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Title: Celtic Scotland: a history of ancient Alban, Volume 2 (of 3) : Church and culture
Author: Skene, W. F. (William Forbes)
Language: English
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CELTIC SCOTLAND
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_Printed by Thomas and Archibald Constable_
FOR
DAVID DOUGLAS, EDINBURGH
LONDON HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO.
CAMBRIDGE MACMILLAN AND BOWES.
GLASGOW JAMES MACLEHOSE AND SONS
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CELTIC SCOTLAND:
A HISTORY OF
Ancient Alban
BY
WILLIAM F. SKENE, D.C.L., LL.D.
HISTORIOGRAPHER-ROYAL FOR SCOTLAND.
VOLUME II.
CHURCH AND CULTURE.
_SECOND EDITION._
EDINBURGH: DAVID DOUGLAS
1887
_All Rights reserved._
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
This volume being now likewise out of print, it has been thought right
to issue a new edition.
The Author has for this purpose carefully revised the text, and made
such corrections and alterations as appeared to be demanded. These,
however, he was glad to find are few in number and unimportant in
character.
EDINBURGH, 27 INVERLEITH ROW,
_2nd May 1887_.
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
The volume now published contains the second of the three books into
which the history of Scotland during the Celtic period has been divided,
and, like the first volume, forms a substantive work in itself. It deals
entirely with the history of the old Celtic Church, and its influence on
the culture of the people. The early ecclesiastical history of Scotland
is a subject beset with even greater difficulties than those which
affect its early civil history. It shares with the latter that
perversion of its history which has been caused by the artificial system
elaborated by our oldest historians. The fictitious antiquity given by
it to the settlements of the Scots is accompanied by a supposed
introduction of Christianity at an earlier period, equally devoid of
historic foundation; and this supposed early Christian Church has given
rise to what may be called the Culdean controversy, by which the true
history has been further obscured. It is a disadvantage which affects
the history of all churches, that it is almost inevitably viewed through
the medium of the ecclesiastical prepossessions of the historian. This
has been peculiarly the case with the history of the early church in
Scotland, which has become the battle-field on which Catholic and
Protestant, Episcopalian and Presbyterian, have contended for their
respective tenets; and this evil is greatly aggravated when the basis of
the controversy consists of such a strange mixture of fact and fable as
that which characterises the history of the early Scottish Church, as it
is usually represented.
People are tired, however, of this incessant repetition by church
historians of the same one-sided arguments, and partial statement of
authorities adduced to assimilate the early Celtic Church, in its
doctrine and constitution, to one or other of the great ecclesiastical
parties of the modern church. They want to know what sort of a church
this early Celtic Church really was, irrespective of all ecclesiastical
bias, and this the Author has attempted to show in the following volume.
He has endeavoured simply to tell the tale of the early Celtic Church,
as he finds it recorded in the oldest and most authentic sources of
information. With this view he has treated of the history of the church
mainly in its external aspect, and has been unable to touch, to any
great extent, upon its doctrinal history, or to attempt to exhibit its
theological characteristics. The discussion of these questions must
still be left to the polemical historians. From the works of these
writers the Author has thus derived little assistance; but his task has
been greatly aided by another class of writers, who have brought to bear
upon the different branches of the subject that sound judgment,
extensive research, and critical acumen, which are requisite to
extricate the true history of the early church from the fictitious and
controversial matter with which it has been encumbered.
The first to bring these qualities to bear upon the subject was
undoubtedly the late Dr. Joseph Robertson, in a very remarkable essay
which appeared in the _Quarterly Review_ in 1849, under the title of
‘Scottish Abbeys and Cathedrals’ (vol. lxxxv. p. 103); and this was
followed by a valuable essay ‘On the Scholastic Offices in the Scottish
Church in the twelfth and thirteenth Centuries,’ printed in 1852 in the
_Miscellany of the Spalding Club_ (vol. v. p. 56). But, in 1857, there
appeared by far the most important work bearing upon the history of the
early Scottish Church. This was the edition of Adamnan’s Life of St.
Columba, by the Rev. Dr. Reeves, now Dean of Armagh, printed for the
Irish Archæological Society and the Bannatyne Club. This work is a
perfect model of an exhaustive treatment of its subject, and exercised
at once an influence upon the study of Scottish church history, the
importance of which cannot be over-estimated. It was followed, in 1864,
by a work of the same author on _The Culdees of the British Islands as
they appear in History_, in which he has brought together almost all the
evidence we possess with regard to their history. In the same year the
late Bishop of Brechin commenced his useful labours in this department
of history by publishing the Missal of Arbuthnot, with a valuable
preface. And in 1866 the late Dr. Joseph Robertson produced his last and
most important work, viz., the _Statuta Ecclesiæ Scoticanæ_, which he
edited for the Bannatyne Club, in two volumes, the first of which
consists of an elaborate introduction by himself. It is cause of much
regret that this accurate and acute historian had not lived to devote
his great abilities and extensive research to a complete history of the
church, which would have rendered the present attempt unnecessary.
Dr. John Stuart, who had already, in his great work on the Sculptured
Stones of Scotland, made one of the most important contributions to the
elucidation of Scottish antiquities which we possess, edited in 1868 the
Charters of the Priory of the Isle of May for the Society of
Antiquaries, with a valuable preface; and in 1869 we are indebted to him
for an admirable edition of the Book of Deer, printed for the Spalding
Club, to which he has prefixed an elaborate preface. Chapters IV. and V.
of this preface on Celtic polity and on the early Scottish Church are
essays of singular ability, and full of acute and valuable suggestive
matter.
In 1872 the late Bishop of Brechin published his ‘Kalendars of Scottish
Saints, with personal notices of those of Alba, Laudonia, and
Strathclyde: an attempt to fix the districts of their several missions
and the churches where they were chiefly had in remembrance.’ It is a
very useful compilation, and may be referred to for the churches
dedicated to the various founders of the early churches mentioned in
this work. It is only necessary to add that in 1874 Dr. Reeves’s
valuable edition of Adamnan’s Life of St. Columba was, with his consent,
published in the series of Scottish Historians, with a translation of
the Life by the late Bishop of Brechin; and that in the same year there
appeared in the same series an edition by him of the Lives of St. Ninian
and St. Kentigern, with translations, introduction, and notes.
Such is a short view of what has already been done for the history of
the early Celtic Church of Scotland by historians of this class. The
author of the present work is fully conscious of the imperfect manner in
which he has executed the task he set before himself; but, without
claiming to possess the same qualities in an equal degree, he has at
least endeavoured to perform it in the same spirit, and takes this
opportunity of acknowledging the extent to which he has freely availed
himself of their labours. He has especially to acknowledge the valuable
aid given him by W. Maunsell Hennessey, Esq., of the Public Record
Office, Dublin, in enabling him to enrich his work with a translation of
the Old Irish Life of St. Columba, by that eminent Irish scholar, which
will be found in the appendix; and he has also to thank John Taylor
Brown, Esq., and Felix Skene, Esq., for a careful revision of the
proof-sheets of this work.
EDINBURGH, 27 INVERLEITH ROW,
_14th April 1877_.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
-------
BOOK II.
_CHURCH AND CULTURE._
CHAPTER I.
THE CHURCHES IN THE WEST.
PAGE
Early notices of the British Church 1
Church of Saint Ninian 2
Mission of Saint Columbanus to Gaul 6
Controversy regarding Easter 7
Three orders of Saints in the early Irish Church; Secular,
Monastic, and Eremitical 12
The Church of Saint Patrick 14
Collegiate Churches of Seven Bishops 24
Church of the Southern Picts 26
Early Dalriadic Church 33
Church south of the Firths of Forth and Clyde 35
Apostasy of early Churches 39
CHAPTER II.
THE MONASTIC CHURCH IN IRELAND.
The second order of Catholic Presbyters 41
The entire Church monastic. Relative position of Bishops and
Presbyters 42
The Presbyter-abbot 44
Monastic character of the Church derived from Gaul 45
Monachism reached the Irish Church through two different
channels 45
First channel through the monastery of Candida Casa, or
Whithern, in Galloway 46
Second channel through Bretagne and Wales 49
The school of Clonard 50
The Twelve Apostles of Ireland 51
Saint Columba one of the twelve 52
A.D. 545. Founds the monastery of Derry 53
A.D. 558. Foundation of Bangor 55
The primitive Irish monastery 57
The Monastic family 61
Island monasteries 62
Monasteries were Christian colonies 63
Privilege of sanctuary 65
Law of succession to the abbacy 66
The right of the church from the tribe 71
The right of the tribe from the church 72
Influence of the church 73
Monasteries were seminaries of instruction 75
Early churches founded in the Western Isles 76
Mission of Saint Columba to Britain 78
CHAPTER III.
THE MONASTIC CHURCH IN IONA.
A.D. 563. St. Columba crosses from Ireland to Britain with
twelve followers 85
Founds a monastery in Iona 88
Description of the island 88
Character of the Columban Church 93
Site of the original wooden monastery 95
Constitution of the monastery 101
St. Columba’s labours among the Picts 104
A.D. 565. Converts King Brude 105
Character of the paganism of the Scots and Picts 108
Proceedings of St. Columba in converting the northern Picts 119
A.D. 574. St. Columba inaugurates King Aidan and attends the
assembly of Drumceatt 122
CHAPTER IV.
THE FAMILY OF IONA.
What St. Columba had accomplished in twelve years; and
meaning of the expression ‘Family of Iona’ 127
Monasteries founded by him in the islands 128
Monasteries founded during his life by others in the islands 133
Monasteries founded by Columba and others among the northern
Picts 134
A.D. 584-597. Monasteries founded by Columba among the
southern Picts 135
Visit of Saint Columba to Ireland 138
Last day of his life 138
Character of Saint Columba 143
Primacy of Iona and successors of St. Columba 148
A.D. 597-599. Baithene, son of Brendan 149
A.D. 599-605. Laisren, son of Feradhach 150
A.D. 605-623. Fergna Brit, son of Failbhe 151
A.D. 623-652. Segine, son of Fiachna 154
A.D. 634. Extension of Columban Church to Northumbria 154
A.D. 634. Church of the southern Scots of Ireland conforms
to Rome 159
A.D. 652-657. Suibhne, son of Cuirtri 163
A.D. 657-669. Cummene Ailbhe, son of Ernan 163
A.D. 664. Termination of the Columban Church in Northumbria 164
A.D. 669-679. Failbhe, son of Pipan 168
A.D. 673. Foundation of church of Applecross by Maelrubha 169
A.D. 679-704. Adamnan, son of Ronan 170
A.D. 686. First mission to Northumbria 170
Adamnan repairs the monastery of Iona 171
A.D. 688. Second mission to Northumbria 172
A.D. 692. Synod of Tara. The northern Scots, with the
exception of the Columban monasteries, conform to Rome 173
A.D. 704-717. Schism at Iona after the death of Adamnan 175
A.D. 717. Expulsion of the Columban monks from the kingdom
of the Picts 177
CHAPTER V.
THE CHURCHES OF CUMBRIA AND LOTHIAN.
A.D. 573. Battle of Ardderyd. Rydderch Hael becomes king of
Strathclyde 179
Oldest account of birth of Kentigern 180
Jocelyn’s account of his birth 181
Anachronism in connecting St. Servanus with St. Kentigern 184
Earlier notices of Kentigern 185
Kentigern driven to Wales 186
Kentigern founds the monastery of Llanelwy in Wales 188
A.D. 573. Rydderch Hael becomes king of Cumbria and recalls
Kentigern 190
Kentigern fixes his see first at Hoddam 191
Mission of Kentigern in Galloway, Alban, and Orkneys 192
Meeting of Kentigern and Columba 194
Death of Kentigern 196
A.D. 627. Conversion of the Angles to Christianity 198
The Monasteries in Lothian 200
Saint Cudberct or Cuthbert 201
Irish Life of St. Cuthbert 203
A.D. 651-661. Cudberct’s life in the monastery of Melrose 206
A.D. 661. Cudberct becomes prior of Melrose 208
A.D. 664. Cudberct goes to Lindisfarne 209
A.D. 669-678. St. Wilfrid, bishop over all the dominions of
King Osuiu, and founds church of Hexham, which he
dedicates to St. Andrew 210
A.D. 670. Cudberct withdraws to the Farne island 211
A.D. 684. Cudberct becomes bishop of Lindisfarne 213
A.D. 686. Cudberct resigns the bishopric and retires to
Farne island 214
A.D. 687. Death of Cudberct 214
A.D. 698. Relics of Cudberct enshrined 218
A.D. 688. Strathclyde Britons conform to Rome 219
A.D. 705-709. Wilfrid founds chapels at Hexham, dedicated to
St. Michael and St. Mary 220
A.D. 709-731. Relics of St. Andrew brought to Hexham by Acca 222
Monastery of Balthere at Tyninghame 223
Anglic bishopric of Whithern, founded about A.D. 730, and
comes to an end about A.D. 803 224
CHAPTER VI.
THE SECULAR CLERGY AND THE CULDEES.
No appearance of the name of Culdee till after the expulsion
of Columban monks 226
Monastic Church affected by two opposite influences 227
First by secular clergy 227
Legend of Bonifacius 229
Legend of Fergusianus 232
Churches dedicated to St. Peter 233
Second influence: the Anchoretical life 233
Anchorites called _Deicolæ_ or God-worshippers 237
Anchorites called the people of God 239
A.D. 747. Order of Secular Canons instituted 241
_Deicolæ_ brought under canonical rule 242
_Deicolæ_ in the Saxon Church 243
Anchoretical life in Ireland and Scotland 245
Anchorites called _Deoraidh De_, or God’s pilgrims 247
The third order of Irish Saints—Eremitical 248
_Deicolæ_ termed in Ireland _Ceile De_ 250
_Deicolæ_ and _Ceile De_ show the same characteristics 252
_Ceile De_ brought under the canonical rule 254
_Ceile De_ called _Keledei_ in Scotland, and first appear in
territory of the southern Picts 255
Legend of St. Servanus 255
Servanus introduces _Keledei_, who are hermits 258
_Keledei_ of Glasgow, who were solitary clerics 259
Legends connected with the foundation of St. Andrews 261
Older legend belongs to foundation of monastery in sixth
century 266
Columban monasteries among the Picts fell into the hands of
laymen 268
Second legend belongs to later foundation, to which relics
of St. Andrew were brought 271
_Keledei_ of St. Andrews originally hermits 275
Canonical rule brought into Scotland, and _Keledei_ become
canons 275
Conclusion as to origin of the Culdees 276
CHAPTER VII.
THE COÄRBS OF COLUMCILLE.
A.D. 717-772. Schism still exists in Iona 278
Two parties with rival abbots 279
Two missionaries, St. Modan and St. Ronan, in connection
with Roman party 282
A.D. 726. An Anchorite becomes abbot of Iona 283
The term _Comhorba_ or Coärb applied to abbots of Columban
monasteries 285
A.D. 772-801. Breasal, son of Seghine, sole abbot of Iona 288
A.D. 794. First appearance of Danish pirates, and Iona
repeatedly ravaged by them 290
A.D. 801-802. Connachtach, abbot of Iona 290
A.D. 802-814. Cellach, son of Congal, abbot of Iona 291
A.D. 802-807. Remains of St. Columba enshrined 292
A.D. 814-831. Diarmaid, abbot of Iona 297
Monastery rebuilt with stone 297
Shrine of St. Columba placed in stone monastery 300
A.D. 825. Martyrdom of St. Blathmac protecting the shrine 300
A.D. 831-854. Innrechtach ua Finachta, abbot of Iona 306
A.D. 850-865. Tuathal, son of Artguso, first bishop of
Fortrenn and abbot of Dunkeld 307
Cellach, son of Aillelo, abbot of Kildare and of Iona 307
A.D. 865-908. Primacy transferred to Abernethy, where three
elections of bishops take place 310
Legend of St. Adrian 311
A.D. 878. Shrine and relics of St. Columba taken to Ireland 317
CHAPTER VIII.
THE SCOTTISH CHURCH.
A.D. 878-889. First appearance of the name ‘The Scottish
Church’ when freed from servitude under Pictish law 320
A.D. 908. Primacy transferred to St. Andrews. Cellach first
bishop of Alban 323
A.D. 921. Introduction of canonical rule of the Culdees 324
Fothad, son of Bran, second bishop of Alban 327
A.D. 955-963. Malisius bishop of Alban 329
A.D. 963-970. Maelbrigde bishop of Alban 330
A.D. 970-995. Cellach, son of Ferdalaig, bishop of Alban 331
Iona ravaged by Danes; shrine of St. Columba transferred to
Down 332
A.D. 1025-1028. Alwynus bishop of Alban 336
Lay abbots of Dunkeld 337
Hereditary succession in benefices 338
Church offices held by laymen, and retained by their heirs 338
A.D. 1028-1055. Maelduin bishop of Alban 343
A.D. 1055-1059. Tuthald bishop of Alban 344
A.D. 1059-1093. Fothad last bishop of Alban 344
Character of Queen Margaret, and her reforms in the church 344
Anchorites at this time 351
Queen Margaret rebuilds the monastery of Iona 352
A.D. 1093-1107. After death of Fothad no bishop for fourteen
years 354
_Keledei_ of St. Andrews 356
The _Cele De_ of Iona 360
CHAPTER IX.
EXTINCTION OF THE OLD CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.
Causes which brought the Celtic Church to an end 365
A.D. 1093-1107. See of St. Andrews remains vacant, and
churches founded in Lothian only 366
A.D. 1107. Turgot appointed bishop of St. Andrews, and the
sees of Moray and Dunkeld created 368
Establishment of the bishopric of Moray 368
Establishment of the bishopric of Dunkeld 370
Rights of _Keledei_ pass to St. Andrews 372
Canons-regular introduced into Scotland 374
Diocese of Glasgow restored by Earl David 375
Bishoprics and monasteries founded by King David 376
Establishment of bishopric of Ross 377
Establishment of bishopric of Aberdeen 378
Monasteries of Deer and Turriff 380
Establishment of bishopric of Caithness 382
The communities of _Keledei_ superseded by regular canons 384
Suppression of _Keledei_ of St. Andrews 384
Suppression of _Keledei_ of Lochleven 388
Suppression of _Keledei_ of Monimusk 389
Monastic orders of Church of Rome introduced 392
Columban abbacies or _Abthens_ in possession of lay abbots 393
Establishment of bishoprics of Dunblane and Brechin 395
Bishoprics of Brechin and Dunblane formed from old see of
Abernethy 397
Suppression of _Keledei_ of Abernethy 398
Failure of Celtic Church of Brechin 400
Failure of Celtic Church in bishopric of Dunblane 402
Failure of Celtic Church in Bishopric of Dunkeld 405
Formation of diocese of Argyll or Lismore 408
Condition of Columban Church of Kilmun 410
Condition of Columban Church of Applecross 411
State of Celtic monastery of Iona 412
A.D. 1203. Foundation of Benedictine abbey and nunnery at
Iona, and disappearance of Celtic community 415
Remains of old Celtic Church 417
CHAPTER X.
LEARNING AND LANGUAGE.
Character of the Irish Monastic Church for learning 419
Resorted to by foreign students 420
Iona as a school of learning 421
Literature of the Monastic Church 422
The _Scribhnidh_, or scribes in the monasteries 423
The Book of Armagh 423
Hagiology of the Irish Church 425
Analysis of the Lives of St. Patrick 427
Lives of St. Bridget 443
Hagiology of the Scottish Church 444
Bearing of the Church on the education of the people 444
The _Ferleiginn_, or lector 444
The Scolocs 446
Influence of the Church on literature and language 448
Art of writing introduced 448
Spoken dialects of Irish 450
Peculiarities of Irish dialects 451
Written Irish 452
Scotch Gaelic 453
Origin of Scotch Gaelic 454
A written language introduced by Scottish monks 457
Gaelic termed Scottish, and Lowland Scotch, English 459
A.D. 1478-1560. Period of neglected education and no
learning 461
After 1520 Scotch Gaelic called Irish, and the name Scotch
passes over to Lowland Scotch 462
After Reformation Scotch Gaelic becomes a written language 463
APPENDIX.
I.
The old Irish Life of St. Columba; being a discourse on his
Life and Character delivered to the Brethren on his
Festival. Translated from the original Irish text by W.
Maunsell Hennessey, Esq., M.R.I.A. 467
II.
The Rule of St. Columba 508
III.
Catalogue of Religious Houses at the end of the Chronicle of
Henry of Silgrave, c. A.D. 1272, so far as it relates to
Scotland 509
ILLUSTRATIVE MAPS.
Map of Iona, showing site of the monasteries _to face page_ 100
Map illustrating history of the Monastic ” 178
Church prior to eighth century
Map illustrating state of the Church in the ” 418
reign of David I.
BOOK II.
_CHURCH AND CULTURE._
---
CHAPTER I.
THE CHURCHES IN THE WEST.
[Sidenote: Early notices of the British Church.]
In endeavouring to form a just conception of the history and
characteristics of the early Celtic Churches of the British Isles, it is
necessary at the very outset to discriminate between three consecutive
periods, which are strongly contrasted. The first is that period which
preceded the withdrawal of the Roman troops from Britain and the
termination of the civil government of the Roman province there in the
beginning of the fifth century; the second, the period of isolation
which followed, when the invasion of the Roman provinces in Gaul and
Britain by the Barbarians interposed a barrier of paganism between the
churches of Britain and the Continent, and for the time cut off all
communication between them; and the third, that which followed the
renewal of that intercourse, when they again came into contact in the
end of the sixth century.
During the Roman occupation of Britain the Christian religion had
unquestionably made its way under their auspices into the island, and
the Roman province in Britain was, in this respect, no exception to the
other provinces of the empire. It can hardly be doubted that, as early
as the second century of their occupation, a Christian Church had been
established within its limits, and there were even reports that it had
penetrated to regions beyond it. It is unnecessary for the purpose of
this work, and it would be out of place here, to enter into any inquiry
as to the actual period and history of the introduction of the Christian
Church into the British province, a subject which has been fully
discussed by other writers.[1] Our more immediate concern is with the
churches founded beyond its limits, among those tribes termed by the
Roman writers Barbarians, in opposition to the provincial Britons.
Suffice it to say that during the Roman occupation the Christian Church
in Britain was a part of the Church of the empire. It was more
immediately connected with that of Gaul, but it acknowledged Rome as its
head, from whom its mission was considered to be derived, and it
presented no features of difference from the Roman Church in the other
western provinces.
[Sidenote: Church of Saint Ninian.]
Towards the end of the Roman occupation the Christian Church seems to
have penetrated in two directions beyond the limits of the province, but
in other respects to have possessed the same character. During that
troublous time when the province was assailed by the barbarians on the
north and west, and its actual boundary had been drawn back from its
nominal limits, a Christian Church was established in the district
extending along the north shore of the Solway Firth, where Ptolemy had
placed the tribe of the Novantæ, its principal seat being at one of
their towns situated on the west side of Wigtown Bay, and termed by him
‘Leukopibia.’ The fact is reported by Bede as one well known to have
taken place. The missionary was Ninian, a bishop of the nation of the
Britons, who had been trained at Rome in the doctrine and discipline of
the western Church, and who built at Leukopibia a church of stone, which
was vulgarly called Candida Casa, and dedicated to St. Martin of
Tours.[2] This is the earliest account we have of him, and shows very
plainly both his relation to Rome as the source of his mission and his
connection with the Church of Gaul. It is probable that Ailred of
Rievaulx, in his Life of Ninian, written in the twelfth century, but
derived from older materials, repeats a true fact when he says that
Ninian heard of the death of Martin while he was erecting this church;
and this fixes the date of its foundation at the year 397. From Bede’s
statement we learn that the object of his mission seems to have been the
conversion of the Pictish nation, with the view probably of arresting,
or at least mitigating, their attacks upon the provincial Britons. He
founded his church of Candida Casa among the people occupying the
district on the north side of the Solway Firth, extending from the Nith
to the Irish Channel, who afterwards appear as the Picts of Galloway;
and we are told that through his preaching the Southern Picts, extending
as far north as the great mountain range of the Grampians, abandoned
their idolatrous worship and received the true faith.
While the Christian Church had thus been extended into the southern
province of the Pictish nation, it appears to have by this time
penetrated also to the Scots of Ireland. If the old Irish Life of Ninian
can be trusted, he is said to have left Britain and spent the last years
of his life in Ireland, where he founded a church in Leinster called
Cluain Conaire, and it is certain that he was commemorated there on the
16th of September under the name of Monenn.[3] The date of Ninian’s
death is not recorded. It has been almost uniformly stated by modern
writers to have taken place on the 16th September in the year 432, and
has been given by some on the authority of Bede, by others on that of
Ailred; but no such date is to be found in either writer, and this
supposed year of his death rests upon no authority whatever.
The Roman dominion in Britain came to an end in 410, when the troops
were withdrawn from the province and the provincial cities left to
protect themselves. Roman Britain thus ceased, to all intents and
purposes, to form part of the empire; her intercourse with the Continent
was almost entirely cut off by the incursions of the barbarian tribes
into Roman Gaul; and, with the exception of a few contemporary notices
of the Church during some years after the termination of the Roman
dominion, all is silence for a century and a half, till it is broken in
the succeeding century by the querulous voice of Gildas. The few facts
which we learn from contemporary sources are these: that in the year 429
the churches of Britain had been corrupted by the ‘Pelagian Agricola,
son of the Pelagian bishop Severianus,’ who had introduced the Pelagian
heresy among them to some extent;[4] that the orthodox clergy
communicated the fact to the Gallican bishops, by whom a synod was held,
when it was resolved to send Germanus bishop of Auxerre, and Lupus
bishop of Troyes, to Britain; and that, at the instance of Palladius the
deacon, Germanus received a mission from Celestine, bishop of Rome, to
bring back to the Catholic faith the Britons tainted with this
heresy.[5] Two years after, in 431, according to the same chronicler,
Pope Celestine ordained Palladius a bishop, and sent him to the
Christian Scots of Ireland as their first bishop; and thus, ‘having
ordained a bishop to the Scots, while he endeavoured to preserve Roman
Britain as Catholic, he made the barbarian island Christian,’[6] in this
sense at least that he had formed into a regular church those of its
inhabitants who had already become Christian. Whether the Christian
religion had been introduced into Ireland by the preaching of Ninian, or
whether it had existed there from even an earlier period, there are now
no materials to indicate;[7] but the mission of Palladius seems to imply
that Ninian was at this time dead.
Such are the few facts which we have from contemporary sources at this
time; and all other accounts which we possess of the church among the
barbarians are derived from tradition or legend, which will be dealt
with in its proper place. These few isolated statements show us a church
in Roman Britain, which had been extended, in one direction, into the
districts north of the Roman wall, till arrested by the great mountain
barrier separating the northern from the southern Picts, and, in
another, to the island of Ireland, then the only country inhabited by
the people called Scots. We find it in close connection with the
Gallican Church, and regarding the Patriarch of Rome as the head of the
Western Church and the source of ecclesiastical authority and mission.
With the exception of the temporary prevalence of the Pelagian heresy in
Britain, we can discover no trace of any divergence between them in
doctrine or practice.[8] There now follows a long period of utter
darkness, during which all connection with the Continent was broken off;
and we learn nothing further regarding the churches beyond the western
limits of the empire, till the church of the extreme west came into
contact with that of Gaul towards the end of the sixth century.
[Sidenote: Mission of Saint Columbanus to Gaul.]
In the year 590 the ecclesiastical world in Gaul, in which the Franks
and Burgundians were already settled, was startled by the sudden
appearance of a small band of missionaries on her shores. They were
thirteen in number—a leader with twelve followers. Their outward
appearance was strange and striking. They were clothed in a garment of
coarse texture made of wool, and of the natural colour of the material,
under which was a white tunic. They were tonsured, but in a different
manner from the Gaulish ecclesiastics. Their heads were shaved in front
from ear to ear, the anterior half of the head being made bare, while
their hair flowed down naturally and unchecked from the back of the
head. They had each a pilgrim’s staff, a leathern water-bottle and a
wallet, and a case containing some relics. They spoke among themselves a
foreign language, resembling in sound the dialect of Armorica, but they
conversed readily in Latin with those who understood that language.[9]
When asked who they were and whence they came, they replied,—‘We are
Irish, dwelling at the very ends of the earth. We be men who receive
naught beyond the doctrine of the evangelists and apostles. The Catholic
faith, as it was first delivered by the successors of the holy apostles,
is still maintained among us with unchanged fidelity;’ and their leader
gave the following account of himself,—‘I am a Scottish pilgrim, and my
speech and actions correspond to my name, which is in Hebrew Jonah, in
Greek Peristera, and in Latin Columba, a dove.’[10] In this guise they
appeared before the people, addressing them everywhere with the whole
power of their native eloquence. Some learned the language of the
country. The rest employed an interpreter when they preached before the
laity. To ecclesiastics they spoke the common language of the Latin
Church. Their leader, Columbanus, was a man of commanding presence and
powerful eloquence, and endowed with a determination of character and
intensity of purpose which influenced, either favourably or the reverse,
every one with whom he came in contact. From the kings he soon obtained
permission to settle in their territories and to erect monasteries; and
two monastic establishments soon arose within the recesses of the Vosges
mountains, which now divide Alsace from France—those of Luxeuil and
Fontaines, to which the youth of the country flocked in numbers for
instruction, or for training as monks.
[Sidenote: Controversy regarding Easter.]
They had not been long established there when the Gaulish clergy became
aware that in the new monasteries the festival of Easter was
occasionally celebrated on a different Sunday from that observed by the
Roman Church, there being occasionally an interval of a week between the
two, and sometimes even the violent discrepancy of an entire month. This
arose from a difference in the mode of calculating the Sunday on which
Easter ought to fall, both in regard to the week within which it ought
to be celebrated and the cycle of years by which the month was to be
determined. By the law of Moses the passover was to be slain on the
fourteenth day of the first month of the year, in the evening (Exod.
xii. 2, 3, 6), and the children of Israel were further directed to eat
unleavened bread seven days:—‘In the first month, on the fourteenth day
of the month, at even, ye shall eat unleavened bread, until the
one-and-twentieth day of the month’ (__Ib.__ xii. 18). It was further
declared that the month in which the fourteenth day or the full moon
fell first after the vernal equinox was to be their first month. In
applying this rule to the Christian Easter, the Eastern Church, in the
main, adopted it literally, and celebrated Easter on the same day as the
Jewish Passover, on whatever day of the week it might fall. The Western
Church, however, held that, as our Saviour had risen from the dead on
the first day of the week after the Passover, the festival of Easter
should be celebrated on the Sunday between the fourteenth and the
twentieth day of the moon on the first month of the Jewish lunar year.
In order to bring the lunar date into connection with the solar year so
as to fix the day of the month on which Easter was to be kept, various
cycles were framed by the Church; till at length the Easter cycle of
nineteen years was introduced at Alexandria by Anatolius, bishop of
Laodicea, in 270, by which Easter was celebrated on the Sunday falling
on the fourteenth day of the moon, or between that day and the twentieth
on a cycle of nineteen years. In the Western Church, however, the time
for celebrating Easter was calculated on a cycle of eighty-four years,
which was improved by Sulpicius Severus in 410, and continued to be used
till 457, when a longer cycle of 532 years was introduced by Victorius
of Aquitaine, based upon the cycle of nineteen years; and in the year
525 the computation was finally fixed by Dionysius Exiguus on the cycle
of nineteen years. By this time it was likewise held that, as the
Passover was slain on the evening of the fourteenth day of the moon,
according to the Jewish system of reckoning the days from evening to
evening, the fifteenth, and not the fourteenth, ought to be considered
as the first day of unleavened bread, and consequently Easter ought to
fall on the Sunday between the fifteenth and twenty-first days of the
moon; and by a canon of the fourth council of Orleans, held in the year
541, it was directed that the Easter festival should be observed by all
at the same time, according to the tables of Victorius.[11]
These changes in the mode of computation in the Western Church took
place after the connection between Britain and the rest of the empire
had ceased, and when the British Churches were left in a state of
isolation. They therefore still retained the older mode of computation,
which had been once common to the whole Western Church; and thus it came
that when Columbanus went on his mission to Gaul he found the
continental Churches celebrating the festival of Easter on the Sunday
between the fifteenth and twenty-first days of the moon, calculated on
the cycle of nineteen years, while the British and Irish Churches
celebrated the same festival on the Sunday between the fourteenth and
twentieth days of the moon, calculated according to the cycle of
eighty-four years; the difference in the days of the moon causing an
occasional divergence of a week, and that of the cycles a possible
divergence of a month.[12] The prelates of Gaul seem to have eagerly
caught at a ground upon which they could charge these strange
missionaries, who had taken such a hold upon the country, with following
practices at variance with the universal Church, and thus pursuing a
schismatical course. A council was summoned for the purpose of
considering what steps they ought to take with regard to these
strangers; but Columbanus, though probably included in the summons,
contented himself by sending a letter, which is still extant, addressed
to ‘our holy lords and fathers or brethren in Christ, the bishops,
presbyters, and other orders of Holy Church,’[13] in which he vindicates
the mode of keeping Easter which he had received from his fathers,
according to the cycle of eighty-four years, refers to Anatolius as
having been commended by Eusebius and St. Jerome, and denounces the
change made by Victorius as an innovation. He claimed his right to
follow the course derived from his fathers, and remonstrated with them
for endeavouring to trouble him on such a point. What the result of this
synod was we do not know; but it was followed by an appeal by Columbanus
to the Pope himself. To Columbanus Rome was still the traditional Rome
of the fourth and fifth centuries. Since then the Irish Church had not
come into contact with her, and inherited the same feelings of regard
and deference with which the early church had regarded her before the
period of their isolation, and while she was still to them the
acknowledged head of the churches in the western provinces of the Roman
empire. In this letter, which also is extant, he addressed Boniface IV.
as ‘the holy lord and[14] Apostolic Father in Christ, the Pope.’ He
tells him that he had long desired to visit in spirit and confer ‘with
those who preside in the apostolic chair, the most beloved prelates over
all the faithful, the most revered fathers by right of apostolic
honour.’ He vindicates the doctrine of his church as no way differing
from that of other orthodox churches, but claims to be regarded ‘as
still in his fatherland, and not bound to accept the rules of these
Gauls; but as placed in the wilderness and, offending no one, to abide
by the rules of his seniors;’ and he appeals to ‘the judgment of the 150
fathers of the Council of Constantinople, who judged that the churches
of God established among the Barbarians should live according to the
laws taught them by their fathers.’ This was the second œcumenical
council held at Constantinople in the year 381. The second canon directs
that the bishops belonging to each diocese shall not interfere with
churches beyond its bounds. It then regulates the jurisdiction of the
great patriarchates, and concludes by declaring that the churches of God
among the Barbarian people—that is, beyond the bounds of the Roman
empire—shall be regulated by the customs of their fathers.[15] The
position which Columbanus took up was substantially this—‘Your
jurisdiction as Bishop of Rome does not extend beyond the limits of the
Roman empire. I am a missionary from a church of God among the
Barbarians, and, though temporarily within the limits of your
territorial jurisdiction, and bound to regard you with respect and
deference, I claim the right to follow the customs of my own church
handed down to us by our fathers.’
It is unnecessary for our purpose to enter further into the life and
doings of Columbanus. They have been referred to here at the very
outset, because it was by his mission that the churches of the extreme
west were again, for the first time, brought into contact with the Roman
Church; and he has left behind him authentic writings which present to
us at once the points of contrast between the two churches, and the
relation they bore to each other, and thus afford us a fixed point from
which to start in our examination of the early history and peculiar
characteristics of these Celtic churches during the dark period of their
isolation, when all intercourse with the Continent was cut off.
[Sidenote: Three Orders of Saints in early Irish Church; Secular,
Monastic, and Eremitical.]
There are two ancient documents, both belonging to the eighth century,
which afford us, at the outset, a view of the characteristic features of
the early Irish Church. One is a ‘Catalogue of the Saints of Ireland
according to their different periods,’ in which they are arranged in
three classes corresponding to three periods of the church;[16] and the
other is the Litany of Angus the Culdee, in which he invokes the saints
of the early church in different groups.[17] The Catalogue of the Saints
proceeds thus:—‘The first order of Catholic saints was in the time of
Patricius; and then they were all bishops, famous and holy and full of
the Holy Ghost; 350 in number, founders of churches. They had one head,
Christ, and one chief, Patricius; they observed one mass,[18] one
celebration, one tonsure from ear to ear. They celebrated one Easter, on
the fourteenth moon after the vernal equinox, and what was
excommunicated by one church, all excommunicated. They rejected not the
services and society of women,’ or as another MS. has it, ‘they excluded
from the churches neither laymen nor women; because, founded on the rock
Christ, they feared not the blast of temptation. This order of saints
continued for four reigns.[19] All these bishops were sprung from the
Romans, and Franks, and Britons, and Scots. The second order was of
Catholic Presbyters. For in this order there were few bishops and many
presbyters, in number three hundred. They had one head, our Lord; they
celebrated different masses,[20] and had different rules, one Easter on
the fourteenth moon after the equinox, one tonsure from ear to ear; they
refused the services of women, separating them from the monasteries.
This order has hitherto lasted for four reigns.[21] They received a mass
from Bishop David, and Gillas and Docus, the Britons.[22] The third
order of Saints was of this sort. They were holy presbyters, and a few
bishops; one hundred in number; who dwelt in desert places, and lived on
herbs and water, and the alms; they shunned private property,’ or, as
the other MS. has it, ‘they despised all earthly things, and wholly
avoided all whispering and backbiting; they had different rules and
masses, and different tonsures, for some had the coronal and others the
hair (behind); and a different Paschal festival. For some celebrated the
Resurrection on the fourteenth moon, or on the sixteenth with hard
intentions. These lived during four reigns, and continued to that great
mortality’[23] in the year 666. This document presents us with a short
picture of the church prior to the year 666, and it is hardly possible
to mistake its leading characteristic features during each of the three
periods. In the first period we find churches and a secular clergy. In
the second, the churches are superseded by monasteries, and we find a
regular or monastic clergy; and in the third, we see an eremitical
clergy living in solitary places. But while this seems to indicate, and
may to some extent have arisen from, a deepening asceticism—the clergy
passing from a life under the ordinary canonical law of the church,
through the discipline and strict rule of monastic observances, to a
solitary life of privation and self-denial in what was called the
_Desert_—there were probably causes connected both with the social state
of the wild people among whom they exercised their clerical functions
and with the result of their labours, which led to the church being
reconstructed from time to time on a different basis, and thus
presenting a different outward aspect. The distinction in order between
the bishop and the presbyter, however, seems to have been preserved
throughout, though their relation to each other, in respect to numbers
and jurisdiction, varied at different periods.
[Sidenote: The Church of Saint Patrick.]
The first order of Saints representing the Church during the first
period had Christ for their head, and St. Patrick for their leader or
chief. They claimed therefore to be peculiarly the Church of Saint
Patrick. And here we are struck at the outset by the fact that there is
no mention whatever of the mission of Palladius; and if we turn to the
few notices of the early Irish Church in contemporary writers of other
countries, we find the equally striking contrast that, while they record
the mission of Palladius, they make no mention of Patrick. The life of
Patrick, as usually told and accepted in history, is derived in the main
from his acts, as contained in Lives of the Saint compiled at different
times ranging from the eighth to the twelfth century. Seven of these
lives were published by Colgan in his _Trias Thaumaturga_, and he has
attempted to assign fixed dates to those which are anonymous; but it is
obvious that they are, to a large extent, composed of legendary and
traditional matter. The Book of Armagh, which was compiled about the
year 807,[24] presents us with two older narratives. One was compiled by
Muirchu Maccumachtheni, or the son of Cogitosus, at the suggestion of
Aedh, bishop of Sletty, who died in 698; the other by Tirechan, who is
believed to be the author of the Catalogue of the Saints. Both,
therefore, belong to the same period. Muirchu’s life is imperfect, as we
only possess a short summary of the first part;[25] and we can gather
from it that Patrick had gone to Rome to prepare for his mission, but
went no farther than Gaul, as he there met the disciples of Palladius,
at a place called Ebmoria, who reported the death of Palladius, who,
having failed in his mission, had died on his return to Rome in the
territory of the Britons; and that Patrick then received the episcopal
degree from Matho the holy king and bishop, and proceeded on his mission
to Ireland.[26] Tirechan’s account is more precise. He says, ‘In the
xiii. year of Theodosius the emperor, Patricius the bishop was sent by
Bishop Celestine, Pope of Rome, for the instruction of the Irish; which
Celestine was the forty-second bishop of the apostolic see of the city
of Rome after Peter. Palladius the Bishop was the first sent, who is
otherwise called Patricius, and suffered martyrdom among the Scots, as
the ancient saints relate. Then the second Patricius was sent by an
angel of God, named Victor, and by Pope Celestine, by whose means all
Ireland believed, and who baptized almost all the inhabitants.’[27] This
account of his mission also appears in all the Irish Annals, and is
apparently taken from the older chronicle of Marianus Scotus, who died
in the year 1084, and who gives it thus:—‘In the eighth year of
Theodosius, Bassus and Antiochus being consuls, Palladius, being
ordained by Pope Celestine, was sent as first bishop to the Scots
believing in Christ. After him St. Patricius, a Briton by birth, was
consecrated by St. Celestine the Pope, and sent to the archiepiscopate
of Ireland. There during sixty years, preaching with signs and miracles,
he converted the whole island of Ireland to the faith.’[28] As Pope
Celestine died in July 432, this supposed mission of Patrick must have
taken place within a year at least of that of Palladius; and while
Probus records the latter alone, without any hint of its sudden
termination, we are asked to believe that it had proved at once
unsuccessful, and that Palladius having either suffered martyrdom or
died within the year, a second mission, headed by Patrick, was sent
either directly by or during the life of Pope Celestine. If this be so,
if it be true that the mission of Palladius effected nothing and came to
an end either by his martyrdom or flight within a year, and that
Patrick’s mission, which succeeded it, was followed by the conversion of
the whole island, it seems strange that nothing should have been known
on the Continent at the time of this great event, and that it should be
noticed by no contemporary author. Not a single writer prior to the
eighth century mentions it; and even Bede, who quotes the passage in
Probus recording the mission of Palladius, and mentions those of Ninian
and Columba, is silent as to that of Patrick. Columbanus, and the other
missionaries from Ireland who followed him, seem to have told their
foreign disciples nothing about him, and in the writings of the former
which have been preserved,—in his letters to the Popes and the Gaulish
clergy, and in his sermons to his monks,—the name of Patrick, the great
founder of his church, never appears. We should be tempted to conclude,
as many have done, that the account of Patrick and of his mission was
entirely mythical, and that neither the one nor the other had any real
existence, were it not that, when we turn to the writings of two of the
contemporaries of Columbanus at home, we do find an occasional mention
of Patrick at a sufficiently early date to leave no reasonable doubt of
his existence, and that two documents are attributed to him which may
fairly be accepted as genuine. The oldest authentic notice of Patrick
occurs in a letter which is still extant, written by Cummian to
Segienus, abbot of Iona, in the year 634, regarding the proper time for
keeping Easter. In it he refers to the cycle ‘introduced into use by our
pope, Saint Patricius;’[29] and Adamnan, writing in the end of the
seventh century, in the second preface to his Life of Columba mentions
‘Maucta, a pilgrim from Britain, a holy man, a disciple of Saint
Patricius the bishop.’[30] These early notices, though few in number,
seem sufficient to prove his existence; but if we are to receive as
genuine documents his Confession and the Epistle to Coroticus, as
undoubtedly we ought, they not only afford conclusive evidence of his
own existence and the reality of his mission, but give us his own
account of the leading particulars of his life.[31] The information he
gives us may be shortly stated thus:—Patricius was born of Christian
parents and belonged to a Christian people; for he ‘was the son of
Calpornius a deacon, son of the late Potitus a presbyter, who lived in
the village of Bannavem of Tabernia, where he had a small farm.’[32] He
was of gentle birth, his father being also a ‘decurio,’ that is, one of
the council or magistracy of a Roman provincial town.[33] He lived at
this little farm when, in his sixteenth year, he was taken captive and
brought to Hibernia or Ireland with many thousands; and he adds, ‘as we
deserved, for we had forsaken God, and had not kept his commandments,
and were disobedient to our priests, who admonished us for our
salvation.’ He remained six years in slavery in Ireland, where he was
employed tending sheep; and then he escaped in a ship, the sailors of
which were pagans, and after three days reached land, and for
twenty-eight days journeyed through a desert. He was again taken
captive, and remained two months with these people, when on the sixtieth
night he was delivered from their hands. A few years after he was with
his parents, or relations, in the Roman province of Britain,[34] when he
resolved, in consequence of a vision, to leave his native country and
his kindred, and go to Ireland as a missionary to preach the gospel,
which, he says, he was able to accomplish after several years.
Saint Patrick’s narrative of his early life conveys the impression that
he was a simple youth, of an earnest and enthusiastic temperament, who,
in the solitude of his captivity in Ireland, had communed with his own
spirit and been brought under a deep sense of religion; and, when again
restored to his native country and his home, had brooded over the desire
which strong religious conviction creates in many a youth to devote
himself to missionary labour, till he became persuaded that he had
received a divine call. If he was taken captive in his sixteenth year
and remained six years in captivity, he was twenty-two when he escaped,
and was probably now between twenty-five and thirty years old. He had
early been made a deacon,[35] and must at this time have gone to Ireland
probably in priest’s orders; for he tells us that he had lived and
preached among the Irish from his youth up, and given the faith to the
people among whom he dwelt.[36] At the age of forty-five he was
consecrated a bishop, and in his epistle to Coroticus he designates
himself ‘Patricius, a sinner and unlearned, but appointed a bishop in
Ireland.’[37]
It is clear from Patrick’s own account of himself that he was a citizen
of the Roman province in Britain;[38] that his family had been Christian
for at least two generations, and belonged to the aristocracy of a Roman
provincial town, and that the district of Tabernia, in which it was
situated, was exposed to the incursions of the Scots; that he had
laboured among the Irish as a missionary for at least fifteen, if not
twenty, years before he was consecrated a bishop, and it was only
latterly that his labours were crowned with much success. His Confession
appears to have been written towards the end of his life, as he
concludes it by saying that it was written in Ireland, and that this was
his confession before he died;[39] and his epistle was written to
Coroticus while the Franks were still pagan—that is, before their
conversion in the year 496. In his Confession he tells us that through
his ministry clerics had been ordained for this people newly come to the
faith, and that in Hiberio or Ireland ‘those who never had the knowledge
of God, and had hitherto only worshipped unclean idols, have lately
become the people of the Lord, and are called the sons of God. The sons
of the Scoti and the daughters of princes are seen to be monks and
virgins of Christ.’[40] In the epistle to Coroticus he addresses his
‘beloved brethren and children whom he had begotten in such numbers to
Christ.’[41] It is, however, remarkable that he does not in either
document make the slightest allusion to Palladius or his mission, and
this leads certainly to the inference that it had failed and had never
become an efficient and operative episcopal mission in the country.
Patrick’s episcopate must certainly have followed that of Palladius, and
that possibly at no great distance of time; and if he was then
forty-five years of age, this would throw his sixteenth year, when he
was taken captive, to the first decade of the century, when the Roman
province was exposed to the incursions of the Scots, and thus he must
have himself already laboured as a missionary among the Irish people, to
whom Palladius was sent as their first bishop.
Such is the account which Patrick gives of himself in these documents,
which we accept as undoubtedly genuine; and we shall see how, at a later
period, this simple narrative became incrusted with a mass of
traditional, legendary, and fictitious matter, which had gradually
accumulated in the minds of the people, and was brought into shape and
added from time to time to the story of Saint Patrick’s life and labours
by each successive biographer.
Patrick states in his Confession simply that he ordained clerics, but we
are told in the Catalogue of the Saints that ‘they were all bishops,
famous and holy, and full of the Holy Ghost, 350 in number, founders of
churches;’ and this is confirmed by Angus the Culdee, in his Litany,
where he invokes ‘seven times fifty holy bishops, with three hundred
priests, whom Patraic ordained,’ and quotes the verse—
‘Seven times fifty holy cleric bishops[42]
The saint ordained,
With three hundred pure presbyters[43]
Upon whom he conferred orders.’
Upwards of one half of his clergy seem, therefore, to have been bishops,
and he appears to have placed a bishop, consecrated by himself, in each
church which he founded. The difference in order between bishop and
presbyter is here fully recognised; and there was nothing in this very
inconsistent with the state of the primitive church before it became a
territorial church, and its hierarchical arrangements and jurisdiction
were adapted to and modelled upon the civil government of the Roman
empire.[44] In the earlier period of the Christian Church there was,
besides the chief bishop in each city, whose consecration required the
action of at least three bishops, an order of ‘Chorepiscopi,’ or country
bishops,[45] who were consecrated by the chief bishop; and the relative
proportion of bishops and presbyters was very different from what it
afterwards became. We find in the Apostolical Constitutions in the
ordinances of the church of Alexandria that ‘if there should be a place
having a few faithful men in it, before the multitude increase, who
shall be able to make a dedication to pious uses for the bishop to the
extent of twelve men, let them write to the churches round about the
place, in which the multitude of believers are established. If the
bishop whom they shall appoint hath attended to the knowledge and
patience of the love of God, with those with him, let him ordain two
presbyters when he hath examined them, or rather three;’[46] and we are
told that in Asia Minor alone there were upwards of four hundred
bishops.[47] Such a church as this could not have been very unlike the
Irish Church at this period—the relative proportion of bishops and
presbyters much the same; and Patrick seems to have adapted it to the
state of society among the people who were the objects of his mission.
Their social system was one based upon the tribe, and it consisted of a
congeries of small septs united together by no very close tie. Anything
like a territorial church, with a central jurisdiction, was hardly
possible among them. Patrick tells us nothing of the mode in which he
was consecrated a bishop; but the expression in his epistle to
Coroticus, that he was constituted the bishop in Ireland, seems to imply
that he regarded himself as chief bishop for the whole people. He
founded churches wherever he could obtain a grant from the chief of the
sept, and appears to have placed in each _Tuath_ or tribe a bishop,
ordained by himself, who may have had one or more presbyters with him.
It was, in short, a congregational and tribal episcopacy, united by a
federal rather than a territorial tie under regular jurisdiction; and
this is implied by the statement that ‘what was excommunicated by one
church was excommunicated by all.’ During Patrick’s life, he no doubt
exercised a superintendence over the whole; but we do not see any trace
of the metropolitan jurisdiction of the church of Armagh over the rest.
‘All these bishops,’ we are told in the Catalogue of the Saints, ‘were
sprung from the Romans, and Franks, and Britons, and Scots.’ By the
Romans and Britons probably those are meant who belonged to the Roman
province in Britain, and followed Patrick in his mission; by the Franks
those who came from Gaul appear to be intended; and whenever it was
possible, he no doubt appointed a native Scot, and one of the tribe
among whom he founded a church, to be its bishop. The extent to which
the foreign element entered into the clergy of his church may be learnt
from the Litany of Angus, who invokes ‘the Romans in Achudh Galma, in Hy
Echach; the Romans in Letar Erca; the Romans and Cairsech, daughter of
Brocan, in Cill Achudh Dallrach; Cuan, a Roman, in Achill; the Romans in
Cluan Caincumni; and the Romans with Aedan in Cluan Dartada; the Gauls
in Saillidu; the Gauls in Magh Salach; and the Gauls in Achudh Ginain;
the Saxons in Rigar; and the Saxons in Cluan Muicceda; fifty men of the
Britons with Monan, in Lann Leire.’ And, in another tract by Angus the
Culdee on the Mothers of the Saints, he has, ‘Dina, daughter of the king
of the Saxons, was the mother of the ten sons of Bracan, king of
Britain, son of Bracha Meoc: viz. St. Mogoroc of Struthuir; St.
