most animated, dramatic, and varied
Northum-
.
..
brian Bede.
the richest m interesting and original characters.
It is that, in short, where the incidents of the con-
version of the Anglo-Saxon conquerors, and of the
propagation of monastic institutions, appear to us
in fullest light. This is naturally explained by the
fact that it is the birthplace of the Venerable
424 ST AUGUSTIX
Bede. This great and honest historianthe Eng-
lish Gregory of Tours, and the father of British
historywas born and always lived in Northum-
berland. Hence in his interesting narratives a
natural prominence is given to the men and the
affairs of his native region, along with an exact
and detailed reproduction of the local traditions
and personal recollections which he treasured up
and repeated with such scrupulous care.
517. Bede informs us that about a century after the
first landing of the Saxons, under Hengist, in the
country of Kent, their neighbours, the Angles, cross-
ing the North Sea, founded on the opposite coast
of Britain two colonies, long distinct, sometimes
united, but finally combined together under the
name of Northumbria.
1
The wall anciently raised
by the Emperor Severus from the mouth of the
Solway to that of the Tyne to check the Caledonian
incursions, was their boundary. The oldest of the
two kingdoms was that of the Bernicians to the
Ida, found- north. Their chief, Idawho, like Hengist, claimed
kingdom
to be a descendant of Odinestablished his resi-
of Bernicia.
. .
clence in a fortress which he called Bamborough,
after his wife Bebba, with that conjugal reverence
so often illustrated even among the most savage
Germans. The British bards, in return, have named
this queen the Fair Traitress, because she was of
British origin, and fought in the foremost ranks on
1
United from 588 to 633
;
separated at the death of Edwin in 631 ; and
reunited anew under Oswald and Oswy.
OF CANTERBURY. 425
the field of battle against her countrymen.
1
The
imposing remains of this fortress, situated on a de-
tached rock on the coast, still surprise and arrest
the traveller. From this point the invasion of the
Angles spread over the fertile valleys of the Tweed
and Tyne.
The second colony, that of the Deirians, to the
south, was concentrated principally in the valley of
the Tees and in the extensive region which is now
known as Yorkshire. The first chief of the Deiri- Eiia,
ans of whom anything is known, was that Alia
ortheking-
J &
domof
Ella, whose name

pronounced by the young slaves

De
3
1
Q
a-
8Q
exposed for sale in the Forumsuggested to St
Gregory the hope of soon hearing the Hallelujah
echo through his kingdom.
1
This region, to the
north of the Humber, was precisely that which had
suffered most from the Caledonian incursions; and,
according to some authors, the Saxons of Hengist,
called in the character of allies by the Britons to
their aid, were already established before the arrival
of the Deirian colony. But Ida and his Angles
would not in any character hold tenure under
their Germanic compatriots from the south of the
island, and instead of fighting against the Picts or
the Scots they leagued themselves with them to
crush the ill-starred Britons.
Ida, who had twelve sons, and who reigned 547-559.
1
A. de la Boederie, Luttes des Bretons Insulaircs contre Us Anglo-
Saxons,
p.
155.
2
See ante,
p.
330.
426 ST AUGUSTIN
twelve years, used fire and sword against the
natives with such animosity that the British bards
surnamed him the Man
of
Fire, or the Great
Burner. They withstood him to the last extrem-
ity, and he fell in battle against them. But his
588. grandson, Ethelfrid, took a terrible revenge. He
was Ellas son-in-law; and at the death of the lat-
ter, and to the prejudice of the rights of the chiefs
son, Ethelfrid reunited the two kingdoms of Deira
and Bernicia, and mustering to his own standard
all the Anglo-Saxons of Northumbria, he subdued
or massacred a greater multitude of the Britons
Ethelfrid
than any other of the invading chiefs.
1
He was,
ager, says Bede, the ravaging wolf of Holy Writ : in the
morning he devoured his prey, and in the evening
he divided his spoil. The vanquished, who had
called his grandfather the Burner, had only too
good cause to call Ethelfrid the Kavager.
Conqueror He had not, however, like his predecessors, the
scots and
Caledonians for auxiliaries. They had become
Britons.
,
J
The great-
Christians, thanks to the apostolic zeal of Columba
ness of
x
Northum-
anc[ fog Irisn missionaries : and far from second-
ona due to
hi
588-6i6
m
o
th pagan invaders, the Dalriadian Scots, re-
cently established in Great Britain,
1
came to the
succour of the Britons, who were their fellow-Chris-
tians. Their king, Aidanthe same who had been
.
1
"
Nemo in tribunis, nemo in regibus plures eorum terras, extermina-
te vel subjugatis indigenis, aut tributaries genti Anglorum, aut habita-
biles fecit."

Bedf, i. 34.
2
"Rex Scotorum qui Britanniam inhabitant."

Ibid. See ante,

p.
103.
OF CANTERBURY. 427
consecrated by Columba, the monastic apostle of
Caledoniamarched against Ethelfrid at the head
of a numerous army. But his friend, the holy
monk of Iona, was no longer there, as of old,
1
to
protect him with his prayers, and aid him with his
ardent sympathies. The Scots and the Saxons met 603.
at Degstane, near the existing frontier of England
and Scotland. After a desperate struggle the Scots
army was cut to pieces ; and this defeat put an end
for ever to any desire on the part of the northern
Celts to undertake the defence of their brethren of
the south against the Teutonic conquerors.
Having conquered the Scots, the formidable hea- 607 or 613.
then threw himself on the Britons of Wales ; and
it was then that he fulfilled the prophecy of Au-
gustin by exterminating the twelve hundred monks
of Bangor. After this he completed the conquest
of Northumbria, and fell, ten years later, in an
encounter with his countrymen, the East Angles,
under the command of that King Eedwald whom
we have seen professing Christianity for a time to
please King Ethelbert.
2
East Anglia, as the name itself indicates, was
occupied by a colony of the same race as the Angles
of Northumbria. On the death of the first Chris-
616.
tian king of Kent, Eedwald inherited the title of
Bretwalda, which gave him a certain military su-
premacy over the whole Anglo-Saxon federation.
He had given shelter to the son of Ella, who, while
1
See ante,
p.
183.
2
See ante,
p.
409.
428
ST AUGUSTIN
still a child, had been dethroned by his brother-in-
Edw-in,
law, the terrible Ethelfrid. This young prince,
brother-iii-
m
or
Jaw
of
named Edwin, grew up at Eedwald's court, and
Ethelfrid,

x
but repre-
nad even \)qqh married to the daughter of his pro-
sentmg the
*
n^ty
dy
"
Sector. Ethelfrid, seeing in him a rival and a suc-
Itfuge
cessor, employed by turns threats and bribes to
East
the
induce Eedwald to surrender the royal exile. The
Angles.
Anglian prince was on the point of yielding,
when one of the friends of Edwin came by night to
apprise him of his danger, and offered to conduct
him to a place of refuge, where neither Eedwald nor
Ethelfrid should be able to discover him. "No,"
replied the young and generous exile,
"
I thank you
for your goodwill, but I shall do nothing. Why
should I begin again to wander a vagabond through
every part of the island, as I have too much done ?
If I must die, let it be rather by the hand of this
great king than by that of a meaner man/' Not-
withstanding, moved and agitated by the news, he
went out, and seated himself on a rock before the
palace, where he remained for a long time alone
and unnoticed, a prey to agonising uncertainty.
1
vision and
All at once he beheld before him, in the midst of
Edwin, the darkness, a man whose countenance and dress
were unknown to him, who asked him what he did
there alone in the night, and added,
"
What wilt
1
"
Si ergo vis, liac ipse hora te educam. . . . Gratias quidem ago
benevolentiae tute. . . . Quin potius, si moriturus sum, ille me magis
quam ignobilior quisquam morti tradat. . . . Solus ipse mcestus in la-
pide pervigil . . . cum diu tacitus mentis angoribus et cseco carperetur
igni."

Bede, ii. 12.