Mochonoc, the pilgrim of Kil Mucraisse and of Gelinnia in the region of
Delbhna Eathra; Dirad of Eadardr uim; Duban of Rinndubhain alithir;
Carenn of Killchairinne; Carpre, the pilgrim of Killchairpre; Isiol
Farannain; Iust in Slemna of Alban; Elloc of Kill Moelloc, near
Lochgarman; Pian of Killphiain in Ossory; Coeman, the pilgrim of Kill
Choeman, in the region of Gesille and elsewhere. She was also mother of
Mobeoc of Gleanngeirg, for he was a son of Brachan, son of Bracha
Meoc.’[48]
The first order, too, ‘rejected not the services and society of women,’
or, according to another MS., ‘they excluded from their churches neither
laymen nor women,’ which indicates their character as secular clergy, in
contradistinction to those under a monastic rule. ‘They celebrated
Easter on the fourteenth moon after the vernal equinox,’ that is, as we
have seen elsewhere, from the fourteenth to the twenty-first day of the
moon; and there appears to have been no difference in this respect
between them and the Church of Rome prior to the year 457. Their clergy
were tonsured; but at this time there were in the Church various forms
of tonsure, and the first form, ‘from ear to ear,’ that is, having the
hair removed from the fore part of the head and leaving it to grow
behind the ears, was also practised in Gaul, from whence it was probably
derived.[49]
Although Patrick alludes to the great numbers he converted, there does
not seem to have been anything like a national adoption of Christianity.
It is remarkable enough that the _Ardri_ or chief king of Ireland
appears to have remained pagan during the entire period of his mission,
and it was not till the year 513 that a Christian monarch ruled in Tara.
Neither did the arrangement by which isolated bishops were placed in
each sept or tribe whose chief or petty king had been converted prove
well calculated to disseminate Christianity through the whole tribe, and
to leaven the entire people with its influence.
[Sidenote: Collegiate Churches of Seven Bishops.]
This appears to have led, towards the end of his life, to the adoption
of a very peculiar sort of Collegiate Church. It consisted in a group of
seven bishops placed together in one church; and they were brought
closer to the tribal system based on the family which prevailed in
Ireland, by these bishops being usually seven brothers selected from one
family in the tribe. We see the germs of something of the kind in
Tirechan’s Annotations, where it is said that towards the end of his
career ‘Patrick passed the Shannon three times, and completed seven
years in the western quarter, and came from the plain of Tochuir to Dulo
Ocheni, and founded seven churches there.’ And again, ‘The seven sons of
Doath—that is Cluain, Findglais and Imsruth, Culcais, Deruthmar, Culcais
and Cennlocho—faithfully made offerings to God and Saint Patrick.’[50]
But Angus the Culdee in his Litany gives us a list of no fewer than one
hundred and fifty-three groups of seven bishops in the same church, all
of whom he invokes. A few of these we can identify sufficiently to show
that they usually consisted of seven brothers living together in one
church, and that they belong to this period. For instance, he invokes
‘the seven bishops of _Tulach na’n Epscop_,’ or Tulach of the Bishops;
and we find in the old Irish Life of St. Bridget, who died in 525, that
on one occasion at Tealagh, in the west of Leinster, ‘pious nobles,
_i.e._ seven bishops, were her guests.’[51] Again he invokes ‘the seven
bishops of Drom Arbelaig;’ and in the Irish Calendar on 15th January we
have ‘seven bishops, sons of Finn, _alias_ Fincrettan of
Druimairbealagh.’ Again he invokes ‘the seven bishops in Tamhnach;’ and
in the Calendars on 21st July we have this notice: ‘The seven bishops of
Tamhnach Buadha, and we find seven bishops, the sons of one father, and
their names and history among the race of Fiacha Suighdhe, son of
Feidhlimidh Reachtmhar, son of Tuathal Teachtmhar.’ Again he invokes
‘the seven bishops of Cluan Emain;’ and we are told in the Life of Saint
Forannan that, after the Council of Drumceatt Columba was met by a large
concourse of ecclesiastics, among whom the descendants of Cennaine, the
aunt of St. Bridget, are alone enumerated, and among these are ‘the
seven bishops of Cluain-Hemain,’ now Clonown, near Athlone, and they are
represented in the Genealogy of the Saints in the Book of Lecan as seven
brethren, the sons of the same mother.[52] Such appear to be in the main
the characteristics of the early Irish Church in this the first period
of its history; and we must now turn to Scotland to see to what extent
they are reflected there.
[Sidenote: Church of the southern Picts.]
The dark interval of a century between the death of Ninian and the
coming of Columba when we find ourselves treading on firm ground, is
thus filled up by Fordun:—
‘In A.D. 430 Pope Celestinus sent Saint Palladius into Scotia, as the
first bishop therein. It is therefore fitting that the Scots should
diligently keep his festival and church commemorations, for by his word
and example he with anxious care taught their nation—that of the Scots
to wit—the orthodox faith, although they had for a long time previously
believed in Christ. Before his arrival, the Scots had, as teachers of
the faith and administrators of the Sacraments, priests only or monks,
following the rite of the primitive church. So he arrived in Scotland
with a great company of clergy in the eleventh year of the reign of King
Eugenius, and the king freely gave him a place of abode where he wanted
one. Moreover, Palladius had as his fellow-worker in preaching and
administering the Sacraments a most holy man, Servanus; who was ordained
bishop and created by Palladius his coadjutor—one worthy of him in all
respects—in order to teach the people the orthodox faith, and with
anxious care perfect the work of the Gospel; for Palladius was not equal
to discharging alone the pastoral duties over so great a nation.’ And
again: ‘The holy bishop Terrananus likewise was a disciple of the
blessed Palladius, who was his godfather and his fostering teacher and
furtherer in all the rudiments of letters and of the faith.’[53] This
statement has been substantially accepted as history by all historians
of the Church in Scotland; but when we examine the grounds on which it
rests, we shall see reason to doubt whether Palladius ever was in
Scotland, and to place Servanus at a much later period. Terrananus alone
appears to have any real claim to belong to this period.
The only real information we possess as to the acts of Palladius, in
addition to the short notice of his mission given us by the contemporary
chronicler Prosper of Aquitaine, is derived from the Lives of St.
Patrick; and we shall see how this statement of Palladius’ missionary
labours in Scotland grew out of these lives, combined with the
fictitious character of the early history of Scotland as it is
represented by Fordun. The oldest Lives of Patrick are those in the Book
of Armagh; and Tirechan, whose annotations contain our first notices of
his life, states that Palladius ‘suffered martyrdom among the
Scots’—that is, the Irish—‘as the ancient saints relate.’[54] Muirchu,
whose Life was compiled soon after, says, after narrating his mission to
Ireland, ‘Neither did those rude and savage people readily receive his
doctrine, nor did he wish to pass his time in a land not his own; but
returning hence to him who sent him, having begun his passage the first
tide, little of his journey being accomplished, he died in the territory
of the Britons.’[55] The next notice we have of him is in the Life
attributed to Mark the Anchorite which belongs to the beginning of the
ninth century, and is added to the _Historia Britonum_ of Nennius. Here
Palladius is not allowed to land in Ireland at all, ‘but tempests and
signs from God prevented his landing, for no one can receive anything on
earth except it be given him from above. Returning, therefore, from
Ireland to Britain, Palladius died in the land of the Picts.’[56]
Probus, who had the Book of Armagh before him, and embodies many
passages of Muirchu’s Life in his own narrative, repeats his account of
Palladius, but substitutes for the expression ‘in the territory of the
Britons’ that of ‘in the territory of the Picts.’[57] The Life termed by
Colgan the third follows that of Muirchu, and states that ‘he returned
to go to Rome, and died in the region of the Britons.’[58] Another Life
makes Palladius land in Ireland and found three churches there; but
‘seeing that he could not do much good there, wishing to return to Rome,
he migrated to the Lord in the region of the Picts. Others, however, say
that he was crowned with martyrdom in Ireland,’[59] alluding in the
latter part to the statement of Tirechan. The Tripartite Life says that,
‘on turning back afterwards, sickness seized him in the country of the
Cruithne, and he died of it.’[60]
Thus far we find that the oldest view was that he suffered martyrdom in
Ireland. This is followed by the statement that he died in the territory
of the Britons on his way back to Rome. The territory of the Picts is
then substituted for that of the Britons; but this evidently points to
Galloway as the place where he landed and died, if he had not been
martyred in Ireland. Finally the storm, which Mark the Anchorite tells
us hindered his landing, is now made to execute a more remarkable feat.
One of the earliest lives of Saint Patrick is the hymn attributed to
Fiech of Sletty, and in the Scholia attached to it we are told that
Palladius founded three churches in Ireland; ‘nevertheless he was not
well received by the people, but was forced to go round the coast of
Ireland towards the north, until, driven by a great tempest, he reached
the extreme part of the Modhaid towards the south, where he founded the
church of Fordun and Pledi in his name there.’[61] Another biographer,
not satisfied with this, removes his martyrdom from Ireland, and, after
narrating the founding of the three churches, tells us that ‘after a
short time Palladius died in the plain of Girgin, in a place which is
called Forddun. But others say that he was crowned with martyrdom
there.’[62] The place meant is undoubtedly Fordun in the Mearns, the
Irish form of which name was _Maghgherginn_, and the storm here drives
him from Ireland to the north, through the Pentland Firth, and along the
east coast southwards till he reaches the coast of Kincardineshire, and
dies at Fordun.
This form of the legend, which takes him round Scotland to the territory
of the Picts on the east coast, evidently owes its origin to the fact
that the church of Fordun in the Mearns was dedicated to Palladius under
the local name of Paldy, and was believed to possess his relics. How
then came his dedication and his relics there if he had no mission
himself in Scotland? The notices of Terrananus may throw some light upon
this. He is said in the Breviary of Aberdeen to have been a native of
the province of the Mearns, to have been baptized and instructed in the
Christian faith by Palladius, and to have died and been buried at
Banchory on the river Dee, called from him Banchory-Ternan. His day in
the Calendar is the 12th of June, and on that day Angus the Culdee has
in his metrical Calendar,—
‘Torannan, the long-famed voyager
Over the broad shipful sea.’
Now the scholiast upon this Calendar records a tradition that he was the
same person with Palladius. He says,‘Torannan, the far-famed voyager,
that is, Palladius, who was sent from the successor of Peter to Erin
before Patraic. He was not received in Erin, whereupon he went to Alban.
He is buried in Liconium.’[63] Liconium was probably the old name of the
place afterwards called Banchory-Ternan. The probable solution is that
Terrananus or Ternan really was a disciple of Palladius, and brought his
relics either from Ireland or from Galloway to his native district in
the territories of the southern Picts, who, we know from Bede, had been
converted, perhaps not long before, by Ninian of Candida Casa, and, as
the founder of the church of Fordun in honour of Palladius, became to
some extent identified with him. Add to this Fordun’s assumption that
the Scots to whom Palladius was sent as first bishop were the
inhabitants of Scotland, and we see upon what his statement was based.
There were, of course, no Scots in Scotland at that time. But, by thus
appropriating Palladius, Fordun brought himself into a dilemma.
According to his fictitious and artificial scheme of the early history
of his country, the Scots had colonised Scotland several centuries
before Christ, and had been converted to Christianity by Pope Victor I.
in the year 203. But if Palladius was their first bishop in 430, what
sort of church had they between these dates? He is therefore driven to
the conclusion that it must have been a church governed by presbyters or
monks only. Hector Boece gave the name of Culdees to the clergy of this
supposed early church; and thus arose the belief that there had been in
Scotland an early church of Presbyterian Culdees.
Although we may thus accept Terrananus as a disciple of Palladius,
Servanus has no claim to be regarded as possessing the same character.
Fordun tells us ‘In the History of Saint Kentigern we read that Servanus
was the disciple of the reverend bishop Palladius, almost in the very
earliest days of the Scottish Church;’ and again, ‘On his arrival in
Scotia he (Palladius) found Saint Servanus there, and called him to work
in the vineyard of the Lord of Sabaoth; and when afterwards the latter
was sufficiently imbued with the teaching of the church, Palladius
appointed him his suffragan over all the nation of the Scots. So runs
the story in that work.’ These passages are quoted from a Life of
Kentigern, a fragment of which, containing the passage in question, is
still preserved.[64] In this life the birth of Kentigern is placed at
Culross, where he is received and educated by Servanus. Kentigern died
in extreme old age in 603, which places his birth towards the beginning
of the sixth century; but unless the life of Servanus had extended
beyond the century, he could not have been found in Scotland by
Palladius if he arrived in 430. It would be just possible that he might
have been a disciple, were it not that the Life of Servanus has also
been preserved. It is contained in the same MS. with one of the lives of
Kentigern, and seems to have been recognised by the church of Glasgow as
the life of the same Servanus who was his instructor;[65] but when we
turn to this life, we do not find in it the least mention of either
Palladius or Kentigern. Servanus is there brought in contact with
Adamnan, abbot of Iona, who flourished in the seventh century; and he
founds the church of Culross in the reign of Brude, king of the Picts,
who filled the throne from 697 to 706 in the latter part of the life of
Adamnan.[66] It is obvious, therefore, that there is a great anachronism
in placing this Servanus as the instructor of Kentigern, and that he in
reality belongs to the century after his death. We are thus left with
Terrananus or Ternan alone, as having: any claim to belong to this
period, and the dedications to him show that the field of his labours
was the territory of the southern Picts, who are said by Bede to have
been converted some time before by Ninian.
Although we thus lose two traditionary apostles of the early Scottish
Church, we find, on the other hand, indications of a connection between
this church of the southern Picts and the church in Ireland which
belongs to the first period in the Catalogue of the Saints of Ireland
and is said to have been founded by Patrick. Nectan, who is called in
the Pictish Chronicle king of all the provinces of the Picts, and
reigned from 458 to 482, is there said to have founded the church of
Abernethy in honour of St. Bridget; and we are told in the Life of
Boethius or Buitte, who founded the church of Mainister Buitte in
Ireland and died in 521, that he arrived in Pictland with sixty
followers, ten of whom were brothers and ten virgins; and finding
Nectan, king of that land, just dead, he raised him to life, and
received from him a grant of the fortress in which his miraculous
recovery had taken place, where he founded a church.[67] In the
dedications of the churches in the territory of the southern Picts, we
find traces of the presence of two other saints who belonged to this
early period of the Irish Church. The church of Inchmocholmoc, now
Inchmahome, in the Loch of Menteith, is dedicated to Mocholmoc, whose
day in the Calendar was the 6th of June, and this identifies him with
Colman of Dromore, in Ireland, who was called Mocholmoc.[68] He was an
Irish Pict, a disciple of Ailbe of Emly, and founded his monastery of
Dromore at latest before the year 514. Fillan, called _an lobar_, or the
leper, whose day is 20th June, was also a disciple of Ailbe, and is said
in the Irish Calendar to have been of _Rath Erenn in Alban_, or ‘the
fort of the Earn, in Scotland;’ and the parish of Saint Fillans, at the
east end of Loch Earn, takes its name from him, while the church of
Aberdour, on the northern shore of the Firth of Forth, is also dedicated
to him.[69] Further than this we can throw no light upon this early
church among the southern Picts.
[Sidenote: Early Dalriadic Church.]
Towards the end of the fifth century, however, there took place among
them a settlement of an Irish people who were already Christian. These
were Scots from the district in Ireland termed Dalriada, forming the
north-eastern part of Ulster, and extending from the river Ravel to the
Bann. We are told in the Lives of St. Patrick that he visited this
district of Dalriada, and founded several churches in it; and that when
he again revisited it for the purpose of confirming and extending the
faith, he found the twelve sons of Erc in possession of the sovereignty,
and prophesied of one of them, Fergus mor, son of Erc, that he should be
a king, and that the kings of that land, and also of Fortren, in the
land of the southern Picts, should descend from him;[70] and Tighernac
records that ‘Fergus mor, son of Erc, with the people of Dalriada, takes
possession of part of Britain and dies there.’ They appear to have
landed in Kintyre and spread from thence along the coasts of Argyll,
which from them took the name of Dalriada. For sixty years they appear
to have gradually , until their extended their possessions encroachment
upon the land of the Picts, towards the north, brought down upon them
Brude, son of Maelcu, the powerful king of the northern Picts, from whom
they sustained a great defeat; and they were for the time driven back
into Kintyre. This Dalriadic people brought their Christian religion
with them, and, during this period of sixty years of their advance into
the country, appear to have extended themselves as far as the island of
Mull, so as to embrace the island of Iona within their bounds, for in
this island we are told the three sons of Erc—Loarn, Fergus, and
Angus—were buried; and Fordun is probably recording real events when he
tells us that Domangart, the son of Fergus, and Gabran his grandson,
after whose death the Dalriads were driven back to Kintyre, were buried
here.[71] There does appear, in fact, to have been in the island of
Iona, even at this early period, a Christian establishment of that
peculiar collegiate form which appears at this time in Ireland: for
among the groups of seven bishops whom Angus the Culdee invokes in his
Litany, we find ‘the seven bishops of Hii’; and again, apparently the
same group, as ‘the seven bishops of the church of Ia,’ another form of
the name of the island.[72]
The extensive prevalence of the dedications to Bridget or Bride in the
West Highlands and Islands shows the influence of the Irish Church at
this period in the western districts; and we learn from the old Lives of
St. Bridget that she was visited shortly before her death, which took
place in 525, by Nennidius, son of Ethath, ‘de partibus Mula,’ which
Colgan rightly takes to mean the island of Mull.[73] The dedications to
Odhran or Oran, too, in the islands connected with Dalriada, probably
belong to this earlier Dalriadic Church. Besides the cemetery in Iona
called Reilic Odhrain, he appears in Tyree, where there is a
burial-ground called Claodh Odhrain, in Colonsay at Killoran, and in
Mull at Tiroran, on the north bank of Loch Scridan. He appears to be the
same person as Odhran or Oran of Leitrioch-Odhrain, now Latteragh, in
the barony of Upper Ormond and county of Tipperary in Ireland, whose
death is recorded on the 2d October 548. He was of the same stock as the
people of Dalriada.[74]
[Sidenote: Church south of the Firths of Forth and Clyde.]
When we turn to the district south of the Firths of Forth and Clyde,
which contained a mixed population of Britons, Picts, and Saxons, the
former two of whom alone professed Christianity, we find, as we might
expect, that there was a connection between the Christian Church there
and both the British and the Irish Church. With the British Church we
may connect those sons of Brachan or Brychan who are said to have
founded churches in Manau. These are Rhun Dremrudd and Rhawin, two of
his sons who are said to have founded churches there and to have been
slain by the Saxons and Picts. Another son, Arthur, was buried in Manau;
and Nevydd, the son of Rhun, is said to have been a bishop in the north
and likewise to have been slain by the Saxons and Picts. In one account
his church is said to have been at _Lechgelyddon_, or ‘the Stone of
Celyddon’ or Caledonia, in the north; and his name is probably preserved
in Rosneveth, now Roseneath.[75]
The connection between this church and that of Ireland appears from the
legend of St. Monenna, of which we have three versions. She is said to
have been consecrated as a virgin by St. Patrick, and to have formed a
society consisting of eight virgins and one widow, and founded the
church of Cillsleibhe Cuillin, now Killevy in the county of Armagh. In
one of these legends she is said to have sent one of her virgins called
Brignat to Rosnat, a name by which, as we shall afterwards see, Candida
Casa, or Whithern, was known. Three days after her death, one of her
virgins who succeeded her, called Tannat, dies. In another form of the
legend she is said to have founded seven churches in Scotland: one at
Chilnecase in Galloway, a second on the hill of Dundonald in Ayrshire, a
third on Dumbarton rock, a fourth in the castle of Strivelyn or
Stirling, a fifth at Dunedene, ‘which in Anglic is called Edeneburg,’ a
sixth on the hill of Dunpelder in East-Lothian, and the seventh at
Lanfortin or Longforgund in Gowrie, where she is said to have died; and
her relics were divided between the Scots, English, and Irish, the first
portion being at Lanfortin and the last at Cillsleibhe. In the third
form of the legend she founds many churches and monasteries in Scotland:
one in Strivelyn or Stirling, one at Edeneburg on the top of the rock in
honour of Saint Michael, three in Galloway, and one at Lanfortin. Here
we see that her churches were mainly founded at the principal fortified
posts in the country. Her death is recorded in the year 519.[76]
Such are the few scattered notices of this church which we are able to
substitute for the fabulous missions of Palladius and Servanus in
Scotland at this time. It was confined to the southern Picts, the
Dalriads, and the population south of the Firths of Forth and Clyde, the
tribes forming the nation of the northern Picts, and occupying the
districts north of the great mountain range called the Mounth, being
still pagan; and we find indications that the church, as then
constituted, proved ineffectual to win over the people to any great
extent to a thorough adoption of Christianity, and that a very general
relapse to paganism had taken place.
[Sidenote: Apostasy of early churches.]
Jocelin is probably reporting a genuine tradition when, in his Life of
Kentigern, he says that the Picts, who had received the faith from
Ninian, had lapsed into apostasy; and so also the author of the older
Life of Kentigern, when he terms a king of the Picts of Lothian
‘semi-pagan.’[77] St. Patrick, in his epistle to Coroticus, written
probably towards the end of his life, terms Coroticus, in whom we have
already recognised that Ceretic Guledig from whom the kings of Alcluith
or Alclyde were descended,[78] ‘a tyrant who fears neither God nor his
priests,’ and his followers ‘wicked rebels against Christ, and betrayers
of Christians into the hands of the Scots and Picts.’ The latter, too,
he repeatedly terms the apostate Picts, and says that the people ruled
by Coroticus were no longer ‘his fellow-citizens, or the fellow-citizens
of pious Romans, but were the fellow-citizens of demons,’ and the
‘associates of Scots and apostate Picts.’[79] It is apparent that the
churches founded by Ninian and Patrick had in the main failed to effect
a permanent conversion of the native tribes to Christianity, and that
the latter was doomed to witness, even in his own life, a great
declension from the Christian Church and relapse into paganism.
It required a different organisation to establish the Christian Church
on a firm and permanent basis among them, and to leaven the whole people
with its doctrines and rules of life. The introduction of the monastic
element, and its application to the entire organisation of the Church,
not only effected what a church with its secular clergy had failed to
do, but led to that remarkable outburst of missionary zeal which sent
from the shores of Ireland a stream of Christian missionaries invading
the Continent in every direction, converting the people and founding
monasteries among them, of whom Columbanus was the forerunner.
-----
Footnote 1:
There is a very able paper in the recently published volume of the
remains of the late A. W. Haddan, which originally appeared in the
_Christian Remembrancer_, on ‘The Churches of British Confession.’ It
contains an admirable _résumé_ of this question, and the deductions of
the writer are unquestionably sound. With the views in this paper the
author entirely concurs.
Footnote 2:
Bede, _Hist. Ec._, B. iii. c. iv.
Footnote 3:
An extract from this Life is given by Usher, _Brit. Ecc. Ant._, and an
abstract of it in Bollandus, _Acta Sanct._, Sept. 16. In the Felire of
Angus the Culdee we have, at 16 Sept., _Moinend nuall cech genai_,
‘Monenn the shout of every mouth;’ and the gloss is _Moinend Cluana
Conaire Tomain hi tuaiscert h. Faelan_, ‘Monenn of Cluan Conaire Toman
in north Hy-Faelan,’ in Leinster. The Martyrology of Tamlacht has
‘Monenn, _i.e._ Ninianus episcopus Candide Case.’ Monenn is merely
_Nenn_ or Ninian with the Irish _mo_ or ‘my’ prefixed, as is usual in
naming these saints.
Footnote 4:
‘Florentio et Dionysio Coss. (A.D. 429) ... Agricola Pelagianus,
Severiani Pelagiani Episcopi filius, Ecclesias Britanniæ dogmatis sui
insinuatione corrupit.’—Prosper, _Chron. Opp._ i. 400, 401.
Footnote 5:
‘Florentio et Dionysio Coss. (A.D. 429) ... ad actionem Paladii
diaconi Papa Cœlestinus Germanum Antisiodorensem Episcopum vice sua
mittit, et deturbatis hæreticis Britannos ad Catholicam fidem
dirigit.’—Prosper, _Chron._ 401. Prosper wrote two chronicles about
the year 455. The share taken in the mission by the Gallican bishops
is reported by Constantius in his Life of Germanus written some thirty
years after. The two accounts are not inconsistent. See Haddan and
Stubbs’ _Councils_, vol. i. p. 17, note.
Footnote 6:
‘Basso et Antiocho Coss. (A.D. 431) ad Scotos in Christum credentes
ordinatus a papa Cœlestino Palladius primus episcopus
mittitur.’—Prosper, _Chron._
‘Et ordinato Scotis Episcopo, dum Romanam insulam studet servare
Catholicam, fecit etiam barbaram Christianam.’—Prosper, _Cont.
Collat._ xxi. (A.D. 432).
There can be now no question that the Scots to whom he was sent were
those of Ireland.
Footnote 7:
See Dr. Todd’s _Life of Saint Patrick_, p. 189, for a critical
examination of the facts which seem to imply an earlier Christianity
in Ireland.
Footnote 8:
Protestant church historians are unreasonably jealous of admitting any
connection between the early British or Irish Church and Rome; but the
Rome of the fourth and fifth centuries was not the Rome of the middle
ages. It was the church of St. Jerome and St. Augustine. There was no
question then about supremacy, and the bishop of Rome was simply
regarded with deference and respect as the acknowledged head of the
Christian Church within the western provinces of the empire of which
Rome was the capital. Questions of ecclesiastical supremacy did not
emerge till the empire was broken up.
Footnote 9:
See ‘The Irish Monasteries in Germany,’ _Ulster Journal of Arch._,
vol. vii. p. 233, and authorities there quoted.
Footnote 10:
Columbanus in Epist. to Pope Boniface IV., says—‘Nos enim SS. Petri et
Pauli et omnium discipulorum, divinum canonem Spiritu Sancto
scribentium, discipuli sumus, toti Heberi, ultimi habitatores mundi,
nihil extra evangelicam et apostolicam doctrinam recipientes.’ He
calls himself ‘perigrinus Scotus,’ and adds,—‘Sed talia suadenti,
utpote torpenti actu ac dicenti potius, quam facienti mihi, _Jonæ_
Hebraice, _Peristeræ_, Græce, _Columbæ_ Latine.’—Migne, _Patrologia_,
vol. 37, coll. 275, 282.
Footnote 11:
Hefele, _Concilien Geschichte_, vol. i. p. 317; vol. ii. p. 758.
Footnote 12:
There is no clearer account of the difference in the reckoning of the
days of the moon than that in the letter of Abbot Ceolfrid to Nectan,
king of the Picts, given to us by Bede, and probably his own
composition (_Hist. Ec._, B. v. c. 21). The ordinary idea that the
British and Irish Churches derived their mode of keeping Easter from
the Eastern Church, or from the disciples of St. John, is based upon a
mistake, and arises from their being occasionally but erroneously
termed quarto-decimans from their celebrating Easter on the fourteenth
day of the moon when it fell upon a Sunday; but the Eastern
Christians, to whom this name was properly given, differed essentially
from them by invariably celebrating Easter on the fourteenth day,
whether it fell on a Sunday or not.
Footnote 13:
‘Dominis Sanctis et in Christo patribus vel fratribus, episcopis,
presbyteris, cæterisque sanctæ Ecclesiæ ordinibus.’—Migne,
_Patrologia_, vol. 37, col. 264.
Footnote 14:
‘Domino Sancto et in Christo apostolico patri Papæ.’—_Ib._ col. 226.
Footnote 15:
Hefele, _Concilien Geschichte_, vol. ii. p. 16.
Footnote 16:
This Catalogue was first published by Usher from two MSS., and is
believed to be the work of Tirechan, the author of the annotations on
the Life of Saint Patrick in the Book of Armagh. His period is the
eighth century.
Footnote 17:
The Litany of Angus is contained in the Leabhar Breac, and also in the
Book of Leinster.
Footnote 18:
This was certainly the Roman or Western Form.
Footnote 19:
The names of the kings are given, but it is unnecessary to add them.
They reigned till the year 534.
Footnote 20:
Some retained the Roman Form, others adopted the Gallican introduced
by David, Gillas, and Docus.
Footnote 21:
The kings mentioned reigned to the year 572.
Footnote 22:
This is followed by the names of twenty-five saints of this order.
Footnote 23:
The names of seven bishops and eight presbyters are given.
Footnote 24:
The Book of Armagh has been very inaccurately printed by Sir William
Betham in his _Irish Antiquarian Researches_. An edition of this most
valuable MS. has long been promised by the then Dean of Armagh, now
Bishop of Down, and it is hoped that he will still accomplish it. It
would be an invaluable boon to all students of Church history. See
_Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy_, vol. iii. pp. 316, 356, for
an account of this MS. and of the authors of the lives.
Footnote 25:
The author adopts the theory that the summary of Aidus appended to the
annotations of Tirechan contains the headings of the chapters of the
first part of Muirchu’s life.
Footnote 26:
Betham, _Ant. Res._, App. pp. i, ii, and xliii.
Footnote 27:
_Ibid._ App. xxxv. xxxvi. In this passage xiii. is probably written
for viii. either in Sir W. Betham’s manuscript or in the original MS.
Theodosius became sole emperor in 423. His eighth year was therefore
431, and his ninth 432.
Footnote 28:
Pertz, _Mon. Germ. Hist. Script._, vol. v. p. 533.
Footnote 29:
Usher, _Sylloge_, Ep. xi.
Footnote 30:
Adamnan, _Vit. S. Col._, ed. 1874, p. 107.
Footnote 31:
A careful edition of the Confession and Epistle, with a translation,
is annexed to Miss Cusack’s _Life of Saint Patrick_, to which the
references are made.
Footnote 32:
Qui fuit vico Bannavem Taberniæ.—_Conf._ The natural inference
certainly is that Tabernia was the name of the district in which
Bannavem was situated.
Footnote 33:
Ingenuus fui secundum carnem; Decurione patre nascor.—_Ep. Cor._
Footnote 34:
Et iterum post paucos annos in Britanniis eram cum parentibus
meis.—_Conf._ The expression Britanniis or Britannicis in the plural,
clearly designates the Roman province in Britain. He calls it here his
‘patria.’ ‘Parentes’ may be either parents or relations.
Footnote 35:
He alludes to words spoken when he was fifteen years old. ‘Quod
confessus fueram ante quod essem diaconus.’—_Conf._
Footnote 36:
‘Vos scitis et Deus qualiter apud vos conversatus sum a juventute mea
et fide veritatis et sinceritate cordis; etiam ad gentes illas inter
quas habito, ego fidem illis præstiti et præstabo.’—_Conf._ The same
thing is implied in his epistle to Coroticus, where he says that he
had sent a letter by a holy priest, ‘quem ego ex infantia docui.’ If
he had taught this priest from his infancy, he must himself have been
long in Ireland.
Footnote 37:
In his Confession he says that, when about to be given the rank of a
bishop (‘gradus episcopatus’) a fault was brought up against him which
he had committed thirty years before, when he was fifteen; and his
epistle to Coroticus commences ‘Patricius peccator indoctus, scilicet
Hiberione constitutis episcopum me esse futeor certissime reor, a Deo
accepi id quod sum.’
Footnote 38:
In his Confession he says he had been desirous to go ‘in Britanniis
... quasi ad patriam et parentes; non id solum, sed etiam usque
Gallias.’ This excludes the idea that he could have been a native of
any part of Gaul. Britanniæ is the well-known expression for Roman
Britain. In his epistle to Coroticus he says, ‘Non dico civibus meis,
neque civibus sanctorum Romanorum.’
Footnote 39:
Et hæc est confessio mea antequam moriar.—_Conf._
Footnote 40:
Et ut clerici ubique illis ordinarentur ad plebem nuper venientem ad
credulitatem.... Unde autem Hiberione, qui numquam notitiam habuerunt,
nisi idula et himunda usque nunc semper coluerunt, quomodo nuper
effecta est plebs Domini et filii Dei nuncupabantur. Filii Scotorum et
filiæ Regulorum monachi et virgines Christi esse videntur.—_Conf._
Footnote 41:
O speciossissime, atque amantissimi fratres et filii, quos in Christo
genui, enumerare nequeo.—_Ep. Cor._
Footnote 42:
The word is _Sruith episcop_. Sruth is the Irish equivalent of cleric.
Footnote 43:
The word is _Crumthir_. In the Sanas Cormaic we have _Cruimther_,
i.e. _Gaedelg indi as presbyter_, ‘that is the Gaelic of
presbyter.’—Stokes, _Three Irish Glossaries_, p. 9. In Nennius the
number of presbyters is increased from 300 to 3000, and in the
Tripartite Life to 5000.
Footnote 44:
By the council of Sardica in 347 a canon was passed prohibiting
bishops being placed in small cities or villages where a single
presbyter was sufficient.
Footnote 45:
Bingham’s _Ant._, Book ii. c. 12.
Footnote 46:
_Copt. Coll._, Book i. Can. i. 11. Bunsen’s _Hippolytus_, ii. p. 27.
Footnote 47:
Bingham’s _Ant._, Book ii. c. 11; Book ix. c. 3.
Footnote 48:
Colgan, _A.SS._, p. 312. St. Mochonoc’s church was called Gailinne nam
Breatan, or Gallen of the Britons, in King’s County.
Footnote 49:
St. Paulinus of Nola says (Ep. 7) of some of the monks of his time in
Gaul, that they were ‘casta informitate capillum ad cutem cæsi, et
inæqualiter semitonsi et destituta fronte prærasi.’
Footnote 50:
Betham, _Ant. Res._, App., pp. xxxiii. xxxix.
Footnote 51:
O’Hanlan, _Lives of the Irish Saints_, vol. ii. p. 84.
Footnote 52:
Dr. Todd’s _Life of St. Patrick_, p. 34. The notices from the Irish
Calendars are taken from those of Tamlacht and Donegal.
Footnote 53:
Fordun, _Chron._, B. iii. cc. 8, 9.
Footnote 54:
Qui martyrium passus est apud Scotos, ut tradunt sancti
antiqui.—Betham, _Ant. Res._, App. xxxvi.
Footnote 55:
Sed reversus ad eum qui missit illum revertere vero eo hinc, et in
primo mari transito cœpto qui erat parum itinere in Britonum finibus
vita factus.—_Ib._, App. i.
Footnote 56:
Sed per quasdam tempestates et signa illum Deus prohibuit, quia nemo
potest quicquam accipere in terra nisi fuerit datum desuper, et illa
Palladius rediens de Hibernia ad Britanniam ibi defunctus est in terra
Pictorum.—Nenn., _Hist. Brit._ Ed. Gunn.
Footnote 57:
Ad fines Pictorum pervenisset ibidem vita decessit.—Colg. _Tr. Th._ p.
48.
Footnote 58:
Tertia Vita, _ib._ p. 23.
Footnote 59:
Quarta Vita, _ib._ p. 38.
Footnote 60:
Hennessy’s translation in Miss Cusack’s _Life of S. Patrick_, p. 378.
Footnote 61:
Colgan, _Tr. Th._, p. 5.
Footnote 62:
Secunda Vita, _ib._ p. 13.
Footnote 63:
These and the other notices of St. Ternan will be found conveniently
collected together in the Preface by the late Bishop of Brechin to the
Missal of Arbuthnot.
Footnote 64:
It is printed in the _Chartulary of Glasgow_, and also in the volume
of _Lives of Saint Ninian and Saint Kentigern_, edited by the late
Bishop of Brechin for the series of _Scottish Historians_, vol. v. p.
123.
Footnote 65:
This life is printed in the _Chronicles of the Picts and Scots_, p.
412.
Footnote 66:
The chronicle in the _Scala Cronica_ has under this Brude, ‘En quel
temps veint Saint Servanus en Fiffe.’—_Chron. of Picts and Scots_, p.
201.
Footnote 67:
_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p, 410. The church was probably Carbuddo, or
Castrum Boethii, near Dunnichen, the old name of which was Duin
Nechtain.
Footnote 68:
Lanigan, _Ec. Hist._, vol. i. p. 432. In Ireland the custom existed of
prefixing the word _mo_ or ‘my,’ and adding the word _oc_, or
‘little,’ to the name of a saint, as an expression of endearment. When
the name ended with the syllable _an_, the word _oc_ was substituted
for it. Thus Colman becomes _Mo_cholm_oc_.
Footnote 69:
June 20, _Faolan amlobair i Raith-Erann in Albain._—_Mart. Don._
Footnote 70:
_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 17.
Footnote 71:
The old chronicles have ‘Yona insula, ubi tres filii Erc, seu Fergus,
Loarn, et Angus sepulti fuerunt.’—_Ib._ pp. 151, 174, 288. Fordun says
of Gabran, ‘cujus ad sepeliendum corpus ad ecclesiam Sancti Orani
delatum est, ubi patris et avi funera quiescunt in Hy insula.’—B. iii.
c. 24.
Footnote 72:
Angus has _Secht n-epscoip na Hii_, and also _Secht n-epscoip Cille
Hiæ_—‘The seven bishops of Hii,’ and ‘The seven bishops of the church
of Ia.’
Footnote 73:
Colgan, _A.SS._ p. 112. Mula certainly is Mull, and the old parish of
Kilnoening in Mull probably takes its name from him.
Footnote 74:
_An. IV. Mag._, vol. i. p. 187. In the Martyrology of Tamlacht this
Odhran appears on 2d October as _Odran Lathracha_; and again on 27th
October as _Odrani sac. Lettracha vel o Hi_, that is, ‘Odran, priest
of Latteragh, or of Iona.’ Angus the Culdee has on 27th October _Odran
Abb. Saer Snamach_, ‘Odran, Abbot, noble swimmer’; and in the gloss it
is said he was either ‘Odran the priest of Tech Aireran in Meath, or
Odrain of Lethracha-Odhrain in Muskerry, and of Hi Columcille—that is,
of Relic Odrain in Hii.’—(Forbes, _Calendars_, p. 426.) This
identification of the Oran of Relic Oran in Iona with Oran of
Latteragh places his death in 548, fifteen years before Columba, with
whom he is connected in popular tradition, came to Scotland. The first
appearance of this story is in the old Irish Life of Columba. It is as
follows:—‘Columcille said thus to his people, It would be well for us
that our roots should pass into the earth here. And he said to them,
It is permitted to you that some one of you go under the earth of this
island to consecrate it. Odhran arose quickly and thus spake, If you
accept me, said he, I am ready for that. O Odhran, said Columcille,
you shall receive the reward of this; no request shall be granted to
any one at my tomb unless he first ask of thee. Odhran then went to
heaven. He founded the church of Hy there.’ This story, however, was
unknown to Adamnan, who records the natural death of one of the
brethren whose name was either Brito or who was a Briton, and adds
that he was the first of the brethren who died in the island (B. iii.
c. 7). Neither does the name of Odran appear in the oldest lists of
the twelve companions of Columba; and Angus the Culdee expressly says
the Odran celebrated on 27th October was an abbot, which the Oran of
the tradition could not have been. The epithet of swimmer, too,
alludes to an incident in the life of S. Odran of Latteragh.—See
Colgan, _A.SS._, p. 372.
Footnote 75:
See _Lives of the Cambro-British Saints_, pp. 272, 602, for an account
of Brychan and his family. He had an impossible number of children,
varying in different legends from ten to twenty-four sons and
twenty-six daughters. It has already been remarked (see vol. i. p.
160, note, and the _Four Ancient Books of Wales_, vol. i. p. 82) that
some of these sons and daughters are connected with _Brycheiniog_ or
Brecknock in Wales, and others with Manau Guotodin in the north, and
with the men of the north. It is obvious that there must have been two
Brychans, and that two different families have been mixed together.
The name Brychan comes from _Brych_, ‘speckled,’ the Gaelic equivalent
of which is _Breacc_, and seems to refer to a characteristic of the
Picts. It enters into the name _Brycheiniog_ or Brecknock in Wales,
and we also find it in two different localities in Scotland. In Manau
Guotodin, the chief church, that of Falkirk, was called _Ecglis
Breacc_, or ‘the Speckled Church,’ the Saxon equivalent of which was
_Fahkirk_, from the word _Fah_, signifying speckled. There is also the
river Briech, and on the Firth of Forth Briechness, now Bridgeness. In
Forfarshire we have also Brechin. The northern family seem to have
been the same as that of the ten sons of Braccan, son of Bracha Meoc,
king of the Britons, who found churches in Ireland, as one of the
sons, Iust, is said to have been of _Sleamna in Alban_ or Scotland;
and another, Maconoc, we find in the patron saint of Inverkeilor in
Forfarshire. There is there also a church called Neveth, and in the
_Cognatio_ the sepulchre of Brachan or Brychan is said to be ‘in
insula que vocata Enysbrachan, que est juxta Manniam.’ Mannia stands
here for Manau in the north, and it is possible that Inchbrayoch in
Forfarshire, which was dedicated to Saint Braoch, may be the island
meant.
Footnote 76:
Pervenerat etiam in Albaniam, id est Scotiam, in qua ædificaverat
ecclesias in Christi nomine, quarum hæc sunt nomina.
Una est Chilnecase in Galweia.
Altera vero in cacumine montis, qui appellatur Dundeuel, quia sic
semper solebat, sicut prædiximus, ut supra nudam petram nudis
membris in noctibus oraret Deum, qui semper orandus sit, sicut
scriptura ait; ‘Orate sine intermissione,’ et reliqua.
Tertia autem in alto montis Dunbreten.
Quarta in castello, quod dicitur Strivelin.
Quinta vero Dunedene, quæ Anglica lingua dicta Edenburg.
Sexta enim Mons Dunpeleder, et illinc transfretavit mare in Albaniam
ad Sanctum Andream.
Post hæc vero exiit ad Alecthae, ubi modo est optima ecclesia, quam
Lanfortin aedificavit cum quodam fonte sanctissimo, et mansit illic
aliquanto tempore et multum dilexit illum locum, in quo in fine vitæ
suæ, ut affirmaret, Domino volente, emisit spiritum.—_Vita S. Mon. a
Conchubrano_, cap. vii. 66; _A.SS._ Boll. ad 5 July.
Another Life of Saint Monenna, printed by Capgrave, has
Multis itaque signis in Hibernia declaratis, ad regem Scotiæ nomine
Conagal cognatum suum profecta multas ecclesias et monasteria
construxit, inter quæ
Apud Strivelin unam et
Apud Edenburgh in montis cacumine in honore Sancti Michaelis alteram
edificavit ecclesiam.
Et in Galwedia tres nominatas a fundamentis fecit ecclesias.
Monenna appears in the Calendars on 5th and 6th July; and on the
former day the Irish Calendars have Saint Edania, Edœna, or Edana.
In the Scotch Calendars she appears only in that of David Camerarius
on 5th July as ‘Sancta Moduenna, virgo in Laudonia et Galovida, Scotiæ
provinciis celebris;’ but the Breviary of Aberdeen has on 19th
November ‘Medana virgo Dei castissima ex Ybernia oriunda.’ The account
given of her in the ‘Lectiones’ is shortly this:—Flying from the
attempts of a ‘miles quidam illius provincie nobilis,’ she takes
refuge in Scotland, having crossed in a vessel with two handmaidens,
‘et ad partes Galuidie superiores que Ryndis dicitur arripuit ubi
pauperculam laborando egit vitam.’ The soldier still pursuing her, she
and her maidens embarked upon a stone, which floated thirty miles ‘ad
terram que Farnes dicitur ubi nunc Sancte reliquie virginis
acquiescunt.’ The Breviary places her in the time of Ninian. ‘Tandem
vitam in sanctitate et paupertate transigens sub sanctissimo et
beatissimo patre Niniano antistite pridie kalendarum Novembrium animam
a corpore Domino jubente seperari permisit.’—_Brev. Ab._ xiii. Id.
Dec.
The churches of Kirkmaiden in the parish of that name and the Rinns of
Galloway, and in the parish of Glasserton and district called Farnes,
were dedicated to this Medana. She is, however, probably the same
person as Monenna, also called Moduenna and Edana, and these may have
been two of the three churches said to have been founded by her in
Galloway, the third being the church called Chilnacase, which may have
been at Whithern or Candida Casa, where Medana is said to have died.
It is impossible from the lives to ascertain her true date, as they
are full of anachronisms; but the Ulster Annals have at 518 ‘Quies
Darerce que Moninne nominata est.’
Footnote 77:
Cap. xxvii.—Picti vero prius per Sanctum Ninianum ex magna parte ...
fidem susceperunt. Dein in apostasiam lapsi....
Rex igitur Leudonus vir semipaganus.
Footnote 78:
See vol. i. p. 158, note.
Footnote 79:
See Miss Cusack’s _Life of Saint Patrick_, p. 613, for this epistle
and a translation, and for the expressions above quoted.
CHAPTER II.
THE MONASTIC CHURCH IN IRELAND.
[Sidenote: The second order of Catholic Presbyters.]
Assuming that the three orders of the saints pictured the leading
characteristics of three periods of the Irish Church, there can be no
question that the great feature of the second period was its monastic
character. The principal points of difference in the constitution of the
Church represented by the first two orders were these:—The first order
‘was of Catholic saints,’ the second ‘of Catholic presbyters.’ In the
first they are said to have been ‘all bishops, founders of Churches’; in
the second there were ‘few bishops and many presbyters, in number 300.’
In the first ‘they had one head, Christ, and one chief, Patricius’; in
the second ‘they had one head, our Lord,’ but no chief. In the first
‘they observed one mass, one celebration’; in the second ‘they
celebrated different masses, and had different rules.’ In the first
‘they excluded from the churches neither laymen nor women’; in the
second ‘they refused the services of women, separating them from the
monasteries.’[80] The first, as we have said, exhibits a secular clergy
founding churches; the second a clergy observing rules and founding
monasteries. There were no doubt monasteries in the earlier church, and,
as St. Patrick tells us in his Confession, ‘sons of the Scots and
daughters of the princes are seen to be monks and virgins;’ but these
were accidental features in a church essentially secular, and the
monasteries were probably of the earliest type, when the monks were
laymen, while the clergy, in common with the church at that period,
consisted of bishops with their presbyters and deacons; but in the
second period the entire church appears to have been monastic, and her
whole clergy embraced within the fold of the monastic rule.
[Sidenote: The entire Church monastic. Relative position of Bishops and
Presbyters.]
Bede well expresses this when, in describing one of her offshoots at
Lindisfarne, he says, ‘All the presbyters, with the deacons, cantors,
lectors, and the other ecclesiastical orders, along with the bishop
himself, were subject in all things to the monastic rule.’[81] The Irish
Church was therefore at this period a monastic church in the fullest
sense of the term, and the inevitable effect of this was materially to
influence the relation between the two grades of bishops and presbyters,
both as to position and as to numbers. In order to estimate rightly the
nature of this change, it is necessary to keep in view the distinction
between the power of mission and that of orders. The former is the
source of jurisdiction, and the latter of the functions of the
episcopate. When the two are united, we are presented with a diocesan
episcopacy; but the union is not essential. A monastic church requires
the exercise of episcopal functions within her as much as any other
church, and for that purpose possesses within her the superior grade of
the bishop according to canonical rule;[82] but when it became customary
for the abbot of the monastery as well as several of the brethren to
receive the ordination of the priesthood, for the purpose of performing
the religious rites within the monastery, the tendency of all
monasteries within a church was to encroach upon the functions of the
secular clergy, and not only to claim exemption from the episcopal
jurisdiction, but even to have within themselves a resident bishop for
the exercise of episcopal functions within the monastery, to whose abbot
he was subject as being under the monastic rule.[83] The idea of
transferring monachism entirely to the clergy of a particular district
was not absolutely unknown in the Western Church.[84] But at this period
it was adopted by the Irish Church in its entirety; and when the entire
church became monastic, the whole episcopate was necessarily in this
position. There was nothing derogatory to the power of episcopal orders,
nothing to reduce the bishops, as a superior grade, below or even to the
level of the presbyters; but the mission, and the jurisdiction of which
it is the source, were not in the bishop, but in the monastery, and that
jurisdiction was necessarily exercised through the abbot as its monastic
head. There was episcopacy in the church, but it was not diocesan
episcopacy. Where the abbot, as was occasionally the case, was in
episcopal orders, the anomaly did not exist. But the presbyters greatly
outnumbered the bishops, and the abbot in general retained his
presbyterian orders only.
[Sidenote: The presbyter-abbot.]
When this was the case, the bishop appears as a separate member of the
community, but ‘the presbyter-abbot was the more important functionary.’
Bede, the most observant as he is the most candid of historians,
remarked this when he says that Iona ‘was wont to have always as ruler a
presbyter-abbot, to whose jurisdiction the whole province and even the
bishops themselves were, by an unusual arrangement, bound to
submit;’[85] and again, that ‘the monastery in Iona (not the abbot but
the monastery) for a long time held the pre-eminence over almost all
those of the northern Scots, and all those of the Picts, and had the
direction of their people.’[86] It was this inversion of the
jurisdiction, placing the bishop under that of the monastery, which Bede
pronounced to be an unusual order of things. The episcopate was in fact
in the Monastic Church of Ireland a personal and not an official
dignity; and we find at a later period that inferior functionaries of
the monastery, as the scribe and even the anchorite, appear to have
united the functions of a bishop with their proper duties.[87]
[Sidenote: Monastic character of the Church derived from Gaul.]
Whence then did the Irish Church at this period derive its monastic
character? Monasticism, as we know, took its rise in the East; but when
Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, took refuge in Rome from the
persecution of the Arians in the year 341, told of the life of the monks
in the east, and wrote a Life of St. Anthony, the monastic life became
at once popular in the west, and all Rome became filled with
monasteries. The term _religio_, or ‘religion,’ was given to the
monastic institutions, and that of ‘religious’ to all who followed a
monastic rule, in contradistinction to that of ‘secular,’ which was
applied to the clergy whose lives were regulated merely by the general
law of the Church. From Italy it was introduced into Gaul, and it was
finally established as an institution in that Church by Martin, monk and
afterwards bishop, who founded the monastery of Ligugé, the most ancient
monastery in Gaul, at the gates of Poitiers, in 361; and afterwards,
when he became bishop of Tours in 372, a monastery near that city, which
bore the name of ‘Majus Monasterium,’ or Marmoutier; and this monastery
became the centre of monastic life in Gaul.[88]
[Sidenote: Monachism reached the Irish Church through two different
channels.]
From Martin of Tours the monastic influence reached the Irish Church
through two different channels, and became the means of infusing a new
life into that Church, imparting to it a character which harmonised
better with the tribal organisation of the social system and exhibited
itself in that marvellous burst of energy which not only filled Ireland
with monasteries, but was carried by its monkish missionaries across the
sea to Britain and the Continent. The legend which connects Patrick with
Martin, narrating that Conchessa, Patrick’s mother, was his niece, and
that Patrick went to Martin at the age of twenty-five, and after four
years’ instruction received from him the monastic habit, must be
abandoned as irreconcilable with the chronology of St. Patrick’s life,
and as introduced at a later period into his acts, as we shall
afterwards see. That, however, which connects Ninian of Whithern with
Martin is more trustworthy. He undoubtedly went to Rome during the
lifetime of Martin, where, according to Bede, he was trained in the
faith and mysteries of religion. He is said, on his return, to have
visited that saint at Tours, and obtained from him masons for the
purpose of building a church after the Roman manner, which, says Bede,
was called Candida Casa, and dedicated to St. Martin.
[Sidenote: First channel through the monastery of Candida Casa, or
Whithern, in Galloway.]
This monastery, under the name of the ‘Magnum Monasterium,’ or monastery
of Rosnat, became known as a great seminary of secular and religious
instruction. In the legend of St. Cairnech we find it mentioned as ‘the
house of Martain,’ and as ‘the monastery of Cairnech.’ He was the son of
Sarran, king of the Britons, by Bobona, daughter of Loarn son of Erc,
who had another daughter, Erca, mother of Murcertach, afterwards king of
Ireland. As Murcertach is said in the legend to have been at that time
with the king of Britain learning military science, the events there
narrated must be placed before the date of the great battle of Ocha in
478, which was fought by Lughaidh, who then became king of Ireland, and
by Murcertach mac Erca, and established the throne of Ireland in the
line of the northern Hy Niall. The legend adds that ‘Cairnech went to
Erin before him, and became the first bishop of the clan Niall and of
Teamhar, or Tara, and he was the first martyr and the first monk of
Erin, and the first Brehon of the men of Erin also.’[89] In this legend
the introduction of monachism into Ireland is attributed to Cairnech,
who had been bishop and abbot of the monastery or house of Martin, or in
other words, of Candida Casa; and we find soon after several of the
saints, mentioned as belonging to this second order, resorting thither
for the purpose of being instructed and trained in the monastic life. We
learn from the acts of Tighernac of Clones and of Eugenius of Ardstraw,
who were both natives of Leinster, but connected with Ulster families on
the mother’s side, that, with a number of others of both sexes, they had
been carried off when boys by pirates and brought to Britain, where they
were sent by the king, at the queen’s intercession, to a holy man,
called in the Life of Tighernac, ‘Monennus,’ and in that of Eugenius,
‘Nennio, called also Mancennus’ and ‘Manchenius,’ and trained by him in
his monastery of Rosnat, which is also called _alba_, or ‘white.’[90]
When set at liberty and enabled to return to their own country, they
both received episcopal orders; and Tighernac founded the monastery of
Galloon in Lough Erne, and afterwards that of Cluain-eois or Clones in
Monaghan; while Eugenius founded Ardstrath, now Ardstraw, near Derry. In
the Acts of S. Enda of Aran, too, we are told that, when a youth, he was
sent by his sister to Britain, to the monastery of Rosnat, where he
became the humble disciple of Mancenus, the ‘magister’ of that
monastery.[91] He afterwards founded in one of the Aran islands, on the
west coast of Ireland, a monastery containing one hundred and fifty
monks, of which he was the presbyter-abbot. Saint Monenna too sends one
of her family, named Brignat, to the British island, to the monastery of
Rosnat, in order that she might be trained in the rules of monastic
life, after which she returns to Ireland.[92] Again we are told in the
Acts of St. Finnian or Finbarr, of ‘Maghbile,’ or Moyville, that he went
as a boy to St. Caelan, abbot of Noendrum, who placed him under the care
of a most holy bishop called Nennio, who had come in a ship with some of
his people to the harbour of the monastery; and by him he was taken to
his own monastery, termed the ‘Magnum Monasterium,’ and there trained
for several years in the rules and institutions of monastic life.[93] In
another Life, in which he is identified with St. Fridean of Lucca, his
master’s name is called Mugentius, and his monastery ‘Candida.’[94]
Finally, in the preface to the Hymn or Prayer of Mugint, we are told
that ‘Mugint made this hymn in Futerna. The cause was this:—Finnen of
Maghbile went to Mugint for instruction, and Rioc, and Talmach, and
several others with him.’[95] Finnian, having received episcopal orders,
afterwards founded the monastery of Magh Bile or Moyville, in the county
of Down.
There can be little question that the monastery of Rosnat, called also
‘Alba’ and ‘Candida’ and ‘Futerna,’ and known as the ‘Magnum
Monasterium,’ could have been no other than the monastery of Candida
Casa, known to the Angles as Whithern, of which ‘Futerna’ is the Irish
equivalent. The future bishops and abbots who were trained there were
all more or less connected with Ulster; the monasteries founded by them
were in the north of Ireland; and Finnian, the latest of them, was of
the race of Dal Fiatach, occupying the districts of Down and part of
Antrim, separated by the Irish Channel from Galloway. They would
naturally resort to the great school of monastic life established there
by Ninian in honour of St. Martin of Tours, to be trained in the rules.
Whether Mancenus, or Manchenius, and Mugint were the same person, or the
latter the successor of the former, it is difficult to say. Both appear
to have borne the name of Nennio; but this appellation may have been
applied to the abbots of Candida Casa as the successors of the founder
Ninian. The former name of Manchenius is obviously the Irish name
Manchan; and he is probably celebrated in the Litany of Angus the
Culdee, when he invokes ‘thrice fifty disciples, with Manchan the
master.’[96]
[Sidenote: Second channel through Bretagne and Wales.]
While this monastic life, which Ireland thus received from Saint
Ninian’s monastery in Galloway, affected mainly the north of Ireland,
the second great channel through which monachism reached Ireland
exercised a powerful and all-pervading influence on her central and
southern districts. In the year 394 Tours was made the capital or civil
metropolis of the province of Lugdunensis Tertia, and became a
metropolitan city. Her ecclesiastical jurisdiction extended over the
provinces now called Bretagne, Maine, and Anjou, with a part of
Touraine; and Saint Martin became the metropolitan bishop. The monachism
introduced into Gaul and fostered by him spread at once into Bretagne,
where the monasteries of Landouart and Landevenech were founded;[97] and
from thence it passed into Wales. In the Catalogue of the Saints we are
told that those of the second or monastic order ‘received a mass from
bishop David, and Gillas and Docus, the Britons.’ Bishop David is of
course the celebrated Saint David who founded the church of
_Cillemuine_, or Menevia, now St. David’s. Gillas is no other than the
historian Gildas;[98] and by Docus is meant Saint Cadoc, who founded the
great monastery of Nantgarvan, or Llancarvan, in South Wales, where
Gildas was also associated with him. From these three eminent fathers of
the monastic church of Wales the monastic institution also passed into
Ireland through Finnian of Clonard. Finnian was of the race in Ireland
termed _Cruithnigh_, or Picts; and we are told in his Acts, that after
having been instructed in his youth by Fortchern of Trim and Caiman of
Dairinis, an island in the bay of Wexford, he, in his thirtieth year,
crossed the Irish Channel to the city of Kilmuine, where he found the
three holy men, David and Cathmael[99] and Gildas, and became their
disciple. After remaining thirty years in Britain, partly in the
monastery of St. David and partly in other monasteries in Wales, he
returned to Ireland followed by several of the ‘religious’ Britons, ‘to
gather together a people acceptable to the Lord.’
[Sidenote: The school of Clonard.]
He eventually founded the great monastery of _Cluain-Erard_, or Clonard,
in Meath, which is said to have contained no fewer than three thousand
monks, and which became a great training school in the monastic life,
whence proceeded the most eminent founders of the Irish
monasteries.[100] In an Irish Life of Finnian quoted by Dr. Todd in his
_Life of Saint Patrick_, we are told, that ‘after this a desire seized
Finnian to go to Rome when he had completed his education. But an angel
of God came to him, and said unto him, “What would be given to thee at
Rome shall be given to thee here. Arise and renew sound doctrine and
faith in Ireland after Patrick.”’[101] And in the Office of Finnian it
is said that, ‘when he was meditating a pilgrimage to Rome, he was
persuaded by an angel to return to Ireland, to restore the faith, which
had fallen into neglect after the death of Saint Patrick.’[102] These
expressions all point to an effete and decaying church restored through
the medium of Finnian and his monastic school of Clonard, and to a great
revival and spread of Christianity through a new and living organisation
based upon the monastic institution.
[Sidenote: Twelve apostles of Ireland.]
This great work was carried out by twelve of his principal disciples,
who filled the land with monasteries, and, as leaders of the new
monastic church, became known as the twelve apostles of Ireland. In the
Martyrology of Donegal Finnian is well described as ‘a doctor of wisdom
and a tutor of the saints of Ireland in his time; for he it was that had
three thousand saints at one school at _Cluain Eraird_, as is evident in
his life; and it was out of them the twelve apostles of Erin were
chosen;’ and it is added, ‘A very ancient vellum-book, in which are
contained the Martyrology of Maelruain of Tamhlacht, and the list of the
saints of the same name, states that Finnian was in his habits and life
like unto Paul the apostle.’[103] Of these twelve apostles the earliest
were the two Ciarans—Ciaran who founded the monastery of Saighir in
Munster, and Ciaran, called _Mac-an-tsaor_, or ‘the son of the
artificer,’ who founded, in 548, the more celebrated monastery of
Clonmacnois in King’s County; Columba, son of Crimthan, a native of
Leinster, who founded that of Tirrdaglas in the same year; Mobhi
Clairenach, who founded the monastery of Glais-Naoidhen in Fingall; and
Ninnidh, whose monastery was in an island in Lough Erne called
Inismacsaint. Somewhat later were Brendan of Birr; the other Brendan,
who became celebrated for his seven years’ voyage in search of the land
of promise, and founded the monastery of Clonfert, where, like his
master Finnian, he ruled as presbyter-abbot over three thousand monks;
and Laisren or Molaisse of Devenish. Still later were Ruadhan of Lothra,
Senell of Cluaininnis and Cainnech of Achabo, who lived till the end of
the century. Of these, Brendan of Birr and Cainnech of Achabo were, like
their master, of Pictish descent.
[Sidenote: Saint Columba, one of the twelve.]
The number of the twelve apostles was made up by one who was destined to
become more celebrated, and to leave a more extended and permanent
impression on the church than any of the others. This was a disciple
termed _Colum_ or in Latin, Columba. By paternal descent he was a scion
of the royal house of the northern Hy Neill. His father, Fedhlimidh,
belonged to that tribe of them termed the Cinel Conaill from Conall
Gulban, one of the eight sons of Niall, from whom they were descended,
and was connected in the female line with the kings of Dalriada. Columba
was born on the 7th December 521,[104] and was baptized under that name
by the presbyter Cruithnechan, but became soon known as _Columcille_ or
‘Columba of the church,’ in consequence of the frequency of his
attendance, when a child, at the church of _Tulach-Dubhglaise_, now
Temple Douglas, near the place of his birth.[105] When he had attained a
proper age he became a pupil of Finnian, or Finbarr, of Maghbile, where
he was ordained a deacon.[106] He then, while yet a deacon, placed
himself under the instruction of an aged bard called Gemman, by whom no
doubt was fostered his taste for poetry, and that regard for the bardic
order instilled, which led to their subsequently obtaining his warm
support.[107] Thus far the account of his youth is supported by Adamnan;
but we must now trust to the ancient Irish Life alone for the further
particulars of his early training. Leaving Gemman, he became a disciple
of Finnian of Clonard, under whom he completed his training, and formed
one of that band known as the twelve apostles of Ireland. He then joined
Mobhi Clairenach, one of the number, at his monastery of Glaisnaoidhen,
where he found Ciaran and Cainnech, who had been his fellow-disciples,
and a third, Comgall, who belonged, like Ciaran and Cainnech, to the
race of the Irish Picts, and was destined to become equally celebrated
as a founder of monastic institutions. Columba thus united in himself
the training of both monastic schools—that of Finnian of Maghbile,
derived from the great monastery of Candida Casa, and that of his
namesake of Clonard, derived from David, Gildas, and Cadoc of Wales. On
leaving Mobhi, he probably obtained priest’s orders, having attained the
age of twenty-five years; but the fact is not recorded in the Irish
Life.[108] [Sidenote: A.D. 545. Founds the monastery of Derry.]We are
told, however, that immediately after the death of Mobhi, who died in
545, Columba founded the church of Derry. The account of it given in the
old Irish Life will furnish a good illustration of how these monasteries
were founded. ‘Columcille then went to Daire, that is, to the royal fort
of Aedh, son of Ainmire, who was king of Erin at that time. The king
offered the fort to Columcille; but he refused it, because of Mobhi’s
command. On his coming out of the fort, however, he met two of Mobhi’s
people bringing him Mobhi’s girdle, with his consent that Columcille
should accept a grant of territory, Mobhi having died. Columcille then
settled in the fort of Aedh, and founded a church there.’ Ainmire, the
father of Aedh, and Columba were cousins-german, the sons of brothers.
The grant of the royal fort to him as a commencement to his
ecclesiastical career was therefore not unnatural. After this he is said
to have founded the church of Raphoe in Donegal, and ten years after the
foundation of Daire he founded at _Dair-Mag_, now Durrow, in the diocese
of Meath, another church, which is called in the Irish Life a ‘Recles’
or monastery. It is termed by Bede a noble monastery in Ireland, which,
from the profusion of oak-trees, is called in the Scottish language
Dearmach, that is, the plain of oaks.[109] Besides these, the first and
last of which were his principal monasteries in Ireland, he is said in
the Irish Life to have founded many others, as _Cennanus_, or Kells, in
the north-west of the county of Meath, which the Irish Life tells us was
a fort of Diarmada, son of Cerbaill, and ‘Columcille marked out the city
in extent as it now is, and blessed it all, and said that it would
become the most illustrious possession he should have in the land’—a
prophecy fulfilled after two centuries had elapsed from his death; also
Clonmore in the county of Louth; _Rechra_, now Lambay, an island off the
coast of the county of Dublin; Swords, known as _Sord-Choluimchille_, in
the county of Dublin; Drumcliffe, a little to the north of Sligo;
Drumcolumb in the county of Sligo; Moone in the county of Kildare; _Eas
mic n Eirc_, or Assylyn, near the town of Boyle; Easruadh, on the river
Erne in Tyrconell; _Torach_, or Tory island, off the coast of Donegal;
and others not mentioned in the Life.[110]
[Sidenote: A.D. 558.
Foundation of Bangor.]
In the year 558 the great monastery of _Bennchar_, or Bangor, was
founded in the county of Down, the ancient territory of the Irish Picts,
by Comgall, who was of that race and had been a companion of Columba at
Glaisnaoidhen. It was situated on the south side of Belfast Lough; and
the following account of it is given in his Life:—‘So great a multitude
of monks then came to Comgall that they could not be maintained in one
place, and hence they possessed several cells and many monasteries not
only in the region of the Ultonians, but throughout the other provinces
of Ireland; and in these different cells and monasteries three thousand
monks were under the care of the holy father Comgall; but the greater
and more memorable of them was the monastery of Bennchar.’[111] St.
Bernard, abbot of Clairvaux, in his Life of St. Malachy, written in the
twelfth century, tells us that Bennchar was given to him by the lord of
the land, that he might build, or rather rebuild, a monastery there;
‘for,’ he says, ‘a most noble monastery had existed there under its
first father Comgall, which, as the head of many monasteries, produced
many thousand monks. This sacred place was so fertile of saints and so
abundantly bore fruit to God, that one of the sons of that holy
fraternity, called Luanus, is said to have been alone the founder of no
fewer than a hundred monasteries, filling Ireland and Scotland with its
offspring, and not only in these, but even in foreign countries these
swarms of saints poured forth like an inundation, among whom Saint
Columbanus, penetrating thence to these our Gallican regions, erected
the monastery of Luxeuil.’[112] Angus the Culdee in his Litany invokes
‘forty thousand monks, with the blessing of God, under the rule of
Comgall of Bangor,’ but this number has probably been written for four
thousand in the text.[113] The Luanus mentioned by St. Bernard was
Lugidus, or Molua, of Clonfert-Molua, now Clonfertmulloe, on the
boundary between Leinster and Munster, and his monasteries were mainly
founded in the southern half of Ireland. It was, as we have seen, by the
mission of Columbanus to Gaul that this Monastic Church of Ireland was
brought into contact with the Continental Church. We have already
adverted to some of the external peculiarities which distinguished it
from the Roman Church at this period; and we must now consider more in
detail the features which characterised it in the aspect in which it
presents itself to us in its home in Ireland.
[Sidenote: The primitive Irish monastery.]
When we read of such a number of monasteries constructed within a short
period, so many of them, too, the work of one saint, we must not suppose
that they at all resembled the elaborate stone structures which
constituted the monastery of the Middle Ages. The primitive Celtic
monastery was a very simple affair, and more resembled a rude village of
wooden huts. We find from the Irish Life of Columba that, when he went
to the monastery of Mobhi Clairenach, on the banks of the river
Finglass, where no fewer than fifty scholars were assembled, their huts
or bothies (_botha_) were by the water, or river, on the west, and that
there was an _ecclais_, or church, on the east side of the river, which
was no doubt, as was usual at the time, made of no better material. Thus
it is told of Mochaoi, abbot of Nendrum, that on one occasion he went
with seven score young men to cut wattles to make the _ecclais_, or
church.[114] When Ciaran of Saighir, who was one of the twelve apostles
of Ireland, proceeded to erect his huts and church, he is said to have
constructed them of the rudest materials, and when he went into the wood
for these a wild boar assisted him by biting off with his sharp teeth
the rods and branches for the purpose.[115] Coemgen of Glendalough, too,
built his oratory of rods of wood, planks, and moss;[116] and in
Conchubran’s Life of Monenna we are told that ‘she founded a monastery,
which was made of smooth planks, according to the fashion of the
Scottish nations, who were not accustomed to erect stone walls or get
them erected.’[117] The church in these early monasteries was thus, as
well as the huts or bothies for the accommodation of the monks,
frequently built of wood; and the usual name given to this early wooden
church was _Duirthech_, or _Deirthech_, of which the Latin equivalent
was ‘oratorium.’ Of this word various etymologies are given; but the
most probable is that contained in an old glossary which tells us that
_Duirtheach_ comes from _Dairthech_, a house of oak, and _Deirthech_
from _Dear_, a tear, that is, a house in which tears are shed.[118]
It was not till the end of the eighth century, when the ravages of the
Danes and their repeated destruction of the churches by fire showed the
great insecurity of these wooden buildings, that they began, when
reconstructed, to be built of stone, and the _cloicteach_, or stone
belfry, was then added to the ecclesiastical buildings. Of the repeated
destruction of the wooden buildings by fire the Irish Annals afford
sufficient evidence, and that the _cloicteachs_ were added through fear
of the Danes, is probable from the evidence that they were not only used
as belfries, but also as places of safety both for the monks and for the
valuables in possession of the monasteries.[119] The stone churches were
termed _Damhliag_, and are usually rendered in Latin by ‘templum,’
‘ecclesia,’ and ‘basilica.’[120] In an ancient tract of Brehon laws,
which treats of the different stipends given to artificers for their
labours, there is a statement of the payments to be made to the _Ollamh
Saer_, or master builder, who was required to be equally skilled in the
art of building in stone and in wood, which well brings out the
distinction between the modes of constructing these buildings. In this
document we are told that he was to be paid ‘for the two principal
branches of the art as from the beginning, that is, stone building and
wood building, the most distinguished of these branches to remain as
formerly—viz., the _Daimhliag_ and the _Duirthech_. Twelve cows to him
for these, that is, six cows for each.’[121]
Attached to the _Duirthech_ was usually a small side building termed
_Erdam_, or in Latin ‘exedra,’ which was used as a sacristy.[122] There
was also a somewhat larger house which was the refectory, or common
eating-hall, termed the _Proinntigh_, and in connection with it a
_Coitchenn_, or kitchen, and when there was a stream of water fit for
the purpose there was a _Muilinn_, or mill, and in connection with it a
stone kiln for drying the corn. The _Ollamh Saer_ was also to receive
‘six cows for _coicthigis_, or kitchen-building, and six cows for
_muilleoracht_, or mill-building.’ Somewhat apart from the cells of the
monks were the abbot’s house and the house set apart for the reception
of guests, called the _Tighaoid-headh_, or ‘hospitium,’ and these two
were of wood, as appears from the numerous notices in the Annals of
those buildings being burnt by the Danes;[123] while the _Ollamh Saer_
is to receive ‘two cows for houses of rods.’ The whole of these
buildings were protected by a circumvallation, sometimes of earth, or of
earth and stone, termed the _Rath_, or _Lios_, and in Latin ‘vallum,’ at
others of stone, or of earth faced with stone, and termed _Caiseal_, the
remains of which still exist in connection with several of these
foundations.[124]
The size of these monasteries, as well as the number of monks which they
contained, varied very much, but this did not affect their relative
importance, which depended more upon the position of their founder and
the jurisdiction they possessed from their foundation over other
monasteries which had emanated from the same founder, or his disciples.
The smallest in size appear to have usually contained one hundred and
fifty monks. This was the number in the monastery founded in the Aran
isles by Enda, who was one of those founders of monasteries who were
trained at the ‘Magnum Monasterium’ of Candida Casa, or Whithern. We
find the same number in the monastery of Lothra, founded by Ruadhan, one
of the twelve apostles of Ireland;[125] and Angus the Culdee in his
Litany invokes ‘thrice fifty true monks under the rule of Bishop Ibar,’
‘thrice fifty true monks under the rule of Munnu, son of Tulchan,’ and
‘thrice fifty true monks with the favour of God in Dairiu Chonaid.’ We
have then a monastery three times as large, when he invokes ‘nine times
fifty monks under the rule of Mochoe of Nendrum.’ The numbers of seven
hundred and eight hundred occur in connection with Mochuda, when he
invokes the ‘seven hundred true monks who were buried at Rathinn before
the coming of Mochuda, upon being expelled thence to Lismore,’ and the
‘eight hundred who settled in Lismore with Mochuda, every third of them
a favoured servant of God.’ Then we have a monastery at Lethglin
containing fifteen hundred monks, when he invokes ‘the three hundred and
twelve hundred true monks settled in Lethglin, who sang the praises of
God under Molaisse, the two Ernas, and the holy martyr bishops of
Lethglin.’ Finally, the great monastery and seminary of Clonard, from
whence emanated the twelve apostles of Ireland, contained, as we have
seen, three thousand monks.
[Sidenote: The monastic family.]
When Brendan, one of the twelve, is said to have been the father of
three thousand monks, and four thousand are said to have been under the
rule of Comgall of _Bennchar_, or Bangor, it is probable that these
numbers included the inmates of other monasteries, either founded by
them or under their jurisdiction. The aggregate of monks in each
monastery was termed its _Muintir_, or ‘familia;’ but this word seems to
have been used both in a narrow sense for the community in each
monastery and also in a broader signification, for the entire body of
monks, wherever situated, who were under its jurisdiction.[126] The
monks were termed brethren. The elders, termed seniors, gave themselves
up entirely to devotion and the service of the church, while their chief
occupation in their cells consisted in transcribing the Scriptures. In
the monastery of Lughmagh there were under Bishop Mochta sixty seniors;
and of them it is said—
Three-score psalm-singing seniors
Were his household, royal the number;
Without tillage, reaping, or kiln-drying,
Without work, except reading.[127]
There was then a class of working brethren who were occupied in the
labours of the field, and from these were chosen too those required for
mechanical work in the monastery. When Columba visited the monastery of
Clonmacnois, some of the monks, we are told, were at their little grange
farms near the monastery, and others within it.[128] An important
occupation, too, was the training of the young, and those under
instruction were termed ‘juniores’ or ‘alumni,’ and were said to be
‘learning wisdom.’[129] These formed the congregation of the monastery.
[Sidenote: Island monasteries.]
The larger monasteries were usually situated on the mainland; but the
small islands round the coast, or in the inland lochs, appear to have
possessed an irresistible attraction for the founders of these
monasteries, probably from the security against danger and the
protection from intrusion which they afforded, and on them the smaller
communities probably were settled. Of the islands round the coast of
Ireland, the three Aran isles, which lie off the coast of Galway, seem
to have at once attracted these settlements. Among the class of saints
who were trained to the monastic life in the monastery of Whithern,
while Finnian founded the great monastery and seminary of _Maghbile_ or
Moville in Ulster, Enda at once directed his steps to these islands, and
we are told in his Acts that, having received a grant of the island of
Aran from King Angus of Munster, he collected a company of disciples,
and divided the island into ten parts, in which he constructed ten
monasteries, placing in each one superior, as father, and another as
second in power who should succeed the first on his death. He directed
that the seniors should be buried with the rest, but that the bishops
who succeeded them should be interred in their own proper cemeteries,
and he founded his own monastery at the east end of the island, which is
still called the Cell of St. Enda.[130] This island is now known as _Ara
na Navach_, or Aran of the Saints. Tory Island, off the north-west
coast; Rachra, off the north-east; Rechra, or Lambay, in the Irish
Channel, and other small islands, became likewise the seats of similar
foundations. Of the twelve apostles of Ireland, we find that
three—Molaisse of Devenish, Senell of Cluaininnis, and Ninnidh of
Inismacsaint, founded their chief monasteries on three small islands in
Lough Erne; and on two other islands in the same lake there were also
monasteries. In Lough Ree, a lake formed by the Shannon, there were
five; and in Lough Corrib and Lough Derg, both also formed by the
Shannon, there were, in the former, three, and in the latter two
monasteries. Wherever the river Shannon in its course formed a small
island there was also a monastery; and the number of these island
monasteries throughout Ireland generally was very great.
[Sidenote: Monasteries were Christian colonies.]
The monastic system which thus characterised the Irish Church in its
second period and pervaded its organisation in every part, forming its
very life, presented features which peculiarly adapted it to the tribal
constitution of the social system of the Irish, and led to their being
leavened with Christianity to an extent which no other form of the
church could have effected. These large monasteries, as in their
external aspect they appeared to be, were in reality Christian colonies,
into which converts, after being tonsured, were brought under the name
of monks. Thus we are told in the Life of Brendan that, as soon as he
had been ordained priest by Bishop Erc ‘he also received from him the
monastic garb; and many leaving the world came to him, whom he made
monks, and he then founded, in his own proper region, cells and
monasteries,’ till they reached the number of three thousand.[131] There
was thus in each tribe a Christian community to which the people were
readily drawn, and in which they found themselves possessed of
advantages and privileges without their actual social position with
reference to the tribe and the land being essentially altered. They
formed as it were a great ecclesiastical family within the tribe, to
which its members were drawn by the attractions it presented to them.
These were, first, greater security of life and property. Before the
tribes were to any extent brought under the civilising influences of
Christianity, life must have been, in a great measure, a reign of
violence, in which every man had to protect his life and property as he
best might; and the struggle among these small communities, either to
maintain their own rights, or to encroach on those of others, and the
constant mutual warfare to which it gave rise, must have exposed the
lives of their members to incessant danger. To them the Christian
community offered an asylum in which there was comparative rest and
relief from danger at the cost of observing the monastic rule. An
anecdote in Columba’s early life, told us by Adamnan, will show clearly
enough what must have been the state of early society in Ireland in this
respect. ‘When the holy man,’ he says, ‘while yet a youth in deacon’s
orders, was living in the region of Leinster, learning divine wisdom, it
happened one day that an unfeeling and pitiless oppressor of the
innocent was pursuing a young girl, who fled before him on a level
plain. As she chanced to observe the aged Gemman, master of the foresaid
young deacon, reading on the plain, she ran straight to him as fast as
she could. Being alarmed at such an unexpected occurrence, he called on
Columba, who was reading at some distance, that both together, to the
best of their ability, might defend the girl from her pursuer; but he
immediately came up, and without any regard to their presence, stabbed
the girl with his lance under their very cloaks, and leaving her lying
dead at their feet, turned to go away back. Then the old man, in great
affliction, turning to Columba, said, “How long, holy youth Columba,
shall God, the just judge, allow this horrid crime and this insult to us
to go unpunished?” Then the saint at once pronounced this sentence on
the perpetrator of the deed; “At the very instant the soul of this girl
whom he hath murdered ascendeth into heaven, shall the soul of the
murderer go down into hell;” and scarcely had he spoken the words when
the murderer of the innocent, like Ananias before Peter, fell down dead
on the spot before the eyes of the holy youth. The news of this sudden
and terrible vengeance was soon spread abroad throughout many districts
of Ireland, and with it the wonderful fame of the holy deacon.’[132]
Thus there soon sprang up a belief that any violation of the protection
to life afforded by these Christian communities would draw down on the
perpetrator the vengeance of the Christian’s God. Adamnan’s Life is
pervaded by similar instances of the insecurity of life and property
through crime and oppression.
[Sidenote: Privilege of sanctuary.]
But these monasteries, or Christian communities, likewise claimed the
privilege of sanctuary within their bounds, which was fenced by similar
religious sanctions. The loss of a battle, or any similar misfortune
which befell any one who had violated this right of sanctuary, was
directly attributed to such violation, till it became a confirmed belief
that it could not be infringed with impunity. Thus, when the battle of
Culdremhne was fought between Diarmaid, king of Ireland, and the
northern Hy Neill, in 561, in which the former was defeated, it was said
to have been ‘in revenge of the killing of Curnan, son of Aedh, son of
Eochaidh Tirmcharna, while under the protection of Colum-cille.’[133]
The same King Diarmaid, too, drew upon himself the curse of Ruadhan of
Lothra, one of the twelve apostles of Ireland, by violating his
sanctuary and carrying off by force to his palace at Tara a person who
had taken refuge with Ruadhan. On his refusal to deliver him up,
‘Roadanus and a bishop that was with him took their bells that they had,
which they rang hardly, and cursed the king and place, and prayed God
that no king or queen ever after should or could dwell in Tarach, and
that it should be waste for ever, without court or palace, as it fell
out accordingly,’ and as stated in an old Irish poem,—
From the judgment of Ruadhan on his house
There was no king at _Teamraigh_ or Tara.[134]
The belief that the violation of the sanctuary of a Christian community
would infallibly be avenged led to the fulfilment of the prophecy.
[Sidenote: Law of succession to the Abbacy.]
But a still more powerful influence arose from the intimate relation
which the Christian community bore to the organisation of the tribe, and
the extent to which the one was a reflection of the other. The
publication of the Brehon Laws of Ireland, and the details with which
they supply us, enable us now to understand better the precise nature of
this relation. In estimating this, two facts must be kept in
mind:—First, that the Irish Church of this second period cannot be
regarded as forming one united church under a common hierarchy,
recognising the authority of one central head, as may have been true of
the church of the earlier period. While the first order of Catholic
saints is said to have had ‘one head, Christ, and one chief, Patricius,’
the second order of Catholic presbyters is only said to have had ‘one
head, our Lord,’ The church of this period must be viewed as consisting
rather of different groups of monasteries, founded by the respective
saints, either bishops or presbyters, of the second order, each group
recognising the monastery over which the founder of the group personally
presided, or which possessed his relics, as having jurisdiction over
those which emanated from him and followed his rule.[135] It was thus
not one great ecclesiastical corporation, but an aggregate of separate
communities in federal union. Secondly, that the abbots of each
monastery, whether bishops or presbyters, were not elected by the
brethren forming the community, but succeeded one another by a kind of
inheritance assimilated to that of the tribe. As we have already seen,
the foundation of a monastery usually commenced by a grant of a royal
_Rath_ or fort, or of a portion of land made by the head of the tribe to
which it belonged to the saint, and in most instances the founder
obtained this grant from the head of the tribe to which he himself
belonged. These two tribes are in the Brehon Laws termed respectively
the _Fine Grin_, or Tribe of the Land, that is, the tribe to whom the
land belonged; and the _Fine Erluma_, or Tribe of the Saint, that is,
the tribe to whom the patron saint, or founder, belonged. By the law of
Tanistic succession in Ireland, the right of hereditary succession was
not in the individual, but in the family to which he belonged. That is,
it was hereditary in the family, elective in the individual. When the
founder of the monastery belonged to the same tribe, or family, as the
owner of the land which had been granted to him, the abbacy remained
with this family, who provided from among the members of it a person
duly qualified to fulfil the functions of abbot. There was thus
connected with each monastery, to use the words of Dr. Reeves, a
‘_Plebilis progenies_,’ or lay family, ‘in whom the tenancy of the lands
was vested, possessing a regular succession, and furnishing from its
members certain _Coärbs_, or successors, to the first abbot, who formed
the _Ecclesiastica progenies_ and who, being unmarried, exhibit no
lineal succession. In fact, the rule was, on each avoidance of the
abbacy, to fill up the situation from founders’ kin, and, failing a
qualified person in the direct line, to choose a successor from a
collateral branch.’[136] The monastery of Derry is an instance of this.
Aedh, son of Ainmire, the king of Ireland who granted the land, and
Columba, the saint who founded the monastery, both belonged to the same
tribe—that of the Cinel Conaill. The rule is thus stated in the Brehon
Laws: ‘When it is a Church of the Tribe of the Land and the Church of
the Tribe of the Saint and of the Land at the same time. That is, the
tribe of the land succeeds to the church—that is, the tribe of the saint
and the tribe of the land are one tribe in this case, and the saint is
on his own land,—
The saint, the land, the mild monk,
The Dalta Church of fine vigour,
The Compairche, and the Deoruid De,
By them is the abbacy taken (in their order).’[137]
When, however, the saint who founded the monastery belonged to a
different tribe from that of the chief from whom the grant was obtained
and in whose tribe it was founded, the succession to the abbacy was
often retained by the family to whom the saint belonged, from the
members of which the abbot was in the same manner supplied. The
monastery of Drumcliffe is an instance of this. It was founded by
Columba in a district which belonged to a stranger tribe, and in the old
Irish Life it is said that ‘he gave the authority, and the clergy and
the succession to the Cinel Conaill for ever’—that is, to his own tribe.
When this was the case, instead of the same tribe forming a lay and
ecclesiastical ‘progenies,’ or family, the two families connected with
the succession—the tribe of the land and the tribe of the saint—were
different, and the following is the rule in the Brehon Laws:—
‘The Church of the Tribe of the Saint. That is, the tribe of the
Saint shall succeed in the Church as long as there shall be a
person fit to be an abbot (_Damna Apaidh_, or _materies_ of an
abbot), of the tribe of the saint, even though there should be but
a psalm-singer of these, it is he that will obtain the abbacy.
Where this is not the case, it is to be given to the tribe of the
land until a person fit to be an abbot, of the tribe of the saint,
shall be found; and when he is, it is to be given to him if he be
better than the abbot of the tribe of the land who has taken it.
If he be not better, he shall take it only in his turn. If a
person fit to be an abbot has not come of the tribe of the saint
or of the tribe of the land, the abbacy is to be given to the
tribe of the monks (_Fine Manach_), until a person fit to be an
abbot, of the tribe of the saint or of the tribe of the land,
shall be found; and where there is such, he is preferable. If a
person fit to be abbot has not come of the tribe of the saint, or
of the tribe of the land, or of the tribe of the monks, the
_Annoit_ shall take it in the fourth place; the _Dalta_ shall take
it in the fifth place; the _Compairche_ shall take it in the sixth
place; the nearest _Cill_ shall take it in the seventh place. If a
person fit to be an abbot has not come in any of these seven
places, the _Deoruid De_ shall take it in the eighth place. If a
person fit to be an abbot has not arisen of the tribe of the
saint, or of the land, or of the monks together, and the _Annoit_,
or the _Dalta_, or the _Compairche_, or the nearest _Cill_, or the
_Deoruid De_, has the wealth, it must be given to the tribe of the
saint, for one of them fit to be an abbot goes for nothing. The
abbacy goes from them.’[138] The untranslated terms in these
passages are used to designate the different churches which
belonged to the same monastic group. The _Annoit_ is the parent
church or monastery which is presided over by the patron saint, or
which contains his relics.[139] The _Dalta_ was a church
affiliated to it.[140] The _Compairche_ was a church in the same
‘parochia.’[141] The _Cill_ was the ‘Cella,’ as distinguished from
the ‘Monasterium.’[142] The _Deoruid De_, literally ‘God’s
stranger or pilgrim,’ was, as we shall afterwards see, the
anchorite or solitary who lived secluded from his brethren in a
stone cell.[143] The _Cell Manach_, or ‘Cella Monachorum,’ is thus
explained. ‘That is, a cell of monks is held by the tribe of
monks; and the abbacy shall always belong to the monks as long as
shall be a person of them fit to be an abbot; and whenever this is
not the case, it is similar to that before mentioned of the tribe
of the land, binding the tribe of the saint by a guarantee to the
tribe of the land, upon the _Annoit_.’[144]
[Sidenote: The right of the church from the tribe.]
These notices as to the succession in which the abbacy is held, obscure
and fragmentary as are some of them, are sufficient to show the close
connection in this respect between the church and the tribe; but that
connection was rendered still more intimate by the claims which the
church had now established upon the people of the tribe. They are thus
defined:—‘The right of the Church from the _Tuath_ or tribe is tithes
and first fruits and firstlings; these are due to a church from her
members,’ Tithes probably belong to a late period of the church; but the
two others seem to be more archaic, and are thus defined:—‘What are
lawful firstlings? Every first-born, that is, every first birth of every
human couple, and every male child that opens the womb of his mother,
being the first lawful wife, with confession according to their
soul-friend, by which a church and souls are more improved; and also
every male animal that opens the womb of its mother, of small or
lactiferous animals in general. First fruits are the fruit of the
gathering of every new produce, whether small or great, and every first
calf and every first lamb which is brought forth in the year,’ ‘Every
tenth birth afterwards, with a lot between every two sevens,[145] with
his lawful share of his family inheritance to the claim of the church,
and every tenth plant of the plants of the earth and of cattle every
year and every seventh day of the year to the service of God, with every
choice taken more than another after the desired order.’[146] It is very
characteristic of the spirit of these laws that the day of rest—the
seventh day—should form one of the demands of the church upon the lay
tribe, which its members were bound to render for the service of God
with their other dues. The position of the son so given to the church is
thus described: ‘The son who is selected has become the tenth, or as the
firstling to the church; he obtains as much of the legacy of his father,
after the death of his father, as every lawful son which the mother has,
and he is to be on his own land outside, and he shall render the service
of a free monk (_saermanuig_) to the church, and the church shall teach
him learning; for he shall obtain more of a divine legacy than of a
legacy not divine.’ The term _Manach_, or Monk, embraced all who were
connected with, or subject to, the _ecclais_ or monastery, and formed
her _muintir_, or ‘familia,’ down to the lowest grade of those who
occupied the church lands; and when they had any of the church orders
conferred upon them, there was attached to it a very valuable privilege
which must have powerfully attracted them to the service of the church.
It is thus stated:—‘The enslaved shall be freed, the plebeians exalted,
through the orders of the church and by performing penitential service
to God. For the Lord is accessible; he will not refuse any kind of man
after belief, among either the free or the plebeian tribes; so likewise
is the church open for every person who goes under her rule.’[147]
[Sidenote: Right of the tribe from the church.]
On the other hand, ‘the right of the _Tuath_ or tribe against the
church’ is thus stated:—‘They demand their right from the church, that
is, baptism and communion and requiem of soul, and the offering
(_oifrend_) from every church to every person after his proper belief,
with the recital of the Word of God to all who listen to it and keep
it.’[148] However difficult it may be for us now to comprehend the full
import of these arrangements, they still indicate clearly enough how
much the monastic church was a tribal institution, and how completely
her rights were interwoven with those of the members of the tribe. This
is implied, in a tract on the legal constitution and rights of
privileged classes, when it is said, ‘It is no _Tuath_ or tribe without
three free _neimhedh_, or dignitaries—the _Eclais_, or church; the
_Flaith_, or lord; and the _File_, or poet.’[149]
[Sidenote: Influence of the church.]
The influence of the church, however, in her spiritual and moral aspect
was as great as that which arose from her adaptation to the customs and
laws of the tribe; and if we would understand how she so rapidly
attained so powerful a position in the social organisation of the
aggregate of tribes forming the population of Ireland, we must advert to
her character and mode of operation as a missionary church. We can
readily understand that these large monastic churches founded upon the
mainland might at once exercise a great influence among the surrounding
population; but when we consider the almost universal preference shown,
in founding these churches, towards placing them in small islands,
either near the coast or in the large inland lakes, and how numerous
these island monasteries were, it seems difficult now to understand how
there should have proceeded so great an influence from a small body of
monastic clergy living on these isolated and unfrequented spots, as so
rapidly to overthrow the heathenism of a great people, and to bring them
so generally and speedily into subjection to the Christian Church. The
monastic character of the church gave, however, a peculiar stamp to her
missionary work which caused her to set about it in a mode well
calculated to impress a people still to a great extent under the
influence of heathenism. It is difficult for us now to realise to
ourselves what such pagan life really was—its hopeless corruption, its
utter disregard of the sanctity of domestic ties, its injustice and
selfishness, its violent and bloody character; and these characteristics
would not be diminished in a people who had been partially Christianised
and had fallen back from it into heathenism. The monastic missionaries
did not commence their work, as the earlier secular church would have
done, by arguing against their idolatry, superstition, and immorality,
and preaching a purer faith; but they opposed to it the antagonistic
characteristics and purer life of Christianity. They asked and obtained
a settlement in some small and valueless island. There they settled down
as a little Christian colony, living under a monastic rule requiring the
abandonment of all that was attractive in life. They exhibited a life of
purity, holiness, and self-denial. They exercised charity and
benevolence, and they forced the respect of the surrounding pagans to a
life the motives of which they could not comprehend, unless they
resulted from principles higher than those their pagan religion afforded
them; and, having won their respect for their lives and their gratitude
for their benevolence, these monastic missionaries went among them with
the Word of God in their hands, and preached to them the doctrines and
pure morality of the Word of Life. No wonder if kings and nations became
converted to Christianity and incorporated the church into their tribal
institutions in a manner which now excites our wonder, if not our
suspicion. The lives of the saints show us these missionaries, owing to
their devoted and self-denying lives, first received with respect by
some chief, then obtaining a grant of land to found their monastery, and
the people soon after converted by the preaching of the Word of God.
Their influence, however, was soon enhanced by a less legitimate
feature. We know how readily a rude and primitive people invest with
superstitious and supernatural power those claiming superior sanctity,
and the newly converted people soon surrounded these saints, as they
termed them, with the same old halo of reverence and awe which had
belonged to their pagan priests, such as they were. The power with which
the latter were supposed to be endowed, of influencing the action of
their native gods, was transferred to the Christian missionary, who was
believed to exercise a similar power with regard to the Christian Deity.
Their intercession was sought for, their malediction dreaded, and the
claims and rites of the Christian Church invested with superstitious
sanctions which brought the people more readily and universally into
subjection to her. We can trace this feeling in the Brehon Laws. We are
there told that ‘there are three periods at which the world is
worthless: the time of a plague, the time of a general war, the
dissolution of express contracts. There are three things which remedy
them: tithes and first fruits and alms; they prevent the occurrence of
plague; they confirm peace between the king and the people; they prevent
the prevalence of war; they confirm all in their good contracts and in
their bad contracts; they prevent the worthlessness of the world.’[150]
And again, in explaining the rights of the _Graid Feine_, or country
people, as to marriage, the commentary adds, ‘That is, the daughter of
each of them to the other, such a person as is not under the word, or
curse, of a patron saint.’[151]
[Sidenote: Monasteries were seminaries of instruction.]
But these monastic establishments probably acquired a still greater
influence from the extent to which they had obtained possession of the
instruction of the young. They soon became, in fact, great educational
seminaries to which the youth of the tribe were sent, not only to be
trained to monastic life, but also for the purpose of receiving secular
education. Each monastic church had, besides her community of monks, a
body of young people who received instruction; thus in one of the laws
it is said, ‘purity benefits the church in receiving every son for
instruction, every monk to his proper penance, with the proper payments
of all to their proper church.’[152] Even in the smaller monasteries,
the number of scholars was usually fifty.[153] In the larger, of course,
a much greater number were taught. Hence a single generation was
sufficient to convert the mass of the people to be devoted adherents of
the Church.
[Sidenote: Early Churches founded in the Western Isles.]
The great evidence, however, of life and energy in a church is her
missionary spirit towards foreign countries, and the irrepressible
desire of her members to carry her teaching and her institutions into
the neighbouring countries; and this evidence of her vitality the Irish
Church at this period manifested in a very remarkable degree. It was
natural that the opposite coast of North Britain and the islands which
lay between it and Ireland should attract these missionaries at once to
their shores. The first impulse seems to have been given by Brendan of
Clonfert, who, it is said, soon after he had been ordained priest by
Bishop Erc and assumed the monastic habit, sailed with fourteen of his
monks in search of the land of promise of the saints, and spent seven
years in the search before he returned home. The narrative of his seven
years’ voyage became one of the most popular tales of the Middle Ages,
and numerous editions exist of it. In its present shape it is, no doubt,
a mere romance or monkish dream, in which the narrator, under the
fiction of an imaginary voyage to different unknown islands, endeavours
to realise his ideal of monastic and eremitical life, and it possesses
some truly picturesque features. But there must have been some historic
foundation for it; and such a romance could hardly have been interwoven
into the acts of a real Brendan, if there had not been in the events of
his life a missionary adventure in which he sought to extend the
Christian Church to some distant island. There are not wanting some
indications that this was so; but be this as it may, there seems no
reason to refuse credit to the statement that, after his return from
this voyage, he went to Britain to visit St. Gildas,[154] who, as we
have seen, was one of those from whom the monastic life passed to
Ireland through the medium of Finnian of Clonard and his twelve
disciples, of whom Brendan was one. After leaving Gildas, Brendan
appears to have gone to the Western Islands, and to have founded in one
of the islands a monastery called Ailech, and a church and its
surrounding village in the land of Heth, and then returned to
Ireland.[155] This land of Heth we now know to have been the island of
Tyree,[156] but the precise situation of the other it is more difficult
to fix. It must, however, certainly be looked for in one of the islands
belonging to Britain.[157] The name of Brendan is connected with more
than one of the Western Isles. Fordun tells us that the island of Bute
bore the name of Rothesay ‘until, when the faith of our Saviour had been
diffused through all the ends of the earth, and the islands which are
afar off, Saint Brandan constructed thereon a booth—in our idiom,
_bothe_, that is, a shrine.’[158] But though the old chronicler’s
etymology of the name of Bute is bad, the name of Brendan is preserved
in the designation given to the people of Bute of ‘the Brandanes,’ and
in the Kilbrandan Sound, which separates the island of Arran from
Kintyre. The principal church in the island of Seil, which lies off the
coast of Lorn, is also dedicated to Brendan, and one of the small
islands forming the group called the Garveloch Isles, bears the name of
Culbrandan, or the retreat of Brendan. This island is next to that
called _Eilean na Naoimh_, or the Island of the Saints, and as the
latter appears to have borne the name of Elachnave,[159] it is not
impossible that here may have been the monastery of Aileach. This visit
to the Western Isles took place some time before the foundation of his
principal monastery in Ireland, that of Clonfert, the date of which is
known to have been 559; and we shall probably not be far wrong if we fix
the the year 545 as the probable date.
[Sidenote: Mission of Saint Columba to Britain.]
The mainland of Argyll, off the coast of which these islands lay, was at
this time in the occupation of the Scots of Dalriada, who had now
possessed these districts for upwards of forty years. Their king was
Gabhran, grandson of that Feargus Mor mac Erc who had led the colony
from Ireland to Scotland in the beginning of the same century. Ireland
had become nominally Christian before they left its shores, and they
were, in name at least, a Christian people, and, during the first sixty
years of the colony, had extended themselves so far over the western
districts and islands, as to bear the name of kings of Alban. Whether
Tyree was at this time included in their possessions may be doubted, but
Seil certainly would be. They sustained, however, a great reverse in the
year 560. Brude, the son of Mailchu, whom Bede terms a most powerful
monarch, became king of the northern Picts, and had his royal seat at
Inverness. By him the Dalriads were attacked, driven back, and their
king Gabhran slain. For the time their limits were restricted to the
peninsula of Kintyre and Knapdale and probably Cowal; but the islands
were lost to them.[160] This great reverse called forth the mission of
Columba, commonly called _Columcille_, and led to the foundation of the
monastic church in Scotland.
In investigating the lives of these great fathers of the Church, and
endeavouring to estimate the true character of their mission, we have to
encounter a very considerable difficulty. They filled so large a space
in the mind of the people, and became in consequence the subject of so
much popular tradition, that the few authentic facts of their history
preserved to us became overlaid with spurious matter stamped with the
feelings and the prejudices of later periods; and these popular
conceptions of the character and history of the saint and his work were
interwoven by each of his successive biographers into their narrative of
his life, till we are left with a statement of their career partly true
and partly fictitious, and a false conception is thus formed of their
character and mission. So it was with Patrick, the Apostle of Ireland;
and Columba, the Apostle of Scotland, shared the same fate. In both
cases it is necessary to separate the older and more authentic tradition
from the later stratum of fable. For this purpose we possess, in the
case of Patrick, his own account of himself as contained in his
Confession and his epistle to Coroticus, and can test the statements of
his later biographers by their consistency with these documents. In the
case of Columba we have no such record to appeal to, and can only bring
the narratives of the later biographers to the test of a comparison with
the statements of those who wrote more near to his own time. Fortunately
for us, his two earliest biographers, Cummene and Adamnan, were both his
successors in the abbacy of the monastery founded by himself, and
collected its traditions regarding its founder within so short a period
after his death that we may appeal to their statements of fact,
irrespective of the colouring given to them by the circumstances of the
time in which these biographers lived, with some confidence as affording
us the means of testing the later narratives. Cummene became abbot just
sixty years, and Adamnan eighty-two, after Columba’s death. We are
warranted therefore in concluding that supposed facts in his life, which
either are ignored by them or are inconsistent with their narrative, are
the fruit of later and spurious tradition.
In the old Irish Life, which Dr. Reeves considers to be a composition
probably as old as the tenth century, and which was originally compiled
to be read as a discourse upon his festival, a few statements are found
which bear this character; but the grand repertory of all these later
and questionable additions to his biography is the elaborate Life by
Manus O’Donnell, chief of Tyrconnell, compiled in the year 1532, which
professes to be a chronological digest of all the existing records
concerning the patron of his family.[161] The tale which it tells of the
cause of Columba’s mission to Scotland, and which is popularly accepted
as true, is shortly this:—In the year 561 a great battle was fought at a
place called Cuil-dremhne in Connaught, not far from the boundary
between that province and Ulster. The contending parties were Diarmaid
son of Cerbaill, head of the southern Hy Neill and king of Ireland, on
the one side, and, on the other, the northern Hy Neill under the sons of
Murcertach mac Erca, chiefs of the Cinel Eoghain, Ainmere, son of Sedna
chief of the Cinel Conaill, and the people of Connaught under their king
Aedh. The king of Ireland was defeated with great slaughter, and the
cause of the battle was twofold: First, that King Diarmaid had taken
Curnan, the son of the king of Connaught, by force from under the
protection of Columba; and secondly, that he had given judgment against
Columba in a dispute between him and Finnian of Moyville regarding the
possession of a transcript of a copy of the Book of Psalms belonging to
the latter, which Columba had made without his permission, and which the
king had adjudged to belong to Finnian on the ground of the adage, To
every cow belongs its calf. Columba, who himself belonged to the race of
the northern Hy Neill, was said to have incited his tribe to avenge him
upon the king of Ireland, and to have by his prayers contributed to
their success. A synod of the saints of Ireland was held, before whom
Columba was arraigned as responsible for the great slaughter caused by
this battle; and they decided that he must win from paganism as many
souls as had been slain in this battle. The mode in which it was to be
fulfilled was referred to Laisren, or Molaisse, of Inishmurry, who
imposed as a penance upon Columba perpetual exile from Ireland, whose
shores his eyes were not again to see and whose soil his feet were not
again to tread. Columba accordingly left Ireland for the Western Isles.
He first landed on the island of Colonsay and ascended the highest
ground, when, finding he could see the coast of Ireland from it, he
dared not remain there; and a cairn called _Cairn Cul ri Erin_ marks the
spot. Proceeding farther east, he landed on the south end of the island
of Iona; and, ascending the nearest elevation, where a cairn, also
called _Cairn Cul ri Erin_ marks the spot, he found that Ireland was no
longer in sight; upon which he remained there, and founded his church on
the island. Such is the popular account of Columba’s mission.