OF CANTERBURY. 429
thou promise to him who shall ricl thee of thy grief,
by dissuading Kedwald from delivering thee up to
thy enemies, or doing thee any harm ?
" "
All that
may ever be in my power/' answered Edwin. "And
if/' continued the unknown,
"
he promised to make
thee king, and a king more powerful than all your
ancestors, and all the other kings in England
?
"
Edwin promised anew that his gratitude would be
commensurate with such a service.
"
Then," said
the stranger,
"
if he who shall have exactly fore-
told to you such great fortunes, offers you counsels
more useful for your welfare and your life than
any of your fathers or kinsmen have ever re-
ceived, do you consent to follow them
?
" The exile
swore that he would implicitly obey him by whom
he should be rescued from such great peril and
made king.
Thereupon the unknown placed his right hand
upon his head, saying,
"
When a like sign shall be
shown thee, then recall this hourthy words and
thy promise." With this he disappeared so sud-
denly, that Edwin believed he had spoken not with
a man but with a spirit.
1
A moment after his
friend came running to announce that he had no
longer anything to fear, and that King Kedwald,
1
"
Quid mercis dare velis ei qui. . . . Quid si etiam regem te futu-
rum . . . ita ut omnes qui ante te reges in gente Anglomm fuerant po-
testate transcendas. . . . Turn ille tertio : Si autem qui tibi tanta talia-
que dona veraciter prsedixerit. . . . Cum hoc ergo tibi signum advenerit,
memento hujus temporis, ac loquelse nostra?, et ea quae nunc promittis
adimplere ne differas. His dictis, ut ferunt, repente disparuit."

Bede.
430 ST AUGUSTIN
having confided his project to the queen, had been
dissuaded by her from his breach of faith.
This princess, whose name has been unfortunately
forgotten, had, like most of the Anglo-Saxon women,
an all-powerful influence in the heart of her hus-
band. More happily inspired than when she had
induced him to renounce the baptism which he had
received when with Ethelbert,
1
she showed him
how unworthy it would be to sell for gold his soul,
and what is more, his honour, which she esteemed
the most precious of all jewels.
2
Edwin he-
Under the generous influence of the queen, Eed-
comes king

Nortimm
wa
^
nt on
b
r
refusecl to give up the exiled prince,
brans.
having sent back the ambassadors intrusted
with the costly presents of Ethelfrid, he declared
Avar against him. The result was that, Ethelfrid
616.
having been defeated and slain, Edwin was estab-
lished as king in Northumbria by his protector Eed-
wald, who was now the chief of the Anglo-Saxon
federation. The sons of Ethelfrid, although, on
the mother's side, nephews of the new king, were
obliged to fly, like Edwin himself in his youth.
They went for refuge to the Dalriadian Scots,
whose apostle Columba had been. We shall pre-
sently see what resulted from this exile, to Nor-
thumbria and the whole of England.
1
See ante,
p.
419.
2
"
Postquam cogitationem suam rcgin?e in secreto revelavit, revocavit
eum ille ah intentione . . . ammonens quia nulla ratione conveniat . . .
ininio fklem suam, qua; omnihus ornamentis pretiosior est amore pecuniae
pcrdere."

Bede, loc. cit.

OF CANTERBURY. 431
Like his brother-in-law Ethelfrid, Edwin reigned
over the two united kingdoms of Deira and Ber-
nicia
;
and, like him, he waged a vigorous war
against the Britons of Wales. Having thus become
62i-
the dreaded chief of the Angles of the North, he
found himself esteemed and sought after by the
East Angles, who on the death of their king, Eed-
wald, offered him the sovereignty. But Edwin
preferred to repay the protection which he had
received from Kedwald and his wife by leaving
the kingdom of East Anglia to their son. He re- Edwin be-
served, however, the military supremacy which Bretwaida.
Bedwald had exercised, as well as the title of
Bretwaida, which had passed from the king of
Kent to the king of East Anglia, but which, after
being held by Edwin, was to remain always at-
tached to the Northumbrian monarchy.
We have no precise information regarding the
origin or the nature of the authority with which
the Bretwaida was invested. It is apparent only
that this authority, at first of a temporary and
exclusively military character, extended, after the
conversion of the different kingdoms of the Heptar-
chy, to ecclesiastical affairs. It is evident also that
it added to the royal dignity the prestige of a real
supremacy, all the more sought after that it was
probably conferred, not only by the vote of the other
kings, but of all the chiefs of the Saxon nobility.
1
Thus then was accomplished the mysterious pre-
1
The ealdorrnenthose whom Bede calls primates tribuni. Bede gives
432 ST AUGUSTIN
diction of Edwin's nocturnal visitor ; he was now
a king, and more powerful than any of the English
kings before him. For the supremacy of the Bret-
walda, added to the vast extent of country occu-
pied by the Angles of the North and East, secured
to the king of Northumbria a preponderance alto-
gether different from that of the petty kings of the
South who had borne the title before him. Hav-
ing reached this unhoped-for elevation, and hav-
ing lost his first wife, a daughter of the king of
He marries East Anglia, he sought a second bride, and asked
terofthe
in marriage the sister of the kino; of Kent, the
first Chris-


tian king of
daughter of Ethelbert and Bertha, a descendant of
Kent.
fe
m m
'
Hengist and Odin through her father, and of St
Clotilda through her mother. She was called
Ethelburga that is, noble protectress; for this
word Ethel, which appears so often in Anglo-Saxon
names, is simply, as has been already remarked,
the German edel, noble. Her brother Eadbakl,
the following as the succession of chiefs of the Anglo-Saxon federation,
up to the time when the title of Bretwalda became extinct
:

About 560,
Ella, king of Sussex.
,,
577,
Ceawlin, king of Wessex.
,,
596,
Ethelbert, king of Kent.
616,
Kedwald, king of East Anglia.
,,
624,
Edwin,
}
,, 635,
Oswald, \ kings of Northumbria.

645,
Oswy,
)
Lappenberg believes, with every appearance of reason, that after tiie
death of Oswy, in 670, the authority of the Bretwalda passed to Wulfhere,
king of Mercia, whose supremacy over the king of Essex is proved by
Bede himself, iii. 30. Mackintosh interprets the term Bret-walda by
that of dompteur or arbiter {wieldcr) of the Britons
;
but he gives no
satisfactory reason for that etymology.
OF CANTERBURY. 433
brought back by Archbishop Laurence to the
Christian faith, at first refused the demand of the
king of Northumbria. He answered that it was
impossible for him to betroth a Christian virgin to
a pagan, lest the faith and the sacraments of the
true God should be profaned by making her live
with a king who was a stranger to His worship.
Far from being offended at this refusal, Edwin
promised that, if the princess was granted to him,
he would do nothing against the faith that she
professed
;
but, on the contrary, she might freely
observe all the rites of her religion, along with all
who might accompany her to his kingdommen
or women, priests or laymen. He added that he
would not himself refuse to embrace his wife's
religion, if after having had it examined by the
sages of his council he found it to be more holy
and more worthy of God than his own.
1
It was on these conditions that her mother
Bertha had left her country and her Merovingian
family to cross the sea and wed the king of Kent.
The conversion of that kingdom had been the
reward of her sacrifice. Ethelburga, destined, like
her mother, and still more than she, to be the
means of introducing a whole people to the know-
ledge of Christianity, followed the maternal ex-
ample. She furnishes us with a new proof of the
1
"
Nec abnegavit se etiam eamdem subiturum esse religionem si tamen
examinata a prudentibus sanctior et Deo dignior posset inveniri."

Bede,
ii. 9.
VOL. III. 2 E
434 ST AUGUSTIN
lofty part assigned to women in the history of the
Germanic races, and of the noble and touching
influence attributed to them. In England as
in France, and everywhere, it is ever through
the fervour and devotion of Christian women
that the victories of the Church are attempted
or achieved.
But the royal virgin was intrusted to the North-
umbrians, only under the guardianship of a bishop
charged to preserve her from all pagan pollution,
by his exhortations, and also by the daily celebra-
tion of the heavenly mysteries. The king, accord-
ing to Bede, had thus to espouse the bishop at the
same time as the princess.
1
Bishop
This bishop,
bv
name Paulinus, was one of those
Paulinus.
.
. .
still surviving Boman monks who had been sent
by St Gregory to the aid of Augustin. He had
been twenty-five years a missionary in the south
2ist July
of Great Britain, before he was consecrated bishop
625.
.
1
of Northumbria by the third successor of Augus-
tin at Canterbury. Having arrived with Ethel-
burga in Edwin's kingdom, and having married
them, he longed to see the whole of the unknown
nation amongst whom he had. come to pitch his
tent, espoused to Christ. Unlike Augustin, after his
landing on the shores of Kent, it is expressly stated
that Paulinus was disposed to act upon the North-
umbrian people before attempting the conversion
1
"
Ordinatus cpiscopus ... sic cum praefata virgiue ad regem quasi
comes copulse carnalis advenit."