That he may have in some degree, either directly or indirectly, been the
cause of the battle of Culdremhne is not inconsistent with the narrative
of Adamnan. He not only twice mentions the battle of Culdremhne, and on
both occasions in connection with the date of Columba’s departure for
Scotland,[162] but he gives some countenance to the tale when he tells
us that Columba had been on one occasion excommunicated by a synod held
at Taillte in Meath; but that when he came to this meeting, convened
against him, St. Brendan of Birr, when he saw him approaching in the
distance, quickly rose, and with head bowed down reverently kissed him;
and when reproached by some of the seniors in the assembly for saluting
an excommunicated person, he narrated that he had seen certain
manifestations connected with his appearance, which convinced him that
he was ‘foreordained by God to be the leader of his people to life. When
he said this, they desisted, and so far from daring to hold the saint
any longer excommunicated, they even treated him with the greatest
respect and reverence.’[163] Adamnan does not connect this synod with
the battle of Culdremhne, and only states that he had been
excommunicated ‘for some pardonable and very trifling reasons, and
indeed unjustly, as it afterwards appeared at the end’; but it is quite
possible that these reasons may have been an imputation of
responsibility for the blood shed at this battle. One of the causes
given for the battle—that of the judgment given against Columba with
regard to the transcript of the Book of Psalms—is, however, inconsistent
with the terms of affection and respect which appear from Adamnan to
have subsisted between Bishop Finnian and Columba, and bears the stamp
of spurious tradition;[164] but the other cause, the violation of the
protection of Columba, touched one of the most cherished privileges of
the Irish monastic church at the time—the right of sanctuary; and it was
not unnatural that Columba should have deeply felt the necessity of
vindicating it, and his tribe, the Cinel Conaill, as well as the whole
race of the northern Hy Neill, should have considered their honour
involved in resenting its violation.
The remainder of the tale is clearly at utter variance with the
narrative of Adamnan. So far from the excommunication by the Synod of
Taillte being followed by a sentence of exile from Ireland, he expressly
tells us that it was not persisted in. He repeatedly alludes to
Columba’s great affection for Ireland, and the yearning of his heart
towards his early home; but not a word as to any prohibition against
returning thither, or that his exile was otherwise than voluntary. He
presents him to us as exercising a constant and vigilant superintendence
over his Irish monasteries, and as repeatedly visiting Ireland, without
a hint as to there being any reason for his refraining from doing
so.[165] We must therefore entirely reject this part of the story.
Adamnan had no idea that Columba was actuated by any other motive than
that of a desire to carry the gospel to a pagan nation, when he
attributes his pilgrimage to a love of Christ.[166] The old Irish Life
knows no other reason than that ‘his native country was left by the
illustrious saint and illustrious sage and son, chosen of God, for the
love and favour of Christ.’ The author of the prophecy of Saint Berchan
admits that he was responsible for the battle of Culdremhne:—
With the youth himself was the cause of
The great slaughter of the battle of Culdremhne;
but assigns as one reason of his going, the subjection of the Dalriads
to the Picts:—
Woe to the Cruithnigh to whom he will go eastward;
He knew the thing that is,
Nor was it happy with him that an Erinach
Should be king in the east under the Cruithnigh.[167]
His real motives for undertaking this mission seem therefore to have
been partly religious and partly political. He was one of the twelve
apostles of Ireland who had emerged from the school of Finnian of
Clonard; and he no doubt shared the missionary spirit which so deeply
characterised the Monastic Church of Ireland at this period. He was also
closely connected, through his grandmother, with the line of the
Dalriadic kings, and, as an Irishman, must have been interested in the
maintenance of the Irish colony in the west of Scotland. Separated from
him by the Irish Channel was the great pagan nation of the northern
Picts, who, under a powerful king, had just inflicted a crushing defeat
upon the Scots of Dalriada, and threatened their expulsion from the
country; and, while his missionary zeal impelled him to attempt the
conversion of the Picts, he must have felt that, if he succeeded in
winning a pagan people to the religion of Christ, he would at the same
time rescue the Irish colony of Dalriada from a great danger, and render
them an important service, by establishing peaceable relations between
them and their greatly more numerous and powerful neighbours, and
replacing them in the more secure possession of the western districts
they had colonised.
-----
Footnote 80:
They appear to have excluded not only women but laymen generally from
the monasteries. Jonas tells us, in his Life of Columbanus, who
belongs to this order of saints, that Theodoric, king of Burgundy,
came to Luxeuil and demanded of Columbanus why he did not allow all
Christians to have access to the more secret enclosures of the
monastery; to which he replied that it was not the custom to open the
habitations of God’s servants to secular men and strangers to
religion, and that he had fit and proper places for the purpose of
receiving guests.—_Vit. S. Col._ cxviii.
Footnote 81:
Omnes presbyteri, diaconi, cantores, lectores, ceterique gradus
ecclesiastici monachicam per omnia cum ipso episcopo regulam
servent.—_Vit. S. Cuthberti_, c. xvi.
Footnote 82:
By the episcopal functions, as distinguished from diocesan
jurisdiction, are meant those ecclesiastical functions appropriated to
bishops in virtue of their orders, irrespective of any territorial
supervision, such as ordination, confirmation, and celebration of the
mass _pontificali ritu_.
Footnote 83:
The Bollandists take the same view, and quote the case of the
monastery of Fulda as an example. They say, ‘Presbyteriani obliti
distinctionis inter potestatem ordinis et jurisdictionis, dum abbatem
presbyterum vident primatem totius provinciæ cui et ipsi episcopi
subduntur, continuo eliminatam potestatem ordinis episcopalis
effinxere. Quasi vero, ut ratiocinationem exemplo illustremus,
Fuldenses monachi ad medium usque sæculum præterlapsum,
presbyterianismum sectati fuissent, habentes abbatem presbyterum,
jurisdictionem quasi episcopalem in vastum territorium exercentem, qui
unum ex subditis monachis habebat, episcopali charactere insignitum,
ad ea, quæ sunt pontificalis ordinis peragenda; qui rerum status
continuavit usque ad annum 1752, quo Benedictus XIV. Fuldense
territorium in episcopatum erexit bulla sua, data iii. Nonas Octobris
1752. Erat igitur et Fuldæ ordo, ut Bedæ verbis utamur, inusitatus; de
quo tamen dicere licet, exceptionem firmare regulam, nec quidquam
decrescere dignitati et necessitati ordinis episcopalis, si, propter
speciales rerum et temporum circumstantias, extraordinaria via, alicui
presbytero amplior quædam jurisdictionis potestas obtingat.’—_Boll.
A.SS._, October, vol. viii. p. 165.
Footnote 84:
Eusebius bishop of Vercelli, and Augustine bishop of Hippo, united
with their clergy in adopting a strictly monastic life.
Footnote 85:
Habere autem solet ipsa insula rectorem semper abbatem presbyterum,
cujus juri et omnis provincia et ipsi etiam episcopi, ordine
inusitato, debeant esse subjecti.—_Η. E._, B. iii. c. iv.
Footnote 86:
Cujus monasterium in cunctis pene Septentrionalium Scottorum et omnium
Pictorum monasteriis non parvo tempore arcem tenebat, regendisque
eorum populis præerat.—_Η. E._, B. iii. c. iii.
Footnote 87:
The following extracts from the Irish Annals will illustrate this:—
624 S. Maodocc _Epscop_ Ferna dec.
652 S. Dachua Luachra _Abb._ Ferna dec.
713 Cillene _Epscop Abb._ Ferna dec.
766 Aedgen _Epscop agus Abb._ Fobhair dec.
769 Forandan, _Scribneoir agus Epscop_ Treoit dec.
791 Clothchu _Epscop agus Angcoire_ Cluana Ioraird, Suibhne _Epscop_
Atha Truim decc.
Footnote 88:
_The Monks of the West_, by Montalembert, vol. i. pp. 452-460. Dupuy,
_Histoire de Saint Martin_, p. 50. His biographer, Sulpicius Severus,
says that he filled the high function of bishop without abandoning the
spirit and virtue of the monk.—C. 10.
Footnote 89:
_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 55.
Footnote 90:
Deinde beatus puer libertati restitutus S. Monenni disciplinis et
monitis in Rosnatensi monasterio quod alio nomine Alba vocatur.—_In
Vit. S. Tighernac_, Colgan, _A.SS._ p. 438.
Quos duos viros sanctus ac sapiens Nennio, qui Mancennus dicitur, de
Rosnacensi monasterio ... Post aliquot vero annos Eugenius atque
Tyghernachus cum præfati Manchenii ac fratrum jussione et oratione ad
Hiberniam navigauerunt.—_In Vit. S. Eugenii_, ib.
Footnote 91:
Vade ad Britanniam at Rosnatum monasterium et esto humilis discipulus
Manceni magistri illius monasterii.—_In Vit. S. Endei_, ib.
Footnote 92:
Inter alias Dei famulas quædam Dei virgo, nomine Brignat cum sancta
virgine cohabitasse traditur: hujus enim futuræ sanctitatis indicia
considerans, eam in Britanniam insulam de Rostnatensi monasterio,
conversationis monasticæ regulas accepturam misisse perhibetur.—_Boll.
A.SS._ Julii, tom. ii. p. 294.
Footnote 93:
Cum eodem repatriante navigavit et in ejus sede quæ Magnum vocatur
Monasterium regulas et institutiones monasticæ vitæ aliquot annis
probus monachus didicit.—Colgan, _A.SS._ p. 438.
Footnote 94:
Modo factum est quod magister suus Mugentius nomine, que in civitate
quæ dicitur Candida liberales disciplinas eum docuerat.—Colg. _A.SS._,
p. 634.
Footnote 95:
_Liber Hymnorum_, Part i. p. 97, with notes by the Rev. J. H. Todd.
Footnote 96:
_Tri cocait descipul la Manchan_ magister, hos omnes invoco.
Footnote 97:
Dupuy, _Histoire de Saint Martin_, pp. 215, 217. Haddan and Stubbs’
_Councils_, vol. ii. pp. 86, 87, 91.
Footnote 98:
Gildas the historian is said in his Life to have gone to Ireland in
the reign of King Anmericus or Ainmire, ‘qui et ipse misit ad beatum
Gildam, rogans ut ad se veniret; promittens se ipsius doctrinis in
omnibus obediturum, si veniens ecclesiasticum ordinem in suo regno
restauraret; quia pœne Catholicam fidem in ipsa insula omnes
reliquerant.’—Colg. _A.SS._ p. 183.
Columbanus, who was alive and in Ireland at the time, refers to him in
his epistle to Pope Gregory, in these terms,—‘Cæterum de episcopis
illis quid judicas, interrogo, qui contra canones ordinantur, id est,
quæstu: simoniacos et Giltas auctor pestes scripsistis.’—_Ep. ad S.
Greg. Pap._ Migne, _Patrologia_, vol. 37, col. 262.
Footnote 99:
Cathmael was the baptismal name of Cadoc of Nantgarvan. See _Vita S.
Cadoci_ in _Lives of Cambro-British Saints_, pp. 25-27.
Footnote 100:
_Vita S. Finniani_, apud Colgan, _A.SS._, p. 393.
Footnote 101:
Dr. Todd’s _Life of Saint Patrick_, p. 101.
Footnote 102:
Tandem Romam meditans, in Hiberniam reditum angelus Domini suasit, ad
fidem post B. Patrici obitum neglectam restaurandam, etc.—Colgan,
_A.SS._, p. 401. See also Dr. Todd’s remarks upon this subject in his
_Life of Saint Patrick_, p. 101.
Footnote 103:
Martyrology of Donegal, p. 335. A list of these twelve apostles is
given in the Life of St. Finnian.
Footnote 104:
The year is fixed by calculation from Adamnan’s data; see Reeves’s
_Adamnan_, ed. 1874, p. 225. The summary of Saint Columba’s life in
the introduction to this edition, and the notes, may be consulted for
all the events of Saint Columba’s life. The subject is most
exhaustively treated in Dr. Reeves’s great work.
Footnote 105:
See Dr. Reeves’s Note, p. 225. Adamnan alludes to his having been
under the care of Cruithnechan, a priest, in B. iii. c. 3.
Footnote 106:
Adamnan alludes to this, B. ii. c. 1.
Footnote 107:
Adamnan alludes to his being under Gemman, B. ii. c. 26; see also
Reeves’s _Adamnan_, p. 274.
Footnote 108:
The story of how S. Columba obtained his priest’s orders appears only
in the Scholia or Annotations on the Feliré of Angus the Culdee. It is
thus translated by Dr. Todd:—‘Bishop Etchen is venerated in
Cluainfota-Boetain in Fera-Bile in the south of Meath, and it was to
him Columcille went to have the order of a bishop conferred upon him.
Columcille sat under the tree which is on the west side of the church,
and asked where the cleric was; “There he is,” said a certain man, “in
the field where they are ploughing below.” “I think,” said Columcille,
“that it is not meet for us that a ploughman should confer orders on
us; but let us test him.”... Then Columcille went up to the cleric,
after having thus tested him, and told him what he came for. “It shall
be done,” said the cleric. The order of a priest was then conferred
upon Columcille, although it was the order of a bishop he wished to
have conferred upon him,’ etc. Dr. Todd’s _Life of Saint Patrick_, p.
71. This tale does not appear in the old Irish Life, and is probably a
mere attempt to explain why so great a saint was merely a presbyter;
but his master, Finnian of Clonard, was a presbyter-abbot, and his
disciples would naturally follow his example in what indeed was the
main characteristic of this second order of the saints.
Footnote 109:
Monasterium nobile in Hibernia, quod a copia roborum Dearmach lingua
Scottorum, hoc est, campus roborum cognominatur.—B. iii. c. 10. It is
termed by Adamnan ‘Roboreti Campus. Roboris Campus. Roboreus Campus.’
Footnote 110:
See Dr. Reeves’s _Adamnan_, ed. 1874, p. xlix., for a complete list of
his Irish foundations.
Footnote 111:
Constituitque magnum monasterium, quod vocatur Bennchor, in regione,
quæ dicitur Altitudo Ultorum (Ards) juxta mare orientale; et maxima
multitudo monachorum illuc venit ad S. Comgallum ut non potuissent
esse in uno loco, et inde plurimas cellas et multa monasteria non
solum in regione Ultorum sed per alias Hiberniæ provincias; et in
diversis cellis et monasteriis tria millia monachorum sub cura sancti
patris Comgelli erant; sed maior et nominatior cæteris locis prædictum
monasterium Benchor est.—Boll. _A.SS. in Vit. S. Comgalli_, cap. 13.
Footnote 112:
Ipsum quoque locum Benchor tradidit ei princeps, ut ædificaret ibi
monasterium, vel potius reædificaret. Nempe nobilissimum extiterat
ante sub primo patre Congello, multa millia monachorum generans,
multorum monasteriorum caput. Locus vere sanctus fœcundusque
sanctorum, copiosissime fructificans Deo, ita ut unus ex filiis sanctæ
illius congregationis, nomine Luanus, centum solus monasteriorum
fundator extitisse feratur. Hiberniam Scotiamque repleverunt genimina
ejus. Nec modo in præfatas, sed in exteras etiam regiones, quasi
inundatione facta, illa se sanctorum examina effuderunt; e quibus ad
has nostras Gallicanas partes sanctus Columbanus ascendens Lexoviense
construxit monasterium, factus ibi in gentem magnam. Hæc de antiqua
dicta sint Benchorensis monasterii gloria.—_Vit. S. Malachiæ_, cap. 5.
Footnote 113:
_xl. mili manach co rath De fo mam Chomgaill Benchuir_, hos omnes
invoco.
Footnote 114:
Martyr. Donegal, p. 177.
Footnote 115:
Aper statim in conspectu viri Dei virgas et fenum ad materiem cellæ
construendæ dentibus suis fortiter abscidit.—Colgan, _A.SS._, p. 458.
Footnote 116:
_Boll. A.SS._, Jun. 1, 316.
Footnote 117:
Ecclesia in monasterio sanctæ Monennæ cum supradicta abbatissa
construitur tabulis dedolatis, juxta morem Scotticarum gentium, eo
quod macerias Scotti non solent facere, nec factas habere.—_Vit. S.
Mon._
Footnote 118:
_Durthech .i. dairtech .i. tech darach no deirthech .i. tech .i.
telgter dera._ ‘_Durthech_, _i.e._ dairtech, _i.e._ a house of oak, or
_deirtech_, _i.e._ a house in which tears are shed.’—Petrie’s _Round
Towers_, p. 342.
Footnote 119:
Dr. Petrie has made the history and use of these buildings perfectly
plain in his great work on the _Round Towers of Ireland_.
Footnote 120:
It is thus explained in the old glossaries:—_Daimliag .i. tegais
cloch._ ‘_Daimliag_, _i.e._ an edifice of stone.’—Petrie’s _Round
Towers_, pp. 141, 142.
Footnote 121:
Petrie’s _Round Towers_, pp. 343, 344.
Footnote 122:
In Cormac’s Glossary it is thus explained:—_Aurdom_, _i.e._ _urdom_,
_i.e._ side house, or against a house externally.
Footnote 123:
See Petrie’s _Round Towers_, pp. 425, 426.
Footnote 124:
_Ib._, p. 442. See description of _Inis macsaint_, an island in Lough
Erne, where Saint Ninnidh, one of the twelve apostles of Ireland,
founded a monastery. ‘To the west and north of the church extend
mounds of earth, which indicate the forms and positions of the ancient
community dwellings. There was a rampart of mixed earth and stones,
and this probably formed a _rath_, or _cashel_.’—O’Hanlon’s _Lives of
the Saints_, vol. i. p. 322. The following is a good description of a
small monastery:—Erat enim habitatio eorum sparsa. Tamen unanimiter
illorum conversatio in spe, fide et charitate fundata erat. Una
refectio, ad opus Dei perficiendum una ecclesia est. Nihil aliud cibi
ministrabatur illis, nisi poma et nuces atque radices et cetera genera
herbarum. Fratres, post completorium, in singulis cellulis usque ad
gallorum cantus seu campanæ pulsum pernoctabant.—_Acta S. Brendani_,
p. 86.
Footnote 125:
This is stated in their acts. The Martyrology of Donegal has under
Enda, abbot of Ara, ‘Thrice fifty was his congregation;’ and under
Ruadhan, son of Ferghus, abbot of Lothra, ‘There were one hundred and
fifty in his congregation, and they used to obtain sufficiency always
without human labour to sustain them, by continually praying to, and
praising, the Lord of the elements.’—_Mart. Don._, pp. 83, 103.
Footnote 126:
It is used by Tighernac in this sense. He has at 718, ‘Tonsura corona
super _familiam Iae_ datur’ (_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 74); while
Bede in his account of the same event says, ‘Nec multo post illi
quoque qui insulam Hii incolebant monachi Scotticæ nationis, _cum his
quæ sibi erant subdita monasteriis_, ad ritum paschæ ac tonsuræ
canonicum Domino procurante perducti sunt.’—B. v. c. 22.
Footnote 127:
Mart. Donegal, p. 216. See also Adam. _Vit. S. Col._, B. iii. c. 4.
Footnote 128:
Auditoque ejus accessu, universi undique ab agellulis monasterio
vicinis cum his qui ibidem inventi sunt congregati, etc.—Adam. _Vit.
S. Col._, B. i. c. 3.
Footnote 129:
_Ib._ B. iii. c. 22.
Footnote 130:
Colgan, _A.SS._, p. 707.
Footnote 131:
Accepitque Sanctus Brendanus cum esset sacerdos habitum monasticum
sanctum. Et multi relinquentes sæculum hinc inde venerunt ad eum et
fecit eos Sanctus Brendanus monachos. Deinde cellas et monasteria
fundavit in sua propria regione et multa monasteria et cellas per
diversas regiones Hyberniæ fundavit in quibus tria millia monachorum
ut perhibetur a senioribus sub eo erant.—_Acta S. Brendani_, p. 10.
Footnote 132:
Adam. _Vit. Col._, B. ii. c. 26.
Footnote 133:
_Annals of the Four Masters_, p. 193.
Footnote 134:
Petrie’s _Antiquities of Tara Hill_, pp. 125, 127.
Footnote 135:
Thus Bede, after narrating the foundation of Iona and Dearmagh by
Columba, adds—‘Ex quo utroque monasterio plurima exinde monasteria per
discipulos ejus et in Britannia et in Hibernia propagata sunt: in
quibus omnibus idem monasterium insulanum, in quo ipse requiescit
corpore, principatum teneret.’—B. iii. c. 4.
Footnote 136:
See the very able paper by Dr. Reeves on this subject in the
_Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy_, vol. vi. p. 447.
Footnote 137:
_Ancient Laws of Ireland_, vol. iii. p. 75.
Footnote 138:
_Ancient Laws of Ireland_, vol. iii. p. 75. The translation of these
passages has been made a little more literal, but the meaning of the
last sentence is not very apparent.
Footnote 139:
_Annoit—andoit .i. eclais do et in aile as cenn agas is tuiside_; that
is, a church which precedes another is a head and is earlier—a parent
church.—_O’Don. sup._
Footnote 140:
From _Dalta_, a pupil, a disciple.
Footnote 141:
_Pairche_, a parochia.—Cormac’s _Glossary_. _Compairche_ is
conparochia.
Footnote 142:
Conchad went to Armagh, and Fland Feblae gave his Cell (_Cheill_) to
him, and he himself took the abbacy (_Abbaith_).—_Book of Armagh._
Deinde cellas et monasteria fundavit in sua propria regione.—_Act. S.
Brendani_, c. ii.
Footnote 143:
This expression is translated in the Ancient Laws ‘a pilgrim,’ but the
pilgrim in the true sense of the term is expressed in Irish by the
word ‘ailithir.’ _Deoraid_, advena.—_O’Don. sup._
Footnote 144:
_Ancient Laws of Ireland_, vol. iii. p. 79.
Footnote 145:
The explanation given in the commentary of this obscure expression is,
if ten sons are born after the first, then ‘to set aside the three
worst sons, and to cast lots between the seven best sons to see which
of them should be due to the church.’
Footnote 146:
_Ancient Laws_, vol. iii. pp. 39, 40, 41.
Footnote 147:
_Ancient Laws_, vol. iii. p. 31.
Footnote 148:
_Ib._ p. 33.
Footnote 149:
MS., Brit. Mus., Nero, A. vii.
Footnote 150:
_Ancient Laws_, vol. iii. p. 13.
Footnote 151:
_Ib._ p. 17.
Footnote 152:
_Ib._ p. 35.
Footnote 153:
This is the number we have seen in the small establishment of Mobhi
Clarenach. Saint Brendan went to Bishop Ere when five years old, ‘ad
legendum ... et quinquaginta ex illis manserunt sub lege Sancti
Episcopi Erci usque ad mortem suam.’—_Act. S. Brendani_, c. vi.
Footnote 154:
Postea navigavit Sanctus Brendanus in peregrinatione ad Britanniam,
adivitque sanctissimum senem Gilldam, virum sapientissimum in
Britannia habitantem, cujus fama sanctitatis magna erat.—_Act.
Brendani_, c. xv. It is usually stated that he went to Armorica, or
Bretagne, but by Britannia, when used without qualification, Britain
can only be meant.
Footnote 155:
Et benedicentibus se invicem Sanctus Brendanus et Sanctus Gilldas cum
suis fratribus civitatisque illius habitatoribus, recessit inde. Et in
alia regione in Britannia monasterium nomine Ailech sanctissimus
Brendanus fundavit. Atque in loco alio in Britannia in regione Heth,
ecclesiam et villam circa eam assignavit et ibi magnas virtutes beatus
Pater Brendanus fecit: et postea navigavit ad Hyberniam.—_Vit.
Brendani_, c. xvi. The passage is thus given in the Brussels
edition:—Postea flentibus omnibus profectus est ac in Britanniam
remeavit ac duo monasteria, unum in insula Ailech, alterum in terra
Ethica in loco nomine Bledua fundavit.
Footnote 156:
See Reeves’s _Adamnan_, ed. 1874, p. 303.
Footnote 157:
In the Life quoted, the term ‘regio’ is applied equally to both; but
Dr. Reeves has shown that this term is used for an island, and in the
Brussels edition of the Life, it is expressly called ‘insula.’ It is
supposed by Dr. Lanigan to be Alectum in Armorica, but the name of
Britannia usually designates Britain.
Footnote 158:
Fordun’s _Chronicle_, ed. 1872, vol. ii. p. 24.
Footnote 159:
The parsonage and vicarage teinds of the islands of Ilachinive and
Kilbrandon belonged to the priory of Oronsay, and were in 1630
granted, with the lands of Andrew, bishop of Raphoe and prior of
Oronsay, to John Campbell, rector of Craignish.—_Origines
Parochiales_, vol. ii. part i. p. 276.
Footnote 160:
This appears from the notice in the Annals of Ulster, in 568, of an
expedition to the Western Region or Western Isles, by Colman Beg. son
of Diarmait, and Conall, son of Comgall (of Dalriada). The Four
Masters in the parallel passage have ‘Sol and Ile’—Sheil and Isla.
Footnote 161:
See Preface to Dr. Reeves’s _Adamnan_ for an account of these Lives.
Footnote 162:
Adamnan, Pref. 2, and B. i. c. 7.
Footnote 163:
Adamnan, B. iii. c. 4.
Footnote 164:
See Adamnan, Book iii. c. 5. This transcript appears to have been the
book termed the Cathach, which remained among the relics of St.
Columba, and the tradition seems to have been connected with it.
Footnote 165:
See Adamnan, B. i. cc. 7, 30, 32, 35; B. ii. cc. 29, 37, 42, 44; in
which ten different visits to Ireland are recorded.
Footnote 166:
Pro Christo peregrinare volens.
Footnote 167:
_Chron. of the Picts and Scots_, pp. 80, 82.
CHAPTER III.
THE MONASTIC CHURCH IN IONA.
[Sidenote: A.D. 563.
St. Columba crosses from Ireland to Britain with twelve
followers.]
‘In those days the Saint, with twelve disciples, his fellow-soldiers,
sailed across to Britain.’[168] Such is the short and simple statement
of Columba’s earliest biographer. Adamnan gives us the additional
information that it was ‘in the second year after the battle of
Culdremhne, that is, in the year 563, and in the forty-second of his
age, that Columba, resolving to seek a foreign country for the love of
Christ, sailed from Scotia, or Ireland, to Britain.’[169] In the same
year, which is again marked by Adamnan as being two years after the
battle of Culdremhne, we find him living in Britain with King Conall,
son of Comgall,[170] the successor of that Gabhran who had met his
defeat and death in the battle with the powerful king of the Picts in
560. The territories occupied by the Scots of Dalriada had in
consequence been much restricted, and for the time probably did not
extend much beyond the peninsula of Kintyre, and perhaps Cowal, for
while his predecessors are termed _Ri Alban_ by the old annalist
Tighernac, Conall bears the title of _Ri Dalriada_ only. His chief seat
appears at this time to have been at a place which the annalist calls
Delgon, or Cindelgend, in Kintyre; and it seems to have been situated on
the west coast of Knapdale.[171] The curious cave chapel at Cove, on
Loch Caolisport, which tradition says was Columba’s first church in
Scotland before he sailed to Iona, is probably connected with his
residence with King Conall.[172]
Columba seems to have followed the mode usual at the time of commencing
a missionary work, by exhibiting the Christian life in its purity and
self-denial, as well as by preaching the Word; and accordingly Bede
tells us that he converted the Pictish nation ‘by example as well as by
the Word.’[173] His first object therefore would be to obtain the grant
of some island suitably situated for his purpose, where he could found
one of those primitive Celtic monasteries in which alone it was at the
time possible to lead the Christian life. The island selected for the
purpose was that small island which is separated from the great island
of Mull by a narrow channel, and which bore the name of _Ia_ or _Hii_,
now called Iona.[174] It has been made a subject of controversy whether
Columba received the donation of this island from Conall, the king of
Dalriada, or from Brude, the king of the Picts; and a rather profitless
discussion has followed upon it. The principal authorities are, on the
one side, the old annalist Tighernac, and on the other, the Venerable
Bede; but although the latter historian preceded the former by at least
three hundred years, it is maintained that Tighernac was likely to be
better informed. In recording the death of King Conall in 574, he adds
that ‘it was he who immolated the island of Ia to Columcille.’[175]
Bede’s account, however, is very circumstantial. He says, on his first
mention of the island of Hii, ‘which island belongs indeed to the realm
of Britain, being separated from it by a sound of no great size; but
was, by the donation of the Picts who inhabit these districts of
Britain, given over to the Scottish monks from whose preaching they had
received the faith of Christ.’[176] These accounts, though involving an
apparent contradiction, are not in reality inconsistent with each other.
Before the settlement of the Irish colonists in Dalriada, the districts
forming it were occupied by a Pictish population. The Scots extended
themselves by degrees, and some time prior to 560 their possessions had
probably reached, at all events, the islands of Mull and of Iona. The
Dalriads were already Christians. Whatever they won for themselves was
also won for the Christian Church; and there is reason to think that
there was an earlier Christian establishment on the island. Still,
because it was situated on the frontiers of the Dalriads and the Picts,
when the former were driven back by Brude, the king of the Picts, in
560, this part of the country must have been lost to them in actual
possession. They would, however, claim it as their right, and hope to
regain it. When Columba came on the avowed mission of endeavouring to
convert these Picts, the Dalriadic king would naturally point to Iona as
a suitable position for his mission, and convey to him such right in it
as he possessed. On the other hand, Bede does not anywhere say that it
was given to him by the Pictish monarch, but that it was a donation from
the Picts who inhabited the districts of Britain from which the island
was separated by a narrow strait. These would naturally form the first
fruits of the saint’s mission, and their donation would be one, not of
the Pictish nation at large, but of the tribe of the land, which we know
was an essential preliminary to the foundation of these monastic
establishments in Ireland. Accordingly the ancient tract called the
_Amra Choluimchilli_ describes Columba as ‘a noble one who sought seven
_tuaths_, and definite for indefinite in it, or five _tuaths_ of Erin
and two _tuaths_ in Alban.’[177]
[Sidenote: Founds a monastery in Iona.]
Columba thus commenced his mission by founding his monastery in the
island of Iona. According to the old Irish Life, it was on Whitsun Eve,
which in that year fell on the 12th of May, that he arrived in the
island, when, we are further told, ‘two bishops who were in the island
came to lead him by the hand out of it; but God now revealed to
Columcille that they were not true bishops, whereupon they left the
island to him, when he told of them their history and their true
adventures.’[178] They were no doubt the remains of that anomalous
church of seven bishops which here, as elsewhere, preceded the monastic
church; and Columba appears to have refused to recognise them as
legitimately entitled to the character of bishops, and the island was
abandoned to him. It was an island well adapted in situation for his
purpose, and must have possessed many attractions to one who, like
Columba, possessed an intense love of nature and of natural objects, had
the soul of a poet, and desired to combine with his active missionary
work a life of purity and self-denial.
[Sidenote: Description of the Island.]
No one who pays merely a flying visit to Iona in an excursion steamer,
with a crowd of tourists, and sees apparently a desolate-looking island
with a few grey ruins, through which he is hurried by the guide in order
that he may return in the steamer the same day, can form any conception
of its hidden beauties,—its retired dells, its long reaches of sand on
shores indented with quiet bays, its little coves between bare and
striking rocks, and the bolder rocky scenery of its north-western and
south-western shores, where it opposes wild barren cliffs and high rocky
islets to the sweep of the Atlantic. Columba could hardly find a spot
better adapted for the foundation of an island monastery which was to
form the centre of a great missionary work, and to exhibit the Christian
life in contrast with the surrounding paganism. He would find himself in
possession of an island lying north-east and south-west, and separated
from the island of Mull by a narrow channel of about a mile broad. Its
length, about three miles and a half, and its breadth, about a mile and
a half. In the centre of the island he would see a plain extending
across it—at its narrowest part—from the eastern to the western sea,
presenting apparently fertile land well adapted for agriculture or
pasture, and, in the middle of it, a small green hillock surmounted by a
circle of stones.[179] North of this plain, on the western shore, he
would see a tract of wilder ground consisting of small grassy patches,
or dells alternating with rocky elevations, culminating in the highest
hill in the island, now called Dunii;[180] and on the northern shore, a
strip of low land extending from the base of the hill to the sea, and
terminating at the north-east end of the island in a stretch of the
purest white sand, which was destined to be afterwards the scene of a
cruel slaughter of the monks by the Danes. South of this plain he would
see a tract of low fertile land, extending along the eastern shore, and
sloping gently towards the sea; and through the centre of it a stream
issuing from some marshy ground which separates the level fields from
the bold barren tract on the west, and extends from the foot of Dunii,
and trickling through a small channel into the sea. On the south of this
stream he would find the plain hounded on the west by a natural bulwark
of rocky elevations, and between it and the sea he would probably find
the ancient cemetery in which the founders of the Dalriadic colony and
their successors, down to his own time, were buried; and farther south,
on the shore, a little harbour, or landing-place, for persons crossing
the channel from Mull. If he ascended Dunii, he would find that Iona
formed the centre of an archipelago of islands. On the north he would
see the lofty island of Rum and the low shores of Canna, and behind them
the distant and striking forms of the Coollin Hills in Skye.[181]
Looking west, the horizon would be bounded on the north-west by the
island range consisting of the two islands of Coll and Tiree, and on the
south-west the distant shores of Isla would be visible. Looking south
over the low land of the Ross of Mull, the hills called the Paps of Jura
would be very conspicuous, while the Garveloch islands, lying between it
and Mull, are hidden by the intervening land. Below him, his eye would
dwell on that part of the level fertile plain which extends from the
foot of Dunii, where it is separated from the more northern plain by a
line of rocky knolls, to the stream which flows from the marshy ground
on the south. Here no object would arrest his gaze on the sloping plain
save two isolated rocky hillocks on its highest level, and a large flat
boulder stone between them and the sea, which must have travelled, in
the glacial period of prehistoric times, across the channel from the
opposite coast of Mull. This part of the plain would appear to him to
present a favourable site for his monastery, while, by forming an
artificial lake out of the marsh from which the stream flowed, he might
increase its volume so as to enable it to turn a small mill, near which
he would place a kiln for drying the grain, and a barn for storing
it.[182] We may well suppose that Columba, when he first surveyed his
newly acquired island and thus looked around him, would form the silent
resolution that here he would place his central monastery, and that he
would not rest till he had planted a Christian church in every island
within sight.
South of the central plain, the whole of the southern part of the island
consists of rocky elevations separating small grassy ravines, and
terminates in the bay called _Port-a-churich_, where tradition places
the arrival of Columba in his curach; and at its south-west corner the
island rises into the very perfection of bold rocky scenery. Here the
rocky heights which bound the central plain on the south-west are termed
_Uchdachan_, or breasts; and on the highest point overlooking the
expanse of the western sea is the cairn called _Cul ri Erin_, which
marks the spot where he is said to have ascended for the purpose of
ascertaining if he could discern from it the distant shores of his
beloved Erin. Among the several poems attributed to Columba, there is
one which so remarkably describes the scene from this spot and the
emotions it was calculated to excite in one of his temperament, that it
is hardly possible to avoid the conclusion that it contains the genuine
expression of his feelings. It bears the title _Columcille fecit_, and
has been thus translated:—
Delightful would it be to me to be in _Uchd Ailiun_
On the pinnacle of a rock,
That I might often see
The face of the ocean;
That I might see its heaving waves
Over the wide ocean,
When they chant music to their Father
Upon the world’s course;
That I might see its level sparkling strand,
It would be no cause of sorrow;
That I might hear the song of the wonderful birds,
Source of happiness;
That I might hear the thunder of the crowding waves
Upon the rocks;
That I might hear the roar by the side of the church
Of the surrounding sea;
That I might see its noble flocks
Over the watery ocean;
That I might see the sea monsters,
The greatest of all wonders;
That I might see its ebb and flood
In their career;
That my mystical name might be, I say,
_Cul ri Erin_ (Back turned to Ireland);
That contrition might come upon my heart
Upon looking at her;
That I might bewail my evils all,
Though it were difficult to compute them;
That I might bless the Lord
Who conserves all,
Heaven with its countless bright orders,
Land, strand, and flood;
That I might search the books all,
That would be good for any soul;
At times kneeling to beloved heaven;
At times at psalm-singing;
At times contemplating the King of Heaven,
Holy the chief;
At times at work without compulsion;
This would be delightful.
At times plucking _duilisc_ from the rocks;
At times at fishing;
At times giving food to the poor;
At times in a _carcair_ (solitary cell).
The best advice in the presence of God
To me has been vouchsafed.
The King, whose servant I am, will not let
Anything deceive me.[183]
In this island, then, of Iona, Columba founded his church, which not
only for a time embraced within its fold the whole of Scotland north of
the Firths of Forth and Clyde, and was for a century and a half the
national church of Scotland, but was destined to give to the Angles of
Northumbria the same form of Christianity for a period of thirty years.
[Sidenote: Character of the Columban Church.]
In estimating the character of the Columban Church, it has hitherto been
too much regarded from a narrow point of view, and its characteristics
examined as if it stood alone—an isolated church founded by Columba and
unconnected with any other. In addition to this, it has been made the
subject of controversy between the Episcopal and Presbyterian churches,
and their historians have regarded it through the medium of their own
ecclesiastical prepossessions, and claimed it as possessing the
essential characteristic of their own church. It must be viewed,
however, as in reality a mission from the Irish Church, and as forming
an integral part of that church, with which it never lost its
connection. We should not therefore expect to find that, in character,
it materially differed from that church, and we must interpret the
indications afforded to us of the peculiarities of the Columban Church,
if we are rightly to estimate their nature, by the known institutions of
the parent Church of Ireland, of which it was an offshoot. We shall find
accordingly that in every respect it resembled the Irish Church of this
period. Like that church, it was essentially a monastic church, and also
like it we find in it neither a territorial episcopacy nor anything like
Presbyterian parity, but the same anomalous position of the episcopal
order. The bishops were under the monastic rule, and as such were, in
respect of jurisdiction, subject to the abbot, even though a presbyter,
as the head of the monastery; but the episcopal orders were fully
recognised as constituting a grade superior to that of the presbyters,
and the functions which, by the general law of the church, were the
exclusive privilege of the episcopate, were not interfered with. Thus
while Bede, on the one hand, tells us that the monastery founded by
Columba in Iona was wont to have always at its head a presbyter-abbot,
to whose jurisdiction the whole province and even the bishops themselves
were by an unusual arrangement subjected,[184] Adamnan, on the other
hand, records two instances of the exercise of episcopal functions, in
which they are plainly recognised as the exclusive privilege of a
superior ecclesiastical grade. Thus we are told that Findchan, a priest
and founder of the monastery of Artchain in Tiree, brought with him from
Ireland, under the clerical habit, a certain Aid the Black, who was of a
royal family and of the race of the Irish Picts, that he might remain in
pilgrimage in his monastery for several years, for Aid had been a very
bloodthirsty man, and had slain even the king of Ireland; and that,
after Aid had spent some time in his retirement, Findchan, having called
in a bishop, had him improperly ordained a priest. ‘The bishop, however,
would not venture to lay his hands on the head of Aid, unless Findchan,
who was attached to Aid in a carnal way, would place his right hand on
his head as a mark of his approval.’ When this ordination became known
to Columba he disapproved of it, not because there was anything
irregular in the intervention of the bishop, but ‘because Findchan had,
contrary to the laws of God and the Church, placed his right hand upon
the head of a son of perdition.’[185] On another occasion, when a
stranger from the province of Munster, ‘who,’ says Adamnan, ‘concealed
through humility the fact that he was a bishop, was invited, on the next
Lord’s day, by Columba to join with him in consecrating the body of
Christ, that as two priests they might break the bread of the Lord
together, Columba, on going to the altar, discovered his rank and thus
addressed him:—“Christ bless thee, brother; do thou break the bread
alone, according to the episcopal rite; for I know now thou art a
bishop. Why hast thou disguised thyself so long, and prevented our
giving thee the honour due to thee?”’[186] We thus see two of the
episcopal functions—viz., that of ordination and that of celebrating the
eucharist with the pontifical rite—as well as the honour due to those
possessing episcopal orders, as fully recognised as was the jurisdiction
of the presbyter-abbot over them. The monastery founded by Columba in
the island was, like many others of the island monasteries, one which
was to consist of one hundred and fifty monks, or persons under the
monastic rule. It is thus described in a stanza quoted in the old Irish
Life:—
Illustrious the soldiers who were in Hii,
Thrice fifty in monastic rule,
With their curachs across the sea;
And for rowing threescore men.
[Sidenote: Site of the original wooden monastery.]
The principal buildings of this earliest monastery were, as Adamnan
clearly indicates, constructed entirely of wood and wattles, and
therefore we cannot expect to find any remains of them to mark the
precise spot on which they stood. The present ruins are the remains of
stone buildings constructed at a much later period; but we should expect
to be able to trace the course of the _vallum_, or rampart, which
bounded the original monastery, and must have been, as is usual, either
an earthen rampart, or one composed of mixed earth and stones, if it was
not a stone _cashel_. We should expect, too, to find some indications of
what formed its cemetery or burial ground. Then the stream which issues
from the Lochan Mor, and is termed the Mill-stream, must have turned the
wheel of a small mill; and near it we should find the remains of the
kiln, which was of course a stone building.[187] On the north side of
the Mill-stream, near its issue from the lake, is an elevated piece of
ground, rectangular in shape, flat on the top, and in part enclosed at
the sides, which does not appear to be artificial, though adapted to
some purpose. Where this abuts on the stream are the remains of a stone
kiln. On its western side, at a little distance from where the stream
issues from the lake, is the commencement of an outer rampart, composed
of mixed earth and stones, which extends to the end of the plateau and
then proceeds north between the lake and the plain, passing the two
isolated rocky knolls on the east side, and terminates in two parallel
straight terraces about one hundred and eighty yards long. These are
termed _Iomaire nan achd ann an breithe_, or ‘the Ridge of the Acts in
judgment,’ and approach within about fifty yards of the rocky knoll
which bounds this plain on the north. Such indications as Adamnan gives
of the site of the monastic buildings would place them on the sloping
ground between this rampart and the channel. He mentions the _vallum_,
or rampart, the _canaba_, or kiln, and the _horreum_, or barn by name;
and, though he does not expressly mention a mill, he shows that there
was one, as he tells us that one of the crosses was placed in a
mill-stone as a pedestal.[188] He speaks of the _monasterium_, or
monastery proper, in terms which show that it contained a refectory of
considerable size, in which was a fireplace and a vessel of water.[189]
He mentions the _hospitium_, or guest-chamber, which was wattled,[190]
and the houses, or cells of the monks, with the _plateola_, or little
court, which they surrounded,[191] and he indicates that these monastic
buildings were constructed of wood.[192] He repeatedly mentions the
church with its _exedra_, or side chamber, and terms it an oratorium,
which shows that it was a _Duirthech_ or oak building.[193] He
frequently alludes to the house, or cell, occupied by Columba himself,
which he says was built of planks and placed on the highest part of the
ground.[194] Although no remains of these buildings exist, we can gather
what their relative position probably was from the buildings of another
early monastery founded by Columba, which appear to have been all
constructed of stone, and have thus left some remains behind them. In
one of the Garveloch islands termed _Eilean na Naomh_, or the Isle of
the Saints, are the remains of some very primitive ecclesiastical
buildings which, as we shall afterwards see, we can identify with those
of the first monastery Columba founded after that of Iona, and which,
fortunately for us, owing to the island being uninhabited, not very
accessible, and little visited, have not disappeared before the
improving hand of man. The remains are grouped together about the middle
of the island, on its south-eastern side. Here there is a small
sheltered _port_ or harbour, and near it a spring of water termed _Tobar
Challum na Chille_, or Columba’s well. Near the shore, south of this, in
a sheltered grassy hollow, are the remains of the cemetery, with traces
of graves of great age; and adjoining it a square enclosure, or small
court, on the east of which are the remains of buildings of a domestic
character. North of this is the church, a roofless building, formed of
slates without mortar, and measuring twenty-five feet by fifteen.
North-east of this is a building resembling the cells appropriated to
the abbots of these primitive monasteries. Farther off, on higher
ground, are the remains of a kiln, and on a slope near the shore are two
beehive cells resembling those used by anchorites.[195] Somewhat of the
same arrangement characterised the early monastic buildings at Iona, so
far as the existing remains and the indications afforded by Adamnan
enable us to fix their site. The small creek now called _Port na
muintir_, or the harbour of the community, considerably to the south of
where the mill-stream enters the sea, is, from its situation opposite a
similar harbour on the coast of Mull, probably the _portus insulæ_, or
landing-place of the island, mentioned by Adamnan. The remains of the
stone kiln fix its site. Columba’s cell was, he tells us, on the highest
ground, and another passage shows that it was near a small hillock
overlooking the monastery.[196] On the east side of the rampart,
however, just where it passes near the isolated rocky knoll called _Cnoc
na bristeadh clach_, is an elevated piece of level ground where the
fragments of a cross were found; and here it must have been, for Adamnan
tells us that Ernan the priest, who was Columba’s uncle, and presided
over the monastery he had founded in the island of Hinba—that is, the
very monastery the remains of which we have been describing—feeling
himself seriously ill, desired to be taken back to Columba, who set out
from his cell to the landing-place to meet him, while Ernan, though
feeble, attempted to walk from the landing-place to meet Columba; and,
when there were only twenty-four paces between them, Ernan suddenly died
before Columba could see his face, and breathed his last as he fell to
the ground; and Adamnan adds, ‘that on the spot where he died a cross
was raised _before the door of the kiln_, and another where Columba
stood.’ It is obvious from this narrative that the kiln was between
Columba’s cell and the landing-place, and the former must have been
nearly as far to the north as the latter was to the south-east of it.
There in his cell, overlooking the monastery, Columba sat and wrote or
read, having one attendant and occasionally two of the brethren standing
at the door and awaiting his orders; and here he slept on the bare
ground with a stone for his pillow. From his cell there appears to have
been a _via_ or road which crossed the mill-stream in front of the kiln,
and led from thence to the harbour or landing-place now called _Port na
muintir_.[197] Then the flat boulder stone fixes the site of the
refectory and the other conventual buildings which formed the monastery
proper. Adamnan indicates that it was at some distance from the eminence
immediately behind Columba’s cell which overlooked it.[198] We learn
from an incident mentioned by Adamnan in connection with Cainnech’s
monastery of Achaboe in Ireland, that it contained a refectory in which
was a table whereon the _eulogia_, or blessed bread, was divided;[199]
and a curious passage in the preface to an old poem attributed to
Columba shows us that the same custom was used at Iona, but that a large
flat stone was used for a table. It is as follows:—‘On a certain day
Columcille was in Hii, and no one was with him except Boithin; and they
had no food except a sieve of oats. Then said Columcille to Boithin,
“Illustrious guests are coming to us to-day, O Boithin;” and he said to
Boithin, “Remain thou here ministering to the guests, whilst I go to the
_Muillinn_, or mill.” He took upon him his burden from off a certain
stone that was in the _Recles_ or monastery; _Blathnat_ was its name,
and it exists still, and it is upon it that division is made in the
_Proinntig_, or refectory. However, the burden was heavy to him; so that
he made this hymn in alphabetical order from that place until he arrived
at the mill.’ Another version of the preface says that ‘the name of that
stone is _Moelblatha_, and he left prosperity on all food which should
be placed upon it.’[200] The refectory, therefore, was at some distance
from the mill, and its site was marked by a stone remarkable enough to
have a special name, to be capable of being used as a table, and to
survive the building which enclosed it. Between this spot and the sea
are the remains of an old burial-ground, marked by two upright pillar
stones, over which a third was once placed, resembling a rude cromleac,
or stone gateway. The _Duirthech_, or oratory, was placed probably on a
higher part of the sloping ground between the conventual buildings and
Columba’s cell. The site thus indicated of the older wooden monastery
places it about a quarter of a mile north of the present ruins, which
are on the south side of the mill-stream and therefore between the kiln
and the shore. Outside of the _vallum_, or rampart, was the _Bocetum_,
or cowhouse, mentioned by Adamnan; and the land on the east side of the
island, south of the mill-stream, appears to have been used for pasture,
while the fertile land forming the western part of the central plain, as
well probably as the level land at the north end of the island, was used
for tillage; and there appear to have been two granaries for storing the
grain—one near the monastery, and the other close to the fields under
tillage.
[Illustration:
Map of
PART OF IONA
shewing site of the
MONASTERIES.
_J. Bartholomew, Edin.^r_
]
[Sidenote: Constitution of the monastery.]
The members of this community were termed brethren. They took a solemn
monastic vow on bended knees in the _oratorium_, and were tonsured from
ear to ear—that is, the fore part of the head was made bare, and the
hair was allowed to grow only on the back part of the head. They were
addressed by Columba as his _familia_ or chosen monks. They consisted of
three classes. Those of advanced years and tried devotedness were called
seniors. Their principal duty was to attend to the religious services of
the church, and to reading and transcribing the Scriptures. Those who
were stronger and fitter for labour were termed the working brothers.
Their stated labour was agriculture in its various branches, and the
tending of the cattle; and probably, in addition to this, the service
within the monastery in the preparation of food and the manufacture of
the various articles required for personal or domestic use. Among these
Adamnan mentions the _pincerna_, or butler, who had charge of the
refectory and its appointments, and the _pistor_, or baker, who was a
Saxon. The third class consisted of the youth who were under
instruction, and were termed _alumni_, or pupils. The dress of the monks
consisted of a white _tunica_, or under garment, over which they wore a
_camilla_, consisting of a body and hood made of wool, and of the
natural colour of the material. When working or travelling their feet
were shod with sandals, which they usually removed when sitting down to
meat. Their food was very simple, consisting of bread sometimes made of
barley, milk, fish, eggs; and in Iona they appear to have also used
seals’ flesh. On Sundays and festivals, and on the arrival of guests,
there was an improvement of diet; and an addition, probably of flesh
meat, as mutton or even beef, was made to the principal meal.
With regard to divine worship, Adamnan does not specially mention a
daily service; but the recitation of the Psalter is so repeatedly
alluded to as an important part of the service, that a part of the day
was probably given to it, from which, however, the working brethren were
exempt. But the principal service was unquestionably the celebration of
the Eucharist, which took place on the _dies dominica_, or Lord’s day,
on the stated festivals of the church, as well as on such particular
occasions as the abbot may have appointed. It is termed by Adamnan ‘the
Sacred Mysteries of the Eucharist,’ or ‘the Mysteries of the Sacred
Oblation.’ The priest, standing before the altar, consecrated the
elements. When several priests were present, one was selected, who might
invite a brother presbyter to break bread with him in token of equality.