Bede, ii. 9.
OF CANTERBURY.
435
of the king.
1
He laboured with all his might to
add some Northumbrian converts to the small com-
pany of the faithful that had accompanied the queen.
But his efforts were for a long time fruitless ; he
was permitted to preach, but no one was converted.
In the mean time the successors of St Gregory interven-
tion of
watched over his work with that wonderful and
Pope Boni-
face V.
unwearying perseverance which is characteristic
of
with the
J

L
king of
the Holy See. Boniface V., at the suggestion, no
lmm
"
doubt, of Paulinus, addressed two letters to the
king and queen of Northumbria, which recall those 22d Oct.
of Gregory to the king and queen of Kent. He
exhorted the glorious king of the English, as he
calls him, to follow the example of so many other
emperors and kings, and especially of his brother-
in-law Eadbald, in submitting himself to the true
God, and not to let himself be separated, in the
future, from that dear half of himself, who had
already received in baptism the pledge of eternal
bliss.
2
He conjured the queen to neglect no effort
to soften and inflame the hard and cold heart of
her husband, to make him understand the beauty
of the mysteries in which she believed, and the
rich reward which she had found in her own
regeneration, to the end that they twain whom
1
'
1
Toto animo intendens ut gentem quam adibat, ad cognitionem
veritatis advocans, uni viro sponso virginem castam exhiberet Christo.
. . . Laboravit multura ut . . . aliquos, si forte posset, de paganis ad
fidei gratiam prredicando converteret." Bede, ii. 9.
2
"
Gloriosam conjugem vestram, quae vestri corporis pars esse dignos-
citur, peternitatis prcemio per sancti baptismatis regenerationem illumi-
natam."

Ibid.
436 ST AUGUSTIN
human love had made one flesh here below, might
dwell together in another life, united in an indis-
soluble union.
1
To his letters he added some mo-
dest presents, which testified assuredly either his
poverty or the simplicity of the times : for the
king, a linen shirt embroidered with gold and a
woollen cloak from the east ; for the queen, a
silver mirror and an ivory comb ; for both, the
blessing of their protector St Peter.
But neither the letters of the pope, nor the ser-
mons of the bishop, nor the importunities of the
queen, prevailed to triumph over the doubts of
Edwin. A providential event, however, occurred
Edwin
to shake, without absolutely convincing him. On
th^dagger
1
the Easter-day after his marriage an assassin, sent
sassm.'
by the king of the West Saxons, made his way to
20th April
.
J
.

. .
626.
the king, and, under the pretext of communicating
a message from his master, tried to stab him with
a double-edged poisoned dagger, which he held
hidden under his dress. Prompted by that heroic
devotion for their princes, which among all the
Germanic barbarians coexisted with continual re-
volts against them, a lord named Lilla, having
no shield at hand, threw himself between his
king and the assassin, who struck with such force
1
"
Insiste ergo, gloriosa filia, et summis conatibus duritiam cordis
.... insinuatione mollire dematura. ... In nndens sensibus ejus
.... quantum sit adniirabile quod renata premium consequi meruisti.
Frigiditatem cordis . . . succende. . . . Ut quos copulatio carnalis
affectus unum quodam modo corpus exhibuisse monstratur, lios quoque
unites lidei etiam post hujus vitee transitum in perpetua societate con-
servet."

Bede, lot. cit.

OF CANTERBURY. 437
that his weapon reached Edwin even through the
body of his faithful friend.
1
The same night, the
night of the greatest of Christian festivals, the
queen was delivered of a daughter. While Edwin
was rendering thanks to his gods for the birth of
his first-born, the Bishop Paulinus began, on his
part, to thank the Lord Christ, assuring the king
that it was He who by His prayers to the true God
had obtained that the queen should bear her first
child without mishap, and almost without pain.
The king, less moved by the mortal danger that he
had just escaped, than by the joy of being a father
without peril or hurt to his beloved Ethelburga,
was charmed by the words of Paulinus, and pro-
mised to renounce his idols for the service of Christ,
if Christ granted him life and victory in the war
which he was about to wage against the king who
had tried to procure his assassination. As a pledge
Birth and
of his good faith, he gave the new-born child to the the
S-
0
bishop, that he might consecrate her to Christ.
Edwin.
This first child of the king, the first native Chris-
tian of the Northumbrian nation,
2
was baptised on
Whitsunday (Pentecost), along with eleven persons
1
"
Missus a rege . . . nomine Cuichelmo . . . qui habebat sicam
bicipitem toxicatam. . . . Minister regi amicissimus . . . non habens
scutum . . . mox interposuit corpus suum ante ictum pungentis, sed
tanta vi hostis ferrum infixit, ut per corpus militis occisi etiam regem
vulneraret."

Bede, loc. cit.

2
"
Ut regina sospes absque dolore gravi sobolem procrearet. . . .
Prima de gente Nordanhymbrorum."

Bede, loc. cit. She married King

Oswy, one of her father's successors. We shall see her take a part in the
struggle between the monastic and the Celtic influence in Northumbria.
438 ST AUGUSTIN
of the royal household. She was named Eanfleda,
and was destined, like most of the Anglo-Saxon
princesses, to exercise an influence over the destiny
of her country.
Edwin came back victorious from his struggle with
the guilty king. On his return to Northumbria,
though since giving his promise he had ceased to
worship idols, he would not at once, and without
further reflection, receive the sacraments of the
Christian faith. But he made Paulinus give him
more fully, what Bede calls, the reasons of his be-
lief. He frequently conferred with the wisest and
best instructed of his nobles upon the part Avhich
they would counsel him to take. Finally, being
by nature a man sagacious and reflective, he passed
long hours in solitudehis lips indeed closed, but
discussing many things in the depths of his heart,
and examining without intermission which religion
he ought to prefer.
1
The history of the Church, if I mistake not, offers
no other example of an equally long and conscien-
tious hesitation on the part of a pagan king. They
all appear equally prompt alike for persecution or
for conversion. Edwin, as the testimony of an in-
contestable authority reveals him to us, experienced
1
"
Non statim et inconsulte sacramenta fidei percipere voluit. . . .
Verum primo diligentius . . . rationem fidei ediscere et cum suis pri-
matibus quos sapientiores noverat, curavit conferre, quod de his agendum
arbitrarentur. Sed et ipse cum esset vir natura sagacissimus, sacpe diu
solus residens, ore quidem tacito, sed in intimis cordis multa secum col-
loquens, quod sibi esset faciendum, qiue religio servanda tractabat."

Bede, loc. tit.

OF CANTERBURY.
439
all the humble efforts, the delicate scruples, of the
modern conscience. A true priest has said with
justice: "This intellectual travail of a barbarian
moves and touches us. We follow with sympathy
the searcher in his hesitations ; we suffer in his
perplexities ; we feel that this soul is a sincere
one, and we love it."
1
Meanwhile Paulinus saw time passing away
without the word of God which he preached be-
ing listened to, and without Edwin being able to
bow the pride of his intelligence before the divine
humility of the cross. Being informed of the pro-
phecy and the promise which had put an end to
the exile of the king, he believed that the moment
for recalling them to him had come.
2
One day
when Edwin was seated by himself, meditating in
the secret of his own heart upon the religion which
he ought to follow, the bishop entered suddenly
and placed his right hand upon his head, as the
unknown had done in the vision, asking him if he
recognised that sign.
3
The king, trembling, would
1
Gorini, Defense de VEglise, vol. ii.
p.
87 . Xothing iu this excellent
work can surpass the author's refutation, step by step, of M. Augustin
Thierry" s narrative of the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons. Compare
Faber, Life of
St Edwin, 1844, in the series of Lives
of
the English Saints.
2
According to M. Thierry,
'
' this secret had probably escaped Edwin
among the confidences of the nuptial couch." Bede says exactly the
contrary, though without affirming anything.
'
' Tandem ut verisimile
videtur didicit (Paulinus) in spiritu, quod vel quale esset oraculum regi
quondam ccelitus ostensum."

Bede, ii. 12.

3
"Cum videret difficulter posse sublimitatem animi regalis ad humili-
tatem . . . vivificee crucis inclinari. . . . Cum horis competentibus soli-
tarius sederet, quid agendum sibi esset, quse religio sequenda sedulus
440 ST AUGUSTIN
Last effort have thrown himself at the feet of Paulinus, but
of Paul-
inus.
he raised him up, and said gently,
"
You are now
delivered by God's goodness from the enemies that
you feared. He has given you the kingdom which
you desired. Remember to accomplish your third
promise, which binds you to receive the faith and
to keep its commandments. It is thus only that
after being enriched with the divine favour here,
you will be able to enter with God into the fellow-
ship of the eternal kingdom."
The king
"
Yes," answered Edwin at length,
"
I feel it ; I
conversion
ou<dit to be, and I will be, a Christian." But, always
after hav-

ingcon-
true to his characteristic moderation, he stipulated
suited Par-
1
liament.
or
jy
for himself. He said that he would confer
with his great nobles, his friends, and his council-
lors, in order that, if they decided to believe as he
did, they should be all together consecrated to
Christ in the fountain of life.
Discussion
Paulinus having expressed his approval of this
in the as-
.
sembiy.
proposal, the Northumbrian parliament, or, as it was
then called, the council of sages (ivite?ia-gemot), was
assembled near to a sanctuary of the national wor-
ship, already celebrated in the time of the Romans
and Britons, at Godmundham, hard by the gates of
York. Each member of this great national council
was, in his turn, asked his opinion of the new doc-
trine and worship.
1
The first who answered was
sccum ipse scrutari consuesset, ingrediens ad cum quadam die vir Dei."

Bede, ii. 12.

1
"
Quibus auditis et rex suscipere sc (idem et velle et debere responde-
bat. Verum adhuc cum amicis prmcipibus, et consiliariis suis sese de
OF CANTERBURY. 441
the high priest of the idols, by name Coin, a singu-
lar and somewhat cynical personage.
"
My opinion,"
said he,
"
is most certainly that the religion which
we have hitherto followed is worth nothing ; and
this is my reason. Not one of your subjects has
served our gods with more zeal than I have, and
notwithstanding, there are many of your people
who have received from you far greater gifts and
dignities. But if our gods were not good for no-
thing, they would have done something for me who
have served them so well. If then, after ripe
examination, you have found this new religion
which is preached to us more efficacious, let us has-
ten to adopt it."
1
One of the great chiefs held different language,
in which are revealed to us that religious elevation
and poetic melancholy wherewith the minds of these
Germanic heathens were often imbued. "You re-
member, perhaps," said he to the king,
"
what some-
times happens in the winter evenings whilst you
are at supper with your ealdormen and thanes;
2
while the good fire burns within, and it rains and
snows, and the wind howls without, a sparrow enters
at the one door and flies out quickly at the other.
hoc collaturum esse dicebat. . . . Habito enim cum sapientibus consilio,
sciscitabatur singillatim ab omnibus, qualis sibi doctrina eatenus inaudita
. . . videretur. . . . His similia et cseteri majores natu ac regis consili-
arii prosequebantur.
"

Bede, ii. 13.

1
"
Profiteov quia nihil omnino virtutis, nihil utilitatis religio ilia quam
hucusque tenuimus. ... Si autem Dii aliquid valerent."

Ibid.
2
"
Cum ducibus ac ministris tuis." "Mit thynem Ealdormannum and
Thegnum" is King Alfred's Anglo-Saxon translation of the words of Bede.
442 ST AUGUSTIX
During that rapid passage it is sheltered from the
rain and cold ; but after that brief and pleasant
moment it disappears, and from winter returns to
winter again. Such seems to me to be the life of
man, and his career but a brief moment between
that which goes before and that which follows after,
and of which we know nothing. If, then, the new
doctrine can teach us something certain, it deserves
to be followed/'
1
After much discourse of the same tendency, for
the assembly seems to have been unanimous, the
high priest Coin spoke again with a loftier inspira-
tion than that of his first words. He expressed the
desire to hear Paulinus speak of the God whose
envoy he professed to be. The bishop, with permis-
sion of the king, addressed the assembly. When he
had finished, the high priest cried,
"
For a long time
I have understood the nothingness of all that we
worshipped, for the more I endeavoured to search
for truth in it the less I found it ; but now I declaie
without reserve that in this preaching I see the
shining of the truth, which gives life and salvation
and eternal blessedness. I vote, then, that we give
up at once to fire and to the curse the altars which
we have so uselessly consecrated."
2
The king im-
1
"Alius optimatura regis subdidit : Talis mihi videtur, rex, vita homi-
num . . . quale cum te resideute ad ccenam acceuso foco in media et
calido effecto coenaculo . . . adveniens unus passerum domum citissime
pervolaverit . . . mox de lueme in hiemem regrediens.
"

Bede, ii. 13.

2
"
Unde suggero, o rex, ut templa ct altaria qure sine fructu utilitatis
sacravimus ocius anathemati et igni contradamus.
"

Bede, ii. 3.
OF CANTERBURY. 443
mediately made a public declaration that lie adhered
to the gospel preached by Paulinusthat he re-
nounced idolatry and adopted the faith of Christ.
"But who/' asked the king, "will be the first to
overthrow the altars of the ancient gods, and to pro-
fane their sacred precincts V
3
"
I/' replied the high
priest
;
whereupon he prayed the king to give him
arms and a stallion, that he might the more thor-
oughly violate the rule of his order, which forbade
him to carry arms and to mount ought but a mare.
Mounted on the king's steed, girt with a sword, and
lance in hand, he galloped towards the idols, and
in the sight of all the people, who believed him to
be beside himself, he dashed his lance into the in-
terior of their temple. The profaning steel buried
itself in the wall ; to the surprise of the spectators,
the gods were silent, and the sacrilege remained un-
punished. Then the people, at the command of the
high priest, proceeded to overthrow and burn the
temple.
1
These things occurred in the eleventh year of Baptism
Edwin's reign. The whole Northumbrian nobilitv
Edwin, and
of the no-
ancl a large part of the people followed the example
bmty.
of the king, who was baptised with much solem-
nity on Easter-day
(627)
by Paulinus at York, in a 12th April
627.
wooden church, built in haste while the catechu-
mens were prepared for baptism.
2
Immediately
1
"
Ille respondit : Ego. . . . Rogavit sibi regem arma dare et equum
emissarium quern ascendens . . . pergebat ad idola."

Bede, ii. 3. Com-

pare the Saxon version quoted by Lingard, i. 30.
2
"
Accepit rex cum cunctis gentis sua? nobilibus ac plebe perplurima
444 ST AUGUSTIX
afterwards he built around this improvised sanc-
tuary a large church in stone, which he had not
time to finish, but which has since become the
splendid Minster of York, and the metropolitan
church of the north of England. The town of
York had been already celebrated in the times of
the Eomans. The Emperor Severus and the father
of Constantine had died there. The Northumbri-
ans had made it their capital, and Edwin there
placed the seat of the episcopate filled by his
teacher Paulinus. Thus was realised the grand
design of Gregory, who, thirty years before, at the
commencement of the English mission, had in-
structed Augustin to send a bishop to York, and
to invest him with the jurisdiction of metropolitan
over the twelve suffragan bishoprics which in ima-
gination he already saw founded in the north of
the country conquered by the Anglo-Saxons.
1
627-633.
The king and the bishop laboured together for
six years for the conversion of the Northumbrian
people, and even of the English population of the
neighbouring regions. The chiefs of the nobility
and the principal servants of the king were the first
to receive baptism, together with the sons of Ed-
win's first marriage. The example of a king was,
fidem et lavacrum. . . . Ipse doctori et antistiti suo Paulino sedem epis-
copates donavit. . . . Baptizatus est ibi sed et alii nobiles et regii viri
non pauci."

Bede, ii. 14.