When a bishop officiated, he broke the bread alone, in token of his
superior office. The brethren then approached and partook of the
Eucharist. The chief festival in the year was the Paschal solemnity, or
Easter. The practice of making the sign of the cross is repeatedly
mentioned by Adamnan. One very important feature of this monastic system
was the penitential discipline to which the monks were subjected. The
ordinary discipline consisted of fasting on Wednesday and Friday and
during Lent, to which those who practised extreme asceticism added the
strange custom of passing a certain time with the body entirely immersed
in water, and in that uncomfortable condition reciting the whole, or
part, of the Psalter; but when any one, whether lay or cleric, desired
to enter upon a special course of exercises, it was usual to select a
distinguished saint as his _Anmchara_, soul-friend, or spiritual
director, under whose direction it was fulfilled. After the commission
of any offence, the penitent was required to confess his sin before the
community, generally on his knees, and to perform such penance as the
abbot prescribed, when he was either absolved or enjoined a more
lengthened discipline. Adamnan records two instances of this severer
discipline. In one, where the sin was a very great one, Columba imposed
as a penance perpetual exile in tears and lamentations, among the
Britons; and in another, the penitent, who had assumed the clerical
habit, was sentenced to do penance for seven years in the island of
Tiree, and accomplished his penance in the monastery of Maigh Lunge in
that island. In conclusion, all the members of the community, as well as
the affiliated monasteries, were, by their monastic vow, bound to yield
prompt and implicit obedience to the abbot of the mother church, who was
termed holy father and holy senior.[201]
Such is a short view of the character of the monastic system established
by Columba in the island of Iona. It presented the same life of strict
submission to a rule enforcing observance of religious duty, ascetic
practice and self-denial, which characterised the monastic church in
Ireland, and its doctrines in no respect differed from those of that
church. Their doctrinal system was that common to the Western Church
prior to the fifth century, and it is pervaded by the ecclesiastical
language of that early period. The divergence which took place between
the Irish and the Roman Churches related to points of doctrine, or
matters of observance, which emerged in the Western Church after that
date, when all intercourse between it and the Churches of Britain and
Ireland, beyond the bounds of the Roman empire, had been for the time
interrupted; and to the authority of the Church of Rome with regard to
such matters of faith and practice, when they again came into contact,
the Columban Church, in common with the Irish Church, opposed the custom
of their fathers, for which they claimed the sanction of the second
general council, held in the year 381. To use the language of
Columbanus, the Columban Church ‘received nought but the doctrine of the
evangelists and apostles;’ and, as we learn from Adamnan, the foundation
of Columba’s preaching, and his great instrument in the conversion of
the heathen, was the Word of God.[202]
[Sidenote: St. Columba’s labours among the Picts.]
Such then was the form in which, in the monastery founded by him in the
island of Iona, Columba exhibited the Christian life to the surrounding
heathen, and such the spirit in which he proceeded to do battle with the
paganism which confronted him. Directly facing him to the east was the
great pagan nation of the northern Picts, occupying the whole of
Scotland north of the great range of the Mounth, and extending from sea
to sea. Immediately before him, separated from Iona by a narrow channel,
was the large island of Mull, with its low flat promontory stretching
out towards the island; and behind it, on the mainland, extended the
western districts of Ardnamurchan, Morven, and Lochaber, separated from
the main body of the Pictish kingdom by the western part of the range of
Drumalban, that part of it which was situated south of the Mounth
forming the eastern boundary of the Scottish kingdom of Dalriada.
It was probably not long before the influence of the little colony of
Christian monks, and that of its founder, was felt in the neighbouring
districts occupied by a Pictish population. Columba appears to have been
two years on the island before he attempted to approach the powerful
monarch of the Pictish nation, who was the more direct object of his
mission, and in that period he probably won over the greater part of the
people of the districts of Ardnamurchan and Lochaber. In Adamnan’s
narrative he appears three times in the former district, which he
appropriately terms that ‘stony region;’ on one occasion, travelling
through it with two of his monks; on another, baptizing a child
presented to him by its parents, who must have been already converted;
and, on a third, denouncing some Scottish pirates, who had robbed
Columban, whose guest he was then, and who is termed his friend.[203] In
Lochaber he appears twice: once as the guest of a man of humble
condition, who was the owner of five heifers, and whom the Saint
blessed; and, a second time, when he relieves a very poor peasant who
had come to him. These notices seem to indicate that Columba had at an
early period made his way as a missionary among the rural population of
these districts.[204]
[Sidenote: A.D. 565.
Converts King Brude.]
It was in the year 565, two years after he landed in Iona, that he
appears to have crossed the great mountain barrier of Drumalban and made
his way to the court of King Brude,[205] whose royal palace was situated
near the river Ness.[206] Adamnan relates that, when the Saint made his
first journey to King Brude, the king would not open his gates to him.
When Columba observed this, ‘he approached the folding doors with his
companions, and, having first formed upon them the sign of the cross, he
knocked at and laid his hand upon the gate, which instantly flew open of
its own accord, the bolts having been driven back with great force. The
Saint and his companions then passed through the gate thus speedily
opened.’[207] Adamnan does not tell us who his companions were, which is
unusual with him; but we learn from the Life of St. Comgall that they
were, in point of fact, two of the most distinguished saints of the
period,—Comgall of Bangor and Cainnech of Achaboe. They both belonged to
the race of the Irish Picts; and therefore Columba probably thought that
his mission to the king of the Picts of Scotland would be materially
aided by their presence. According to this Life, Comgall made the sign
of the cross upon the gates of the castle, and they immediately fell
broken to the ground. Columba made the sign of the cross on the door of
the royal house, with the same effect. Cainnech, however, made the sign
over the hand of the king, which held a sword with which he intended to
slay them, and the king’s hand was instantly withered; and it so
remained till he believed in God, and, being made faithful to God, his
hand was restored.[208] The old Irish Life of Columba, in narrating the
same occurrence, says simply that ‘the gate of the castle was shut
against him, but the iron locks of the town (_Baile_) opened instantly
through the prayers of Columcille;’ and we may well suppose that the
bolts may have been withdrawn and the anger of the king disarmed through
no greater miracle than the impression created by the imposing presence
of the three ecclesiastics with their attendants. Adamnan implies this
when he says that, ‘when the king learned what had occurred, he and his
councillors were filled with alarm, and immediately setting out from the
palace, advanced to meet, with due respect, the holy man, whom he
addressed in the most conciliatory and respectful language. And ever
after from that day, as long as he lived, the king held this holy and
reverend man in very great honour, as was due.’[209] Although Adamnan
does not specifically say that the king was then converted, we may infer
that it was so, on the authority both of the Life of St. Comgall and of
the Pictish Chronicle, which places the event in the eighth year of King
Brude, and expressly says that he was in that year baptized by St.
Columba.[210] The Irish Life adds an incident which is nowhere else
recorded, that ‘Mailcu, the son of the king, came with his _Drui_ to
contend against Columcille, through paganism; but they perished through
the words of Columcille, both the king’s son and his _Drui_ with him;
and the name of God and Columcille was magnified through it.’[211]
[Sidenote: Character of the paganism of the Scots and Picts.]
The indications which we receive from Adamnan and from other sources, as
to what the character of the paganism of these northern Picts really
was, are extremely slight; but such as they are, we may infer that the
pagan system which Columba had to encounter among the heathen Picts in
no respect differed from that which characterised the pagan tribes of
Ireland, and which St. Patrick found opposed to him when executing his
own Christian mission. The popular belief undoubtedly is that the
so-called Druidical religion preceded Christianity both in Scotland and
in Ireland; but, before examining the grounds of the traditionary belief
as to the leading features of this system, it may be well to ascertain
what we can really learn from the oldest sources as to its real
character. The ancient metrical Life of St. Patrick, ascribed to Fiacc
of Sleibhte, says of him—
He preached threescore years
The Cross of Christ to the _Tuatha_ of Feni.
On the _Tuatha_ of Erin there was darkness.
The _Tuatha_ adored the _Side_.
They believed not the true Godhead
Of the true Trinity.[212]
And who these _Side_ were we learn from the Book of Armagh, which tells
us that on one occasion St. Patrick and his attendants assembled one
morning at a well, or fountain, near Crochan or Cruachan, the ancient
residence of the kings of Connaught, in the county of Roscommon; ‘and
lo! the two daughters of King Laoghaire, Ethne the Fair and Fedelm the
Ruddy, came early to the well to wash, after the manner of women, and
they found near the well a synod of holy bishops with Patrick. And they
knew not whence they were, or in what form, or from what people, or from
what country; but they supposed them to be men of _Sidhe_, or gods of
the earth, or a phantasm. And the virgins said unto them, “Where are ye?
and whence come ye?” And Patrick said unto them, “It were better for you
to confess to our true God, than to inquire concerning our race.” The
first virgin said, “Who is God, and where is God, and of what is God,
and where is his dwelling-place? Has your God sons and daughters, gold
and silver? Is he everliving? Is he beautiful? Did many foster his Son?
Are his daughters dear and beauteous to men of the world? Is He in
heaven or on earth? in the sea? in rivers? in mountainous places? in
valleys? Declare unto us the knowledge of Him! How shall He be seen? How
is He to be loved? How is He to be found? Is it in youth? Is it in old
age He is to be found?”’[213]
Whatever may be the traces of a higher and more advanced mythology among
the Irish, we can see from the questions of the king’s daughter that the
objects of the popular belief were rather the personified powers of
nature. Mysterious beings, who were supposed to dwell in the heavens or
the earth, the sea, the river, the mountain, or the valley, were to be
dreaded and conciliated. These they worshipped and invoked, as well as
the natural objects themselves in which they were supposed to dwell; and
this conception of them runs through the early history of Ireland during
the pagan period. Thus Tuathal Teachmhar, a mythic monarch of Ireland,
is stated in the Book of Conquests to have received as pledges from the
nation ‘sun and moon and every power which is in heaven and in earth,’
that the sovereignty should be for ever allowed in his family;[214] and
King Laogaire, the contemporary of St. Patrick, when he attacked the
people of Leinster in order to exact from them the tribute called the
Borumha, and was defeated and taken captive, was obliged to give as
pledges ‘sun and moon, water and air, day and night, sea and land,’ that
he would not ask the Borumha as long as he lived; but having again
attempted to exact the Boroime, he was killed by the ‘sun and wind and
the other elements by which he had sworn: for no one dared to dishonour
them at that time.’[215] By the Christian Church they were regarded as
demons. Thus in an ancient tract, contained in the _Leabhar na
h-Uidhri_, we are told that ‘the demoniac power was great before the
introduction of the Christian faith; and so great was it, that they,
that is, the demons, used to tempt the people in human bodies, and that
they used to show them secrets and places of happiness, where they
should be immortal; and it was in that way they were believed. And it is
these phantoms that the unlearned people call _Sidhe_ and _Aes
Sidhe_.’[216]
In connection with this belief was the class of people called _Druadh_,
who were supposed to be able to conciliate these gods of the earth, or,
by their influence with them, practise incantations and work spells.
Thus, in the ancient hymn called _Ninine’s_ Prayer, he says of St.
Patrick—
He fought against hard-hearted _Druide_.
He thrust down proud men with the aid of our Lord of fair heavens.
He purified the great offspring of meadow-landed Erin.
We pray to Patrick, chief apostle, who will save us at the judgment from
doom to the malevolence of dark demons.[217]
St. Patrick himself, in the very old hymn attributed to him, prays to be
protected
Against snares of demons,
Against black laws of heathenry,
Against spells of women, smiths, and _Druadh_.
And Fiacc in his poem says, ‘The Druids of Laogaire concealed not from
him the coming of Patrick.’[218] In the Book of Armagh we find, from the
indications there given of the paganism which St. Patrick overthrew,
that it bore the same character. Thus we are told in the Life of St.
Patrick that ‘the gentiles were about celebrating an idolatrous
solemnity accompanied with many incantations and some magical inventions
and other idolatrous superstitions; their kings being collected, also
their satraps with their chief leaders, and the principal among the
people, and _Magi_ and enchanters and soothsayers and doctors, inventors
of all arts and gifts, as being summoned before Laogaire in Temar.’[219]
Again the _Magus_ of King Laogaire challenges St. Patrick ‘to perform
signs’ to show their respective powers. The _Magus_, in presence of them
all, ‘commenced his magical incantations, and brought down snow upon the
whole plain;’ but St. Patrick blesses the plain, when ‘the snow
immediately vanished without rain, clouds, or wind.’ The _Magus_,
‘having invoked the demons, brought down very thick darkness upon the
earth,’ which also St. Patrick dispelled.[220] In Tirechan’s Annotations
we are told that St. Patrick ‘came to the fountain of Findmaige, which
is called Slan, because it was indicated to him that the _Magi_ honoured
this fountain and made donations to it as gifts to God,’ and further,
‘that they worshipped the fountain like a God.’[221] And again we are
told that St. Patrick ‘came to Muada; and behold the _Magi_ of the sons
of Amolngid heard that the Saint came into the country, a very great
crowd of _Magi_ assembled, with the chief _Magus_, named Recrad, who
wished to slay Patrick; and he came to them with nine _Magi_ clad in
white garments, with a magical host.’[222] Besides the objects of
nature—the clouds of heaven, the water of the earth, the trees and
fountains—in which these gods of the earth were supposed to dwell, they
seem also to have been adored in the shape of idols. The word in Fiacc’s
Hymn translated ‘darkness’ is glossed by ‘the worship of idols;’ and the
few notices we have of them indicate that they were usually pillar
stones. Thus, in the Dinnsenchus, Magh-Sleacht is said to have been thus
called ‘because there was the principal idol of Erin, that is, the
_Cromcruach_ and twelve idols of stone around it, and himself of gold;
and he was the God of all the people which possessed Erin till the
coming of Padric;’[223] and in Cormac’s Glossary the word _Indelba_ is
glossed as ‘the names of the altars of these idols, because they were
wont to carve on them the forms of the elements they adored there.’[224]
Among the Picts of Ireland we find indications of the same system. Thus,
in an account of the foundation of Emain Macha, the chief seat of their
kings, which is contained in the Book of Leinster, we are told that
‘three kings that were over Erin in co-sovereignty, who were of the
Ultonian, or Pictish, race, made an arrangement that each man of them
should reign seven years. There were three times seven guarantors
between them: seven _Druid_, seven _Filid_, or poets, seven _Octighern_,
or military leaders—the seven _Druid_ to scorch them by incantations;
the seven poets to satirise and denounce them; the seven _toisechs_ to
wound and burn them, if each man of them did not vacate the sovereignty
at the end of his seven years.’[225]
The legendary accounts of the settlement of the Picts in Scotland are
pervaded by the same pagan system. According to these legends, the
Cruithnigh came from Thrace to Ireland under six brothers, and the king
of Leinster offered them a settlement if they would expel a people
called the _Tuatha Fidhbha_. One of the brothers, ‘Drostan, the _Drui_
of the Cruithnigh, ordered that the milk of seven score white cows
should be spilled when the battle should be fought. This was done, and
the battle was fought by them, viz., Ardleamhnachta in Ibh Ceinnselaigh.
Every one, when wounded, used to lie down in the new milk, and the
poison did not injure any of them.’ They are then driven out to
Scotland, but ‘six of them remained over Breaghmuigh. From them are
every spell, and every charm, and every sreod, and voices of birds, and
every omen.’[226] In the old poem which is quoted in these legends,
Drostan, a thoroughly Pictish name, is called ‘the powerful diviner,’
‘The plundering host of Fea’ are said to have been aided by poison. Then
it is added—
The _Drui_ of the Cruithnech in friendship
Discovered a cure for the wounded,
New milk in which they were washed
In powerful bathing.
The six who remained are thus described:—
There remained of them in Ealga,
With many artificers and warriors;
They would not leave Breaghmach—
Six demon-like _Druadh_—
Necromancy and idolatry, illusion,
In a fair and well-walled house.
Plundering in ships, bright poems,
By them were taught;
The honouring of _sreod_ and omens,
Choice of weather, lucky times,
The watching the voice of birds
They practised without disguise.[227]
In another legend, when Cruithnecan, who had settled in Pictland,
demands wives for his people from the Irish, ‘he swore by heaven and by
earth, and the sun and the moon, by the dew and the elements, by the sea
and the land, that the legal succession among them for ever should be on
the mother’s side.’[228] There is a poem, attributed to Columba, in
which the same account is given of the pagan system opposed to him. He
says—
It is not with the _sreod_ our destiny is,
Nor with the bird on the top of the twig,
Nor with the trunk of a knotty tree,
Nor with a _sordan_ hand in hand.
And again—
I adore not the voice of birds,
Nor the _sreod_, nor a destiny on the earthly world,
Nor a son, nor chance, nor woman;
My _Drui_ is Christ the Son of God.[229]
The indications afforded by Adamnan of the characteristics of the pagan
system which Columba found opposed to him among the northern Picts, are
quite in harmony with these notices. Thus, as we found King Laogaire
with his Druid opposed to Patrick during his mission, so we find, in
Adamnan’s account of Columba’s mission, Broichan the ‘Magus’ occupying
an influential position at the court of King Brude, whose tutor he had
been.[230] We have already seen that in the Book of Armagh the term
‘Magi’ is applied to those who in the Irish documents are termed
_Druadh_; and that the one is the recognised equivalent in Latin for the
other there can be no doubt, for in a tract contained in the Leabhar
Breac, giving an account of the visit of the Magi to the infant Jesus,
the title is, ‘Of the story of the “_Druad_” incipit;’ and in another
tract in the same book, giving an account of the parentage and country
of King Herod, and of the ‘Magi,’ or Wise Men of the East, the account
of the latter begins, ‘It shall now be inquired what was the family of
these _Druad_, and what country they came from.’[231] Adamnan too uses
the name as one well known, when he tells of a robber who dwelt in the
island of Colonsay and was in the habit of crossing to Mull and stealing
the young seals which were bred for the use of the monastery of Iona,
and whom he terms Erc Mocudruidi, or Erc the Druid’s son.[232]
We find too, that their beliefs, so far as Adamnan indicates them,
possessed the same character. Thus he tells us that on one occasion,
when Columba had been tarrying some days in the province of the Picts,
he converted a certain peasant with his whole family, through the
preaching of the Word of Life; and that the husband was, together with
his wife, children and domestics, baptized. A few days afterwards one of
his sons is attacked by a dangerous illness and brought to the point of
death; whereupon the ‘Magi,’ or _Druadh_, began with great bitterness to
upbraid the parents, and to extol their own gods as more powerful than
the God of the Christians, and thus to despise God as though he were
weaker than their gods. The son dies; but Columba comes and raises him
from the dead, and thus confirms the faith of the peasant.[233] These
gods, too, appear as demons dwelling in fountains. Thus we are told that
again, when Columba was staying in the province of the Picts, he heard
that there was a fountain ‘famous among the heathen people, which the
foolish men, having their senses blinded by the devil, worshipped as
God. For those who drank of this fountain, or purposely washed their
hands or feet in it, were allowed by God to be struck by demoniacal art,
and went home either leprous or purblind, or at least suffering from
weakness or other kind of infirmity. By all these things the pagans were
seduced and paid divine honour to the fountain.’ Columba blesses the
fountain in the name of Christ; and, having washed his hands and feet,
he and his companions drank of the water he had blessed. ‘And from that
day,’ adds Adamnan, ‘the demons departed from the fountain,’ and people,
instead of being injured, were cured of many diseases by it.[234] Then
we find Broichan, the ‘Magus,’ or _Drui_, of King Brude, informing
Columba that he will prevent him from making his voyage along Loch Ness;
‘for,’ he says, ‘I can make the winds unfavourable to thy voyage, and
cause a great darkness to envelope thee in its shade.’ The Saint goes to
the lake with a large number of followers, and the ‘Magi’ begin to
exult, seeing that it had become very dark and that the wind was very
violent and contrary. ‘Nor should we wonder,’ says Adamnan, ‘that God
sometimes allows them, with the aid of evil spirits, to raise tempests
and agitate the sea.’ Columba calls on Christ the Lord, and embarks in
his small boat, which at once carries him along against the wind.[235]
These Christian missionaries appear not to have denied the reality of
those powers exercised by the Druids through their earth gods, but to
have attributed them to the agency of evil spirits, and to have believed
that their gods were demons; and this seems to have called forth the
counter-superstition that these old Celtic saints held familiar
intercourse with the angels of God, and in their turn received powerful
aid from them—a belief which these saints themselves perhaps were not
unwilling to recognise. We can see how such a belief would colour mere
natural phenomena, and we have perhaps a very striking instance of it in
an incident narrated by Adamnan. While Columba, he tells us, was living
in Iona, ‘he went to seek in the woods a place more remote from men and
fitting for prayer. And there, when he began to pray, he suddenly
beheld, as he afterwards told a few of the brethren, a very black host
of demons fighting against him with iron darts. These wicked demons
wished, as the Holy Spirit revealed to the saint, to attack his
monastery and with the same spears kill many of the brethren. But he,
singlehanded against innumerable foes of such a nature, fought with the
utmost bravery, having received the armour of the Apostle Paul. And thus
the contest was maintained on both sides during the greater part of the
day; nor could the demons, countless though they were, vanquish him, nor
was he able, by himself, to drive them from his island, until the angels
of God, as the saint afterwards told certain persons, and those few in
number, came to his aid, when the demons in terror gave way.’ On the
same day, when the saint was returning ‘to his monastery, after he had
driven the devils from his island, he spoke these words concerning the
same hostile legions, saying, Those deadly foes who this day, through
the mercy of God and the assistance of his angels, have been put to
flight from this small tract of land, have fled to Tiree; and there, as
savage invaders, they will attack the monasteries of the brethren and
cause pestilential diseases, of which many will be grievously ill and
die.’[236] We can understand how such a persuasion should, to Columba’s
mind, have peopled a dark thunder-cloud with a host of demons preparing
to attack his monastery, and converted its flashes of lightning into
iron darts; and how when as it passed over to Tiree his prayers brought
angels to his assistance—a belief that would be confirmed if, after
seeing the thunder-clouds hang over Tiree, he received the news of a
sudden outbreak of sickness there. We may compare this incident with the
verses attributed to Columba, and believed to have formed the prayer
with which he aided his kinsmen at the great battle of Culdremhne:—
O God! why wilt thou not drive from us
This mist which envelopes our number?
The host which has deprived us of our judgment,
The host which proceeds round the cairn?
He is a son of storm who betrays us.
My _Drui_—he will not refuse me—
Is the son of God and truth with purity.[237]
We thus see that the paganism which characterised the Irish tribes and
the nation of the northern Picts exhibits precisely the same features;
and all the really ancient notices we possess of it are in entire
harmony with each other in describing it as a sort of fetichism, which
peopled all the objects of nature with malignant beings to whose agency
its phenomena were attributed, while a class of persons termed _Magi_
and _Druadh_ exercised great influence among the people from a belief
that they were able through their aid to practise a species of magic or
witchcraft, which might either be used to benefit those who sought their
assistance, or to injure those to whom they were opposed. How unlike
this is in every respect to the popular conception of what is called the
Druidical religion will be at once apparent. The process by which this
monstrous system has been evoked was simply to invest these same
_Druadh_ with all the attributes which Cæsar and the classical writers
give to the Druids of Gaul, and to transfer to those northern regions
all that they tell of Druidism in Gaul; to connect that with the stone
monuments—those silent records of a remote age, and possibly of a
different race, which have outlived all record of their time; and to
assume that the stone circles and cromlechs, which are undoubtedly
sepulchral monuments,[238] represent temples and altars. Add to this
some false etymologies of terms which are supposed to contain the name
of Bel or Baal,[239] and we have at once the popular conception of the
Druidical religion, with its hierarchy of Archdruids, Druids, Vates, and
Eubates, and all its paraphernalia of temples, altars, human sacrifices
and the worship of Baal.[240]
[Sidenote: Proceedings of St. Columba in converting the northern Picts.]
Adamnan, unfortunately, gives us no details of the conversion of the
nation of the northern Picts from the pagan system which prevailed among
them; but so powerful a monarch as their king, Brude mac Maelchon,
having been won over to the Christian faith, the task of spreading the
knowledge of the true religion among the nation at large would be
greatly facilitated, and less reluctance would be shown to follow his
example. Columba, no doubt, proceeded in the usual way by establishing
monasteries, or small Christian colonies, among the Pictish tribes.
Adamnan records but two instances of conversion beyond the districts
which more immediately surrounded Iona; but as we find, in the former,
Columba in friendly intercourse with the families of peasants whom he
had won over to the Christian faith, so, in the latter, the conversions
are of those in the rank of chiefs. In the one case he was travelling
near Loch Ness, and hearing that an old man, who was a heathen, but ‘who
had preserved his natural goodness through all his life even to extreme
old age,’ was at the point of death, he hurried on to the district of
_Airchartan_, or Glen Urquhard, on the north side of the lake, where he
found ‘an aged man called Emchat, who, on hearing the Word of God
preached by the saint, believed and was baptized, and immediately after,
full of joy and safe from evil and accompanied by the angels who came to
meet him, passed to the Lord. His son Virolec also believed and was
baptized with all his house.’[241] In the other instance he was staying
for some days in the Island of Skye, when ‘a boat came into the harbour,
on the prow of which sat an aged man, the chief of the _Geona_ cohort.
Two young men took him out of the boat and laid him at the feet of the
saint. After being instructed in the Word of God, through an
interpreter, the old man believed and was at once baptized by him; and
when the baptism was duly administered, he instantly died on the same
spot, and was buried there by his companions, who raised a heap of
stones over his grave.’[242] In both cases these old men, who were
obviously of the _Flaith_, or chieftain class, seem to have been
prepared to accept the true religion, and probably partially instructed
in its truth, and hastened to be received into the church before death
carried them off.
The position which Columba appears now to have held at the court of King
Brude, and the disappearance of the ‘Magi,’ or _Druadh_, from the
struggle, show the extent to which the Christian Church had been adopted
in the land; for we find him staying among the Picts, and addressing
King Brude in the following terms, in the presence of the ruler of the
Orkneys:—‘Some of our brethren have lately set sail, and are anxious to
discover a desert in the pathless sea. Should they happen, after many
wanderings, to come to the Orcadian islands, do thou carefully instruct
this chief, whose hostages are in thy hand, that no evil befall them
within his dominions. The saint took care to give this direction because
he knew that, after a few months, Cormac would arrive at the
Orkneys.’[243] This is the language of one in a position of influence
and authority. It is unfortunate that Adamnan should tell us so little
of St. Columba’s real history and work among the heathen Picts, and so
much of his miracles, prophetic utterances, and the manifestations of
angels towards him; but his work is rather a panegyric than a biography,
and his object is more to throw light upon his character, and to
demonstrate his superior holiness, than to contribute a detail of
historical events. The early period at which he wrote makes every hint,
however slight, of great value; and we must be thankful for what we have
got.
Columba seems to have been mainly engaged in the work of spreading the
truth among the Pictish tribes for nine years after the conversion of
King Brude, when he appears to have at length also attained the
political object of his mission. In the year 574 died Conall, son of
Comgall, king of Dalriada, in the thirteenth year of his reign.[244] The
territories over which he ruled were, as we have seen, greatly
restricted in extent, as compared with those of the previous rulers, who
were termed kings of Alban; and Saint Berchan says of him—
Thirteen years altogether
Against the hosts of the Cruithnigh ruled the illustrious.
When he died he was not king,
On Thursday in Kintyre.[245]
According to the law of Tanistry, the succession fell to his cousin
Eogan, son of that Gabran who had been defeated and slain by King Brude
in 560; and Columba would have preferred to see him succeed, as he
regarded him with affection; but he probably thought that his brother
Aidan would suit his purpose better. Aidan was connected through his
mother with the Britons of Strathclyde, and had played his part for a
few years in the British wars. Columba announced that he had seen, ‘on a
certain night, in a mental ecstasy, an angel sent to him from heaven,
and holding in his hand a book of glass, containing the appointment of
kings; and having received the book from the hand of the angel, had read
therein the name of Aidan; and on his being reluctant to appoint him
king, the angel had struck the saint with a scourge,’ and added these
words,—‘Know for certain that by God am I sent to thee with the book of
glass, that in accordance with the words thou hast read therein, thou
mayest inaugurate Aidan into the kingdom.’ This was repeated three
times.
[Sidenote: A.D. 574.
St. Columba inaugurates King Aidan and attends the assembly
of Drumceatt.]
There was no gainsaying such a statement by one in Columba’s position.
Aidan came to Iona, and Columba there ordained him king. During the
words of consecration, he prophesied that the throne would remain to his
children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, and, laying his hand
upon his head, he consecrated and blessed him.[246] Columba’s object in
inaugurating Aidan with this solemn rite was to place him in the rank of
an independent king, and to induce the Pictish monarch to recognise him
as such over the whole of the Dalriadic territories. In order to secure
the former object, he took advantage of an approaching synod, summoned
to meet at Drumceatt, a mound on the river Roe, in the county of
Londonderry. This great convention was called together by Aedh, son of
Ainmire, king of Ireland, in the year 575,[247] and consisted of all the
petty kings and heads of tribes, and of the principal clergy of Ireland.
Columba attended it, accompanied by King Aidan, and by a retinue who are
thus described by the poet Dallan Forgaill:—
Forty priests was their number,
Twenty bishops, noble, worthy,
For singing psalms, a practice without blame,
Fifty deacons, thirty students.[248]
The assembly was held not far from Columba’s monastery of Derry; and no
doubt this retinue would consist of persons taken from his Irish
monasteries, as well as of those who accompanied him from Iona.
Columba’s object would be to make as imposing an appearance as possible;
and there is no improbability in its having been composed not only of
priests but of bishops.
According to the ancient tract called the _Amra Columcille_, there were
‘three causes for which Columcille came from Alban to Erin at that
time—viz., for the releasing of Scannlan Mor, son of Cendfaelad, king of
Ossory, with whom he went in pledge; and for the staying of the poets in
Erin—for they were in banishment on account of their burdensomeness, for
there used to be thirty in the company of each _ollamh_ or chief poet,
and fifteen in the company of each _anrad_, or poet next in rank; and
for pacification between the men of Erin and Alban about Dalriada.’
Columba then came to the assembly, and ‘all rose up before him for
welcome to him. According to another tradition,[249] however, there rose
not up one before him but Domnall, the king’s son. For the king said
there should not rise up one before him; for he knew that about which he
had come, and his coming was not thought well of by him; for the staying
of the poets or the releasing of Scannlan was not pleasing to him. So
that it is then Columcille blessed this Domnall, because he was reverent
to that extent.’ The burdensomeness of the poets arose from their right
to exact what was called _coinmed_, or refection from the tribes for
themselves and their retinue; and Columba, who, as a poet himself,
sympathised with them, succeeded in having their sentence of banishment
revoked on condition of the retinue, for which _coinmed_ could be
exacted, being reduced to twenty-four for each _ollamh_, and twelve for
each _anrad_. The chief _ollamh_ of Erin at this time was Dallan
Forgaill; and out of gratitude for Columba’s efforts on behalf of the
poets, he composed the poem termed the _Amra_, or praise of Columcille.
The preface from which this account is taken states the superstitious
use that was made of it. ‘Columcille promised to Dallan the gifts and
produce of the earth for this praising; and he took not them, but
heaven, for himself and for every one who would recite it each day, and
would understand it between sense and sound. _Ut quidam dixit_,
‘_Amra Coluim_—every day
Whoever will recite it completely,
Will reach the good bright kingdom,
Which God granted to Dallan.’[250]
Columba did not, however, succeed in obtaining the liberation of
Scannlan Mor. With regard to Dalriada, which was the main object of his
attending the assembly, the question was how far the colony, now that
Aidan had been solemnly inaugurated king, should be made independent of
the mother country. As a colony or subject state, it was liable to the
same burdens as were exacted from all the petty principalities in
Ireland. These consisted in the payment of certain rents and tributes
known as _cain_ and _cobach_, and certain military services which
consisted of what was called _fecht_, or the obligation of joining the
superior king in expeditions, and _sloged_, or ‘hosting,’ that is,
taking part in the general levy of the country for war. This question
was referred to Colman, son of Comgellan, who was of Dalriada, ‘and
Columcille said it is he who should make pacification between the men of
Erin and of Alban; and this is the judgment he gave:—Their _fecht_ and
their _sloged_ with the men of Erin always, for there is _sloged_ with
territories always; their _cain_ and their _cobach_ with the men of
Alban, or their sea gathering only with the men of Alban, but all beyond
that with the men of Erin.’[251] That is, the kingdom of Dalriada in
Scotland was to be freed from all tribute towards the supreme king of
Ireland, but they were to join in expeditions and hostings when called
upon, with the exception of the sea gathering, or maritime expedition.
This made Aidan practically independent, and Dalriada ceased to be a
subject state to Ireland. On his return from the assembly, Columba had
probably little difficulty in obtaining from King Brude a recognition of
Aidan’s character as independent king over the western districts which
were occupied by the Scots of Dalriada.
-----
Footnote 168:
Hiisdem diebus sanctus, cum duodecim commilitonibus discipulis, ad
Britanniam transnavigavit.—Pinkerton, _Vit. Sanctor_, p. 29.
Footnote 169:
Adam. Pref. 2, p. 3 (ed. 1874).
Footnote 170:
Adam. B. i. c. 7.
Footnote 171:
The ancient district of Kintyre was much greater in extent than the
modern district of that name. It included Knapdale, and extended as
far as Loch Gilp on the east and Loch Crinan on the west. John, Lord
of the Isles, dates a charter from Cleandaghallagan, in Knapdale,
which seems to be the same place.
Footnote 172:
_New Stat. Ac._ vol. vii. p. 263.
Footnote 173:
Gentemque illam verbo et exemplo ad fidem Christi convertit.—Bede, _H.
E._, B. iii. c. 4.
Footnote 174:
Dr. Reeves has conclusively shown that the name of Iona has arisen
from a misprint of the word Ioua, the adjective form used by
Adamnan—the root of which was Iou.—See Reeves’s _Adamnan_, p. cxxvii.
The oldest forms of the name are Hii, Ia, and I. But we shall, for
greater convenience, retain the conventional name of Iona. The usual
etymologies of _I thona_, the island of waves, or _I shona_, the
sacred isle, are of course untenable.
Footnote 175:
_Bass Conaill mic Comgaill Ri Dalriada_ xiii anno regni sui qui
oferavit insolam Ia Colaimcille.—_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 67.
Footnote 176:
Quæ videlicet insula ad jus quidem Brittaniæ pertinet, non magno ab eo
freto discreta, sed donatione Pictorum, qui illas Brittaniæ plagas
incolunt, jamdudum monachis Scottorum tradita, eo quod illis
prædicantibus fidem Christi perceperint.—Bede, _H. E._, B. iii. c. 3.
Footnote 177:
_Amra Choluim Chilli_, translated by O’Beirne Crowe, p. 65. The
expression ‘definite for indefinite’ is obscure, but means probably a
‘definite title from the tribe.’
Footnote 178:
O’Donnel, who introduces this statement into his Life, supposes they
were Druids in disguise; but there is no warrant for this.
Footnote 179:
This plain is termed by Adamnan Occidentalis Campulus. It is now
called the _Machar_. The hillock is now called _Sithean Mor_, but the
circle of stones has long since disappeared.
Footnote 180:
This tract is termed by Adamnan “Saltus,” or wilds, and is now called
_Sliabh Meanach_.
Footnote 181:
The author may be permitted here to enter his protest against the
cockneyism which, under the inspiration of the guide-books, has
transformed the name of the Coollin hills into the Cuchullin hills,
now universally adopted. The change has taken place within the
author’s recollection, and forty years ago was quite unknown. Martin
terms them in 1702 the Quillins. The name Cuillin has no connection
whatever with Cuchullin.
Footnote 182:
Such was the impression produced upon a party of archæologists who sat
one day in 1876 on the brow of the hill.
The knolls bounding the plain on the north are called _Cnuic na
Bearna_, ‘the knolls of the gap’; the highest of the two isolated
hillocks, _Cnoc na briste clach_, and the other _Cnoc an tuim
dharich_. The lake is called _Lochan Mor_, and the stream _Sruth a
Mhuilinn_, or ‘the mill stream.’
Footnote 183:
The original of this interesting poem is in one of the Irish MSS. in
the Burgundian Library at Brussels. It was transcribed and translated
for the late Dr. Todd by the late Professor O’Curry, and was kindly
given to the author by Dr. Reeves, Bishop of Down and Connor, then
Dean of Armagh, in 1866.
Footnote 184:
Bede, _H. E._, B. iii. c. 4.
Footnote 185:
Adamnan, B. i. c. 29.
Footnote 186:
_Ib._, B. i. c. 35.
Footnote 187:
Pennant, who visited the island in 1772, after describing the existing
ruins and the small rising ground on the west of them called the
Abbot’s Mount, says, ‘Beyond the mount are the ruins of a kiln and a
granary, and near it was the mill. The lake or pool that served it lay
behind.’
Footnote 188:
Adamnan, _Vit. S. Col._, B. i. c. 35; B. iii. c. 24.
Footnote 189:
_Ib._ B. i. c. 18.
Footnote 190:
_Ib._ B. ii. c. 3.
Footnote 191:
_Ib._ B. iii. c. 7.
Footnote 192:
_Ib._ B. ii. c. 46.
Footnote 193:
_Ib._ B. ii. cc. 41-46.
Footnote 194:
Sanctus sedens in tuguriolo tabulis suffulto.—B. i. c. 19. Duo vero
viri, qui eadem hora ejus tugurioli ad januam stabant, quod in
eminentiore loco erat fabricatum.—B. iii. c. 23.
Footnote 195:
See Reeves’s _Adamnan_, Ed. 1874, App. i. p. 318, for a fuller account
of these remains.
Footnote 196:
_Ib._ B. iii. c. 24, p. 97.
Footnote 197:
Reeves’s _Adamnan_, p. 33. The site of this cell must have been close
to where the present house called Clachanach stands, and the remains
of the cross which stood here were found behind the barn.
Footnote 198:
Adamnan, _Vit. S. Col._, B. i. c. 24.
Footnote 199:
Et cum forte post nonam cœpisset horam in refectorio eulogiam
frangere, ocius deserit mensulam, unoque in pæde inherente calceo et
altero pro nimia festinatione relicto festinanter pergit hac cum voce
ad ecclesiam.—_Ib._ B. ii. c. 12.
Footnote 200:
_Lib. Hymn._, part ii. p. 220. Mr. Hennessy suggests that the syllable
_Blath_ here stands for Blad, a portion, fragment, partition,
division, which is also written _Blod_, _Blag_, _Blog_, and by O’Clery
in his glossary _Bladh_, who explains it by _rann no cuid do ni_, a
portion, or share, of a thing. That _Moel_, or _Mael_, when applied to
a stone means a flat-surfaced stone, which exactly answers the
description of the boulder. He thinks _Moelblath_ may be fairly
rendered ‘the flat stone of division.’
Footnote 201:
In the introduction to Dr. Reeves’s _Adamnan_, ed. 1874, will be found
a most elaborate and exhaustive account of the constitution,
discipline, and economy of the community at Iona, to which the reader
is referred for the authorities of the above short sketch. A more
important contribution was never made to the church history of
Scotland than this work, which, for accuracy, critical judgment and
thoroughness, is unsurpassed; and a constant reference to it must be
understood in all that relates to Iona.
Footnote 202:
Adamnan, B. i. c. 27; B. ii. c. 33; B. iii. c. 15.
Footnote 203:
Adamnan, B. i. 8; B. ii. 9, 23.
Footnote 204:
_Ib._ B. ii. cc. 20, 38.
Footnote 205:
This appears to be the best solution of the discrepancy between the
statements of Adamnan and Bede. Adamnan and all the Irish authorities
place the arrival of Saint Columba in Britain in 563, but Bede
distinctly places it in 565. Adamnan states that he lived thirty-four
years in the island, while Bede says that he died at the age of
seventy-seven, having preached in Britain thirty-two years. Bede,
however, connects his mission entirely with the Picts, and places it
in the ninth year of King Brude. The one, therefore, probably dates
from the arrival in Iona, the other from the conversion of Brude.
Footnote 206:
It is usually stated in the local guide-books that Adamnan places King
Brude’s palace ‘ad ostium Nesæ.’ No such expression, however, appears
in Adamnan. The only indication he gives is, that it was near the
river Nesa, but not on it. Dr. Reeves came to the conclusion that it
must be identified with the vitrified fort of Craigphadrick, about two
miles west of the river. It seems, however, unlikely that in the sixth
century the royal palace should have been in a vitrified fort, on the
top of a rocky hill nearly 500 feet high; and it is certainly
inconsistent with the narrative that S. Columba should have had to
ascend such an eminence to reach it. There is, however, about a mile
south-west of Inverness, a gravelly ridge called Torvean. Part of this
ridge is encircled with ditches and ramparts, as if it formed an
ancient hill fort, and at its base, along which the Caledonian Canal
has been carried, a massive silver chain was discovered in the year
1808, consisting of thirty-three circular double links, neatly
channelled round with a prominent astragal, and terminating at either
end in two rings larger than the others, which were about two inches
in diameter, the whole weighing 104 ounces, and extending to 18 inches
in length.—_New Stat. Ac._, vol. xiv. p. 14. Torvean seems to offer a
more natural site if it is not to be sought for on the other side of
the river, which may be inferred from the fact, that the only time
Adamnan notices Columba going by land instead of sailing down Loch
Ness, he went on the north side of the lake, and then he appears to
have crossed the river (Adamnan, B. iii. c. 15; B. ii. c. 58); in
which case it may have been on the eminence east of Inverness, called
the Crown, where tradition places its oldest castle.
Footnote 207:
Adamnan, B. ii. c. 36.
Footnote 208:
_Vit. S. Comgalli_, c. 44. Comgall is said in his life to have visited
Britain in the seventh year after the foundation of the monastery of
Bangor, and, as it was founded in the year 559, this brings us to the
year 565.
Footnote 209:
Adamnan, B. ii. c. 36.
Footnote 210:
In octavo anno regni ejus baptizatus est sancto a Columba.—_Chron.
Picts and Scots_, p. 7.
Footnote 211:
The visit of Columcille to Brude, and this incident which follows, is
contained in the Advocates’ Library MS. only.
Footnote 212:
Whitley Stokes’s _Gaedelica_, 2d edit., p. 131. The word _Tuath_ is
left untranslated, as it means both a territory and a tribe, as well
as the people generally.
Footnote 213:
Dr. Todd’s _Life of Saint Patrick_, p. 451. _Book of Armagh_, in
Betham’s _Antiquarian Researches_, vol. ii. p. xxvii.
Footnote 214:
Petrie, _Hist. Ant. of Tara Hill_, p. 34.
Footnote 215:
_Ib._ p. 169.
Footnote 216:
O’Curry’s _Lectures_, vol. ii. p. 198.
Footnote 217:
Stokes’s _Gaedelica_, p. 133.
Footnote 218:
Stokes’s _Gaedelica_, p. 131.
Footnote 219:
Contigit vero in illo anno idolatriæ sollempnitatem quam gentiles
incantationibus multis et magicis inventionibus aliis idolatriæ
superstitionibus, congregatis etiam regibus, satrapis, ducibus,
principibus, et optimatibus populi insuper, et magis, incantatoribus,
auruspicibus, et omnis artis omnisque doni inventoribus, doctoribus,
ut vocatis ad Loigairum.—Betham, _Ant. Res._, ii. App. p. v.
Footnote 220:
_Ib._ p. viii.
Footnote 221:
_Ib._ p. xxix.
Footnote 222:
Et venit ad illos cum viiii. Magis induti vestibus albis cum hoste
magico.—_Ib._, Ap. p. xxxi.
Footnote 223:
O’Connor, _Script. Hib. Prolegomena_, vol. i. p. xxii.
Footnote 224:
Cormac’s Gloss., _Ir. Ar. Socy._, p. 94. The gloss adds ‘verbi gratia,
figura solis.’ Is it possible that this can refer to the cup-markings
on stones and rocks?
Footnote 225:
O’Curry’s _Lectures on MS. Materials_, App. p. 527.
Footnote 226:
_Chronicle of the Picts and Scots_, p. 31.
Footnote 227:
_Chron. Picts and Scots_, pp. 37, 41, 42.
Footnote 228:
_Ib._, p. 45.
Footnote 229:
_Misc. Irish Arch. Socy._, p. 12. Dr. Todd, in his notes to the Irish
Nennius, p. 144, translates _Sreod_ by ‘sneezing;’ and the last line
he renders ‘nor on the noise of clapping of hands.’—_Life of S. Pat._,
p. 122.
Footnote 230:
Adamnan, B. ii. c. 34.
Footnote 231:
_Leabhar Breac_, Part i. p. 137; Part ii. p. 198. The old Irish word
for Druid is in the singular _Drui_; nom. plural, _Druadh_ or
_Druada_; gen. plural, _Druad_. The modern form is _Draoi_, _Draoite_,
_Draoit_.
Footnote 232:
Adamnan, B. i. c. 33.
Footnote 233:
_Ib._, B. ii. c. 33.
Footnote 234:
Adamnan, B. ii. c. 10.
Footnote 235:
_Ib._, B. ii. c. 35.
Footnote 236:
Adamnan, B. iii. c. 9.
Footnote 237:
Petrie, _Ant. of Tara Hill_, p. 123.
Footnote 238:
This Dr. John Stuart has most conclusively shown in the very able
papers in the appendix to his preface to the _Sculptured Stones of
Scotland_, vol. ii. It is to be regretted that these valuable essays
have not been given to the public in a more accessible shape.
Footnote 239:
Dr. Todd, in a note as to the meaning of the word Beltine, says, ‘This
word is supposed to signify “lucky fire,” or “the fire of the god Bel”
or Baal. The former signification is possible; the Celtic word _Bil_
is good or lucky; _tene_ or _tine_, fire. The other etymology,
although more generally received, is untenable.—Petrie on _Tara_, p.
84. The Irish pagans worshipped the heavenly bodies, hills, pillar
stones, wells, etc. There is no evidence of their having had any
personal gods, or any knowledge of the Phœnician _Baal_. This very
erroneous etymology of the word Beltine is, nevertheless, the source
of all the theories about the Irish Baal-worship, etc.’—_Life of Saint
Patrick_, p. 414.
Footnote 240:
Dr. John Hill Burton was the first to expose the utterly fictitious
basis on which the popular conceptions of the so-called Druidical
religion rests, and he has done it with much ability and acuteness in
an article in the _Edinburgh Review_ for July 1863, and in his
_History of Scotland_, vol. i. chap. iv. But he undoubtedly carries
his scepticism too far when he seems disposed to deny the existence
among the pre-Christian inhabitants of Scotland and Ireland of a class
of persons termed Druids. Here he must find himself face to face with
a body of evidence which it is impossible, with any truth or candour,
to ignore.
Footnote 241:
Adamnan, B. iii. c. 15.
Footnote 242:
_Ib._, B. i. c. 27.
Footnote 243:
Adamnan, B. ii. c. 43.
Footnote 244:
_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 67.
Footnote 245:
_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 83.
Footnote 246:
This account of Aidan’s consecration is contained in the older Life by
Cummine, and repeated by Adamnan, B. iii. c. 6. In Smith’s _Dictionary
of Christian Antiquities_, the author of the article Coronation
says,—‘Aidan was made king by him on the celebrated Stone of Destiny,
taken afterwards from Iona to Dunstaffnage, and thence to Scone,’ and
refers to Adamnan; but there is not a syllable about the stone in
Adamnan. For its removal from Iona to Dunstaffnage there is no
authority whatever, and that from Dunstaffnage to Scone is part of the
exploded fable originated by Hector Boece. The subject is fully
discussed in the author’s tract on the ‘Coronation Stone.’
Footnote 247:
575 Magna _mordail_, .i. conventio Drommacheta, in qua erant Colum
Cille ocus Mac Ainmireach.—_An. Ult._ It is three times referred to by
Adamnan, B. i. c. 38; B. ii. c. 6. He calls it ‘condictus regum.’
Footnote 248:
These lines are quoted in the old Irish Life as giving the retinue
with which Columba went to Iona; but Dallan Forgaill’s poem relates to
the convention of Drumceatt.
Footnote 249:
_Amra Columcille_ by J. O’Beirne Crowe, pp. 9, 11, 15. The same
account is given in the Advocates’ Library MS. of the old Irish Life,
evidently taken from the _Amra_. The other tradition referred to seems
to be that in Adamnan. See B. i. c. 8, where this incident is
mentioned.
Footnote 250:
_Amra Columcille_, p. 15.
Footnote 251:
_Ib._, p. 13.
CHAPTER IV.
THE FAMILY OF IONA.
[Sidenote: What St. Columba had accomplished in twelve years; and
meaning of the expression “Family of Iona.”]
Twelve years had now elapsed since Columba first set foot on the island
of Iona, and he had already to a great extent accomplished the task he
had set before him. He had founded his monastery in the island, as the
central point of his mission; and the exhibition of the Christian life,
as alone it was possible to present it in the state of society which
prevailed among these pagan tribes, as a colony of tonsured monks
following a monastic rule, had its usual effect in influencing the
population of the adjacent districts. He had converted and baptized the
most powerful monarch that ever occupied the Pictish throne, and secured
his friendship and support; and this was soon followed by the whole
nation ostensibly professing the Christian faith. He had succeeded in
re-establishing the Irish colony of Dalriada in the full possession of
its territories, and obtained from the _Ardri_, or supreme king of
Ireland, the recognition of its independence. He now found himself
occupying a position of great influence and authority both in Ireland
and Scotland—as the founder of numerous monasteries in the former, and
as the acknowledged head of the Christian Church in the latter. Adamnan
tells us that he had founded monasteries within the territories both of
the Picts and of the Scots of Britain, who are separated from each other
by the great mountain range of Drumalban.[252] These monasteries, as
well as those which he had founded in Ireland, regarded the insular
monastery of Iona as the mother church, and as having, as such, a claim
to their obedience; and became subject to her jurisdiction, while their
inmates constituted the great monastic fraternity which was termed the
_Muintir Iae_, or family of Iona, in the extended sense of the term.
Adamnan mentions only a few of these monasteries, and gives no details
which might enable us to fix the exact date of their foundation; though
we can gather from his narrative that some of them existed during the
earlier years of his mission, and all must, of course, have been founded
at some period during the thirty-four years of his life in Iona.
[Sidenote: Monasteries founded in the islands.]
Among the islands in which he founded monasteries, the two most
important are those termed by Adamnan ‘Ethica terra’ and ‘Insula Hinba,’
or ‘Hinbina:’ the former has been conclusively identified with the
low-lying and fertile island of Tiree, the _Tireth_, or ‘land of corn,’
which lies about twenty miles to the north-west of Iona, and whose dim
outline would be barely seen on the horizon were it not for the elevated
promontory of Ceannavara at the south end of the island. The name Hinba
or Hinbina seems to designate the group of islands called the Garveloch
Isles, situated in the centre of the great channel which separates the
island of Mull from the mainland of Lorn, and which were the _Imbach_,
or ‘sea-surrounded.’ The most westerly of the four islands which
constitute this group is termed Elachnave and _Eilean na Naomh_, or the
Island of Saints. It is a grassy island rising to a considerable height,
and has at the west side a small and sheltered bay, on the lower ground
facing which are a fountain, called St. Columcille’s Well, and the
foundations of what must have been a monastic establishment, near which
are the remains of two beehive cells.[253] It is probable that on these
two islands were founded the two earliest monasteries by Brendan before
they were lost to the Scots of Dalriada by the defeat of the year 560,
by which event they were probably swept away. In the year 565 Comgall of
Bangor, who had come to the assistance of Columba on his first visit to
King Brude, erected a monastery at a certain village in the land of
Heth, or Tiree, where he is said in his Life to have abode some time;
and that too was ruined by the Picts. We are told in his Life that, ‘one
day when Comgall was working in the field, he put his white hood over
his garment; and about the same time a number of heathen plunderers from
the Picts came to that village to carry away everything that was there,
whether man or beast. Accordingly when the heathen robbers came to
Comgall, who was labouring in the field, and saw his white hood over his
cape, thinking that this white hood was Comgall’s Deity, they were
deterred from laying hands on him, for fear of his God. However, they
carried off to their ship the brethren of Comgall and all their
substance.’ The pirates are of course shipwrecked through the prayers of
the Saint, and gave back their plunder; but afterwards Comgall was
conducted back to Ireland by a company of holy men.[254] This took place
during the interval of fourteen years between the defeat of the Dalriads
in 560 and their re-establishment in 574; and during this period the
islands around Iona, which had been occupied by the Scots and from which
they were driven by the Picts, seem to have formed a sort of debateable
ground with a mixed population of Scots and Picts, who carried on a kind
of guerilla warfare with each other; and any Christian establishments
which existed among them would form points of attack for the heathen
Picts. Thus we have here Pictish sea-robbers attacking the monastery in
Tiree; and Adamnan tells us of a noted pirate of the royal tribe of
Gabhran, and therefore a Scot, called Johan, son of Conall, whose seat
appears to have been the rude fort which gave the name of Dunchonell to
one of the Garvelochs, and whom we find plundering in the district of
Ardnamurchan.[255] He also tells us of a robber, Erc, the Druid’s son,
who resided in Colonsay, and who plunders in the island of Mull.