1
"
Qui true subjaceant ditioni . . . ita duntaxat ut si eadem civitas
cum finitiinis locis veibuni Dei receperit, ipse quoquc XII episcopos or-
dinet, et nietropolitaiii honore perfruatur.
"

Bede, i. 29.
OF CANTERBURY. 445
however, far from being enough, among the Anglo-
Saxons, to determine the conversion of a whole
people ; and the first Christian king and the first
bishop of Northumbria did not, any more than Ethel-
bert and Augustin, think of employing undue con-
straint. Doubtless it required more than one effort
on their part to overcome the roughness, the ignor-
ance, the indifference of the heathen Saxons. But
The king
and bishop
thev had, at the same time, much encouragement,
labur to-
J
9
'
'gether for
for the fervour of the people and their anxiety for
the
?
on
-
M
x J
version of
baptism were often wonderful. Paulinus having
J^JJ^"
gone with the king and queen, who several times
accompanied him on his missions, to a royal villa
far to the north, they remained there, all three, for
thirty-six days together, and during the whole of
that time the bishop did nothing else from morning
till night than catechise the crowds that gathered
from all the villages around, and afterwards baptise Baptism
them in the river which flowed close by. At the
by immer-
sion.
opposite extremity of the country, to the south, the
name of Jordan is still given to a portion of the
course of the river Derwent, near the old Koman
ford of Malton, in memory of the numerous
subjects
of Edwin that were there baptised by the Boman
missionary.
1
Everywhere he baptised in the rivers
or streams, for there was no time to build churches.
2
However, he built, near Edwin's principal
palace, a
1
The Times of 17th March 1865.
2
The Glen in Northumberland, the Swale, and especially the Der-
went, in Yorkshire, are still mentioned among the rivers in which the
bishop baptised thousands of converts by immersion.
446 ST AUGUSTIN
stone church, whose calcined ruins were still visible
after the Reformation, as well as a large cross, with
this inscription : Paulin us hie prcedicavit et cele-
bravit?
Passing; the frontiers of the Northumbrian kino-
dom, Paulinus continued his evangelistic course
among the Angles settled to the south of the
Humber, in the maritime province of Lindsay.
There also he baptised many people in the Trent
;
and long afterwards, old men, who had in their
childhood received baptism at his hands, recalled
with reverent tenderness the venerable and awe-
inspiring stranger, whose lofty and stooping form,
black hair, aquiline nose, and emaciated but im-
posing features, impressed themselves on every be-
holder, and proclaimed his southern origin.
2
The
beautiful monastic church of Southwell consecrates
the memory of the scene of one of those multitud-
He com- inous baptisms
;
and it is to the mission of Bishop
inences the
cathedral
Paulinus on this side the Humber that we trace the
of Lincoln.
foundation of that magnificent Cathedral of Lin-
coln, which rivals our noble Cathedral of Laon in
its position, and even surpasses it in grandeur, and
perhaps in beauty.
3
1
At Dewsbury, on the banks of the Calder. Alford, Annates Anglo-
Saxonice, ap. Bolland., vol. vi. Oct.,
p.
118.
2
"
Quenidam seniorem . . . baptizatum a Paulino . . . praesente rege
Adwino. . . . Quoniam effigiem ejnsdem Paulini referre esset solitus. . . .
Vir longre staturre, paululum incurvus, nigro capillo, facie macilenta, naso
adnnco perenni, venerabilis siinul et terribilis aspeetu."

Bede, ii. 16.

3
All the most beautiful religious edifices of EnglandYork, Lincoln,
and Southwelltrace their origin to the episcopate of Paulinus.

Fabet:,
op. cit.
OF CANTERBURY. 447
It was in the stone church (Becle always notes And there
consecrates
this detail most carefully) built by Paulmus at
the fifth
J
/
J
Archbishop
Lincoln, after the conversion of the chief Saxon of
of Canter-
7
bury.
that town, with all his house, that the metropolitan
6
"
28-
bishop of York had to proceed to the consecration
of the fourth successor of Augustin in the metro-
politan see of Canterbury. Honorius was, like
Paulinus, a monk of Mount Ccelius at Kome, and
one of the first companions of St Augustin in his
mission to England. He was a disciple of St
Gregory, and had learned from the great pontiff
the art of music, and it was he who led the choir
of monks on the occasion of the first entrance of
the missionaries, thirty years before, at Canterbury.
1
The Pope then reigning was also named Honorius,
625-640.
first of that name. He sent the pallium to each
of the two metropolitans, and ordained that when
God should take to himself one of the two, the
other should appoint a successor, in order to avoid
the delay of a reference to Rome, so difficult by
reason of the great distance to be travelled by sea
and land. In the eloquent letter which accom-
panied the pallium, he reminds the new archbishop
that the great Pope Gregory had been his master,
and should ever be his model, and that the whole
work of the archbishops, his predecessors, had been
but the fruit of the zeal of that incomparable
pontiff.
2
1
Hook, Lives
of
the Archbishops,
pp.
53, 111.
2
"
Dilectissimo fratri Honorio Honorius. . . . Exoramus ut vestram
dilectionem in prsedicatione Evangelii laborantem et fructificantem sec-
448 ST AUGUSTIX
The Pope wrote also to King Edwin to congrat-
ulate him on his conversion and on the ardour and
sincerity of his faith, and to exhort him to read
much in the works of St Gregory, whom he calls
the Preacher of the English, and whom he recom-
mends the king to take for his perpetual intercessor
with God.
1
But when this letter reached England,
Edwin was no more.
Prosperity The six years which passed between his conver-
cenceof
sion and his death may certainly be reckoned
the reign
J J
of Edwin,
among the most glorious and happy that it was
ever given to any Anglo-Saxon prince to know.
He speedily raised Northumbria to the head of the
Heptarchy. On the south, his ardent zeal for the
faith which he had embraced after such ripe reflec-
tion extended its influence even to the populations
which, without being subjected to his direct autho-
rity, yet belonged to the same race as his subjects,
conversion
The East Angles, as we have seen, had offered him
Angles, their crown, and he had refused it. But he used
his influence over the young king, who owed to
tantemque magistri et capitis sui sancti Gregorii regulam perpeti stabili-
tate confirmet (redemptor) ... ut fide et opere, in timore Dei et cari-
tate, vestra adquisitio decessorumque vestrorum quae per Domini Gregorii
exordia pullulata convalescendo amplius extendatur . . . longa terrarum
marisque intervalla, quae inter nos ac vos obsistunt, ac et nos condescen-
dere coegerunt, ut nulla possit ecclesiarum vestrarum jactura per cujus-
libet occasionis obtentum quoque modo provenire : sed potius commissi
vobis populi devotionem plenius propagare."
Ap.
Bedam, ii. 18.
1
"
Pnedicatores vestri . . . Gregorii frequenter lectione occupati,
pra oculis affectum doctrina? ipsius, quam pro vestris animabus libenter
exercuit, habetote : quatenus ejus oratio, et reguum vestrum popu-
lumque augeat, et vos omnipotenti Deo irreprehensibiles repraesentet
"

Ibid., ii. 17.

OF CANTERBURY. 449
him his elevation to the throne, to induce him to
embrace the Christian religion, with all his sub-
jects. Eorpwald thus expiated the apostasy of his
father ; and Edwin thus paid the ransom of the
generous pity that the royalty of East Anglia had
lavished on his youth and his exile.
On the north he extended and consolidated the
Anglo-Saxon dominion as far as the isthmus which
separated Caledonia from Britain. And he has left
an ineffaceable record of his reign in the name of
the fortress built upon the rock which commanded
the entrance of the Forth, and which still lifts its
sombre and alpine fronttrue Acropolis of the bar-
barous northfrom the midst of the great and pic-
turesque city of Edinburgh (Edwins burgh).
On the west he continued, with less ferocity than
Ethelfrid, but with no less valour and success, the
contest with the Britons of Wales. He pursued
them even into the islands of the channel which
separates Great Britain from Ireland ; and took
possession of the Isle of Man and another isle
which had been the last refuge of the Druids from
the Eoman dominion, and which, after its conquest
by Edwin, took the name of the victorious race,
Angles-ey.
Within his own kingdom he secured a peace and
security so unknown both before and after his
reign that it passed into a proverb ; it was said
that in the time of Edwin a woman with her new-
born child might traverse England from the Irish
VOL. III. 2 F
450
ST AUGUSTTN
Channel to the North Sea without meeting any one
who would do her the least wrong. It is pleasant
to trace his kindly and minute care of the well-
being of his subjects in such a particular as that of
the copper cups which he had suspended beside the
fountains on the highways, that the passers-by
might drink at their ease, and which no one at-
tempted to steal, whether from fear or from love of
the king. Neither did any one ever reproach him
for the unwonted pomp which distinguished his
train, not only when he went out to war, but
when he rode peacefully through his towns and
provinces, on which occasions the lance surmounted
with a large tuft of feathers
1
which the Saxons
had borrowed from the Eoman legions, and which
they had made the sacred standard of the Bret-
walda and the ensign of the supreme sovereignty
in their confederationwas always carried before
him in the midst of his military banners.
But all this grandeur and prosperity were about
to be engulfed in a sudden and great calamity.
Alliance of
There were other Angles than those who, in Nor-
the heathen
of Mercia
and the
thumbria and East Anglia, were already subdued
1
rit
.
i's
;
h
and humanised by the influence of Christianity :
Christians
J J
5win
there remained the Angles of Merciathe great
central region stretching from the Humber to the
1
"Sicut usque liodie in proverbio dicitur, etiamsi mulier una cum re-
cens nato parvulo vellet totam perambulare insulam a mari ad mare,
nullo se hedente valeret. . . . Erectis stipitibus rcreos caucos suspendi
juberet. . . . Illud genus vexilli quod Romani Tufam, Angli vero Tuuf
appellant."