Of Columban monasteries in Tiree, Adamnan mentions two. One he calls
‘Campus Lunge,’ or the plain of Lunge. It was situated near the shore
over-against Iona, and had a _portus_, or harbour, which is probably the
little creek or bay still known as Portnaluing; and the site of the
monastery has been identified with that of Soroby on the south-east side
of the island, where a large churchyard with some old tombstones and an
ancient cross are the only remains of an ecclesiastical establishment.
The monastery is frequently mentioned by Adamnan. It seems to have been
founded at an early period, and was under the charge of Baithen,
afterwards the successor of Columba in the abbacy of Iona.[256] The
second is termed by Adamnan Artchain, and said to have been founded by
Findchan, one of Columba’s monks, whose name also appears in Kilfinichen
in the island of Mull.[257] The island, too, which he calls Hinba, is
repeatedly mentioned by Adamnan, and seems also to have been an early
foundation. He tells us that at one time Columba sent Ernan, his uncle,
an aged priest, to preside over the monastery he had founded many years
before in that island;[258] and it seems to have been especially
connected with the penitential discipline of the order, and a place of
retirement for those who wished to lead a more solitary life. Thus, we
find Columba on one occasion visiting Hinba, and ordering that the
penitents should enjoy some indulgence in respect of food, which one of
the penitents in that place, a certain Neman, refused to accept.[259]
Again, one of the brethren, Virgnous, after having lived for some time
in the monastery of Iona, resolved to spend the rest of his life in
Hinba, and led the life of an anchorite for twelve years in the
hermitage of Muirbulcmar.[260] The church and the house occupied by
Columba are mentioned by Adamnan, and it is not impossible that the
hermitage here referred to yet exists in one of the two beehive cells,
which is still entire.[261] Here, too, he tells us that four holy
founders of monasteries came from Ireland to visit Columba, whom they
found in Hinba. These were Comgall of Bangor and Cainnech of Achaboe,
the two who had accompanied him in his first visit to King Brude,
Brendan of Clonfert, and that Cormac for whom, when on a voyage in
search of a solitary island in which to found a hermitage, he asked King
Brude to secure the protection of the ruler of the Orkneys. This meeting
must have taken place before the year 577, when Brendan died. They are
termed by Adamnan ‘founders of monasteries,’ and he probably means here
monasteries in Scotland; for Cormac is not known to have founded any
monastery in Ireland, where he was superior of the monastery of Durrow,
founded by Columba shortly before he began his mission in Iona; but in
Galloway the church of Kirkcormac probably takes its name from him. The
other three had all founded monasteries in Scotland—Brendan one in
Tiree, and another probably in the island belonging to the Garveloch
group, called Culbrandon; Comgall, in Tiree; while Cainnech founded
several monasteries in Scotland. In his Life he is said to have lived in
Heth, or Tiree, where the remains of a church called Cillchainnech still
exist. He was also in Iona, where the remains of a burying-ground are
still called Cillchainnech. He is also said to have dwelt at the foot of
a mountain in the Drumalban range, referring, no doubt, to the church of
Laggankenney, at the east end of Loch Laggan, and two islands are
mentioned, _Ibdone_ and _Eninis_, or the ‘island of birds,’ one or other
of which was probably the island now called Inchkenneth, on the west
side of Mull.[262] Adamnan mentions one other island monastery, that of
Elena, of which one of Columba’s twelve followers, Lugneus Mocumin,
became superior—probably _Eilean Naomh_ on the west coast of Isla; and
two monasteries on the mainland, one called Cella Diuni, of which
Cailtan was superior, on the lake of the river Aba, which is probably
Lochawe; and the other called Kailleauinde, of which Finten was
superior, and which may be Killundine in the old parish of Killintag in
Morvern.[263] A few of Columba’s other foundations in western districts
and islands can be traced by their dedications to him. In the island of
Skye, where he is mentioned by Adamnan as having been twice, in the very
remarkable ruins on an island in a loch now drained, called Loch
Chollumcille, in the north of Skye. Also, on an island in the river of
Snizort, one which was of old called Sanct Colme’s kirk in Snizort; and
one on a small island in the bay of Portree, called Eilean
Columcille.[264] The church in Canna too bore his name. In Morvern one
of the two old parishes was called Cillcholumchille, and within the
limits of Dalriada, on the mainland, were a few churches bearing the
same name.
[Sidenote: Monasteries founded during St. Columba’s life by others in
the islands.]
Of churches founded during his life, and no doubt in connection with him
by others, three were sufficiently prominent to be occasionally
mentioned in the Irish Annals. The first was that of Lismore, founded on
the long grassy island of Lismore, lying between the coast of Lorn and
that of Morvern, by Lugadius, or Moluoc, a bishop. He is termed by Angus
the Culdee, under June 25th, ‘Lamluoc the pure, the bright, the
pleasant, the sun of Lismore;’ and the gloss adds, ‘that is, Moluoc of
Lismore in Alban.’ His death is recorded by Tighernac in 592.[265] He is
said by the Breviary of Aberdeen to have been a disciple of Brendan; but
it is more probable that he was attached to Columba, as his pedigree
takes him up to Conall Gulban, the ancestor of Columba and the founder
of the tribe to which he belonged.[266] The name of Kilmaluog in Lismore
still commemorates his church there. The second of these monasteries is
that of _Cinngaradh_, or Kingarth, a church in the south end of the
island of Bute, which was founded by Cathan, who also was a bishop. He
was of the race of the Irish Picts, and the contemporary and friend of
Comgall and Cainnech;[267] and from him were named the churches termed
Cillchattan. The third was founded in the island of _Egea_, or Egg,
which, with its strangely-shaped hill called the Scuir of Egg, can be
seen from the north end of Iona. The founder was Donnan. He is
commemorated by Angus the Culdee in his Felire, on the 17th of April, as
‘Donnan of cold Eig,’ to which the gloss adds, ‘Eig is the name of an
island which is in Alban, and in it is Donnan. This Donnan went to
Columcille to make him his _Anmchara_, or soul-friend; upon which
Columcille said to him, I shall not be soul-friend to a company of red
martyrdom, for thou shalt come to red martyrdom and thy people with
thee; and it was so fulfilled;’[268] and in his Litany he invokes the
‘fifty-four who suffered martyrdom with Donnan of Ega.’[269] This would
place the settlement in the island of Egg in the lifetime of Columba,
and probably during the interval between the defeat and death of Gabran
in 560 and the succession of Aidan in 574, when it required no great
gift of prophecy to anticipate such a fate for a Christian establishment
in one of the group of islands which were at the time the scene of
warfare between the two nations, though this fate did not in fact
overtake them till some time after. The churches termed Cill Donnan were
either founded by him or dedicated to him. The numerous churches in the
west Highlands bearing the names of Cillmaluag, Cillchattan, and
Cilldonnan show that these were centres of missionary work.
[Sidenote: Monasteries founded by Columba and other among the northern
Picts.]
Of the monasteries which must have been founded by Columba in the
Pictish territories east of the Drumalban range Adamnan gives us no
account, nor does he even mention any by name; but of the foundation of
one we have an instructive account in the Book of Deer, which shows that
they extended as far as the Eastern Sea. The tradition of the foundation
of the churches of Aberdour in Banffshire and of Deer in the district of
Buchan are thus given. ‘Columcille and Drostan, son of Cosgrach, his
pupil, came from _Hi_, or Iona, as God had shown to them, unto
_Abbordoboir_, or Aberdour, and Bede the _Cruithnech_, or Pict, was
Mormaer of Buchan before them; and it was he that gave them that
_cathair_, or town, in freedom for ever from Mormaer and Toisech. They
came after that to the other town; and it was pleasing to Columcille,
because it was full of God’s grace, and he asked of the Mormaer—viz.,
Bede—that he should give it him, and he did not give it; and a son of
his took an illness after refusing the clerics, and he was nearly dead.
Then the Mormaer went to entreat the clerics that they should make
prayer for the son, that health should come to him, and he gave in
offering to them from _Cloch in tiprat_ to _Cloch pette mic Garnait_.
They made the prayer, and health came to him. Then Columcille gave to
Drostan that _cathair_, and blessed it, and left as his word “Whosoever
should come against it, let him not be many-yeared victorious.”
Drostan’s tears came on parting with Columcille. Said Columcille, “Let
Dear be its name henceforward.”’[270] In this traditional account
preserved by the monks of Deer, we have a type of the mode in which
these monasteries, or Christian colonies, were settled among the heathen
tribes—the grant of a _cathair_, or fort, by the head of the tribe, and
its occupation by a colony of clerics,—which is quite in accordance with
what we learn as to the settlements of this monastic church in Ireland.
The church of _Rosmarkyn_, now Rosemarky, on the northern shore of the
Moray Firth, and that of _Muirthillauch_, or Mortlach, in the vale of
the Fiddich, were dedicated to Moluog of Lismore, and were probably
founded by him, as was that of Kildonan in Sutherland, by Donnan.
[Sidenote: A.D. 584-597.
Monasteries founded by Columba among the southern Picts.]
In 584 an event happened which appears to have opened up an additional
field for Columba’s missionary labour. This was the death of his steady
friend and supporter King Brude, who died in that year.[271] Adamnan
seems to be at a loss to account for death having been allowed to
overtake King Brude while the powerful intercession of the great saint
might have been exercised on his behalf, and attributes it to the
disappearance of a mysterious crystal which Columba had blessed, and
which, when dipped in water, was believed to impart to it a curative
virtue. It was preserved among the king’s treasures, but could not be
found, though sought for in the place where it was kept on the day when
King Brude died in his palace near the river Ness.[272] His successor
was Gartnaidh, son of Domelch, who belonged to the nation of the
southern Picts, and appears to have had his royal seat at Abernethy, on
the southern bank of the Tay, near its junction with the river Earn. The
only fact recorded of his reign is that he built the church of Abernethy
two hundred and twenty-five years and eleven months before the church of
Dunkeld was built by King Constantin.[273] The statement is so specific,
that it seems to embody a fragment of real history contained in some
early chronicle, and places the date of the foundation of Abernethy
during the first ten years of Gartnaidh’s reign. The nation of the
southern Picts had, as we have seen, been converted early in the
previous century by Ninian; and the Pictish Chronicle attributes the
foundation of the church of Abernethy to an early King Nectan, who
reigned from 457 to 481; but the Christianity established among them had
no permanence, and they gradually fell off, till hardly even the
semblance of a Christian church remained. What King Gartnaidh did,
therefore, was to found a new monastic church where the earlier church
had been, which, like it, was dedicated to St. Bridget of Kildare, and
this not only took place during Columba’s life, but is, in the ancient
tract called the _Amra Columcille_, directly attributed to his
preaching, for in alluding to his death it contains this line: ‘For the
teacher is not, who used to teach the _tuatha_, or tribes, of Toi;’ and
the gloss upon it is, ‘The teacher who used to teach the tribes who were
around Tai. It is the name of a river in Alban;’ and again, ‘He subdued
the mouths of the fierce who were at Toi with the will of the king,’
which is thus glossed: ‘He subdued the mouths of the fierce with the
_Ardrig_, or supreme king of Toi; though it was what they wished—to say
evil, so it is a blessing they used to make, _ut fuit_ Balam.’[274]
Gartnaidh is here called the supreme king of _Toi_, or of the Tay, and
the people whom Columba taught, the tribes about the Tay, which leaves
little doubt that the church of Abernethy on the banks of the Tay, at
this time the chief seat of government, had been refounded in connection
with his mission to the southern Picts. In this work Columba had also
the assistance of his friend Cainnech, whose Pictish descent would
render his aid more effective. Cainnech appears to have founded a
monastery in the east end of the province of Fife, not far from where
the river Eden pours its waters into the German Ocean at a place called
_Rig-Monadh_, or the royal mount, which afterwards became celebrated as
the site on which the church of St. Andrews was founded, and as giving
to that church its Gaelic name of _Kilrimont_. In the notice of Cainnech
on 11th October in the Martyrology of Angus the Culdee, the following
gloss is added: ‘And _Achadh-bo_ is his principal church, and he has a
_Recles_, or monastery, at _Cill Rig-monaig_ in Alban. Once upon a time,
when Cainnech went to visit Finnin, he asked him for a place of
residence. I see no place here now, said Finnin, for others have taken
all the places up before thee. May there be a desert place there, said
Cainnech, that is, in Alban;’[275] and this seems to be alluded to in
the Life of Cainnech when it is said, ‘Afterwards the Irish saints sent
messengers to Cainnech, having learnt that he was living as a hermit in
Britain; and Cainnech was then brought from his hermitage against his
will.’[276] The churches dedicated to Moluog, to Drostan, to Machut the
pupil of Brendan, and to Cathan, and the church founded at Dunblane by
Blaan of Cinngaradh, the son of King Aidan and nephew of Cathan,[277]
show the spread of the Columban Church in the territory of the southern
Picts.
[Sidenote: Visit of Saint Columba to Ireland.]
In the latter years of his life we find Columba residing for a few
months in the midland part of Ireland, and visiting the brethren who
dwelt in the celebrated monastery of Clonmacnois. His reception there
shows the estimation in which he was now held. ‘As soon as it was known
that he was near, all flocked from their little grange farms near the
monastery, and, along with those who were within it, ranged themselves
with enthusiasm under the Abbot Alither; then, advancing beyond the
enclosure of the monastery, they went out as one man to meet Columba, as
if he were an angel of the Lord; humbly bowing down, with their faces to
the ground, in his presence, they kissed him most reverently, and,
singing hymns of praise as they went, they conducted him with all honour
to the church. Over the saint, as he walked, a canopy made of wood was
supported by four men walking by his side, lest the holy abbot Columba
should be troubled by the crowd of brethren pressing upon him.’[278] In
593 Columba completed thirty years of his missionary work in Britain,
and this seems to have given him a foreboding of his coming end;[279]
but he survived four years longer, and then his thirty-four years’
pilgrimage in Britain was brought to its close with his life.
[Sidenote: Last day of his life.]
The touching narrative which both his biographers, Cummene and Adamnan,
give of his last days has been often quoted; but it presents such a
charming picture of what his life in the island was, that it may well be
repeated here. In the year 597 Columba had reached his seventy-seventh
year, and towards the end of May in that year, says Cummene, the man of
God, worn with age and carried in a car, goes to visit the working
brethren, who were, adds Adamnan, then at work on the western side of
the island, and addresses them, saying, ‘During the Paschal solemnities
in the month of April just past I could have desired to depart to
Christ, but lest a joyous festival should be turned for you into
mourning my departure has been deferred,’ Hearing these words, the
brethren, or, as Adamnan calls them, the beloved monks, were greatly
afflicted. The man of God, however, as he sat in his car, turned his
face towards the east and blessed the island with its insular
inhabitants. After the words of blessing, the saint was carried back to
his monastery. On Sunday the second of June we find him celebrating the
solemn offices of the eucharist, when, as his eyes were raised to
heaven, the brethren observed a sudden expression of rapture on his
face, which he explained to them was caused by his seeming to see an
angel of the Lord looking down upon them within the church and blessing
it, and who, he believed, had been sent on account of the death of some
one dear to God, or, as Adamnan expresses it, ‘to demand a deposit dear
to God, by which he understood was meant his own soul, as a deposit
intrusted to him by God.’
Columba seems to have had a presentiment that the following Saturday
would be his last day on earth, for, having called his attendant
Diormet, he solemnly addressed him—‘This day is called in the sacred
Scriptures the Sabbath, a day of rest; and truly to me this day will be
a day of rest, for it is the last of my life, and in it I shall enter
into my rest after the fatigues of my labours; and this night preceding
Sunday I shall go the way of my fathers, for Christ already calls me,
and thus it is revealed to me.’ These words saddened his attendant, but
the father consoled him. Such is Cummene’s short narrative. Adamnan, who
amplifies it, states that Columba had gone with his attendant Diormet to
bless the nearest barn, which was probably situated close to the mill
and not far from the present ruins. When the saint entered it, he
blessed it and two heaps of winnowed corn that were in it, and gave
thanks in these words, saying, ‘I heartily congratulate my beloved monks
that this year also, if I am obliged to depart from you, you will have a
sufficient supply for the year.’ According to Adamnan, it was in answer
to a remark which this called forth from his attendant that he made the
revelation to him, which he made him promise on his bended knees that he
would not reveal to any one before his death. Adamnan then introduces
after it the incident that Columba, in going back to the monastery from
the barn, rested half-way at a place where a cross which was afterwards
erected, and was standing to his day fixed into a millstone, might be
observed at the side of the road; and there came to him a white
pack-horse, the same that used, as a willing servant, to carry the milk
vessels from the cowshed to the monastery. It came up to the saint, and,
strange to say, laid its head on his bosom and began to utter plaintive
cries and, like a human being, to shed copious tears on the saint’s
bosom, foaming and greatly wailing. The attendant, seeing this, began to
drive the weeping mourner away; but the saint forbade him, saying, ‘Let
it alone, as it is so fond of me—let it pour out its bitter grief into
my bosom. Lo! thou, as thou art a man and hast a rational soul, canst
know nothing of my departure hence, except what I myself have just told
you, but to this brute beast devoid of reason the Creator himself hath
evidently in some way made it known that its master is going to leave
it;’ and saying this the saint blessed the work-horse, which turned away
from him in sadness.
According to both Cummene and Adamnan, he then went out, and, ascending
the hillock which overhangs the monastery,[280] he stood for some little
time on its summit, and, uplifting his hands, he blessed his monastery;
and, looking at its present position and future prospects, he uttered a
prophecy, the terms of which Adamnan alone adds: ‘Small and mean though
this place is, yet it shall be held in great and unusual honour, not
only by the kings of the Scots with their people, but also by the rulers
of foreign and barbarous nations and by their subjects; the saints also
of other churches even shall regard it with no common reverence.’ After
this, both biographers tell us, descending from the hill and returning
to the monastery, he sat in his cell and transcribed the Psalter. When
he came to that verse of the thirty-third Psalm (the thirty-fourth of
our version) where it is written, ‘They that seek the Lord shall want no
manner of thing that is good.’—‘Here,’ he said, ‘I think I can write no
more: let Baithen write what follows.’ Having thus written the verse at
the end of the page, he entered the holy church in order to celebrate
the nocturnal vigils of the Lord’s Day; and, as soon as they were over,
he returned to his cell and spent the rest of the night on his bed,
where he had for his couch the bare ground, or, as Adamnan says, a bare
flag, and for his pillow a stone. While reclining there, he commended
his last words to his sons, or, as Adamnan says, to the brethren. ‘Have
peace always and unfeigned charity among yourselves. The Lord, the
Comforter of the good, will be your helper; and I, abiding with Him,
will intercede for you that He may provide for you good things both
temporal and eternal.’ Having said these words, St. Columba became
silent. Then, as soon as the bell rang at midnight, rising hastily, he
went to the church, and, running more quickly than the rest, he entered
alone and knelt down in prayer beside the altar. Diormet, his attendant,
however, following more slowly, saw from a distance the whole interior
of the church filled at the same moment with a heavenly light; but, when
he drew near to the door, the same light, which had also been seen by
some of the brethren, quickly disappeared. Diormet, however, entering
the church, cried out in a mournful voice, ‘Where art thou, father?’
and, feeling his way in the darkness, the lights not having yet been
brought in by the brethren, he found the saint lying before the altar;
and raising him up a little, and sitting down beside him, he laid his
holy head on his bosom. Meantime the rest of the brethren ran in, and,
beholding their father dying, whom living they so loved, they burst into
lamentations. The saint, however, his soul having not yet departed,
opened wide his eyes and looked around him from side to side as if
seeing the holy angels coming to meet him. Diormet then, raising his
right hand, urged him to bless the brethren; but the holy father himself
moved his hand at the same time as well as he was able, and, having thus
signified to them his holy benediction, he immediately breathed his
last. His face still remained ruddy and brightened in a wonderful way
from the heavenly vision: so that he had the appearance not so much of
one dead as of one that sleepeth.’[281]
‘In the meantime,’ as both biographers inform us, ‘after the departure
of his saintly soul, the matin hymns being finished, his sacred body was
carried, the brethren chanting psalms, from the church to his cell,
where his obsequies were celebrated with all due honour for three days
and as many nights; and when these praises of God were finished, his
holy body, wrapped in fine clean linen cloths’ and, Adamnan adds, placed
in a coffin, or tomb,[282] prepared for it, was buried with all due
veneration. The stone which St. Columba had used as a pillow was placed,
as a kind of monument, at his grave, where it still stood in Adamnan’s
day. His obsequies, which lasted three days and nights, were confined to
the inhabitants of the island alone; for there arose a storm of wind
without rain, which blew so violently during the whole time that no one
could cross the sound in his boat;[283] but immediately after the
interment the wind ceased and the storm was quelled, so that the whole
sea became calm.
[Sidenote: Character of St. Columba.]
Columba died on Sunday morning the 9th of June in the year 597,[284] and
left behind him an imperishable memory in the affections and veneration
of the people whom he first brought over to the Christian faith. It is
unfortunately the fate of all such men who stand out prominently from
among their fellows and put their stamp upon the age in which they
lived, that, as the true character of their sayings and doings fades
from men’s minds, they become more and more the subject of spurious
traditions, and the popular mind invests them with attributes to which
they have no claim. When these loose popular traditions and conceptions
are collected and become imbedded in a systematic biography, the evil
becomes irreparable, and it is no longer possible to separate in popular
estimation the true from the spurious. This has been peculiarly the case
with Columba, and has led to a very false estimate of his character. It
has been thus drawn by a great writer, in language at least of much
eloquence:—‘He was vindictive, passionate, bold, a man of strife, born a
soldier rather than a monk, and known, praised and blamed as a
soldier—so that even in his lifetime he was invoked in fight; and
continued a soldier, _insulanus miles_, even upon the island rock from
which he rushed forth to preach, convert, enlighten, reconcile and
reprimand both princes and nations, men and women, laymen and clerks. He
was at the same time full of contradictions and contrasts—at once tender
and irritable, rude and courteous, ironical and compassionate, caressing
and imperious, grateful and revengeful—led by pity as well as by wrath,
ever moved by generous passions, and among all passions fired to the
very end of his life by two which his countrymen understand the best,
the love of poetry and the love of country. Little inclined to
melancholy when he had once surmounted the great sorrow of his life,
which was his exile; little disposed, save towards the end, to
contemplation or solitude, but trained by prayer and austerities to
triumphs of evangelical exposition; despising rest, untiring in mental
and manual toil, born for eloquence, and gifted with a voice so
penetrating and sonorous that it was thought of afterwards as one of the
most miraculous gifts that he had received of God; frank and loyal,
original and powerful in his words as in his actions—in cloister and
mission and parliament, on land and on sea, in Ireland as in Scotland,
always swayed by the love of God and of his neighbour, whom it was his
will and pleasure to serve with an impassioned uprightness. Such was
Columba.’[285] Or rather, such is the Columba of popular tradition,
described in the beautiful and forcible language of his most eloquent
biographer; but much of this character is based upon very questionable
statements, and, as the facts which appear to sanction it do not stand
the test of critical examination, so the harder features of his
character disappear in the earlier estimates of it. Adamnan says of him,
‘From his boyhood he had been brought up in Christian training, in the
study of wisdom, and by the grace of God had so preserved the integrity
of his body and the purity of his soul, that, though dwelling on earth,
he appeared to live like the saints in heaven. For he was angelic in
appearance, graceful in speech, holy in work, with talents of the
highest order and consummate prudence; he lived during thirty-four years
an island soldier. He never could spend the space even of one hour
without study, or prayer, or writing, or some other holy occupation. So
incessantly was he engaged night and day in the unwearied exercise of
fasting and watching, that the burden of each of these austerities would
seem beyond the power of all human endurance. And still, in all these,
he was beloved by all; for a holy joy ever beaming on his face revealed
the joy and gladness with which the Holy Spirit filled his inmost
soul.’[286]
Dallan Forgaill, in the ancient tract called the _Amra Choluimchille_,
speaks of him in the same strain. He describes his people mourning him
who was ‘their souls’ light, their learned one—their chief from
right—who was God’s messenger—who dispelled fears from them—who used to
explain the truth of words—a harp without a base chord;—a perfect sage
who believed Christ—he was learned, he was chaste—he was charitable—he
was an abounding benefit of guests—he was eager—he was noble—he was
gentle—he was the physician of the heart of every sage—he was to persons
inscrutable—he was a shelter to the naked—he was a consolation to the
poor;—there went not from the world one who was more continual for the
remembrance of the cross.’[287] There is no trace here of those darker
features of vindictiveness, love of fighting, and the remorse caused by
its indulgence; nor do the events of his life, as we find them rather
hinted at than narrated, bear out such an estimate of it. He was
evidently a man of great force of character and determined zeal in
effecting his purpose—one of those master-minds which influence and sway
others by the mere force of contact; but he could not have been the
object of such tender love and implicit devotion from all who came under
the sphere of his influence, if the softer and more amiable features
pictured in these earlier descriptions of him had not predominated in
his character.
Three peculiarities he had, which led afterwards to a belief in his
miraculous powers. One was his sonorous voice. Dallan Forgaill tells us
The sound of his voice, Columcille’s,
Great its sweetness above every company;
To the end of fifteen hundred paces—
Vast courses—it was clear.[288]
Adamnan includes this among his miraculous gifts, and adds that to those
who were with him in the church his voice did not seem louder than that
of others; and yet, at the same time, persons more than a mile away
heard it so distinctly that they could mark each syllable of the verses
he was singing, for his voice sounded the same whether far or near! He
gives us another instance of it. Columba was chanting the evening hymns
with a few of his brethren, as usual, near King Brude’s fortress, and
outside the king’s fortifications, when some ‘Magi,’ coming near to
them, did all they could to prevent God’s praises being sung in the
midst of a pagan nation. On seeing this, the saint began to sing the
44th Psalm; and, at the same moment, so wonderfully loud, like pealing
thunder, did his voice become, that king and people were struck with
terror and amazement.[289] Another trait, which was ascribed to
prophetic power, was his remarkable observation of natural objects and
skill in interpreting the signs of the weather in these western regions.
Dallan Forgaill says: ‘Seasons and storms he perceived, that is, he used
to understand when calm and storm would come—he harmonised the moon’s
cocircle in regard to course—he perceived its race with the branching
sun—and sea course, that is, he was skilful in the course of the sea—he
would count the stars of heaven.’[290] When Adamnan tells us that
Baithene and Columban asked him to obtain from the Lord a favourable
wind on the next day, though they were to sail in different directions,
and how he promised a south wind to Baithene next morning till he
reached Tiree, and told Columban to set out for Ireland at the third
hour of the same day, ‘for the Lord will soon change the wind to the
north,’[291] it required no more than great skill in interpreting
natural signs to foretell a south wind in the morning and the return
breeze three hours after. The third quality was a remarkable sagacity in
forecasting probable events, and a keen insight into character and
motives. How tales handed down of the exercise of such qualities should
by degrees come to be held as proofs of miraculous and prophetic power,
it is not difficult to understand.
[Sidenote: Primacy of Iona and successors of St. Columba.]
After Columba’s death, the monastery of Iona appears to have been the
acknowledged head of all the monasteries and churches which his mission
had established in Scotland, as well as of those previously founded by
him in Ireland. To use the words of Bede, ‘This monastery for a long
time held the pre-eminence over most of those of the northern Scots, and
all those of the Picts, and had the direction of their people,’[292] a
position to which it was entitled, as the mother church, from its
possession of the body of the patron saint.[293] Of the subsequent
abbots of Iona who succeeded Columba in this position of pre-eminency,
Bede tells us that, ‘whatever kind of person he was himself, this we
know of him for certain, that he left successors distinguished for their
great charity, divine love and strict attention to their rules of
discipline; following, indeed, uncertain cycles in their computation of
the great festival (of Easter), because, far away as they were out of
the world, no one had supplied them with the synodal decrees relating to
the Paschal observance; yet withal diligently observing such works of
piety and charity as they could find in the Prophetic, Evangelic and
Apostolic writings.’[294]
[Sidenote: A.D. 597-599.
Baithene, son of Brendan.]
According to the law which regulated the succession to the abbacy in
these Irish monasteries, it fell to the tribe of the patron saint to
provide a successor; and Baithene, the cousin and confidential friend
and associate of Columba, and superior of his monastery of Maigh Lunge
in Tiree, who was also of the northern Hy Neill, and a descendant of
Conall Gulban, became his successor, ‘for,’ says the Martyrology of
Donegal, ‘it was from the men of Erin the abbot of I was chosen, and he
was most frequently chosen from the men of Cinel Conaill.’ He appears to
have been designated by Columba himself as his successor, and to have
been at once acknowledged by the other Columban monasteries; for Adamnan
tells us that Finten, the son of Tailchen, had resolved to leave Ireland
and go to Columba in Iona. ‘Burning with that desire,’ says Adamnan, ‘he
went to an old friend, the most prudent and venerable cleric in his
country, who was called in the Scotic tongue Columb Crag, to get some
sound advice from him. When he had laid open his mind to him, he
received the following answer: “As thy devout wish is, I feel, inspired
by God, who can presume to say that thou shouldst not cross the sea to
Saint Columba?” At the same moment two monks of Columba happened to
arrive; and when they remarked about their journey, they replied, “We
have lately come across from Britain, and to-day we have come from Daire
Calgaich,” or Derry. “Is he well,” says Columb Crag, “your holy father
Columba?” Then they burst into tears, and answered, with great sorrow,
“Our patron is indeed well, for a few days ago he departed to Christ.”
Hearing this, Finten and Columb and all who were there present fell on
their faces on the ground and wept bitterly. Finten then asked, “Whom
did he leave as his successor?” “Baithene, his disciple,” they replied.
And we all cried out, “It is meet and right.” Columb said to Finten,
“What wilt thou do now, Finten?” He answered, “With God’s permission, I
will sail over to Baithene, that wise and holy man; and if he receive
me, I will take him as my abbot.”’[295] Baithene enjoyed the abbacy,
however, for two years only, and died in the year 599, on the same day
of the year as Saint Columba, on which day his festival was likewise
held.[296]
[Sidenote: A.D. 599-605.
Laisren, son of Feradhach.]
His successor was Laisren, son of Feradhach, who was also a descendant
of Conall Gulban, and had been superior of Durrow during Columba’s life.
It was in his time that the discussion commenced between the Roman and
the Irish Church regarding the proper time for keeping Easter. The
mission of Columbanus to Gaul in the year 590, and that of Augustine to
Britain in 597, had now brought the Roman Church in contact with the
British and Irish Churches, and this—the most salient point of
difference between them—became at once the subject of a contest for the
enforcement of uniformity on the one part, and the maintenance of their
ancient customs, to which the Celtic mind clings with peculiar tenacity,
on the other. Augustine, on his death in 604, was succeeded by one of
his companions, named Laurentius; and this prelate, Bede tells us, ‘did
not only attend to the charge of the new church that was gathered from
the English people, but also regarded with pastoral solicitude the old
natives of Britain, and likewise the people of the Scots who inhabit the
island of Ireland adjacent to Britain. For observing that the practice
and sentiments of the Scots in their own country, and also those of the
Britons in Britain itself, were contrary to church order in many things,
particularly because they used not to celebrate the solemnity of Easter
at the proper time, but supposed, as we have shown above, that the day
to be observed in commemoration of the Lord’s resurrection was included
in the week from the fourteenth to the twentieth day of the moon, he, in
conjunction with his fellow-bishops, wrote them a letter of exhortation,
beseeching and entreating them to keep the bond of peace and Catholic
observances with that church of Christ which is extended all over the
world. The beginning of his letter is here given: “To our lords and most
dear brethren the bishops or abbots throughout all Scotia (or Ireland),
Laurentius, Mellitus and Justus, bishops, the servants of the servants
of God. When the Apostolic See, according to her practice in all the
world, stationed us in these western parts to preach to the pagan
nations here, and so it came to pass that we entered into this island
which is called Britain, before we were acquainted with it, supposing
that they walked in the ways of the universal church, we felt a very
high respect for the Britons as well as the Scots, from our regard to
their sanctity of character; but when we came to know the Britons, we
supposed the Scots must be superior to them. However, we have learned
from Bishop Daganus coming into this island and Abbot Columbanus coming
into Gaul, that the Scots differ not at all from the Britons in their
habits. For Bishop Daganus, when he came to us, would not take meat with
us, no, not so much as in the same lodging where we were eating.”’[297]
This letter does not appear to have had any effect; but it shows the
spirit in which the two churches came into contact with each other.
[Sidenote: A.D. 605-623.
Fergna Brit, son of Failbhe.]
Laisren died in the following year.[298] His successor was Fergna Brit,
or the Briton. From what he derived this epithet it is impossible to
say, for certain it is that he also was of the tribe of the patron saint
and a descendant of Conall Gulban. He had apparently been a pupil in the
monastery of Iona during Columba’s life, and Adamnan mentions him as
Virgnous—the Latin form of Fergna—‘a youth of good disposition, and
afterwards made by God superior of this church in which I, though
unworthy, now serve.’[299] In his time we again hear of two of the three
great island monasteries which are specially mentioned in the Irish
Annals. In 611 Tighernac records the death of Neman, bishop of Lismore;
and in 617 of Donnan of Egg having been burnt on the fifteenth day
before the kalends of May, or 17th April, with his martyr clerics.[300]
The tale of their martyrdom is thus told in the gloss upon the
Martyrology of Angus the Culdee already quoted. It says, ‘Donnan then
went with his _muintir_, or monastic family, to the _Gallgaedalu_, or
Western Isles, and they took up their abode there, in a place where the
sheep of the queen of the country were kept. This was told to the queen.
Let them all be killed, said she. That would not be a religious act,
said her people. But they were murderously assailed. At this time the
cleric was at mass. Let us have respite till mass is ended, said Donnan.
Thou shalt have it, said they. And when it was over, they were slain
every one of them,’ The Calendar of Marian Gorman has the following
commemoration: ‘Donnan the great with his monks. Fifty-two were his
congregation. There came pirates of the sea to the island in which they
were, and slew them all. Eig is the name of that island.’[301] The
island of Egg is the most easterly of a group of islands lying between
the promontory of Ardnamurchan and the island of Skye. It faces a wild
and rugged district on the mainland, extending from Ardnamurchan to
Glenelg, still known by the name of the _Garbhcriochan_, or rough
bounds. The Christian religion appears to have as yet hardly penetrated
the western districts north of Ardnamurchan, as is indicated by the
dedications of their churches. The island of Egg was probably at this
time connected with this district as a pasture island reserved for their
flocks of sheep; and, while the people would seem to have been
favourable to the little Christian colony established in the island by
Donnan, the rule had passed into the hands of a queen who was still
pagan and employed pirates to destroy them, who burnt the wooden church
in which they were celebrating the eucharist, and the whole community
accordingly perished. We have also at this time a slight trace of the
Columban Church in the eastern districts of the northern Picts in the
Irish Annals, which record in 616 the death of Tolorggain or Talarican,
who is associated in the Scotch Calendars with the Church of Fordyce on
the south shore of the Moray Firth, and who gives his name to the great
district of Cilltalargyn, or Kiltarlity, in the district of the Aird,
extending from the river Ness to the bounds of Ross-shire.[302]
The only other event which took place while Fergna Brit was abbot was
one which was destined to lead to a great extension of the Columban
Church. In the year 617 there arrived at Iona some young and noble
Angles of Bernicia. They were the sons of Aidilfrid, king of Bernicia,
who, while still pagan, as were his people, had been slain by Aeduin,
king of Deira. Bede tells us that his sons, with many of the youth of
the nobility, took refuge among the Scots or Picts, where they lived in
banishment during the whole of Aeduin’s reign, ‘and,’ says Bede, ‘were
there catechised according to the doctrine of the Scots, and regenerated
by the grace of baptism.’[303] Many of them were no doubt sent to the
monastery of Iona to receive this catechetical instruction, and among
them was certainly Osuald, the second son of Aidilfrid, who was at that
time about thirteen years old, and who, we are expressly told, with his
followers had, ‘when in banishment, received the sacraments of baptism
among the seniors of the Scots,’ by whom those of the monastery of Iona
are meant. He appears to have remained there during the rest of Fergna’s
tenure of the abbacy, and the first ten years of that of his successor.
[Sidenote: A.D. 623-652.
Segine, son of Fiachna.]
Fergna died in the year 623,[304] and was succeeded by Segine, son of
Fiachna and nephew of Laisren the third abbot, who of course also
belonged to the tribe of the patron saint, the race of Conall Gulban.
The presidency of Segine over the family of Iona was chiefly remarkable
for two great events in two opposite directions. One was the extension
of the Columban Church into the Anglic kingdom of Northumbria; the
other, that a large section of the Irish Church conformed to Rome: and
both events appear to have taken place at the same time.
[Sidenote: A.D. 634.
Extension of Columban Church to Northumbria.]
At the time that the sons of Aidilfrid fled from the face of King
Aeduin, the latter and his people were still pagans; but the king having
married the daughter of the Christian king of Kent, in the eleventh year
of his reign he was converted to Christianity by the preaching of
Paulinus, who had been ordained bishop by Archbishop Justus of
Canterbury, and accompanied the queen to York. Aeduin was baptized at
York on Easter Sunday in the year 627, ‘in the church of Saint Peter the
apostle, which he himself had there built of timber whilst he was being
catechised and instructed in order to receive baptism. In that city also
he appointed the see for the bishopric of his instructor and bishop,
Paulinus.’[305] The people of the two provinces of Bernicia and Deira
followed their king, and ostensibly embraced Christianity. As soon as
the news reached Rome that the nation of the Northumbrians with their
king had been, by the preaching of Paulinus, converted to the faith of
Christ, Honorius I., who was at that time Pope, sent the ‘pallium’ to
Paulinus, and at the same time wrote letters of exhortation to King
Aeduin, exhorting him with fatherly charity that his people should
persist in and profess the faith of truth which they had received.[306]
When this letter reached York, King Aeduin had been slain, the heathen
Penda of Mercia and the apostate Caedwalla of Wales were in possession
of the country, the infant Christian Church was trampled under foot, and
Paulinus, with his ‘pallium,’ had fled back to Kent. After a year, in
which the land had been given up to paganism, Osuald, who was now thirty
years old, and to whom the right to the Anglic throne had opened by the
death of his brother Ainfrid, invaded Northumbria, and won his kingdom
by the battle of the Heavenly Field, at Denisburn, near Hexham. His
first object was to restore the Christian Church which had been swept
away; and for this purpose he naturally turned to the church where he
himself had been trained in the Christian faith. As Bede tells us, ‘He
sent to the seniors of the Scots, among whom himself and his
fellow-soldiers, when in banishment, had received the sacrament of
baptism, desiring they would send him a bishop, by whose instructions
and ministry the Anglic nation which he governed might be taught the
advantages of faith in the Lord and receive its sacraments. Nor were
they slow in granting his request, but sent him Bishop Aidan, a man of
singular meekness, piety and moderation.’[307] Bede further tells us
that ‘it is reported that when King Osuald had asked a bishop of the
province of the Scots to minister the word of faith to him and his
nation, there was first sent another man of more austere disposition,
who, after preaching for some time to the nation of the Angles and
meeting with no success, and being disregarded by the Anglic people,
returned home, and in an assembly of the seniors reported that he had
not been able to do any good in instructing that nation he had been sent
to preach to, because they were untameable men, and of a stubborn and
barbarous disposition. They, as is testified, in a great council
seriously debated what was to be done, being desirous of the good of the
nation in the matter which it demanded, and grieving that they had not
received the preacher sent to them. Then said Aidan, who was also
present in the council, to the priest then spoken of, “I am of opinion,
brother, that you were more severe to your unlearned hearers than you
ought to have been, and did not at first, conformably to the apostolic
discipline, give them the milk of more gentle doctrine, till, being by
degrees nourished with the Word of God, they should be capable of
greater perfection, and be able to practise God’s sublimer precepts.”
Having heard these words, all who sat with him, turning on him their
eyes, began diligently to weigh what he had said, and presently
concluded that he deserved to be made a bishop, and ought to be sent to
instruct the unbelievers and unlearned, since he was found to be endowed
with the grace of a singular discretion, which is the mother of other
virtues; and accordingly, being ordained, they sent him to preach.’[308]
Bede adds that ‘most of those that had come to preach were monks, and
that Bishop Aidan was himself a monk of the island called Hii, whose
monastery for a long time held the pre-eminence over almost all those of
the northern Scots, and all those of the Picts;’ and again, ‘that from
the aforesaid island, and from this college of monks, was Aidan sent to
instruct the province of the Angles in Christ, having received the
episcopal grade. At this time Segine, abbot and priest, presided over
that monastery.’ There can therefore be little doubt that the great
council was held in Iona under the presidency of Abbot Segine; and it
would almost appear that he himself had gone personally to Northumbria
on the failure of the first mission, as Adamnan refers to a conversation
which he says Abbot Failbe solemnly declared that he himself heard
between King Osuald and Abbot Segine after the battle of the Heavenly
Field had been fought.[309]
As the first missionary sent had been a priest, and the result of
Aidan’s interposition was that all declared him worthy of the
episcopate, there can be little doubt that, as we have already had
occasion to show, the distinction of the orders and the superiority of
the episcopal grade were fully recognised. By the custom of the Scottish
Church, only one bishop was necessary for the consecration of another
bishop. That there were bishops in the Columban Church we know, for Bede
tells us that ‘all the province, and even the bishops, were subject to
the abbot of Iona;’ and, as we have seen, two of the monasteries subject
to Iona—Lismore and _Cinngaradh_, or Kingarth—had episcopal heads. There
may have been an especial reason why it should be better that Aidan
should have episcopal orders, which did not exist in the case of the
Columban monasteries; for, as the head of a remote church, he might have
to ordain priests from among his Anglic converts; while the Columban
Church had Ireland at its back as a great storehouse of clerics, both
bishops and priests. When, therefore, it is said that he received the
episcopal grade, no doubt a bishop had been called in to consecrate him.
But though he was thus enabled to exercise episcopal functions, in other
respects the organisation of the church thus introduced into
Northumbria, both with respect to jurisdiction and to its monastic
character, was the same as that of the Columban Church at home; for,
instead of fixing his episcopal seat at York, he followed the custom of
the monastic church by selecting a small island near the Northumbrian
coast, bearing the Celtic name of _Inis Metcaud_,[310] but known to the
Angles as Lindisfarne, as the site of his monastery, which he was to
rule as episcopal abbot. Bede tells us that, ‘on the arrival of the
bishop, the king appointed him his episcopal see in the isle of
Lindisfarne, as he himself desired; which place, as the tide flows and
ebbs, twice a day is enclosed by the waves of the sea like an island,
and again, twice in the day, when the shore is left dry, becomes
contiguous to the land,’—a very apt description of the island, which is
now called Holy Island; and Bede adds, in his Life of Cudberct, ‘And let
no man marvel that in this same island of Lindisfarne, which is of very
small extent, there should be, as we mentioned above, the seat of a
bishop, and, at the same time, as we now state, the residence of an
abbot and monks. For so it is, in truth. For one and the same habitation
of the servants of God contains both at the same time. Yea, all whom it
contains are monks; for Aidan, who was the first bishop of this place,
was a monk, and was always wont to lead a monastic life, with all his
people. Hence, after him, all the bishops of that place until this day
exercise the episcopal functions in such sort, that, while the abbot,
who is chosen by the bishop with the consent of the brethren, governs
the monastery, all the priests, deacons, chanters, readers and the other
ecclesiastical orders, with the bishop himself, observe in all things
the monastic rule.’[311] This Northumbrian church was therefore an exact
counterpart of the monastic church of which Iona was the head; and Bede
bears a noble testimony to its efficiency as a missionary church. He
says, ‘From that time many from the region of the Scots came daily into
Britain, and with great devotion preached the word of faith to those
provinces of the Angles over which King Osuald reigned; and those among
them that had received priests’ orders administered to the believers the
grace of baptism. Churches were built in several places; the people
joyfully flocked together to hear the Word; possessions and lands were
given of the king’s bounty to build monasteries; the younger Angles were
by their Scottish masters instructed; and greater care and attention
were bestowed upon the rules and observances of regular
discipline.’[312]
[Sidenote: A.D. 634.
Church of the southern Scots of Ireland conforms to Rome.]
The same year which brought to Segine this important request from King
Osuald of Northumbria brought him likewise a letter of not less
importance, but one of a very different tenor, from the head of one of
the dependent monasteries in Ireland. This letter[313] was written by
Cummian, one of the most learned of the Irish ecclesiastics, and
believed to have been abbot of the monastery of Durrow in King’s County,
founded by Columba shortly before he passed over from Ireland to Iona;
and it is still extant. It is addressed to the abbot ‘Segine, successor
of Saint Columba, and other holy men, and to Beccan the anchorite, his
dear brother according to the flesh and in the spirit, with his wise
companions.’ In this letter he tells him that, when the Roman mode of
computation was first introduced into Ireland, he did not adopt it; but,
retiring in private for a year, he entered into the sanctuary of God,
that is, the holy Scripture, and examined it as well as he was able;
after that, works on history; lastly, whatever cycles he could meet
with. He then gives a very learned summary of the result of his
investigations which led him to adopt the Roman system as correct. When
the year had expired, he says, he applied to the successors of our
ancient fathers, of Bishop Ailbe, of Kieran of Clonmacnois, of Brendan,
of Nessan and of Lugidus, that they might tell him what they thought of
the excommunication directed against them from the Apostolic See; and
they having assembled together, some in person, others by
representatives, at _Magh Lene_, or the plain of Lene, in which the
monastery of Durrow was situated, came to the resolution that they ought
to adopt without scruple the more worthy and approved practice
recommended to them by the successors of the apostles of the Lord. They
accordingly enjoined him to celebrate Easter in the following year with
the universal church. Not long after, however, there arose up a certain
whited wall, pretending that he was for upholding the traditions of his
elders, which caused disunion and partly rendered void what had been
agreed to. Upon this it was determined by ‘our seniors’ that if
questions of a more weighty character should arise, they ought to be
referred, according to the decree of the synod, to the head of cities.
They therefore sent some that they knew to be wise and humble, as
children to a mother, and having a prosperous journey by the will of
God, and some of them having come to the city of Rome, they returned in
the third year, and they saw everything accord with what they had heard,
or rather they obtained a much clearer view of the matter, as seeing
instead of hearing; and, being in one lodging with a Greek and a Hebrew,
a Scythian and an Egyptian, they all celebrated their Easter together in
St. Peter’s Church, while they differed from them by a whole month. And
they solemnly assured him of this, saying, This Easter is celebrated to
our knowledge all the world over. ‘These statements,’ adds Cummian, ‘I
have made, not with a view to attack you, but to defend myself.’ Such is
the substance of Cummian’s letter;[314] and as the times for celebrating
Easter according to the Roman and to the Irish computation would be
separated by the interval of a month in the year 631,[315] the synod
must have been held about 630, the return of the deputies taken place in
633, and the letter have been written in the following year. According
to Bede, Pope Honorius in this year ‘wrote to the nation of the Scots,
whom he had found to err in the observance of Easter, earnestly
exhorting them not to esteem their small number, placed in the utmost
borders of the earth, wiser than all the ancient and modern churches of
Christ throughout the world, and not to celebrate a different Easter,
contrary to the Paschal calculation and the synodical decrees of all the
bishops upon earth;’[316] and the result was that, as Bede tells us,
‘the Scots which dwelt in the southern districts of Ireland, by the
admonition of the bishop of the Apostolic See, learned to observe Easter
according to the canonical custom;’ while the northern province of the
Scots and the whole nation of the Picts adhered to the old custom of the
country.[317]
The distinction here drawn by Bede between the Scots inhabiting the
southern districts and the northern province of the Scots obviously
refers to the old traditional division of Ireland into two parts, termed
severally _Leth Mogha_ and _Leth Cuinn_, which were divided from each
other by a ridge extending from the mouth of the Liffey to Galway, and
termed _Eisgir Riada_.[318] The southern districts were Munster and
Leinster south of the Liffey. The northern division contained the rest
of Leinster, Ulster and Connaught. Durrow, though a Columban monastery,
was situated in the southern division, and probably now broke off from
the jurisdiction of Iona and, along with the rest of the Irish Church in
the southern division of Ireland, conformed to Rome.
We meet with a passing notice of the monastery of Lismore in the
following year, when Tighernac records the death of its abbot Eochaidh;
and in the same year Abbot Segine appears to have founded a church in
Rechrann, or the island of Rathlin off the north coast of Ireland.[319]
Some years after a letter appears to have been sent from the Irish
Church to Pope Severinus, who succeeded Honorius in 640, but died within
the year, which called forth a reply from his successor John, while
Pope-elect, by the person who had taken the letter, which Bede tells us
was ‘full of great authority and erudition for correcting the same
error,’ and at the same time admonished them to be careful to crush the
Pelagian heresy, which, he had been informed, was reviving amongst them.
Bede gives us the opening of this epistle thus:—‘To our most beloved and
most holy Tomianus, Columbanus, Cromanus, Dinanus, and Baithanus,
bishops; to Cromanus, Ernianus, Laistranus, Scellanus, and Segenus,
priests; to Saranus and the rest of the Scottish doctors or abbots,
greeting from Hilarius, the arch-priest and keeper of the place of the
holy Apostolic See; from John, the deacon and elect in the name of God;
from John the chief secretary and keeper of the place of the holy
Apostolic See, and from John the servant of God and councillor of the
same Apostolic See.’[320] These Scottish doctors or abbots, with
Tomianus, who was bishop of Armagh, at their head, all belonged to the
northern province, and this appeal had no effect in altering their
relation towards the Church of Rome. But it is instructive to observe
that Segenus or Segine, abbot of Iona, is placed among the clergy of the
Irish Church, of which his monastery, with its dependent monasteries in
Scotland, was ranked as forming a part. Ten years afterwards news came
of the death of Aidan, after a sixteen years’ episcopate over the church
of Northumbria; and Finan, ‘who had,’ says Bede, ‘been sent from Hii,
the island and monastery of the Scots,’ succeeded him.[321]
[Sidenote: A.D. 652-657.
Suibhne, son of Cuirtri.]
Segine’s own death followed a year after. His successor was Suibhne, of
whom we know nothing except that his father’s name was Cuirtri, but it
is unlikely that at this early stage any one who did not belong to the
tribe of the patron saint could be elected an abbot, and the only notice
we have of him is his death after having been five years in the
abbacy.[322]
[Sidenote: A.D. 657-669.
Cummene Ailbhe, son of Ernan.]
He was succeeded in the abbacy by Cummene Ailbhe, the nephew of his
predecessor Segene, whose tenure of office was signalised by equally
important events. His first year is coincident with the extension of the
dominion of Osuiu, the Northumbrian king, over the Britons of
Strathclyde, the southern Picts and the Scots of Dalriada; but, though
the latter ceased for a time to possess an independent king, the rule of
Northumbria could not have affected the church to which her own church
was affiliated. Accordingly, when Finan, the successor of Aidan, died,
we find that Colman was also ‘sent out of Scotia,’ and succeeded him as
bishop.[323] Tighernac records, in the same year, the death of Bishop
Finan and of Daniel, bishop of _Cinngaradh_ or Kingarth, in Bute; and in
the following year, a visit of Abbot Cummene to Ireland;[324] and, as
Bede says of Finan that he was ordained and sent by the Scots, while, in
the case of Colman, he uses the expression that he was sent out of
Scotia, or Ireland, this rather confirms our suspicion that the bishops
called in to consecrate these Northumbrian missionaries were the bishops
of Kingarth, and that the death of Bishop Daniel in the same year
rendered an appeal to Ireland necessary.
[Sidenote: A.D. 664.
Termination of Columban Church in Northumbria.]
While, however, Segine’s tenure of the abbacy saw the extension of the
Columban Church into Northumbria, that of his nephew Cummene was doomed
to see its extinction after it had for thirty years been the church of
the country. The cause was the controversy regarding the proper time for
celebrating Easter. It had been raised, during the episcopate of Finan,
by some ecclesiastics who came from Kent or France; and among them, says
Bede, ‘was a most zealous defender of the true Easter, whose name was
Ronan, a Scot indeed by nation, but instructed in ecclesiastical truth
either in the parts of France or of Italy, who, by disputing with Finan,
corrected many, or at least induced them to make a more strict inquiry
after the truth; yet he could not amend Finan, but on the contrary made
him the more inveterate by reproof, and an open opposer of the truth, he
being of a hot and violent temper.’[325] The royal family, too, were
divided. The queen, Eanfled, being from Kent and having a Kentish
priest, Romanus, with her, followed the Catholic mode, so that one year
the king and queen both celebrated their Easter at different times.
Under Colman the controversy became more bitter, and the king Osuiu and
his son Alchfrid were now opposed to each other, the latter having been
instructed in Christianity by Wilfrid, a most learned man, who had been
originally trained in the Scottish monastery of Lindisfarne, but had
gone from thence to Rome to learn the ecclesiastical doctrine, and spent
much time at Lyons with Dalfin, archbishop of Gaul, from whom he had
received the coronal tonsure. Agilberct, bishop of the West Saxons, a
friend to Alchfrid and to Abbot Wilfrid, having come to Northumbria,
suggested that a synod should be held to settle the controversy
regarding Easter, the tonsure and other ecclesiastical affairs. This was
agreed to; and it was accordingly held, in the year 664, at the
monastery of Streanashalch, near Whitby, where the abbess Hilda, a woman
devoted to God, then presided. The king Osuiu and his son Alchfrid were
both present. On the Catholic side was Bishop Agilberct, with the
priests Agatho and Wilfrid, James and Romanus. On the Scottish side was
Bishop Colman with his clerics from Scotia, or Ireland, the abbess Hilda
and her followers, and Bishop Cedd of Essex, who had been ordained by
the Scots, and acted as interpreter for both parties. The king called
upon Colman and Wilfrid to conduct the discussion. It is given at length
by Bede, but it is unnecessary to say more than that the usual arguments
were used. Colman pleaded that the Easter he kept he received from his
elders; and all his forefathers, men beloved of God, are known to have
celebrated it after the same manner. Wilfrid opposed the custom of the
universal church and the authority of Rome. Colman asks, ‘Is it to be
believed that our most reverend father Columba, and his successors, men
beloved by God, who kept Easter after the same manner, thought or acted
contrary to the divine writings? whereas there were many among them
whose sanctity is testified by heavenly signs and the working of
miracles which they performed, whose life, customs and discipline I
never cease to follow, nor question their sanctity.’ Wilfrid replied,
‘Concerning your father Columba and his followers, whose sanctity you
say you imitate and whose rule and precepts you observe, which have been
confirmed by signs from heaven, I might answer that when many, on the
day of judgment, shall say to our Lord that in his name they prophesied
and cast out devils and wrought many wonders, our Lord will reply that
He never knew them. But far be it from me that I should say so of your
father, because it is more just to believe what is good than what is
evil of persons whom one does not know. If that Columba of yours—and I
may say ours also, if he were Christ’s—was a holy man and powerful in
miracles, yet should he be preferred before the most blessed prince of
the apostles, to whom our Lord had given the keys of the kingdom of
heaven?’ And as Colman admitted that these words were spoken to Peter,
and could not show that any such power was given to Columba, the king
decided to obey the decrees of Rome, and all present gave their assent
and, renouncing the more imperfect institution, hastened to conform
themselves to that which they found to be better.[326] Bede then tells
us ‘that Colman, perceiving that his doctrine was rejected and his sect
despised, took with him such as were willing to follow him and would not
comply with the Catholic Easter and the coronal tonsure—for there was
much controversy about that also—and went back into Scotia, or Ireland,
to consult with his people what was to be done in this case.’ And he
adds that Colman carried home with him part of the bones of the most
reverend father Aidan, and left part of them in the church where he had
presided, ordering them to be interred in its sacristy.[327]
The character which this most candid historian gives of the church of
the Scots in Northumbria so much reflects that of the parent church of
Iona, that it may be well to insert it. He says of Bishop Colman, ‘How
great was his parsimony, how great his continence, the place which they
governed shows for himself and his predecessors, for there were very few
houses besides the church found at their departure, indeed no more than
were barely sufficient for their daily residence. They had also no money
but cattle; for, if they received any money from rich persons, they
immediately gave it to the poor, there being no need to gather money or
provide houses for the entertainment of the great men of the world? for
such never resorted to the church except to pray and hear the Word of
God. For this reason the religious habit was at that time in great
veneration, so that, wheresoever any cleric or monk happened to come, he
was joyfully received by all persons, as God’s servant; and, if they
chanced to meet him as he was upon the way they ran to him and, bowing,
were glad to be signed with his hand or blessed with his mouth. Great
attention was also paid to their exhortations; and on Sundays the people
flocked eagerly to the church or the monasteries, not to feed their
bodies, but to hear the Word of God; and, if any priest happened to come
into a village the inhabitants flocked together forthwith to hear from
him the Word of Life. For the priests and clerics went into the villages
on no other account than to preach, baptize, visit the sick and, in few
words, to take care of souls; and they were so free from the curse of
worldly avarice, that none of them received lands and possessions for
building monasteries, unless they were compelled to do so by the
temporal authorities.’[328]
Though Bede tells us in general terms that Colman returned to Ireland,
he did not actually do so till after four years; for he mentions
afterwards that Colman ‘repaired first to the isle of _Hii_, or Iona,
whence he had been sent to preach the word of God to the Anglic nation.
Afterwards he retired to a certain small island which is to the west of
Ireland, and at some distance from its coast, called, in the language of
the Scots, _Inisboufinde,_’ and Tighernac places this event in the year
668.[329] As he had taken the relics of Aidan with him, it was probably
during this interval that he founded the church of Fearn in Angus,
dedicated to Aidan, and the church of Tarbet, in Easter Ross, with which
his own name is connected; and if he reported to Abbot Cummene, as no
doubt he would, the discussion he had held with Wilfrid, and the appeal
which he had made in vain to the authority of Columba as a man whose
sanctity was testified by heavenly signs and the working of miracles, it
probably led to Cummene’s writing the Life of their great saint, which
Adamnan calls ‘the book which he wrote on the virtues of St.
Columba,’[330] in vindication of the assertion. This Life is still
extant, and the whole of it has been embodied in Adamnan’s more
elaborate production. Tighernac records the death of Cummene in the year
669, and along with it those of two saints who belonged to the church
among the southern Picts—Itharnan or Ethernanus, of Madderdyn, now
Madderty in Strathearn, and Corindu, or Caran, of Fetteresso in the
Mearns.[331]
[Sidenote: A.D. 669-679.
Failbhe, son of Pipan.]
His successor was Failbhe, son of Pipan, also a descendant of Conall
Gulban, and the first year of his tenure of the abbacy also saw Wilfrid
in possession of the diocese of York. According to Bede, he at this time
administered the bishopric of York and of all the Northumbrians, and
likewise of the Picts as far as the dominions of king Osuiu
extended.[332] His diocese therefore comprehended the territories of the
southern Picts, the Britons of Strathclyde and the Scots of Dalriada,
over all of which King Osuiu had extended his rule. Wilfrid retained
this extensive diocese during the entire period of Failbhe’s abbacy;
and, so far as he could make his power felt, his influence would no
doubt be exercised against the Columban Church; for, as Eddi tells us,
‘under Bishop Wilfrid the churches were multiplied both in the south
among the Saxons and in the north among the Britons, Scots and Picts,
Wilfrid having ordained everywhere presbyters and deacons, and governed
new churches.’[333] But the territories of the northern Picts were
beyond his reach; and Failbhe’s tenure of the abbacy is chiefly
remarkable for the extension of the Columban Church to those rugged and
almost inaccessible districts which lay on the western seaboard between
Ardnamurchan on the south and Loch Broom on the north.
[Sidenote: A.D. 673.
Foundation of church of Applecross by Maelrubha.]
The principal agent in effecting this was Maelrubha, who was of the race
of the northern Hy Neill, but belonged to a different sept from that
which had the right of furnishing abbots to the monastery of Iona. He
was connected through his mother with Comgall of Bangor, and became a
member of that monastery which, as situated among the Picts of Ireland,
well fitted him to be a missionary to those of the same race in
Scotland. He came over to Britain in the year 671, and two years
afterwards he founded the church of Aporcrosan, now Applecross,[334]
from which as a centre he evangelised the whole of the western districts
lying between Loch Carron and Loch Broom, as well as the south and west
parts of the island of Skye, and planted churches in Easter Ross and
elsewhere. The dedications to him show that his missionary work was very
extensive. In the same year Failbhe went to Ireland, where he appears to
have remained three years,[335] and was probably engaged in arrangements
for extending the missionary work; for it is probably at this period
that we must place the arrival of Comgan with his sister Kentigerna and
her son Fillan in the district of Lochalsh, where they planted churches,
as well as in the districts south of it as far as Loch Sunart.[336] At
this time too the church in Egg appears to have been restored.[337] In
the year 678 Wilfrid was ejected from his extensive bishopric, but
Failbhe only survived this event one year, when his death is recorded;
and at the same time we have a trace of the church in the eastern
territories of the northern Picts, in the death of Neachtan Neir, who
can be identified with the great saint of Deeside in Aberdeenshire,
called by the people there, Nathalan, or Nachlan.[338]
[Sidenote: A.D. 679-704.
Adamnan, son of Ronan.]
We are now brought in our narrative to the very important period when
Adamnan, the biographer of Columba, ruled over his monastery as ninth
abbot. He was also a descendant of Conall Gulban, and belonged to the
tribe of the patron saint. He was born in 624, just twenty-seven years
after the death of Saint Columba. During the first six years of his
abbacy, the rule of the Angles, under King Ecgfrid, still extended as
far as it did during the reign of his father Osuiu. After the ejection
of Wilfrid from the diocese in this its fullest extent, it was divided
between Bosa and Eata, the latter being appointed bishop of the northern
part; and three years afterwards it was still further divided, Trumuin
being appointed bishop over the province of the Picts which was subject
to the Angles. The defeat and death of King Ecgfrid, however, at the
battle of Dunnichen in the year 685 terminated this rule of the Angles,
and with it the interference of the Anglic bishops with the Columban
Church. The Scots of Dalriada recovered their independence. The southern
Picts were relieved from the more direct yoke of the Angles, and Trumuin
fled from his diocese.
[Sidenote: A.D. 686.
His first mission to Northumbria.]
The new king Aldfrid had been long in exile in Ireland, where he was
known by the name of Flann Finn, and Adamnan was on terms of friendly
acquaintance with him. His first proceeding was to go on a mission to
him to ask the release of the Irish captives whom Berct, King Ecgfrid’s
general, had carried away from the plain of Breg; and the Irish Life of
Adamnan gives us the route he took. It says ‘The North Saxons went to
him and plundered _Magh Bregh_ as far as _Bealach-duin_; they carried
off with them a great prey of men and women. The men of Erin besought of
Adamnan to go in quest of the captives to Saxonland. Adamnan went to
demand the prisoners, and put in at _Tracht-Romra_. The strand is long,
and the flood rapid; so rapid that if the best steed in Saxonland ridden
by the best horseman were to start from the edge of the tide when the
tide begins to flow, he could only bring his rider ashore by swimming,
so extensive is the strand, and so impetuous is the tide.’ Adamnan
appears therefore to have gone in his curach and entered the Solway
Firth, which is evidently the place meant, and landed on the southern
shore. He succeeded in his undertaking, and brought sixty of the
captives back to their homes.[339]
[Sidenote: Adamnan repairs the monastery of Iona.]
His next step was to repair the monastery, which had probably fallen
into disrepair during Failbhe’s time; and for this purpose he sent
twelve vessels to Lorn for oak trees to furnish the necessary
timber.[340] In this monastery he received Arculfus, a bishop of Gaul,
who had gone to Jerusalem to visit the holy places, and returning home
was driven by a violent storm on the west coast of Britain and made his
way to Iona and passed the winter there. During the dreary winter
months, Adamnan committed to writing all the information he could obtain
from him as to the holy places; and this work is still extant.[341]
[Sidenote: A.D. 688.
His second mission to Northumbria.]
In 688 Adamnan proceeded on a second mission to King Aldfrid, with what
object is not known; but it appears to have been connected with the
affairs of Dalriada. This second visit to Northumbria had very important
consequences both for himself and for his church; for Bede tells us that
‘Adamnan, priest and abbot of the monks that were in the isle of Hii,
was sent ambassador by his nation to Aldfrid, king of the Angles, where,
having made some stay, he observed the canonical rites of the church,
and was earnestly admonished by many who were more learned than himself
not to presume to live contrary to the universal custom of the church in
relation to either the observance of Easter or any other decrees
whatsoever, considering the small number of his followers, seated at so
distant a corner of the world. In consequence of this he changed his
mind, and readily preferred those things which he had seen and heard in
the churches of the Angles to the customs which he and his people had
hitherto followed. For he was a good and a wise man, and remarkably
learned in the knowledge of the Scriptures;’[342] and Abbot Ceolfrid of
Jarrow, in his letter to King Naiton of the Picts, who calls him
‘Adamnan, the abbot and renowned priest of the Columbans,’ says that he
visited his monastery, and narrates at length the conversation he had
with him, to which he attributes Adamnan’s conversion.[343] ‘Returning
home,’ continues Bede, ‘he endeavoured to bring his own people that were
in Hii, or that were subject to that monastery, into the way of truth,
which he himself had learned and embraced with all his heart; but in
this he could not prevail.’ We have thus the anomalous state of matters
that the abbot of the monastery had conformed to Rome, but that his
monks and those of the dependent monasteries refused to go along with
him. In the year after his return to Iona, the death of Iolan, bishop of
_Cinngaradh_, or Kingarth in Bute, is recorded; and in 692, which the
annalist marks as the fourteenth after the decease of his predecessor
Failbhe, he went to Ireland, but for what especial purpose which might
render the reference to Failbhe appropriate, we do not learn; and the
following year we find him again in Iona, when the body of Brude mac
Bile, king of the Picts, who died in 693, is brought for interment.[344]
[Sidenote: A.D. 692.
Synod of Tara. The northern Scots, with the exception of the
Columban monasteries, conform to Rome.]
Four years after, in the year 697, he goes again to Ireland, and on this
occasion he was accompanied by Brude, son of Derile, king of the Picts.
His object was to obtain the sanction of the Irish people to a law
exempting women from the burden laid upon all, of what was called
_Fecht_ and _Sluagad_, or the duty attending hostings and expeditions.
For this purpose a synod was held at Tara, which was attended by
thirty-nine ecclesiastics presided over by the abbot of Armagh, and by
forty-seven chiefs of tribes, at the head of whom was the monarch of
Ireland. The law exempting women from this burdensome duty was termed
‘Lex innocentium;’ and the enactments of the synod were called _Cain
Adhamhnain_ or ‘Lex Adamnani,’ because among its results was the
privilege of levying contributions under certain conditions.[345] In the
list of those present occurs the name of _Brude mac Derili ri
Cruithentuaithe_, or King of Pictland. It is to the occasion of this
visit to Ireland that must be referred the statement of Bede that ‘he
then sailed over into Ireland to preach to those people, and, by modest
exhortation declaring the true time of Easter, he reduced many of them,
and almost all that were not under the dominion of those of Hii, from
their ancient error to the Catholic unity, and taught them to keep the
proper time of Easter. Returning to his island after having celebrated
Easter in Ireland canonically, he most earnestly inculcated the
observance of Easter in his monastery, yet without being able to
prevail; and it so happened that he departed this life before the next
year came round. For the divine goodness so ordained it that, as he was
a great lover of peace and unity, he should be taken away to everlasting
life before he would be obliged, on the return of the time of Easter, to
have still more serious discord with those that would not follow him in
the truth.’[346] It would therefore appear that Adamnan did not return
to Iona till the year of his death, which took place on the 23d of
September in the year 704, and in the seventy-seventh year of his
age.[347]
At what period of Adamnan’s abbacy he wrote his life of the patron saint
and founder of the monastery cannot be fixed with any accuracy, but it
was after his visit to Aldfrid in 688; and, as he states that he did so
at the urgent request of his brethren, and alludes incidentally to the
discord which arose among the churches of Ireland on account of the
difference with regard to the Easter feast, it was probably compiled
before the same discord had arisen between the brethren of Iona and
himself as their abbot.[348] Neither can the precise period be fixed
when he founded those churches in the eastern districts which are
dedicated to him; but no doubt, after the termination of the Anglic rule
over the southern Picts and Scots of Dalriada, he would be desirous to
strengthen the Columban Church; and his relations with the kings of the
Picts who reigned after the overthrow of the Angles were, as we have
seen, cordial and friendly. In this work he appears to have been
assisted by the family who had already evangelised the rugged district
termed the ‘Rough Bounds,’ as the churches dedicated to them and him are
found adjacent to each other. Among the northern Picts, Adamnan’s
principal church was that of Forglen on the east bank of the river
Doveran, in which the _Brecbannoch_, or banner of Columba, was
preserved; and separated from it by the same river is Turriff, dedicated
to Comgan. South of the range of the Mounth Adamnan’s most important
foundation was the monastery of Dull in the district of Atholl, which
was dedicated to him, and to which a very extensive territory was
annexed; and closely contiguous to it was the district of Glendochart,
with its monastery dedicated to Fillan, whose name is preserved in
Strathfillan. Fillan again appears in Pittenweem on the south coast of
the peninsula of Fife; and in the Firth of Forth which it bounds is
Inchkeith, ‘on which Saint Adamnan the abbot presided.’[349]
[Sidenote: A.D. 704-717.
Schism at Iona after death of Adamnan.]
Adamnan, though, as Bede says, a man of peace and providentially removed
before the coming Easter, when matters would have been brought to a
crisis between him and his recalcitrant monks, seems notwithstanding to
have left a legacy of discord behind him. For the first time since the
foundation of the monastery of Iona, we find in the successor of Adamnan
an abbot who was not a descendant of Conall Gulban. Conmael, son of
Failbhe, was of the tribe of Airgialla in Ireland, who were descended
from Colla Uais; but three years after Adamnan’s death we find Duncadh,
who belonged to the tribe of the patron saint, obtaining the abbacy.
Then three years after we have the death of Conmael as abbot of Iona.
After his death appears Ceode, bishop of Iona, who dies in 712, and in
713 Dorbeni obtains the chair of Iona, but after five months’ possession
of the primacy dies on Saturday the 28th of October in the same year.
During the whole of this time, however, Duncadh is likewise abbot.[350]
The explanation seems to be that the community of Iona had become
divided on the subject of the Easter question, and that a party had
become favourable to Adamnan’s views. As he had not succeeded in
bringing over any of the Columban monasteries, they were driven to
obtain an abbot elsewhere, and procured the nomination of Conmael; while
the opposing party having got the upper hand three years after, Duncadh,
the legitimate successor of the line of Conall Gulban, obtained the
abbacy, and there was thus a schism in the community—one section of them
celebrating their Easter after the Roman system, who had at their head
Conmael, Ceode the bishop, and Dorbeni; and the other and more powerful
section maintaining, under the presidency of Duncadh, the old custom of
their church. After narrating how ‘at that time,’ that is, in 710,
‘Naiton, king of the Picts who inhabit the northern parts of Britain,
taught by frequent study of the ecclesiastical writings, renounced the
error by which he and his nation had till then been held in relation to
the observance of Easter, and submitted, together with his people, to
celebrate the Catholic time of our Lord’s resurrection,’ Bede closes his
notices of the monastery of Iona by telling us that ‘not long after,
those monks also of the Scottish nation who lived in the isle of Hii,
with the other monasteries that were subject to them, were, by the
procurement of our Lord, brought to the canonical observance of Easter
and the right mode of tonsure. For in the year after the incarnation of
our Lord 716, the father and priest Ecgberct, beloved of God and worthy
to be named with all honour, coming to them from Ireland, was very
honourably and joyfully received by them. Being a most agreeable teacher
and most devout in practising those things which he taught, he was
willingly heard by all; and, by his pious and frequent exhortations he
converted them from the inveterate tradition of their ancestors. He
taught them to perform the principal solemnity after the Catholic and
apostolic manner;’ and Bede adds, ‘The monks of Hii, by the instruction
of Ecgberct, adopted the Catholic rites, under Abbot Dunchad, about
eighty years after they had sent Bishop Aidan to preach to the nation of
the Angles.’[351] It is rarely, however, that, when a change is proposed
in matters of faith or practice, a Christian community is unanimous, and
there is always an opposing minority who refuse their assent to it. So
it must have been here, for in the same passage in which Tighernac
notices the adoption of the Catholic Easter in 716 he adds that Faelchu
mac Dorbeni takes the chair of Columba in the eighty-seventh year of his
age, and on Saturday the 29th of August; while he records the death of
Abbot Duncadh in the following year.[352] We have here again a schism in
the community; and no sooner does Abbot Duncadh with his adherents go
over to the Roman party, than the opposing section adopt a new abbot.
[Sidenote: A.D. 717
Expulsion of the Columban monks from the kingdom of the
Picts.]
The greater part, if not the whole, of the dependent monasteries among
the Picts seem to have resisted the change, and to have refused
obedience to the decree which Bede tells us King Naiton had issued, when
‘the cycles of nineteen years were forthwith by public command sent
throughout all the provinces of the Picts to be transcribed, learned and
observed;’ for we are told by Tighernac that in 717, when Abbot Duncadh
had died and Faelchu remained alone in possession of the abbacy, the
family of Iona were driven across Drumalban by King Naiton. In other
words, the whole of the Columban monks were expelled from his
kingdom;[353] and there is reason to think that Faelchu had been at the
head of one of these dependent monasteries in the territories of the
northern Picts.[354] It is possible that the monks of the monasteries
recently established among the southern Picts by Adamnan may have
conformed; but those of the older foundations, such as Abernethy and
_Cillrigmonadh_, or St. Andrews, were probably driven out; and thus with
the expulsion of the family of Iona terminated the primacy of its
monastery over the monasteries and churches in the extensive districts
of the east and north of Scotland which formed at that time the kingdom
of the Picts.
-----
Footnote 252:
Exceptis duobus populis, hoc est, Pictorum plebs et Scotorum
Britanniæ, inter quos utrosque Dorsi montes Britannici
disterminant.... Cujus (Columbæ) monasteria intra utrorumque populorum
terminos fundata ab utrisque ad præsens tempus valde sunt
honorificata.—B. ii. c. 47·
Footnote 253:
For an account of the remains on this island, see p. 97.
Footnote 254:
See Dr. Reeves’s _Adamnan_, ed. 1874, App. I. p. 306.
Footnote 255:
Adamnan, B. ii. 23, 25.
Footnote 256:
_Ib._, B. i. cc. 24, 41; B. ii. c. 15; B. iii. c. 8. See ed. 1874,
Appendix I., for an account of the monasteries in Tiree.
Footnote 257:
_Ib._, B. i. c. 29.
Footnote 258:
_Ib._, B. i. c. 35.
Footnote 259:
Adamnan, B. i. c. 15.
Footnote 260:
_Ib._, B. i. c. 24.
Footnote 261:
See Reeves’s _Adamnan_, ed. 1874, App. No. I., for an account of the
remains on this island.
Footnote 262:
_Vit. S. Kannechi_, cc. 19, 27, 28.
Footnote 263:
Adamnan, B. ii. c. 17; i. 25; ii. 32.
Footnote 264:
See the edition of 1874, p. 274, for a description of these ruins in
Skye.
Footnote 265:
592 Obitus Lugdach Lissmoir _.i. Moluoc_.—_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p.
67.
Footnote 266:
Colgan, _Tr. Th._, p. 481. _Obits of Christ Church, Dublin_, p. 65.
Footnote 267:
Colgan, _A.SS._, p. 233.
Footnote 268:
Reeves’s _Adamnan_, ed. 1874, p. 293.
Footnote 269:
_Cetrar for coicait lotar hi martrai la Donnan Ega._
Footnote 270:
Book of Deer, published by the Spalding Club in 1869, p. 91.
Footnote 271:
584 Mors Bruidhe mac Maelchon _Rig Cruithneach_.—_Chron. Picts and
Scots_, p. 67.
Footnote 272:
Adamnan, B. ii. c. 34.
Footnote 273:
_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 201. Constantin reigned from 790 to 820
and Gartnaidh from 584 to 599, which places the foundation of
Abernethy during the ten years from 584 to 596.
Footnote 274:
_Amra Columcille_, by O’Beirne Crowe, pp. 29, 63.
Footnote 275:
Introduction to _Obits of Christ Church_, by Dr. Todd, p. lxxvii.
Footnote 276:
_Vit. S. Cainneci_ in Archbishop Marsh’s Library, Dublin, cap. 19. The
Breviary of Aberdeen gives his festival as ‘Sancti Caynici abbatis qui
in Kennoquy in diocesi Sancti Andree pro patrono habetur.’—_Pars
Æstiv. for_ cxxv.
Footnote 277:
Blaan is mentioned in the Martyrology of Angus the Culdee, at 10th
August as ‘Blann the wild of Cinngaradh;’ and the gloss adds, ‘_i.e._
bishop of Cinngaradh, _i.e._ Dumblaan is his chief city, and he is
also of Cinngaradh in the Gall-Gaedelu, or Western Isles.’—Int. to
_Obits of Christ Church_, p. lxviii.
Footnote 278:
Adamnan, B. i. c. 3. Alither became fourth abbot of Clonmacnois on
12th June 585, and died in 599.—Reeves’s _Adamnan_, orig. ed., p. 24,
_note_.
Footnote 279:
Adamnan, B. iii. c. 23.
Footnote 280:
This little hill is twice mentioned by Adamnan. In B. i. c. 24, he
describes the saint as ‘in cacumine sedens montis qui nostro huic
monasterio eminus supereminet;’ and on this occasion he has
‘monticellum monasterio supereminentum ascendens in vertice ejus
paululum stetit.’ If the monastery and Columba’s cell have been
rightly placed, it must have been the rocky knoll behind Clachanach
called _Cnoc an bristeclach_.
Footnote 281:
_Vit. Columbæ, autore Cummenio, apud_ Pinkerton, _Vitæ Sanctorum_, cc.
17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22. Adamnan, B. iii. c. 24. Cummene’s account is
enlarged by Adamnan, and he has added the visit to the barn and the
incident of the white horse; but, as Cummene wrote so much earlier, it
has been thought desirable to discriminate between the two accounts.
Footnote 282:
Adamnan’s word is ‘Ratabusta,’ an unknown word either in classical or
mediæval Latin; and it appears to have puzzled the transcribers, as
other MSS. read ‘Rata busta’ ‘Intra busta,’ ‘In rata tabeta.’ The
Bollandists propose ‘Catabusta.’ Bustum is used for a sepulchre; and
Ducange has Busticeta, which he defines ‘sepulchra antiqua,’
‘sepulchra in agro.’ Dr. Reeves thinks it is used here for a coffin.
Footnote 283:
This frequently happens when the wind blows strongly from the
south-west.
Footnote 284:
St. Columba’s day was the 9th of June, and the year on which he died
is determined by the consideration of whether he must be held to have
died on Saturday evening or on Sunday morning. If on Sunday, then the
9th of June fell on a Sunday in the year 597. If on Saturday, then the
9th of June fell on a Saturday in 596. The former is most consistent
with Adamnan’s narrative, who places his death after midnight, and
states the duration of his life in Iona at 34 years, which, added to
563, gives us the year 597. Bede’s statement, though made on different
_data_, brings us to the same year. He brings him over in 565, but
gives 32 years as the duration of his life after, which also brings us
to 597. Tighernac seems to have adopted the other view, for he says
that he died on the eve of Whitsunday, ‘in nocte Dominica
Pentecosten,’ and Whitsunday fell on the 10th of June 596; but this is
inconsistent with his other statement, that he came over to Britain in
563, and died in the thirty-fifth year of his pilgrimage, which brings
us to 597.
Footnote 285:
Montalembert’s _Monks of the West_, vol. iii. p. 269. Montalembert
accepts the whole of O’Donnel’s biography of St. Columba as true.
Footnote 286:
Adamnan, Pref. 2. His expression ‘insulanus miles’ has been entirely
misunderstood by Montalembert.
Footnote 287:
_Amra Choluimchille_, by O’Beirne Crowe, pp. 27, 39, 49, 51, 53, 65.
Footnote 288:
_Ib._, p. 39.
Footnote 289:
Adamnan, B. i. c. 29.
Footnote 290:
_Amra Choluimchille_, pp. 43, 45.
Footnote 291:
Adamnan, B. ii. c. 14.
Footnote 292:
Bede, _Η. E._, B. iii. c. 3.
Footnote 293:
Bede seems to refer to this when he says, ‘in quibus omnibus idem
monasterium insulanum, _in quo ipse requiescit corpore_, principatum
teneret.’—B. iii. c. 4.
Footnote 294:
The expression, ‘whatever kind of person he was himself,’—verum
qualiscumque fuerit ipse,—has been held to imply that Bede had no
great opinion of St. Columba’s sanctity, or, at all events, referred
to traits in his character which were unfavourable, and Dr. Reeves
suggests that he may refer to current stories of the saint’s imperious
and vindictive temper; but the expression appears to the author to
refer to the immediately preceding sentence—‘de cujus vita et verbis
nonnulla a discipulis ejus feruntur scripta haberi’—which surely
refers to the Lives by Cummene and Adamnan. As Bede was acquainted
with Adamnan’s work on the Holy Places, he could hardly have been
ignorant of his Life of St. Columba; and probably all Bede meant to
express was that he had some hesitation in accepting as true all that
Adamnan said of him.
Footnote 295:
Adamnan, B. i. c. 2. It is unnecessary to follow Finten’s proceedings
further. He is the Finten, surnamed Munnu, who founded Tach Munnu, now
Taghmon, in Ireland, and to whom the churches of St. Mund in Lochleven
and Kilmund in Cowal were dedicated.
Footnote 296:
598 Quies Baethin abbatis Ea anno lxvi etatis sue.—_Tigh._ Tighernac
antedates the deaths of Columba and Baithene one year. The Martyrology
of Donegal records two anecdotes of him. ‘When he used to eat food, he
was wont to say _Deus in adjutorium meum intende_ between every two
morsels. When he used to be gathering corn along with the monks, he
held one hand up beseeching God, and another hand gathering
corn.’—_Mart. Don._ p. 165.
Footnote 297:
Bede, _Η. E._, B. ii. c. 4.
Footnote 298:
605 Obitus Laisreni abbatis Iae.—_Tigh._
Footnote 299:
Adamnan, B. iii. c. 20.
Footnote 300:
611 Neman Abbas Lesmoir.—_Tigh._ 617 Combustio Donnain Ega hi xv
kalendas Mai cum clericis martiribus.—_Tigh._ _Chron. Picts and
Scots_, pp. 68, 69.
Footnote 301:
Dr. Reeves’s _Adamnan_, 1874, p. 294.
Footnote 302:
_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 168. Bishop Forbes’s _Calendars_, p. 449.
Footnote 303:
Bede, _Hist. Ec._, B. iii. c. 1.
Footnote 304:
623 Bass Fergna abbas Iae.—_Tigh._
Footnote 305:
Bede, _Η. E._, B. ii. c. 14.
Footnote 306:
Bede, _Hist. Ec._, B. ii. c. 17.
Footnote 307:
_Ib._, B. iii. c. 3.
Footnote 308:
Bede, _Hist. Ec._, B. iii. c. 5.
Footnote 309:
‘Hanc mihi Adamnano narrationem meus decessor, noster abbas Failbeus,
indubitanter enarravit, qui se ab ore ipsius Ossualdi regis Segineo
abbati eamdem enuntiantis visionem audisse protestatus
est.’—_Adamnan_, B. i. c. 1.
Footnote 310:
632 _Inis Metgoit_ fundata est.—_Tigh._ Tighernac antedates at this
period transactions in Northumbria by about three years.
Footnote 311:
Bede in _Vit. S. Cudbercti_, c. xvi.
Footnote 312:
Bede, _Hist. Ec._, B. iii. c. 3.
Footnote 313:
The title of the letter is—‘In nomine Divino Dei summi confido.
Dominis sanctis et in Christo venerandis Segieno abbati, Columbæ
Sancti et cæterorum sanctorum successori, Beccanoque solitario, charo
carne et spiritu fratri, cum suis sapientibus, Cummianus supplex
peccator, magnis minimus, apologeticam in Christo salutem.’
Footnote 314:
The letter is printed at length in Usher’s _Veterum Epistolarum
Hibernicarum Sylloge_, p. 24, and in Migne’s _Patrologia_, vol.
xxxviii.
Footnote 315:
According to the Irish method Easter in 631 fell on 21st April,
according to the Roman on the 24th of March.
Footnote 316:
Bede, _Hist. Ec._, B. ii. c. 19.
Footnote 317:
_Ib._, B. iii. c. 3.
Footnote 318:
Keating’s _History of Ireland_, cap. ii. § 7.
Footnote 319:
635 Seigine abbas Ie ecclesiam Recharnn fundavit. Eocha abbas Lismoir
quievit.—_Tigh._
Footnote 320:
Bede, _Hist. Ec._, B. ii. c. 19.
Footnote 321:
Bede, _Hist. Ec._, B. iii. c. 17. 651 Quies Aidain episcopi
Saxan.—_Tigh._
Footnote 322:
652 Obitus Seghine abbas Iea .i. filii Fiachna.—_Tigh._
657 Quies Suibne mic Cuirthre abbatis Iea.—_Tigh._
Footnote 323:
Bede, _Hist. Ec._, B. iii. c. 25.
Footnote 324:
660 Obitus Finain mac Rimeda episcopi et Daniel episcopi Cindgaradh.
661 Cuimine abbas ad Hiberniam venit.—_Tigh._
Footnote 325:
Bede, _H. E._, B. iii. c. 25.
Footnote 326:
Bede, _Hist. Ec._, B. iii. c. 25.
Footnote 327:
_Ib._, c. 26.
Footnote 328:
Bede, _Hist. Ec._, B. iii. c. 26.
Footnote 329:
_Ib._, B. iv. c. 4.
A.D. 668 Navigatio Colmani episcop cum reliquiis sanctorum ad insulam
vacce albe in qua fundavit ecclesiam.—_Tigh._
Footnote 330:
Adamnan, B. iii. c. 6.
Footnote 331:
A.D. 669 Obitus Cumaine Ailbe abbatis Iea. Itharnan et Corindu apud
Pictores defuncti sunt.—_Tigh._
Footnote 332:
Bede, _Hist. Ec._, B. iv. c. 3.
Footnote 333:
Eddii _Vit. S. Wilf._, c. xxi.
Footnote 334:
A.D. 671 Maelruba in Britanniam navigat.
A.D. 673 Maelruba fundavit ecclesiam Aporcrosan.—_Tigh._
Footnote 335:
A.D. 673 Navigatio Failbe abbatis Iea in Hiberniam. A.D. 676 Failbe de
Hibernia revertitur.—_Tigh._
Footnote 336:
Bishop Forbes, _Scottish Calendars_, pp. 310-341.
Footnote 337:
Dr. Reeves’s _Adamnan_, ed. 1874, p. 296.
Footnote 338:
A.D. 674 Quies Failbe abbatis Iea. Dormitatio Nechtain.—_Tigh._ He
appears in the Felire of Angus on 8th January as _Nechtain Nair de
albae_, which is glossed _Anair de Albain_—from the east, from Alban.
Footnote 339:
A.D. 687 Adamnanus captivos reduxit ad Hiberniam lx.—_Tigh._ Reeves’s
_Adamnan_, ed. 1874, p. cli. Adamnan alludes to this mission, B. ii.
c. 1.
Footnote 340:
Adamnan, B. ii. c. 46. Boece states that the monastery was rebuilt by
Maelduin, king of Dalriada, whose death is recorded by Tighernac in
690. He therefore reigned at the very time when Adamnan was abbot, and
this fixes the date of these repairs as between 687 and 690.
Footnote 341:
Bede, _Hist. Ec._, B. v. c. 15. Reeves’s _Adamnan_, ed. 1874, p. clxi.
Footnote 342:
Bede, _Hist. Ec._, B. v. c. 15.
Footnote 343:
_Ib._ c. 21. He calls him ‘Abbas et sacerdos Columbiensium egregius.’
Footnote 344:
A.D. 689 Iolan episcopus Cindgaradh obiit. 692 Adamnanus xiiii annis
post pausam Failbe Ea ad Hiberniam pergit.—_Tigh._ See _Chron. Picts
and Scots_, p. 408.
Footnote 345:
Dr. Reeves’s _Adamnan_, ed. 1874, p. clvi. A.D. 697 Adamnan _tuc recht
lecsa in Erind an bliadhna seo_ (brought a law with him this year to
Ireland).—_Tigh._
Footnote 346:
Bede, _Hist. Ec._, B. v. c. 15.
Footnote 347:
A.D. 704 Adamnanus lxxvii anno ætatis suæ, in nonas kalendis Octobris,
abbas Ie, pausat.—_Tigh._
Footnote 348:
See Adamnan, Pref. i. and B. i. c. 3. Dr. Reeves considers that it was
written between the years 692 and 697, but it was more probably
compiled immediately after his return from England in 688, and before
his visit to Ireland in 692.
Footnote 349:
‘Inchekethe, in qua præfuit Sanctus Adamnanus
abbas.’—_Scotichronicon_, B. i. c. 6.
Footnote 350:
A.D. 707 Dunchadh principatum Iae tenuit.—_Tigh._
710 Conmael mac abbatis Cilledara Iae pausat.—_Tigh._
712 Ceode episcopus Iea pausat.—_Tigh._
713 Dorbeni cathedram Iae obtinuit, et v. mensibus peractis in primatu
v kalendis Novembris die Sabbati obiit.—_Tigh._ The 28th day of
October fell on a Saturday in the year 713. The passage recording the
death of Conmael is corrupt.
Footnote 351:
Bede, _Hist. Ec._, B. v. c. 22.
Footnote 352:
A.D. 716 Pasca in Eo civitate commotatur. Faelchu mac Doirbeni
cathedram Columbæ lxxxvii ætatis anno, in iiii kal. Septembris die
Sabbati suscepit.—_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 73. The 29th day of
August fell on a Saturday in the year 716.
A.D. 717 Dunchadh mac Cindfaeladh abbas Ie obiit.—_Ib._ p. 74.
Footnote 353:
A.D. 717 Expulsio familiæ Ie trans dorsum Britanniæ a Nectono
rege.—_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 74.
Footnote 354:
In the Breviary of Aberdeen is the legend of S. Volocus, patron saint
of Dunmeth and Logy in Mar, both in Aberdeenshire. Volocus is the
Latin form of Faelchu, as Vigeanus is of Fechin, Vynanus of Finan, and
Virgilius of Fergal.
[Illustration:
MAP
illustrating History of
MONASTIC CHURCH
prior to 8^{th}. Century
_J. Bartholomew, Edin._
]
CHAPTER V.
THE CHURCHES OF CUMBRIA AND LOTHIAN.
[Sidenote: A.D. 573.
Battle of Ardderyd. Rydderch Hael becomes king of
Strathclyde.]
Ten years after the landing of St. Columba in Iona the great battle of
_Ardderyd_, or Arthuret, was fought between the pagan and the Christian
parties in Cumbria; and the same year which saw Aidan, who had taken
part in it, inaugurated by St. Columba as independent king of Dalriada,
likewise witnessed the establishment of another of the chiefs who fought
in that battle, Rydderch Hael, or the Liberal, as Christian king of
Strathclyde, and the restoration of a Christian Church to its Cumbrian
population. As Columba was the founder of the Christian Church among the
northern Picts, so Kentigern was the great agent in the revolution which
again christianised Cumbria. We are not, however, so fortunate in the
biographers of Kentigern as we are in those of Columba. While those of
the latter lived when the memory of his words and acts was still fresh
in the minds of his followers, Kentigern found no one to record the
events of his life till upwards of five centuries had elapsed after his
death. A fragment of the life which had been used by John of Fordun and
a complete biography by Jocelyn of Furness are all we possess, but
neither of them was compiled before the twelfth century.[355]
[Sidenote: Oldest account of birth of Kentigern.]
The older life, of which a fragment only remains, states that ‘a certain
king Leudonus, a man half pagan, from whom the province over which he
ruled in northern Britannia obtained the name of Leudonia, had a
daughter under a stepmother, and the daughter’s name was Thaney.’ This
girl, having become Christian, ‘meditated upon the virginal honour and
maternal blessedness of the most holy Virgin Mary,’ and desired, like
her, to bring forth one who would be for the honour and salvation of her
nation in these northern parts. She ‘had a suitor, Ewen, the son of
Erwegende, sprung from a most noble stock of the Britons,’ but she
refused to marry him; upon which the king her father gave her the
alternative of either marrying him or being handed over to the care of a
swineherd, and she chose the latter. The swineherd was secretly a
Christian, having been converted by Servanus, a disciple of Palladius,
and respected her wishes. Her suitor Ewen, however, succeeded by a
stratagem in violating her in a wood, and she became with child, upon
which her father ordered her to be stoned according to the laws of the
country; but as none of the officers presumed to cast stones at one of
the royal family, she was taken to the top of a hill called Kepduf and
precipitated from it; having made the sign of the cross, however, she
came down to the foot of the mountain unhurt. The king then ordered her
to be given over to the sea, saying, ‘If she be worthy of life, her God
will free her from the peril of death, if He so will.’ They brought her,
therefore, to the firth, which is about three miles from Kepduf, to the
mouth of a river called Aberlessic, where she was put into a curach,
that is, a boat made of hides, and carried out into deep water beyond
the Isle of May. She remained all night alone in the midst of the sea,
and when morning dawned she was in safety cast on the sand at Culenros,
which, according to sailors’ computation, is thirty miles distant from
the Isle of May. Here she suffered the pains of labour; and, as she lay
on the ground, suddenly a heap of ashes which the day before had been
gathered together close to the shore by some shepherds, was struck by a
gust of the north wind, which scattered around her the sparks which lay
hid within it. When, therefore, she had found the fire, the pregnant
young woman dragged herself at once, as best she could, to the place
indicated by God, and in her extreme necessity, with anxious groans, she
made a little heap with the wood which had been collected the day before
by the foresaid shepherds to prepare the fire. Having lighted the fire,
she brought forth a son, the chamber of whose maturity was as rude as
that of his conception. Some herds found her there with the child, and
while some gave her food, others went straight to the blessed Servanus,
who at that time was teaching the Christian law to his clerics, with one
accord saying, ‘Sir, thus and thus have we found;’ to whom the saint
said, _A Dia cur fir sin_, which in Latin means ‘O utinam si sic
esset,’[356] and the youths replied, ‘Yea, father, it is a true tale and
no fable which we tell; therefore we pray you, sir, come and see, that
thy desire may without delay be satisfied;’ and he also, when he had
learnt the order of the events, rejoiced with great joy, and said,
‘Thanks be to God, for he shall be my dear one.’ For as the child was
being born, when he was in his oratory after morning lauds, he had heard
on high the _Gloria in excelsis_ being solemnly sung. And after an
address to his clerics, in which he vindicates the manner in which the
conception of the blessed Kentigern had taken place, and ‘praises Him
who alone governeth the world, and hath, among others, blessed our
country Britain with such a patron,’ this fragment unfortunately
terminates.[357]
[Sidenote: Jocelyn’s account of his birth.]
Jocelyn, whose narrative, as the Bishop of Brechin well observes, is
here directed at undoing the weird legend of the earlier life, which
gives the unedifying account of the conception of Kentigern, does not
name either father or daughter. He calls Kentigern’s mother simply ‘the
daughter of a certain king, most pagan in his creed, who ruled in the
northern parts of Britannia.’ Neither does he name the suitor who
betrayed her, but declares that she had no consciousness by whom, when,
or in what manner she conceived, and had possibly been drugged. He
states that, according to the law of the country, any girl in her
situation was to be cast down from the summit of a high mountain, and
her betrayer beheaded; that she was taken to the top of a high hill
called Dunpelder, and was cast down, but came to the bottom uninjured;
that she was then taken out to sea by the king’s servants, and placed in
a little boat of hides made after the fashion of the Scots, without any
oar, and, ‘the little vessel in which the pregnant girl was detained
ploughed the watery breakers and eddies of the waves towards the
opposite shore more quickly than if propelled by a wind that filled the
sail, or by the effort of many oarsmen;’ that the girl landed on the
sands at a place called Culenros, in which place at that time Servanus
dwelt, and taught sacred literature to many boys who went to be trained
to the divine service. The birth then takes place as in the other
narrative, and they are brought and presented to Servanus, who ‘in the
language of his country exclaimed, _Mochohe, Mochohe_, which in Latin
means “Care mi, Care mi,” adding, Blessed art thou that hast come in the
name of the Lord. He therefore took them to himself, and nourished and
educated them as if they were his own pledges. After certain days had
passed, he dipped them in the laver of regeneration and restoration, and
anointed them with the sacred chrism, calling the mother Taneu and the
child _Kyentyern_, which by interpretation is Capitalis Dominus.’ He
then educates him, and the gifts of grace manifested by the boy were so
great that ‘he was accustomed to call him, in the language of his
country, _Munghu_, which in Latin means Karrissimus Amicus.’[358]
Kentigern is brought up by Servanus, and the usual boyish miracles are
recorded as evidences of his sanctity, till, having excited the jealousy
and hatred of his fellow-students, he resolves, under Divine guidance of
course, to leave the place. He accordingly retreated secretly, and
‘journeying arrived at the Frisican shore, where the river, by name
Mallena, overpassing its banks when the tide flows in, took away all
hope of crossing;’ but the river is miraculously divided to enable him
to pass, the tide flowing back so that the waters of the sea and of the
river stood as walls on his right hand and on his left. He then crosses
a little arm of the sea near a bridge, which by the inhabitants is
called Servanus’s bridge; and on looking back, he saw that the waters
had not only flowed back and filled the channel of the Mallena, but were
overflowing the bridge and denying a passage to any one. Servanus, who
had followed in pursuit of the fugitive, stood above on the bank and
endeavoured to persuade him to return, but without success; and ‘having
mutually blessed each other, they were divided one from the other, and
never looked in each other’s face again in this world. And the place by
which Kentigern crossed became after that entirely impassable; for that
bridge, always after that covered by the waves of the sea, afforded to
no one any longer means of transit. Even the Mallena altered the force
of its current from the proper place, and from that day to this turned
back its channel into the river Ledone; so that forthwith the rivers
which till then had been separate from each other now became mingled and
united.’ Kentigern passes the night at a town called Kernach, where he
finds an old man, Fregus, on his death-bed, who dies in the night; and
‘next morning Kentigern, having yoked two untamed bulls to a new wain,
in which he placed the body whence the spirit had departed, and having
prayed in the name of the Lord, enjoined upon the brute beasts to carry
the burden placed upon them to the place which the Lord had provided for
it. And in truth the bulls, in no way resisting or disobeying the voice
of Kentigern, came by a straight road, along which there was no path, as
far as Cathures, which is now called Glasgu’, and halted near a certain
cemetery which had long before been consecrated by Saint Ninian. Here
Kentigern lives for some time; and then ‘the king and clergy of the
Cumbrian region, with other Christians, albeit they were few in number,
came together and, after taking into consideration what was to be done
to restore the good estate of the church, which was well-nigh destroyed,
they with one consent approached Kentigern, and elected him, in spite of
his many remonstrances and strong resistance, to be the shepherd and
bishop of their souls;’ and ‘having called one bishop from Ireland,
after the manner of the Britons and Scots of that period, they caused
Kentigern to be consecrated bishop.’[359]
[Sidenote: Anachronism in connecting St. Servanus with St. Kentigern.]
Such is the substance of these narratives; and here we are met, at the
very outset, by a great anachronism. Along with the lives of Kentigern
there is found a life of Servanus, in which he is made the founder of
the church of Culenros; but there is not one syllable about his having
been the master of Kentigern, or in any way connected with him, but the
whole events of his life, as there given, indisputably place him, as we
shall afterwards see, nearly two centuries later.[360] In spite,
therefore, of the statements of his biographers and of the belief of
popular tradition, the only conclusion we can come to is that Servanus
and St. Kentigern were divided by a more impassable barrier than the
river Mallena—the stream of time, and that they had never looked in each
other’s face at all. The scenery, however, of the narrative can be
easily identified. The hill called in the one narrative Kepduf, and in
the other Dunpelder, is Traprain Law, formerly called Dumpender Law, in
the county of Haddington. It is an isolated hill and, along with North
Berwick Law, forms a conspicuous object in the landscape. It is about
700 feet above the level of the sea, and on the south side it is nearly
perpendicular. It is distant about seven or eight miles from Aberlady
Bay, the Aberlessic of the older narrative. Culenros is Culross, on the
north shore of the Firth of Forth, here called the Frisican shore, as
the Forth itself is called by Nennius the Frisican Sea. The names of the
two rivers Mallena and Ledone are simply the Latin terms for the flood
and ebb tide, but the course of the two rivers, the Teith and the Forth,
seems to have suggested the legend. They run nearly parallel to each
other till they approach within three miles of Stirling, when the
southern of the two rivers, the Forth, takes a sudden bend to the north,
as if it would flow backwards, and discharges its waters into the Teith,
the two forming one river, but adopting the name of the former. Kernach
is Carnock, in the parish of Saint Ninian’s in Stirlingshire.
[Sidenote: Earlier notices of St. Kentigern.]
If, however, that part of the legend which introduces Servanus must be
rejected, the remainder derives some support from the old Welsh
documents. In the Triads of Arthur and his Warriors, which are
undoubtedly old, the first is termed ‘Three tribe thrones of the island
of Prydain;’ and the third of the tribe thrones is ‘Arthur, the chief
lord at Penrionyd in the north, and Cyndeyrn Garthwys, the chief bishop,
and Garthmwl Guledic, the chief elder.’[361] The chronology of the life
of Kentigern is not inconsistent with that which here connects him with
the historic Arthur, and the epithet Guledic, which was applied to the
chief among the Cymric kings of the north, gives us Garthmwl as the name
of the king of the district in which Glasgow was situated. In the
_Bonedd y Seint ynys Prydain_, or Pedigrees of the Saints of Britain, we
find the following pedigree: ‘Kyndeyrn Garthwys, son of Ywein, son of
Urien Reged, son of Cynfarch, son of Meirchiawngul, son of Grwst Ledlwm,
son of Cenau, son of Coel; and Dwynwen, daughter of Ladden Lueddog of
the city of Edwin (_Ddinas Edwin_, or Edinburgh), in the north, was his
mother.’[362] We have seen that prior to this period Monenna had founded
a church on the summit of Dunpelder, in which she established nuns;[363]
and it is possible that Dwynwen or Taneu may have been one of these
nuns, who, by the violation of her religious vow, had incurred the
sentence of being exposed in a curach in the adjacent firth. There is
nothing impossible in a small boat being driven before an east wind as
far as Culross; and certain it is that on the shore where she is said to
have landed there was a small chapel dedicated to Kentigern.[364] We
learn from the narrative that there had been an earlier church at
Glasgow founded by Ninian, which Kentigern may have restored, and he
makes his appearance in the martyrologies in the ninth century as ‘Saint
Kentigern, Bishop of Glasgow and Confessor.’[365]
[Sidenote: Kentigern driven to Wales.]