Bede, ii. 16.

OF CANTERBURY. 451
Thames. The kingdom of Mercia was the last state
organised out of the Anglo-Saxon conquest. It
had been founded by that portion of the invaders
who, finding all the eastern and southern shores of
the island already occupied, were compelled to ad-
vance into the interior. It became the centre of the
pagan resistance to, and occasional assaults upon,
the Christian Propaganda, which was henceforth
to have its headquarters in Northumbria. The
pagans of Mercia found a formidable leader in the under
person of Penda, who was himself of royal extrac-
tion, or, as it was then believed, of the blood of
Odin, and had reigned for twenty-two years, but 633-655,
who was inflamed by all the passions of a barbarian,
and, above all, devoured with jealousy of the for-
tunes of Edwin and the power of the Northumbri-
ans. Since Edwin's conversion these wild instincts
were intensified by fanaticism. Penda and the
Mercians remained faithful to the worship of Odin,
whose descendants all the Saxon kings believed
themselves to be. Edwin and the Northumbrians
were, therefore, in their eyes no better than trai-
tors and apostates. But more surprising still, the
original inhabitants of the island, the Christian
Britons, who were more numerous in Mercia than
in any other Anglo-Saxon kingdom, shared and
excited the hatred of the pagan Saxons against the
converts of the same race. These old Christians,
it cannot be too often repeated, always exasper-
ated against the invaders of their island, took no
452 ST AUGUSTIN
account of the faith of the converted Angles, and
would not on any terms hold communion with
them.
1
The Welsh Britons, who maintained their
independence, but who, for more than a century,
had been constantly menaced, defeated, and humi-
liated by Ida, Ethelfrid, and Edwin, professed and
nourished their antipathy with even greater bitter-
andcad-
ness.
2
Their chief, Ceadwalla or Cadwallon, the
wallon.
last hero of the Celtic race in Britain, at first over-
come by Edwin and forced to seek refuge in Ire-
land and in Armorica,
3
had returned thence with
rage redoubled, and with auxiliaries from the other
Celtic races, to recommence the struggle against
the Northumbrians. He succeeded in forming an
Northum- alliance with Penda against the common enemy,
invaded.
Under these two chiefs an immense army, in which
the British Christians of Wales jostled the pagans
of Mercia, invaded Northumbria. Edwin awaited
them at Hatfield, on the southern frontier of his
Edwin is kingdom. He was there disastrously defeated, and
nth'oct. perished gloriously, sword in hand, scarce forty-
eight years of age, dying a death which entitled
him to be ranked amongst the martyrs.
4
His eldest
son fell with him ; the younger, taken prisoner by
christian- Penda, who swore to preserve his life, was infam-
ity extin-
.
guishedin
ously murdered. JNorthumbria was ravaged with
fire and sword, and its recent Christianity completely
1
Bede, ii. 20. See ante,
p.
75, note.
2
Lappenberg, vol. i.
p.
159. La Borderie, op. cit.,
p.
216.
3
See his amusing adventures in Richard of Cirencester, vol. ii.
p.
32.
4
Act. SS. Bolland., die 12 Oetobris.
Northum
bria
OF CANTERBURY. 453
obliterated. The most barbarous of the persecutors
was not the idolatrous Penda, but the Christian
Cadwallon, who, during a whole year, went np and
down all the Northumbrian provinces massacring
every man he met, and subjecting even the women
and children to atrocious tortures before putting
them to death. He was, says Bede, resolved to
extirpate from the soil of Britain the English race,
whose recent reception of Christianity only in-
spired this old Christian, intoxicated with blood
and with a ferocious patriotism, with scorn and
disgust.
1
It is not known why Northumbria, after the
death of Edwin and his son, was not subjugated
and shared among the conquerors ; but it remained
divided, enslaved, and plunged once more into
paganism. Deira fell to Osric, cousin-german of
Edwin ; Bernicia to Eanfrid, one of the sons of
Ethelfrid, who had returned from his exile in Scot-
land. Both had received baptism : the one with
his cousin at York ; the other at the hands of the
Celtic monks of Iona. But a pagan reaction was
the inevitable consequence of the overthrow of the
first Christian king of Northumbria. The two
1
"
Maxima est facta strages in Ecelesia vel gente Nordanhymbrorum.
. . . Unus ex ducibus paganus, alter ... pagano ssevior. . . . Quamvis
nomen et professionem haberet Christiani, adeo ammo et moribus bar-
barus, ut ne sexui muliebri vel innocuse parvulorum parceret setati, qimm
universos atrocitate ferina morti per tormenta contraderet. . . . Totum
genus Anglorum Britannia? finibus erasurum se esse deliberans
;
sed nec
religioni Christians quae apud eos exorta erat, aliquid impendebat hon-
oris."

Bede, ii. 20. Compare iii. 1.

454 ST AUGUSTIN
princes yielded to that reaction, and renounced
their baptism, but without gaining anything there-
by. The king of Deira was killed in battle with
the Britons ; and the king of Bernicia was mur-
dered at an interview which he had sought with
the savage Cadwallon.
Flight of Bishop Paulinus did not consider himself called
Paulinus
. .
and of
upon to remain a witness 01 such horrors. His one
Ethel-
1
burga.
thought was to place in safety the widow of King
Edwinthat gentle Ethelburga who had been con-
fided to him by her brother for a different destiny
:
he brought her back by sea to her brother's king-
dom, with the daughter and the two youngest sons
whom she had borne to Edwin. Even beside her
brother, the king of Kent, she was afraid to keep
them in England
;
and, wishing to devote her own
widowhood to God, she intrusted them to the king
of the Franks, Dagobert, her cousin,
1
at whose court
they died at an early age. As to Paulinus, who
had left in charge of his church at York only a
1
The following is the table of the relationship between the queen of
Northumbria and the king of Austrasia
:

CLOTAI RE I.
CARIBERT, CHILPERIC I.
king of Paris.
BERTHA, < I,ota I RE II.
wife of Ethelbert.
ETHELBURGA, DAOOBERT 1.
wife of Edwin.
Dagobert mounted the throne of Austrasia in 628, three years after
Ethelburga's marriage.
OF CANTERBURY. 455
brave Italian deacon, of whom we shall speak here-
after, he found the episcopal see of Eochester
vacant in consequence of the death of the Eoman
monk, who was the titular bishop, and who, sent
by the primate to the Pope, had just been drowned
in the Mediterranean. Paulinus was invested with
this bishopric by the king and by the archbishop
Honorius, whom he had himself consecrated at Lin-
coln
;
and there he died, far from his native land,
after having laboured during forty-three years for
the conversion of the English.
Thus appeared to crumble away in one day and
for ever, along with the military and political pre-
eminence of Northumbria, the edifice so laboriously
raised in the north of England by the noble and
true-hearted Edwin, the gentle and devoted Ethel-
burga, the patient and indefatigable Paulinus, and
by so many efforts and sacrifices known to God
alone. The last and most precious of Edwin s con-
quests was not destined to survive him long. His
young kinsman, the king of the East Angles, was
no sooner converted than he fell beneath the
poignard of an assassin
;
and, like Northumbria,
East Anglia relapsed altogether into the night of
idolatry.
1
After thirty-six years of continual efforts, the mon- Repulse of
astic missionaries sent by ot Gregory the Great had
mission-
.
aries every
-
succeeded in establishing nothing, save in the petty
where, save
kingdom of Kent. Everywhere else they had been
^leiT
1
Bede, ii. 15.
456 ST AUGUSTIN
baffled. Of the six other kingdoms of the Heptarchy,
threethose of the Saxons of the South and of the
West, and the Angles of the Centre
1
remained in-
accessible to them. The three lastthose of the
Saxons of the East, of the Angles of the East and
North
2
had successively escaped from them. And
yet, except the supernatural courage which courts
or braves martyrdom, no virtue seems to have been
awanting to them. No accusation, no suspicion,
impugns their all-prevailing charity, the fervent
sincerity of their faith, the irreproachable purity of
their morals, the unwearying activity, the constant
self-denial, and austere piety of their whole life.
How, then, are we to explain their defeat, and
the successive failure of their laborious efforts ?
Perhaps they were wrong in not sufficiently follow-
ing the example of our Lord Jesus Christ and His
apostlesin not preaching enough to the humble
and poorin not defying with proper boldness the
wrath of the great and powerful. Perhaps they
Avere wrong in addressing themselves too exclu-
sively to the kings and warlike chiefs, and in un-
dertaking nothing, risking nothing, without the con-
currence, or against the will, of the secular power.
3
Hence, without doubt, these changes of fortune,
these reactions, and sudden and complete relapses
1
Wessex, Sussex, Mercia.
2
Essex, East Anglia, Northumbria.
3
Lingaud, Anglo-Saxon Church, vol. i.
pp,
40, 74.
OF CANTERBURY. 457
into idolatry, which followed the death of their first
protectors
;
hence, also, these fits of timidity, of
discouragement, and despair, into which we see
them falling under the pressure of the sudden
changes and mistakes of their career. Perhaps, in
short, they had not at first understood the national
character of the Anglo-Saxons, and did not know
how to gain and to master their minds, by recon-
ciling their own Italian customs and ideas with the
roughness, the independence, and the manly energy
of the populations of the German race.
At all events, it is evident that new blood was
needed to infuse new life into the scattered and
imperfect germs of Anglo-Saxon Christianity, and
to continue and carry out the work of the mission-
ary monks of Mount Ccelius.
These monks will always have the glory of
having first approached, broken, and thrown seed
upon this fertile but rebellious soil. Others must
water with the sweat of their toil the fields that
they have prepared, and gather the harvest they
have sown. But the sons of St Gregory will none
the less remain before God and man the first la-
bourers in the conversion of the English
people.
And, at the same time, they did not desert their
post. Like mariners intrenched in a fort built in
haste on the shore that they would fain have con-
quered, they concentrated their strength in their
first and indestructible foundations at Canterbury,
458 ST AUGUSTIN.
in the metropolitan monastery of Christ Church
and the monastery extra muros of St Augustin,
and there maintained the storehouse of Roman tra-
ditions and of the Benedictine rule, along with that
citadel of apostolic authority which was for centu-
ries the heart and head of Catholic England.
APPENDIX
APPENDIX.
I.
ION A.
NOTES OF A VISIT MADE IN AUGUST 1862.
(See pages 142 and 289.)
"
To each voyager
Some ragged child holds up for sale a store
Of wave-worn pebbles. . .
,
How sad a welcome !
Where once came monk and nun with gentle stir
Blessings to give, news ask, or suit prefer. . . .
Think, proud philosopher
!
Fallen though she be, this Glory of the West,
Still on her sons the beams of mercy shine
;
And hopes, perhaps, more heavenly bright than thine,
A grace by thee unsought, and unpossesst,
A faith more fixed, a rapture more divine,
Shall gild their passage to eternal rest."
Wordsworth.
The traveller who visits Iona in the hope of finding
imposing ruins or picturesque sites is singularly disap-
pointed in his expectation. Nothing, as has been already
stated, can be less attractive than this island, at first sight
at least. At view of its flat and naked surface a sense of
that painful desolation which is so well expressed by the
word bleak, untranslatable in French, strikes the traveller,
and he involuntarily turns his eyes from that low and sandy
shore to the lofty mountains of the neighbouring isles and
462 APPENDIX.
coasts. After a time, however, a sweet and salutary im-
pression is evolved from the grave, calm, and lonely aspect
of a place so celebrated in spiritual history. The spirit is
a little reassured, and the visitor takes his way through
the poor hamlet, which is the only inhabited place on the
island, towards the ruins, of which so many learned and
splendid descriptions have been written. Here again
there is a fresh disappointment. These ruins have no-
thing about them that is imposingnothing, above all, ab-
solutely nothing, that recalls St Columba, unless it be two
or three inscriptions in the Irish tongue (EirscJi or Erse),
which was his language. But they are not the less of
great interest to the Catholic archaeologist, since they are
all connected with the cloistral and ecclesiastical founda-
tions which succeeded to the monastery of Columba.
Turning to the north, after passing through the village,
you come first to the remains of a convent of canonesses,
the last foundation of the twelfth century, but which,
for a little, survived the Keformation. Transformed into
a stable, then into a quarry, the roofless church still
exists
;
and in it is to be seen the tomb of the last prior-
ess, Anna Macdonald, of the race of the Lords
of
the
Isles, who died in 1543. Thence you pass to the famous
cemetery, which was for so many centuries the last asylum
of kings and princes, nobles and prelates, and of the chiefs
of the clans and communities of all the neighbouring
districts, andas a report made in 1594 says

"of the
best people of all the isles, and consequently the holiest
and most honourable place in Scotland." At that epoch
were still to be seen three great mausoleums with the fol-
lowing
inscriptions
:

TUMULUS REGUM SCOTL3D.

TUMULUS REGUM HIBERNI-S!.
TUMULUS REGUM NO B \VK< ! I M.
APPENDIX. 463
There was even the tomb of a king of France, whose
name is not given, but who must have abdicated before
his death.
Nothing is now shown of these mausoleums except the
site. A tradition, more or less authentic, decides that
eight Norwegian kings or princes were interred at Iona,
four kings of Ireland, and forty-eight Scottish kings. But
all historians agree in stating that, from the fabulous times
of Fergus until Macbeth, Iona was the ordinary burying-
place of the kings and nobles of the Scottish race, and even
of some Saxon princes, such as Egfrid, king of the North-
umbrians, who died in 685.
1
Shakespeare, with his cus-
tomary fidelity to national tradition, has not failed to send
the body of Macbeth's victim to be buried at Iona.
2
The burial-place of the kings was not transferred to the
Abbey of Dunfermline until the time of Malcolm Can-
more, the conqueror and successor of Macbeth, and the
husband of St Margaret.
At present this cemetery contains eight or nine rows of
flat tombs very close to each other. Most of these are
of blue stone, and covered with figures sculptured in re-
lief, with inscriptions and coats of arms. On many of
them may be distinguished the galley which was the her-
aldic ensign of the Macdonalds, Lords
of
the Islesthe
greatest house of the north of Scotland. Among them
is shown the tomb of the contemporary of the great king-
Robert Bruce and the hero of the poem of Walter Scott,
who died in 1387. And there are still to be seen tombs
bearing the arms of the Macdougalls, Lords of Lorn,
the Macleods, Mackinnons, Macquaries, and especially
Macleansthat is to say, of all the chiefs of the clans of
1
"Ejus corpus in Hii insula Columbfe sepultum." Simeon Dunelm,
ap. Twyden, Scriptor.,
p.
3.
2
See the passage quoted,
p.
279, note.
464 APPEXDCX.
the adjacent districts, along with several tombs of bishops,
priors, and other ecclesiastics of the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries.
In the centre of the burying-ground stands a mined
chapel, called St Oran's, from the name of the first of the
Irish monks who died after their landing on the island.
It is 30 feet long by 15 broad, with a fine semi-
circular western door. It is the most interesting, and
perhaps the oldest monument of the island, for it is held
to have been built by the sainted Queen Margaret, wife
of Malcolm Canmore
(f
1093),
mother of the king St
David, one of the most touching figures in the history of
Scotland and of Christendom. She was the regeneratrix
of faith and piety in Scotland, and was animated by a
great devotion to St Columba, by whose intervention she
obtained her only son, after having long been without
children.
1
Before reaching the burying-ground, and on leaving it,
two large stone crosses are seen, each of a single block, and
from 12 to 14 feet highthe one called Maclean's, and the
other St Martin'sthe only two which remain of 360,
which are said to have formerly existed on the island.
Both, fixed on a pedestal of red granite, are long and
slender in form, covered over with sculptured ornaments,
in a style at once graceful and quaint, partially hidden
by the moss. One of them, Maclean's cross, is said to be
that of which Adamnan speaks in his
Life
of
Columba,
It is difficult to understand how, with the scanty means
at their disposal in an age so remote, it was possible to
quarry, sculpture, transport, and erect blocks of granite
of such a size.
1
Fordun, Scoti-chronicon, v. 37. Reeves's Adamnan,
pp.
xxx., cdx.
APPENDIX. 465
At last we reach the Cathedral, or rather the Abbey
Church, a large oblong edifice, in red and grey granite,
166 feet in length, 70 in breadth at the transept, ruined
and roofless, like all the others, but still retaining all
its Avails, and also several large cylindrical columns,
rudely sculptured, with the tombs of an abbot of the
clan Mackinnon, date 1500, and different chiefs of the
Macleans. Over the cross of the transept rises a square
tower, which is seen far off at sea, and is lighted by
windows pierced in the stone, in unglazed lozenges and
circles, such as are still found at Villers, in Brabant, and
at St Vincent and Anastasius, near Eome.
1
The end of
the choir is square, and cannot be older than the four-
teenth century ; but other portions of the church are
of the twelfth and thirteenth. It has, like the beau-
tiful Abbey Church of Kelso, in the south of Scotland,
this peculiarity, that the choir is twice as long as the
nave.
The sombre and sad aspect of all these ruins is owing
in part to the absence of all verdure, and of that ivy
which, especially in the British Isles, adorns elsewhere
the ruins of the past.
This church became, in the fourteenth
century, the
cathedral of the bishopric of the Isles, the titular bishop
of which afterwards resided at Man, one of the Sudereys
that is, the isles lying south of the point of Ardna-
murchan, and distinct from the Norderneys, to the
north
of that cape, a division which elates from the times of the
Norwegians. Hence the title of Episcopus
Sodorensis,
Bishop of Fori
or and Man. Iona became the
cathedral
of
1
See upon these stone windows the -enrious works of M. Albert Lenoir,
in his Architecture Monastiquc, 1st part,
pp.
133, 301, and of M. Ed.
Didron, Annates Archeologiques, vol. xxiii.
pp.
45, 201.
VOL. TIL
2 G
466
APPENDIX.
the bishopric of the Scottish Isles after the union of Man
to England under Edward I.
After the Reformation, and the suppression of all the
bishoprics and monasteries, decreed in 1561 by the Con-
vention of Estates, the Calvinistic Synod of Argyll gave
over all the sacred edifices of Iona to a horde of pillagers,
who reduced them to the condition in which they are now
seen. During the whole of the eighteenth century the
ruins and the cemetery lay desert: the cathedral was
made into a stable
;
and thus was accomplished the pro-
phecy in Irish verse ascribed to Columba, according to
which a time was to come when the chants of the monks
should give place to the lowing of oxen. The 360 crosses
which covered the soil of the holy island
disappeared
during this period, most of them being thrown into
the sea. Some were conveyed to Mull and to the adja-
cent islands, and one is shown at Campbeltona mono-
lith of blue granite, incrusted with sculptures. In this
same island of Mull is to be observed a line of isolated
columns leading to the point of embarkation for Iona,
and destined, according to local tradition, to guide the
pilgrims of old to the sacred isle. (Note of the Rev.
T. Maclauchlan, read before the Society of Antiquaries of
Scotland, February 1863.)
Since 1693 the island has belonged to the Dukes of
Argyll, chiefs of the great clan Campbell, who watch over
the preservation of the ruins. It brings them an annual
revenue of about 300. It contains a population of 350
souls, all Presbyterians. This small populationwhich
lives on the produce of the fisheries and of a few wretched
fields manured with seaweed, where potatoes, barley, and
rye are grown, but where even oats refuse to thrive
offers, notwithstanding, the curious spectacle which is
APPENDIX. 467
found in many of even the pettiest villages in Scotland
:
it has two churches, and forms two congregations ; the
one connected with the
official
or Established worship,
whose ministers are nominated by the lay patrons, and
supported by the ancient property of the Church; and
the other attached to the
"
Free Kirk
"
that is, a body
whose ministers are elected by the people and maintained
by their voluntary offerings.
The most interesting works to be consulted upon this
celebrated island are, first of all, the Eeport of Arch-
deacon Munro in 1594; then Johnson's Journetj to the
Hebrides; Pennant's Tour in the Hebrides; K D. Graham's
Antiquities
of
Iona, London, 1850, in quarto, with plates
;
and finally, a good article in the Gentleman's Magazine
for November 1861.
We cannot quit Iona without adding a word on the
neighbouring isle of Staffa, which contains the famous
grotto of Fingal. It was not really known to the world
till the visit of Sir Joseph Banks in August 1772. There
is no previous mention of it, not even in the journey of
the great Johnson, although it lies within sight of Iona,
which closes the horizon on the south, as seen from the
cavea juxtaposition which has inspired Walter Scott
with these beautiful lines
:

"
Where, as to shame the temples decked
By skill of earthly architect,
Nature herself, it seems, would raise
A Minster to her Makers praise. . . .
Nor doth its entrance front in vain
To old Iona's holy fane,
That nature's voice might seem to say,
'
Well hast thou done, frail child of clay !
Thy humble powers that stately shrine
Tasked high and hardbut witness mine
!'
"
468 APPENDIX.
The English, and travellers in general, profess a great
enthusiasm for this cave, which, as every one knows,
forms an immense vault, into which the sea penetrates,
and which rests on rows of polygonal basaltic columns,
ranged like the cells of a beehive. Sir Eobert Peel, in a
speech in 1837, compared the pulsations of the Atlantic
which roll into this sanctuary to the majestic tones of the
organ ; but he adds,
"
The solemn harmony of the waves
chants the praises of the Lord in a note far more sublime
than that of any human instrument." This sound is, in
fact, the grandest thing about this famous cave. The
rest is a wonder of nature far inferior, it seems to us, to
the wonders of art, and especially of Christian art. The
grotto of Fingal is but 66 feet high by 42 broad, and
227 long. What is that beside our grand cathedrals and
monastic churches, such as Cluny or Vezelay ?
APPENDIX. 469
II.
CONCLUSIONS OF THE TWO PAPEES
OF M. VAKIN
ON THE CAUSES OF THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE BRITISH CHURCH
AND THE CHURCH OF ROME.
(Recueil dcs Memoires prescntes par divers Savants a V Academic
des Inscriptions.

1st series, 1858.)

(See page 379.)
FIRST ARTICLE.
The struggle maintained by the three Celtic nations
(Britons, Picts, and Scots) against the Eoman apostles of
the Saxon colony resulted, according to the opinion of the
learned Anglicans of the last three centuries, from the
fact that Britain had received the faith from Asia, and
would thus have communicated anti-Eoman doctrines to
the Picts and Scots. The three populations, instructed
by Asiatics, would naturally reject the religious yoke
which Eome tried to lay on them (under the pretext of
evangelising the Anglo-Saxons) no less than the political
yoke of the new conquerors. But,
1. There never was anything in common in the usages
of Asia and those in which the three insular nations dif-
fered from the Eoman Church.
2. The origin of these secondary differences, in as far
as the Picts and Scots are concerned, is found in the
subsequent substitution of British usages for those which,
in the beginning, these same people received direct from
Eome.
470 APPENDIX.
3. These usages, even among the Britons, did not ex-
tend back to the origin of Christianity in the British
Isles. They had their sources in circumstances purely
accidental, and completely opposed to any sentiment
hostile to the Eoman Church.
4. The Picts and Scots received the light of the gospel
originally from Some, and not from Britain. They al-
ready occupied at that period the ground which a school
of learned men believe them only to have attained at a
later date.
SECOND ARTICLE.
1. The differences between Eome and Britain were less
numerous, less important, and; above all, of later date than
the recent writers represent.
2. They indicate no relation between Britain and Asia.
3. They prove nothing against Eome : of the three
nations which composed the British Church, two had
from the first adopted the Eoman usages.
4. As to the six controverted customs,
Three had their origin in a national, and not at all in
an Asiatic feelingto wit,
A. The tonsurea national and even Druidic way of
dressing the hairthat of the wise men, who are dis-
cussed in the lives of the Irish saints as opposing great
obstacles to any modifications of the faith
;
B. The national liturgy for the mass, such as existed
in all the Churches evangelised by Eome, Gaul, Spain, &c.
;
C. Aversion for the Eoman clergy, repelled by patri-
otic sentiment, as apostles of the Saxon race
;
And three in mistaken adhesion to the very doctrines
of Eome
:
APPENDIX. 471
D. The ceremonies supplementary to baptism, of which
Bede speaks, ii.
2
; but which the islanders would not
recognise because their first apostles, who had come from
Rome, had told them nothing about them
;
E. The pascal computation (Easter), which the Britons
maintained as they had received it at first from Borne
without wishing to adopt the reform subsequently intro-
duced by the Popes
;
F. The celibacy of the clergy, as severely observed by
the Britons as by the Roman clergyonly they accepted
the double monasteries known in the East : and this is
the only way in which any of the traditions of the East
got a footing in the extreme West.
On the three principal points
1,
The supremacy of
Borne
;
2,
The celebration of Easter;
3,
The marriage of
the prieststhe British Church in no way differs from
other Western Churches,at least, during the first five
centuries. On the three secondary points
1,
The ton-
sure
;
2,
The administration of baptism
;
3, The liturgy

there were differences ; but they were as great between

Britain and the East as between Britain and Italy.
END OF THE THIRD VOLUME.
PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.
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