Jocelyn, after describing Kentigern’s mode of life and how he spread the
faith of Christ in his diocese, tells us that, ‘a considerable time
having elapsed, a certain tyrant, by name Morken, had ascended the
throne of the Cumbrian kingdom,’ who ‘scorned and despised the life and
doctrine of the man of God in much slandering, in public resisting him
from time to time, putting down his miraculous power to magical
illusion, and esteeming as nothing all that he did.’ But after a time
Morken dies and is buried in the royal town, which from him was called
Thorp Morken. ‘After this,’ says Jocelyn, ‘for many days he enjoyed
great peace and quiet, living in his own city of Glasgow, and going
through his diocese;’ but, ‘when some time had passed, certain sons of
Belial, a generation of vipers of the kin of the aforenamed King Morken,
excited by the sting of intense hatred and infected with the poison of
the devil, took counsel together how they might lay hold of Kentigern by
craft and put him to death.’ In consequence of this Kentigern resolved
to leave the north and proceed to Menevia in South Wales, now Saint
David’s, where St. David then ruled as bishop. The Morken here mentioned
is probably one of the kings termed Morcant by Nennius; and it is quite
in accordance with the history of the period that the increasing power
of the pagan party in the northern districts of Cumbria should have
driven Kentigern from Glasgow and forced him to take refuge in Wales.
Jocelyn describes him as proceeding by Carlisle, and says that, ‘having
heard that many among the mountains were given to idolatry or ignorant
of the divine law, he turned aside, and, God helping him and confirming
the word by signs following, converted to the Christian religion many
from a strange belief, and others who were erroneous in the faith.’ ‘He
remained some time in a certain thickly-planted place, to confirm and
comfort in the faith the men that dwelt there, where he erected a cross
as the sign of the faith, whence it took the name of, in English,
Crossfeld, that is, _Crucis Novale_, in which very locality a basilica,
recently erected, is dedicated to the name of the blessed Kentigern.’
Jocelyn then tells us that, ‘turning aside from thence, the saint
directed his steps by the sea-shore, and through all his journey
scattering the seed of the Divine Word, gathered in a plentiful and
fertile harvest unto the Lord. At length safe and sound he reached Saint
Dewi.’
[Sidenote: Kentigern founds the monastery of Llanelwy in Wales.]
St. David was, as we have already seen, one of the great founders of the
monastic church; and Kentigern had not been long with him when he
applied to the king for land to build a monastery, where he might unite
together a people acceptable to God and devoted to good works; and the
king, whom Jocelyn calls Cathwallain, allowed him to choose his own
place. Kentigern, ‘with a great crowd of his disciples along with him,
went round the land and walked throughout it exploring the situations of
the localities, the quality of the air, the richness of the soil, the
sufficiency of the meadows, pastures and woods, and the other things
that look to the convenience of a monastery to be erected;’ and is
finally conducted by a white boar ‘to the bank of a river called Elgu,
from which to this day, as it is said, the town takes its name.’ Here he
commenced to construct his monastery; ‘some cleared and levelled the
situation, others began to lay the foundation of the ground thus
levelled; some cutting down trees, others carrying them and others
fitting them together, commenced, as the father had measured and marked
out for them to build a church and its offices of polished wood, after
the fashion of the Britons, seeing that they could not yet build of
stone, nor were so wont to do.’[366] Here we are treading on somewhat
firmer ground. The monastery described is that of Llanelwy, afterwards
called St. Asaph’s. It is in the vale of Clwyd, at the junction of the
river Elwy with the Clwyd, a name possibly given to it by Kentigern from
some fancied resemblance to the river and valley in the north where he
had his original seat; and the Red Book of St. Asaph’s records several
grants made to Kentigern by Maelgwyn Gwyned, the king of North Wales at
this time.[367]
The description given by Jocelyn of the construction of the monastery is
probably not an inapt account of how these early Irish monasteries were
erected; and indeed it may be considered a type of the larger
monasteries, for Jocelyn tells us, ‘There flocked to the monastery old
and young, rich and poor, to take upon themselves the easy yoke and
light burden of the Lord. Nobles and men of the middle class brought to
the saint their children to be trained unto the Lord. The tale of those
who renounced the world increased day by day both in number and
importance, so that the total number of those enlisted in God’s army
amounted to 965, professing in act and habit the life of monastic rule,
according to the institution of the holy man. He divided this troop,
that had been collected together and devoted to the divine service, into
a threefold division of religious observance. For he appointed three
hundred, who were unlettered, to the duty of agriculture, the care of
the cattle, and the other necessary duties outside the monastery. He
assigned another three hundred to duties within the enclosure of the
monastery, such as doing the ordinary work and preparing food and
building workshops. The remaining three hundred and sixty-five, who were
lettered, he appointed to the celebration of divine service in church by
day and by night; and he seldom allowed any of these to go forth out of
the sanctuary, but they were ever to abide within, as if in the holy
place of the Lord. But those who were more advanced in wisdom and
holiness and who were fitted to teach others, he was accustomed to take
along with him when, at the urgent demand either of necessity or reason,
he thought fit to go forth to perform his episcopal office.’[368]
Allowing for some exaggeration in the numbers of those in the second and
third divisions, this is probably a very correct picture of the
monasteries in the early monastic church of Ireland and Scotland when
the head of the monastery was also a bishop.
[Sidenote: A.D. 573.
Rydderch Hael becomes king of Cumbria and recalls Kentigern.]
After some account of Kentigern’s life at his monastery in North Wales,
Jocelyn returns to the north in order to ‘show what his adversaries
suffered, how he returned to the Cumbrian region, and what he did
there.’ He tells us, after an imaginative account of the fate of those
who had driven out Kentigern, that, ‘when the time of having mercy had
arrived, that the Lord might remove the rod of his fierce anger and that
they should turn unto Him and He should heal them, He raised up over the
Cumbrian kingdom a king, Rederech by name, who, having been baptized in
Ireland in the most Christian manner by the disciples of Saint Patrick,
sought the Lord with all his heart and strove to restore Christianity.’
‘Wherefore,’ continues Jocelyn, ‘King Rederech, seeing that the
Christian religion was almost entirely destroyed in his kingdom, set
himself zealously to restore it; and, after long considering the matter
in his own mind and taking advice with other Christians who were in his
confidence, he discovered no more healthful plan by which he could bring
it to a successful result than to send messengers to Saint Kentigern, to
recall him to his first see.’ It was by the great battle of _Ardderyd_,
fought at Arthuret on the river Esk a few miles north of Carlisle, in
which the pagan and Christian parties met in conflict, and a decisive
struggle for the supremacy took place between them, that the victory of
the Christian chiefs placed Rydderch Hael, or the Liberal, on the
throne; and as this battle took place in the year 573, it gives us a
fixed date for the recall of Kentigern. He responded to the call, and,
having appointed Asaph, one of the monks, his successor, he enthroned
him in the cathedral see; and, ‘blessing and taking leave of them all he
went forth by the north door of the church, because he was going forth
to combat the northern enemy. After he had gone out, that door was
closed, and all who witnessed and heard of his egress and departure
bewailed his absence with great lamentations. Hence a custom grew up in
that church that that door should never be opened save once a year, on
the day of St. Asaph, that is, on the kalends of May, for two
reasons—first in deference to the sanctity of him who had gone forth,
and next that thereby was indicated the great grief of those who had
bewailed his departure.’ Jocelyn tells us that six hundred and
sixty-five of the monks accompanied him, and that three hundred only
remained with St. Asaph.[369]
[Sidenote: Kentigern fixes his see first at Hoddam.]
King Rydderch and his people went forth to meet him, and they
encountered each other at a place called Holdelm, now Hoddam, in
Dumfriesshire, where Kentigern addressed the multitude who had assembled
to meet him; and in the supposed address which Jocelyn puts in his mouth
we have probably a correct enough representation of the paganism which
still clung to the people and influenced their belief—a sort of cross
between their old Celtic heathenism and that derived from their pagan
neighbours the Angles, who now occupied the eastern districts of their
country. According to Jocelyn, he showed them ‘that idols were dumb, the
vain inventions of men, fitter for the fire than for worship. He showed
that the elements, in which they believed as deities, were creatures and
formations adapted by the disposition of their Maker to the use, help
and assistance of men. But Woden, whom they, and especially the Angles,
believed to be the chief deity, from whom they derived their origin, and
to whom the fourth day of the week is dedicated, he asserted with
probability to have been a mortal man, king of the Saxons, by faith a
pagan, from whom they and many nations have their descent.’ The ground
on which he sat there ‘grew into a little hill, and remaineth there unto
this day;’ and ‘men and women, old men and young men, rich and poor,
flock to the man of God to be instructed in the faith.’ And here he
fixed his see for a time; for Jocelyn then tells us that ‘the holy
bishop Kentigern, building churches in Holdelm, ordaining priests and
clerics, placed his see there for a time for a certain reason;
afterwards, warned by divine revelation, justice demanding it, he
transferred it to his own city Glasgow.’[370]
[Sidenote: Mission of Kentigern in Galloway, Alban, and Orkneys.]
It was while his see was still at Hoddam, and before he returned to
Glasgow, that we are told by Jocelyn that Kentigern, ‘after he had
converted what was nearest to him, that is to say, his diocese, going
forth to more distant places, cleansed from the foulness of idolatry and
the contagion of heresy the home of the Picts, which is now called
Galwiethia, with the adjacent parts.’ There are, however, in Galloway
proper no dedications to Kentigern, which somewhat militates against the
accuracy of this statement. We are also told that ‘he went to Albania,
and there with great and almost unbearable toil, often exposed to death
by the snares of the barbarians, but ever standing undeterred, strong in
the faith, the Lord working with him and giving power to the voice of
his preaching, he reclaimed that land from the worship of idols and from
profane rites that were almost equal to idolatry, to the landmarks of
faith, and the customs of the church, and the laws of the canons. For
there he erected many churches, and dedicated them when erected,
ordaining priests and clerics; and he consecrated many of his disciples
bishops. He also founded many monasteries in these parts, and placed
over them as fathers the disciples whom he had instructed.’[371] By
Albania are meant the eastern districts of Scotland north of the Firth
of Forth, and Jocelyn here entirely ignores the work of Columba; but
that the missionary labours of Kentigern were to some extent carried
into these northern districts appears from the dedications to him; and,
strangely enough, the traces of his missionary work are mainly to be
found north of the great range of the Mounth, where, in the upper valley
of the Dee, on the north side of the river, we find a group of
dedications which must have proceeded from a Welsh source. These are
Glengairden dedicated to Mungo, or Kentigern, Migvie and Lumphanan to
Finan, the latter name being a corruption of Llanffinan, and Midmar
dedicated to Nidan; while in the island of Anglesea we likewise find two
adjacent parishes called Llanffinan and Llannidan. In the Welsh Calendar
Nidan appears on 30th September, and his pedigree in the _Bonedd y
Seint_ makes him a grandson of Pasgen, son of Urien, and therefore a
cousin of Kentigern.[372] Jocelyn’s statement that Kentigern likewise
sent forth missionaries ‘towards the Orcades, Norwagia and Ysalanda,’ or
Iceland, must be rejected as improbable in itself and inconsistent with
the older and more trustworthy account given by Diciul, the Irish
geographer, in the early part of the ninth century, that the earliest
Christian missionaries to the northern islands were anchorites who had
all proceeded from Ireland.[373] ‘All this being duly done,’ says
Jocelyn, ‘he returned to his own church of Glasgow, where as elsewhere,
yea, where as everywhere, he was known to shine in many and great
miracles;’ and among those which he relates is the incident of the
queen’s ring found in the salmon, which appears in the arms of the city
of Glasgow.
[Sidenote: Meeting of Kentigern and Columba.]
The only remaining incident which may be considered as historical is the
meeting of Kentigern with Columba. Adamnan tells us that ‘King Roderc,
son of Tothail, who reigned on the rock of Cluaith,’ that is, at
Alcluith, or Dumbarton, ‘being on friendly terms with the holy man, sent
to him on one occasion a secret message by Lugbe Mocumin, as he was
anxious to know whether he would be killed by his enemies, or not,’ and
received from the saint the assurance that he should never be delivered
into the hands of his enemies, but would die at home on his own pillow;
and, says Adamnan, ‘the prophecy of the saint regarding King Roderc was
fully accomplished, for, according to his word, he died quietly in his
own house.’[374] It is plain, therefore, on better authority than that
of Jocelyn, that during King Rydderch’s life some friendly intercourse
had taken place between him and his people and Columba, and that clerics
proceeded from Iona to Strathclyde. This could hardly have taken place
without a meeting between the two saints, though Adamnan does not
mention the name of Kentigern. Kentigern could hardly have returned to
Glasgow much before 582; and we have seen that, after 584, Columba
extended his missionary work into the region about the river Tay. He
would thus be brought very near to the frontiers of the Strathclyde
kingdom, and so be led to visit Kentigern. Jocelyn’s description of the
meeting is too graphic to be omitted. ‘Saint Columba the abbot, whom the
Angles call Columkillus, a man wonderful for doctrine and virtues,
celebrated for his presage of future events, full of the spirit of
prophecy, and living in that glorious monastery which he had erected in
the island of Yi, desired earnestly, not once and away, but continually,
to rejoice in the light of Saint Kentigern. For, hearing for a long time
of the fame in which he was estimated, he desired to approach him, to
visit him, to behold him, to come into his close intimacy, and to
consult the sanctuary of his holy breath regarding the things which lay
near his own heart. And, when the proper time came, the holy father
Saint Columba went forth, and a great company of his disciples and
others, who desired to behold and look upon the face of so great a man,
went with him. When he approached the place called Mellindonor, where
the saint abode at the time, he divided all his people into three bands,
and sent forward a message to announce to the holy prelate his own
arrival and that of those who accompanied him. The holy pontiff was glad
when they said unto him these things concerning them, and, calling
together his clergy and people similarly in three bands, he went forth
with spiritual songs to meet them. In the front of the procession were
placed the juniors in the order of time; in the second, those more
advanced in years; in the third, with himself, walked the aged in length
of days, white and hoary, venerable in countenance, gesture and bearing,
yea, even in grey hairs. And all sang “In the ways of the Lord how great
is the glory of the Lord;” and again they answered, “The way of the just
is made straight, and the path of the saints prepared.” On Saint
Columba’s side, they sang with tuneful voices, “The saints shall go from
strength to strength, until with the God of gods appeareth every one in
Sion,” with the “Alleluia.”’ When they met, ‘they mutually embraced and
kissed each other, and,’ says Jocelyn, naïvely enough, ‘having first
satiated themselves with the spiritual banquet of divine words, they
after that refreshed themselves with bodily food.’ Jocelyn then narrates
a miracle of the usual character, and concludes by telling us that ‘they
interchanged their pastoral staves, in pledge and testimony of their
mutual love in Christ. But the staff which Saint Columba gave to the
holy bishop Kentigern was preserved for a long time in the church of
Saint Wilfrid, bishop and confessor at Ripon, and held in great
reverence, on account of the sanctity both of him who gave it and of him
who received it.’[375] It must, however, have reached Ripon after St.
Wilfrid’s time, as otherwise he could hardly have expressed ignorance of
Columba, as he did at the council of Whitby. Jocelyn concludes by saying
that, ‘during several days, these saints, passing the time together,
mutually conversed on the things of God and what concerned the salvation
of souls; then saying farewell, with mutual love, they returned to their
homes, never to meet again.’
[Sidenote: Death of Kentigern.]
Of Kentigern’s death Jocelyn gives the following strange account, which
probably reports the tradition of the church:—‘When the octave of the
Lord’s Epiphany, on which the gentle bishop himself had been wont every
year to wash a multitude of people in sacred baptism, was dawning—a day
very acceptable to Saint Kentigern and to the spirits of the sons of his
adoption—the holy man, borne by their hands, entered a vessel filled
with hot water, which he had first blessed with the sign of salvation;
and a circle of the brethren standing round him awaited the issue of the
event. And when the saint had been some little time in it, after lifting
his hands and his eyes to heaven, and bowing his head as if sinking into
a calm sleep, he yielded up his spirit.’ ‘The disciples, seeing what was
taking place, lifted the body out of the bath, and eagerly strove with
each other to enter the water; and so, one by one, before the water
cooled, they slept in the Lord in great peace; and, having tasted death
along with their holy bishop, they entered with him into the mansions of
heaven.’ ‘The brethren,’ continues Jocelyn, ‘stripped the saint of his
ordinary clothes, which they partly reserved and partly distributed as
precious relics, and clothed him in the consecrated garments which
became so great a bishop. Then he was carried by the brethren into the
choir with chants and psalms, and the life-giving victim was offered to
God for him by many. Diligently and most devoutly, as the custom of the
church in those days demanded, celebrated they his funeral; and on the
right side of the altar laid they beneath a stone, with as much becoming
reverence as they could, that abode of virtues, etc. The sacred remains
of all these brethren were devoutly and disposedly consigned to the
cemetery for sepulture, in the order in which they had followed the holy
bishop out of this life.’[376] He is thus said to have died on the 13th
of January, which is the octave of the Epiphany. If we are to understand
that he died on a Sunday, then the year of his death may most probably
be fixed as 603, in which year the 13th of January fell upon a Sunday.
The _Annales Cambriæ_, however, record his death in the year 612, which
may otherwise be accepted as the true date.[377] Jocelyn tells us that
he died full of years, when he was one hundred and eighty-five years
old, but we cannot give him so many years. Such long periods of life are
not an unusual feature in the traditionary acts of these early saints,
and are usually inserted to reconcile some anachronism in the events of
their life. The great anachronism in Kentigern’s life is the tale that
he was a disciple of Servanus, and the latter of Palladius, and as
Palladius died in the year 432, one hundred and eighty years before the
death of Kentigern according to the Cambrian Annals, this long life was
given him in order to fill up the interval; but, if we drop the century
which has been added to it, we shall find that a life of eighty-five
years is more consistent with the narrative, and furnishes us with an
unexceptionable chronology. This would place his birth either at 518 or
527, according to the date we assume for his death; and, as Jocelyn
states that he was twenty-five when he was consecrated a bishop, this
gives us 543 or 552 as the date of it. We have thus an interval of about
twenty or twenty-five years for his life at Glasgow, his expulsion to
Wales, and his foundation of the monastery of Llanelwy, as his return
under the auspices of King Rydderch must have taken place soon after the
year 573.
[Sidenote: A.D. 627.
Conversion of the Angles to Christianity.]
Of the immediate successors of Kentigern we have no record whatever; but
a quarter of a century had not elapsed from his death when the nation of
the Angles were by the conversion of their king Aeduin, brought over to
the Christian faith. Bede tells us that Aeduin was baptized at York by
Paulinus on the holy day of Easter in the year 627, and that, ‘at a
certain time, coming with the king and queen to the royal seat which is
called Adgefrin, now Yevering, one of the Cheviots near Wooler, Paulinus
stayed there with them thirty-six days, fully occupied in catechising
and baptizing; during all which days from morning till night he did
nothing else but instruct the people resorting thither from all villages
and places in Christ’s saving word, and, when instructed, he washed them
with the water of remission in the river Glen, which is close by.’
‘These things,’ says Bede, ‘happened in the province of the
Bernicians,’[378] which at this time extended to the Firth of Forth. By
the continuator of Nennius, however, a different tradition has been
handed down to us. He states that ‘Eadguin received baptism on Easter
day, and that twelve thousand men were baptized along with him;’ and
adds, ‘If any one would know who baptized them, Rum, son of Urbgen,
baptized them, and for forty days did not cease to baptize the whole
nation of the Ambrones; and by his preaching many believed in
Christ.’[379] The Urbgen of Nennius is the Urien of the Welsh pedigree
of Kentigern, which would place Rum in the position of being his uncle,
which is hardly possible. But the tradition seems to indicate that the
Cumbrian Church did play a part in the conversion of their Anglic
neighbours; and the Angles occupying the district between the Tweed and
Forth, being more immediately within their reach and coming directly in
contact with them, may have owed their conversion to one who was of the
same race as Kentigern, and, as belonging to the tribe of the patron
saint, had succeeded him as head of the Cumbrian Church. Be this as it
may, the short-lived church of Paulinus could not have had much
permanent effect in leavening these Anglic tribes with Christianity; and
the whole of the Cumbrian and Anglic districts were speedily thrown into
confusion by the revolution which restored paganism for a time under the
pagan Anglic king Penda and the apostate Welsh king Ceadwalla. When
Christianity was again revived in Northumbria, it was in a different
form, and one more assimilated to the church of Kentigern; but the
Cumbrian kingdom fell, not long after, under the dominion of the Angles;
and during the period of their rule there was probably no independent
church there. It is to the Columban Church, established in Northumbria
by King Osuald in 635, that we must look for the permanent conversion of
the Angles who occupied the eastern districts between the Tweed and the
Forth, and for the foundation of churches, or rather Columban
monasteries, among them. The two principal of these were founded, the
one by Aidan, the first of the Columban bishops; the second, in the time
of Finan, his successor. Bede tells us that on the arrival of Aidan,
‘the king appointed him his episcopal see in the island of Lindisfarne,
as he himself desired,’ and that ‘churches were built in several places;
the people joyfully flocked together to hear the Word; possessions and
lands were given of the king’s bounty to build monasteries; the younger
Angles were by their Scottish masters instructed.’[380] And in another
place he says that, when Aidan was first made bishop, ‘he received
twelve boys of the Anglic nation to be instructed in Christ.’[381]
[Sidenote: The monasteries in Lothian.]
‘Among the monasteries so founded by him was that of Mailros, situated
on the banks of the Tweed not far from the later foundation at the
place, and called Old Melrose, a peninsula nearly surrounded by the
Tweed, which is overhung on the farther side by its lofty precipitous
banks, and is strongly guarded by natural defences on every quarter
except the south, where a wall was drawn across the narrow
isthmus.’[382] And the first abbot we hear of in connection with this
monastery was Eata, one of the twelve boys whom Aidan had
instructed.[383] The other monastery was that termed by Bede _Urbs
Coludi_, the Saxon equivalent of which is _Coldingaham_, now Coldingham,
built on a rock overhanging the sea, a short way south of the promontory
termed Saint Abb’s Head. The neck of land on which it was built
stretches into the sea, having for its three sides perpendicular rocks
of great elevation. The fourth side was cut off from the mainland, and
rendered impregnable, by a high wall and deep trench.[384] This
monastery was founded by Aebba, daughter of King Aedilfrid, and
half-sister of the kings Osuald and Osuiu, who became its first
abbess.[385] It was a double monastery, and contained two distinct
communities of men and of women, who lived under her single government.
It is from her that the promontory of Saint Abb’s Head takes its name.
[Sidenote: Saint Cuthbert.]
But, if the great name in the Cumbrian Church was that of Kentigern,
that which left its greatest impress in Lothian, and one with which the
monastery of Mailros was peculiarly connected, was that of Cudberct,
popularly called Saint Cuthbert. Several Lives of him have come down to
us; but undoubtedly the one which, from its antiquity, is most deserving
of credit, is that by the venerable Bede. In this respect Cudberct was
more fortunate even than Columba, for this Life was written within forty
years of his death. Bede, too, was born in the lifetime of the saint
whose life he records, and must have been about thirteen years old when
he died; and he tells us himself that he had frequently shown his
manuscript to ‘Herefrid the priest, as well as to several other persons
who, from having long dwelt with the man of God, were thoroughly
acquainted with his life, that they might read it and deliberately
correct or expunge what they judged advisable.’ ‘Some of these
amendments,’ he adds, ‘I carefully adopted at their suggestion, as
seemed good to me; and thus, all scruples having been entirely removed,
I have ventured to commit the result of this careful research, conveyed
in simple language, to these few sheets of parchment.’[386] Bede tells
us nothing of the birth and parentage of Cudberct; and, though he
relates an incident which occurred when the saint was in his eighth
year, and which he says Bishop Trumuini of blessed memory affirmed that
Cudberct had himself told him, he does not indicate where or in what
country he had passed his boyhood. When he first connects Cudberct with
any locality, he says that ‘he was keeping watch over the flocks
committed to his charge on some remote mountains.’ These mountains,
however, were the southern slope of the Lammermoors, which surround the
upper part of the vale of the Leader, in Berwickshire; for the anonymous
history of St. Cuthbert, which, next to his Life by Bede, has the
greatest value, says that ‘he was watching over the flocks of his master
in the mountains near the river Leder.’[387] There ‘on a certain night,
when he was extending his long vigils in prayers, as was his wont,’
which shows the bent of his mind towards a religious life, he had a
vision in which he saw the soul of Bishop Aidan of Lindisfarne being
carried to heaven by choirs of the heavenly host; and resolved in
consequence to enter a monastery and put himself under monastic
discipline. ‘And,’ says Bede, ‘although he knew that the church of
Lindisfarne possessed many holy men by whose learning and examples he
might well be instructed, yet, allured by the fame of the exalted
virtues of Boisil, a monk and priest, he chose rather to go to Mailros.
And it happened, when he arrived there, as he leaped from his horse and
was about to enter the church to pray, that he gave his horse to an
attendant, as well as the spear which he held in his hand (for he had
not as yet laid aside his secular dress), Boisil himself, who was
standing at the gate of the monastery, first saw him.’ Boisil ‘kindly
received Cudberct as he arrived; and, on his explaining the object of
his visit, viz., that he preferred a monastery to the world, he kindly
kept him near himself, for he was the provost of that same monastery.
And after a few days, on the arrival of Eata of blessed memory, then a
priest and the abbot of that monastery of Mailros, and afterwards abbot
of Lindisfarne, and likewise bishop of the church of Lindisfarne, Boisil
spoke to him of Cudberct, and, telling him how well disposed he was,
obtained permission to give him the tonsure, and to unite him in
fellowship with the rest of the brethren;’[388] and thus Cudberct became
a monk of the monastery of Melrose. As Bishop Aidan died in the year
651, this gives us the first certain date in his life.
[Sidenote: Irish Life of St. Cuthbert.]
The only Life which professes to give his earlier history is ‘The Book
of the Nativity of Saint Cuthbert, taken and translated from the
Irish.’[389] According to this Life, Cuthbert was born in Ireland, of
royal extraction. His mother Sabina, daughter of the king who reigned in
the city called Lainestri, was taken captive by the king of Connathe,
who slew her father and all her family. He afterwards violated her, and
then sent her to his own mother, who adopted her, and, together with
her, entered a monastery of virgins which was then under the care of a
bishop. There Sabina gave birth to the boy Cuthbert, and the bishop
baptized him, giving him the Irish name of Mullucc. He is said to have
been born in ‘Kenanus,’ or Kells, a monastery said to have been founded
by Columba on the death of the bishop who had educated him. His mother
goes with him to Britain by the usual mode of transit in these legends,
that is, by a stone which miraculously performs the functions of a
curach, and they land in ‘Galweia, in that region called Rennii, in the
harbour of Rintsnoc,’[390] no doubt Portpatrick in the Rinns of
Galloway. Then, leaving their stone curach, they take another vessel and
go to ‘a harbour called Letherpen in Erregaithle, a land of the Scots.
This harbour is situated between Erregaithle and Incegal, near a lake
called Loicafan.’ A harbour between Argyll and the Isles must be on its
west side, and the inlet called Lochmelfort may be meant, near the head
of which is the lake called Loch Avich; or, if Loch Awe is meant, it may
have been at Crinan, near which was Dunadd, the capital of
Dalriada.[391] Here they landed, the mother and son and three men, and
wishing to warm themselves, they collect for the purpose dry branches,
and heap them up to light a fire. The place, however, was much exposed
to robbers, and the glitter of the golden armlets of the mother
attracted the notice of some, who rushed upon her with lances, and would
have slain her, but were discomfited by the prayers of the holy boy.
From that day to this, when that spot is covered with branches or pieces
of wood, they ignite of themselves, which the inhabitants attribute to
the merits of the boy.[392] Then they go to the borders of Scotia,[393]
where Columba, the first bishop of Dunkeld, receives the boy and
educates him with a girl, a native of Ireland, named Brigida, who tells
him that the Lord destines him for the Angles in the east of this
province, but reserves her for the western population of the land of the
Irish. Here he excites the envy of three southern clerics from the
region of the Angles.[394] They then go to the island which is called
Hy, or Iona, where they remain some time with the religious men of that
place. Then they visit two brothers-german of the mother, Meldanus and
Eatanus, who were bishops in the province of the Scots, in which each
had an episcopal seat; and these take the boy and place him under the
care of a certain religious man in Lothian, while the mother goes on a
pilgrimage to Rome. In this place in Lothian a church was afterwards
erected in his honour, which is to this day called Childeschirche, and
here the book of the nativity of St. Cuthbert, taken from the Irish
histories, terminates.[395] Childeschirche is the old name of the parish
now called Channelkirk, in the upper part of the vale of the Leader; and
the Irish Life thus lands him where Bede takes him up.
It is certainly remarkable that Bede gives no indication of Cudberct’s
nationality. He must surely have known whether he was of Irish descent
or not. He is himself far too candid and honest a historian not to have
stated the fact if it was so, and it is difficult to avoid the suspicion
that this part of his narrative was one of those portions which he had
expunged at the instance of the critics to whom he had submitted his
manuscript. Unfortunately Bede nowhere gives us Cudberct’s age. He
elsewhere calls him at this time a young man, and he says that his life
had reached to old age.[396] Cudberct resigned his bishopric in 686, and
died in 687. He could hardly have been under sixty at that time, and it
was probably on his attaining that age that he withdrew from active
life. This would place his birth in the year 626, and make him
twenty-five when he joined the monastery at Mailros. The Irish Life
appears to have been recognised by the monks of Durham as early as the
fourteenth century,[397] and it is perfectly possible that these events
may have taken place before Bede takes up his history, though they are
characterised by the usual anachronisms. Dunkeld was not founded till
more than a century after his death, and, as it was dedicated to St.
Columba of Iona, he no doubt appears here as its bishop half-a-century
after his death.[398] The Brigida there mentioned is also obviously
intended for St. Bridget of Kildare, who belongs to a much earlier
period; and the Bishop Eatanus, his mother’s brother, is surely no other
than Eata, abbot of Melrose, and afterwards bishop of Lindisfarne. The
truth may possibly be that he was the son of an Irish kinglet by an
Anglic mother; and this would account for her coming to Britain with the
boy, and his being placed under a master in the vale of the Leader.
[Sidenote: A.D. 651-661.
Cudberct’s life in the monastery of Melrose.]
Bede gives us no particulars of Cudberct’s life in the monastery of
Melrose from 651, when he joined it, to the year 661, when he
accompanies Abbot Eata to Ripon, where King Alchfrid had given the
latter a certain domain to found a monastery, which he did, and having
instituted in it the same monastic discipline which he had previously
established at Mailros, Cudberct was appointed provost of the
guest-chamber. During this period of ten years we may place the events
recorded in the chapter annexed to the Irish Life. According to this
chapter, ‘after the blessed youth Cuthbert had arrived in Scottish land,
he began to dwell in different parts of the country, and coming to a
town called Dul forsook the world, and became a solitary.’ Not more than
a mile from it there is in the woods a high and steep mountain called by
the inhabitants Doilweme, and on its summit he began to lead a solitary
life. Here he brings from the hard rock a fountain of water which still
exists. Here too he erects a large stone cross, builds an oratory of
wood, and out of a single stone, not far from the cross, constructs a
bath, in which he used to immerse himself and spend the night in prayer,
which bath still exists on the summit of the mountain. Cuthbert remains
some time in the territory of the Picts leading a solitary life, till
the daughter of the king of that province accuses him of having violated
her; but, at the prayer of the saint, the earth opened and swallowed her
up at a place still called Corruen, and it was on this account that he
never permitted a female to enter his church—‘a custom,’ says the
writer, ‘which is still rigidly observed in the country of the
Picts;[399] and churches were everywhere dedicated in his honour.’ The
saint, however, would no longer remain in these parts, but exchanged
them for another part of the country.[400] The localities here mentioned
can be easily recognised. Dul is the village of Dull in Strathtay in
Atholl, where Adamnan, not long after Cudberct’s death, founded a
monastery; and about a mile east of Dull is the church of Weem, situated
under a high cliff called the Rock of Weem, about six hundred feet high,
and in some places so steep as to be almost perpendicular.[401] In the
year 657 Osuiu, king of Northumbria, had extended his sway not only over
the Britons and Scots, but also over the territories of the southern
Picts. The district in which these places are situated was now under the
dominion of the Angles, which may have led to Cudberct having proceeded
thither. Cudberct did not remain long at Ripon, for Bede tells us that,
‘since the whole condition of this world is fragile and unsteady as the
sea when a sudden tempest arises, the above-named abbot Eata, with
Cudberct and the rest of the brethren whom he had brought along with
him, was driven home, and the site of the monastery he had founded was
given for a habitation to the monks.’ This sudden tempest, as we learn
from Bede’s history, was the return of St. Wilfrid to England, when King
Alchfrid, ‘who had always followed and loved the Catholic rules of the
church,’ gave him ‘the monastery of thirty families at a place called In
Wrypum (Ripon), which place he had lately given to those that followed
the doctrine of the Scots to build a monastery upon. But forasmuch as
they afterwards, being left to their choice, would rather quit the place
than adopt the Catholic Easter and other canonical rites according to
the custom of the Roman and Apostolic Church, he gave the same to
him.’[402]
[Sidenote: A.D. 661.
Cudberct becomes prior of Melrose.]
Boisil having soon after died, Cudberct was appointed prior of Mailros
in his room, ‘and performed its functions for several years with so much
spiritual zeal, as became a saint, that he gave to the whole community
not only the counsels, but also the example, of a monastic life.’ He was
also zealous in converting the surrounding populace, ‘and frequently
went out from the monastery, sometimes on horseback, but more generally
on foot, and preached the way of truth to those who were in error, as
Boisil had been also wont to do in his time in the neighbouring
villages. He was also wont to seek out and preach in those remote
villages which were situated far from the world in wild mountain places
and fearful to behold, and which, as well by their poverty as by their
distance up the country, prevented intercourse between them and such as
could instruct their inhabitants. Abandoning himself willingly to this
pious work, Cudberct cultivated these remote districts and people with
so much zeal and learning that he often did not return to his monastery
for an entire week, sometimes for two or three, yea occasionally even
for an entire month, remaining all the time in the mountains, and
calling back to heavenly concerns these rustic people by the word of his
preaching as well as by his example of virtue.’[403] It was during this
time that we find him visiting Aebbe at _Coludi_ or Coldingham, and
spending the greater part of the night in prayer and prolonged vigils,
‘entering the sea till the water reached to his arms and neck;’ and that
on one occasion he went to the land of the ‘Niduari Picts,’ or Picts of
Galloway, who were then under the dominion of the Angles. He is
described as quitting his monastery on some affairs that required his
presence, and embarking on board a vessel for the land of the Picts who
are called _Niduari_, accompanied by two of the brethren, one of whom
reported the incident. They arrived there the day after Christmas,
expecting a speedy return, for the sea was smooth and the wind
favourable; but they had no sooner reached the land than a tempest
arose, by which they were detained for several days exposed to hunger
and cold; but they were, by the prayers of the saint, supplied with food
under a cliff where he was wont to pray during the watches of the night;
and on the fourth day the tempest ceased, and they were brought by a
prosperous breeze to their own country.[404] The traces of this visit
have been left in the name of Kirkcudbright, or Church of Cuthbert.
[Sidenote: A.D. 664.
Cudberct goes to Lindisfarne.]
In the year 664 the Columban Church in Northumbria was brought to an end
by the adverse decision of the Council of Whitby, and Bishop Colman left
the country with those of his Scottish clerics who would not conform to
Rome. Eata, the abbot, however, and his provost, Cudberct, gave in their
adhesion to the Roman party, and, at Bishop Colman’s suggestion, the
monastery of Lindisfarne was placed under Eata’s charge, who thus became
abbot both of Mailros and of Lindisfarne. To the latter monastery Eata
transferred Cudberct, ‘there to teach the rules of monastic perfection
with the authority of a superior, and to illustrate it by becoming an
example of virtue.’ He appears to have become zealous in endeavouring to
assimilate the Scottish system to the customs of the Roman Church, for
Bede tells us that there still remained ‘in the monastery certain monks
who chose rather to follow their ancient custom than to obey the new
rule. These, nevertheless, he overcame by the modest power of his
patience, and by daily practice he brought them by little and little to
a better disposition.’[405] In the meantime Tuda, who had been initiated
and ordained bishop among the southern Scots of Ireland, having also the
coronal tonsure according to the custom of that province, and observing
the Catholic time of Easter, and had come from thence while Colman was
yet bishop, was appointed bishop of the Northumbrians in his place. ‘He
was a good and religious man,’ says Bede, ‘but governed his church a
very short time,’ being cut off by the great pestilence of that
year.[406] King Alchfrid had sent Wilfrid to Gaul to be consecrated
bishop over him and his people, and being still absent, King Osuiu sent
Ceadda, abbot of the monastery of Laestingaeu, who had been one of
Bishop Aidan’s disciples, to Kent to be ordained bishop of the church of
York, where, as the archbishop had just died, he was consecrated bishop
by Bishop Vini of Wessex, to whom were joined two bishops of the British
nation who adhered to the Roman party.
[Sidenote: A.D. 669-678.
St. Wilfrid bishop over all the dominions of King Osuiu, and
founds church of Hexham, which he dedicates to St. Andrew.]
Wilfrid now returned from Gaul a consecrated bishop. ‘Whence it
followed,’ says Bede, ‘that the Catholic institution gained strength,
and all the Scots that dwelt among the Angles either submitted to these
persons or returned to their own country.’ Ceadda soon gave way to
Wilfrid, and was translated to the province of the Mercians; while from
the year 669 to 678, when he was expelled, Wilfrid administered the
bishopric of York and of all the Northumbrians, and likewise of the
Picts as far as the dominions of King Osuiu extended. During the period
of his episcopate, Wilfrid, as we are informed by Eddi, founded the
monastery of Hagustald, or Hexham, in the valley of the Tyne, the
district having been given him by the queen Etheldreda, whose property
it appears to have been; and he dedicated it to St. Andrew,[407] in
commemoration of an early incident in his life recorded by Eddi, who
tells us that, when he first conceived the purpose of endeavouring to
turn the Northumbrians from the Columban institutions to Rome, he went
in Rome to a church dedicated to St. Andrew, and there knelt before the
altar and prayed to God, through the merits of his holy martyr Andrew,
that He would grant him the power of reading the Gospels aright, and of
preaching the eloquence of the Evangelists to the people. His prayer was
answered by the gift of persuasive eloquence; and feeling himself
peculiarly under the guidance of that apostle, he dedicated his
monastery of Hexham to him. And thus were the dedications to St. Andrew
first introduced into the northern parts of Britain.
[Sidenote: A.D. 670.
Cudberct withdraws to the Farne island.]
Returning to Cudberct, after he had been twelve years in charge of the
monastery of Lindisfarne, he resolved, according to the custom of the
time, to withdraw from the monastery and lead a solitary life in some
remote island. Bede tells us that he had already ‘begun to learn the
rudiments of a solitary life, and that he used to withdraw into a
certain place which is yet discernible on the outside of his cell, than
which it is more secluded.’ This place can still be identified. It is a
low detached portion of the basaltic line of rock which runs in front of
the ruins of the priory at the south-west corner of the island of
Lindisfarne, which becomes an islet at high-water, while at low-water it
is accessible by a ridge of stone covered with sea-weed. It still bears
his name; and here subsequently existed a small chapel dedicated to him,
which was called ‘the Chapel of St. Cuthbert on the Sea.’[408] Bede
tells us that ‘when he had for a while learned as a recluse to contend
thus with the invisible enemy by prayer and fasting, then in course of
time he ventured still higher, and sought a place of conflict farther
off and more remote from the abode of men.’ For this purpose he retired
to the solitary island of Farne, at a greater distance from the mainland
than Lindisfarne, and then uninhabited. It is about two miles and a half
from the mainland, and presents to the land a perpendicular front of
about 40 feet in height, from which there extends a grassy plain. Here
he constructed an anchorite’s cell; and the description which Bede gives
of it affords us a good idea of what such establishments usually were.
‘How this dwelling-place,’ says Bede, ‘was nearly circular, in measure
from wall to wall about four or five perches. The wall itself externally
was higher than the stature of a man, but inwardly, by cutting the
living rock, the pious inhabitant thereof made it much higher, in order
by this means to curb the petulance of his eyes as well as of his
thoughts, and to raise up the whole bent of his mind to heavenly
desires, since he could behold nothing from his mansion except heaven.
He constructed this wall not of hewn stone, nor of brick and mortar, but
of unwrought stones and turf, which he dug out of the centre of the
place. Of these stones, some were of such a size that it seemed scarcely
possible for four men to lift them; nevertheless it was discovered that
he had brought them from another place and put them on the wall,
assisted by heavenly aid. His dwelling-place was divided into two
parts—an oratory, namely, and another dwelling suitable for common uses.
He constructed the walls of both by digging round, or by cutting out
much of the natural earth, inside and outwardly, but the roof was formed
of rough beams and thatched with straw. Moreover, at the landing-place
of the island there was a large house, in which the monks, when they
came to see him, might be received and rest; and not far from this there
was a fountain of water adapted for the supply of their wants.’ The
remains of this establishment can still be traced on the island, and
here, ‘having constructed the above abode and outhouses with the aid of
the brethren, Cudberct, the man of God, began now to dwell alone.’[409]
He had hardly done so two years when a discussion broke out between
Wilfrid and King Ecgfrid. Wilfred was expelled from his see, ‘and two
bishops were substituted in his stead to preside over the nation of the
Northumbrians—viz., Bosa, to preside over the province of the Deiri, and
Eata, over that of the Bernicians—the former having his episcopal chair
in the city of York, the latter, in the church of Hagustald, or Hexham,
or else in that of Lindisfarne, both of them being promoted to the
episcopal dignity from a college of monks.’ Three years afterwards the
great diocese of York was still further divided, and two other bishops
were added to their number—‘Tunberct, in the church of Hagustald, while
Eata remained in that of Lindisfarne, and Trumuini in the province of
the Picts, which at that time was subject to the Angles.’[410]
[Sidenote: A.D. 684.
Cudberct becomes bishop of Lindisfarne.]
Cudberct had remained eight years in his solitude when Tunberct was for
some cause deposed from his bishopric, and, at a great synod assembled
at Twyford on the Alne, in the year 684, in presence of King Ecgfrid,
and presided over by Theodore, archbishop of Canterbury, Cudberct by the
unanimous consent of all was elected to the bishopric of Hagustald in
his place, and was consecrated bishop at the Easter of the following
year in the city of York, and in presence of King Ecgfrid, ‘seven
bishops meeting at the consecration, among whom Theodore was primate;’
but, as he preferred being placed over the church of Lindisfarne, in
which he had lived, it was thought fit that Eata should return to the
see of the church of Hagustald, over which he had been first ordained,
and Cudberct should take upon him the government of the church of
Lindisfarne. This was done, says the anonymous history, ‘with the
general assent of King Ecgfrid and of the archbishop and these seven
bishops and of all the magnates.’[411] Two months after his consecration
as bishop King Ecgfrid was slain in the battle of Dunnechtain by the
Picts, Trumuini fled from his diocese, and the dominion of the Angles
over the Picts, Scots and Strathclyde Britons came to an end.
[Sidenote: A.D. 684.
Cudberct becomes bishop of Lindisfarne.]
Cudberct, who had accepted the bishopric with great reluctance, after he
had filled the office for two years from his election, becoming aware
that his end was drawing near, resolved to lay down his pastoral office
and return to his solitary life; and after making a complete visitation
not only of his diocese but also of all the other dwellings of the
faithful, in order to confirm all with the needful word of exhortation,
he, soon after Christmas in the year 686, returned to the hermit’s life
he loved so well, in his cell in the island of Farne. And as a crowd of
the brethren stood around him as he was going abroad, one of them asked
him, ‘Tell us, lord bishop, when we may hope for your return.’ And
Cudberct, who knew the truth, answered his simple question as simply,
saying, ‘When you shall bring my body hither.’ ‘After he had passed
nearly two months,’ says Bede, ‘greatly exulting in the repose which he
had regained, he was seized with a sudden illness, and by the fire of
temporal pain he began to be prepared for the joys of everlasting
happiness.’ The account which Bede gives us of his death was, he says,
narrated to him by Herefrid, a devout and religious priest, who at that
time presided over the monastery of Lindisfarne as abbot, and was with
Cudberct when he died. It is too long for insertion, but one or two
incidents recorded by him throw light upon some points relevant to our
inquiry.
[Sidenote: A.D. 687.
Death of Cudberct.]
‘After three weeks of continued wasting infirmity, Cudberct came to his
end thus. He began to be taken ill on the fourth day of the week, and in
like manner on the fourth day of the week, his sickness having been
accomplished, he departed to the Lord.’ Herefrid visited him on the
morning after he was taken ill, and when he took leave of him, and said,
‘Give us your blessing, for it is time for us to go on board and return
home,’—‘Do as you say,’ he said; ‘go on board and return home safe; and
when God shall have taken my soul bury me in this cell, at the south
side of my oratory, opposite the east side of the holy cross which I
have erected there. Now there is at the north of the same oratory a
stone coffin, hidden by sods,[412] which formerly the venerable abbot
Cudda presented to me. Place my body in that, and wrap it in the fine
linen which you will find there.’ Herefrid was prevented from returning
by a storm which lasted five days, but, when calm weather returned, he
went back to the island and found that Cudberct had left his monastery
and was sitting in the house built outside the enclosure for the
reception of visitors, in order that any of the brethren who came to
minister to him should find him there, and have no need to enter his
cell. When Herefrid returned to Lindisfarne, he told the brethren that
their venerable father had given orders that he should be buried in his
own island; they resolved therefore to ask him to permit his body to be
translated hither, and to be deposited in the church with suitable
honour. On his coming to the bishop and laying this request before him
he replies, ‘It was my wish to rest in the body here, where I have
fought my little wrestling, such as it has been, for the Lord, and where
I desire to finish my course, and whence I hope to be raised up by the
merciful Judge to a crown of righteousness. Moreover, I think it would
be more advantageous to you that I should rest here, on account of the
trouble you would have from fugitives and evil-doers, who will probably
fly to my tomb for refuge; for whatsoever I am in myself, I know that
the report will go abroad of me that I am a servant of Christ; and you
would necessarily have very often to intercede with the powerful of the
world, and so to undergo much labour and trouble from the possession of
my body.’ But, on their pressing their request, he says, ‘If you would
really overcome what I had disposed, and should bear my body from this
place, it seems to me that it would be better, in that case, to bury me
inside your church, so that you may visit my tomb whenever you please,
and have it in your power to admit or not to admit those that come
thither.’ The monks thanked him for his permission, knelt down, and then
returned home, from that time forth visiting him frequently. ‘And when,
his sickness continuing, he saw that the time of his dissolution was at
hand, he commanded that he should be carried back to his little cell and
oratory.’ Now it was at the third hour of the day. ‘There we accordingly
carried him,’ says Herefrid, ‘for through his exceeding weakness, he was
unable to walk. But, when we came to the door, we begged him to allow
some one of us to enter along with him and minister to him; for no one
but himself, had for many years, ever entered therein.’ He accordingly
allowed one of the brethren to remain. When Herefrid returned about the
ninth hour of the day, he found him reclining in a corner of his oratory
opposite the altar; and when he pressed him ‘to leave some words which
might be considered as a bequest and as a last farewell to the brethren,
he began to speak a few words—but they were powerful—concerning peace
and humility, and cautioning us against those persons that chose rather
to wrestle against such things than take delight therein. “Keep peace,”
he said, “one with another, and heavenly charity; and, when necessity
demands of you to hold counsel as to your state, take great care that
you be of one mind in your conclusions; and, moreover, maintain mutual
concord with other servants of Christ, and despise not the household of
the faith who come to you seeking hospitality, but be careful to receive
such persons, to entertain them, and to send them away with friendly
kindness; and do not think you are better than other followers of the
same faith and conversation.” But, with the spirit characteristic of one
who had just emerged from an ecclesiastical controversy, he adds,—“But
with those that err from the unity of Catholic peace, either by not
celebrating Easter at the proper time, or by living perversely, have no
communion.”’ ‘Thus he spent a quiet day till evening, and tranquilly
continued the wakeful night also in prayer. Now when the wonted time of
nocturn prayers was come, having received the salutary sacraments at my
hands, he fortified his departure, which he knew had now come, by the
communion of the body and blood of our Lord; and, having lifted up his
eyes to heaven and extended his hands on high, his soul, intent on
heavenly praises, departed to the joys of the kingdom of heaven.’[413]
The similarity of his death to that of Columba, both in the time and
manner of its occurrence and in the touching simplicity of the
narrative, is very striking, and not less so the mode in which it was
made known and received by the monks of Lindisfarne. Herefrid says that
he immediately went out and ‘announced the death to the brethren, who
had in like manner been passing the night in watching and prayer; and it
happened that, in the order of nocturnal lauds, they were at that moment
chanting the fifty-ninth,’ or, as it is in our English prayer-books, the
sixtieth psalm; ‘and forthwith one of them ran and lighted two candles,
and, holding one in each hand, he went up to a higher place, to show to
the brethren who remained in the monastery of Lindisfarne that the holy
soul of Cudberct had now departed to the Lord; for such was the signal
agreed upon among them to notify his most holy death. And when the monk
who was intently watching afar off, on the opposite watch-tower of the
island of Lindisfarne, saw this, for which he had been waiting, he ran
quickly to the church, where the whole congregation of the monks were
assembled to celebrate the solemnities of nocturnal psalmody; and it
happened that they also, when he entered, were singing the
before-mentioned psalm,’ The body of Cudberct was then brought in a boat
to the island of Lindisfarne, where ‘it was received by a great
multitude of people, who, together with choirs of choristers, met it,
and it was deposited in a stone coffin in the church of the blessed
apostle Peter, on the right side of the altar.’[414]
[Sidenote: Α.D. 698.
Relics of Cudberct enshrined.]
Eleven years after his death, the remains of Cudberct were enshrined,
and, as the custom of enshrining the relics of their saints was now
beginning in the Irish Church, the circumstances here detailed are very
instructive. The Divine power, Bede tells us, ‘put it into the hearts of
the brethren to raise his bones, which they expected to have found dry,
as is usual with the dead when the rest of the body has been consumed
and reduced to dust, in order that they might enclose his remains in a
light chest; and they intended, for the sake of decent veneration, to
deposit them in the same place, but above instead of below the pavement.
When they expressed this their desire to Eadberct, their bishop, he
assented to their proposal, and commanded that they should remember to
do this on the day of his deposition, which occurred on the thirteenth
of the kalends of April, or the 20th of March. This they accordingly
did; but, on opening the sepulchre, they found his whole body as entire
as when he was yet living, and more like one in a sound sleep, for the
joints of the limbs were flexible, than one who was dead.’ They hastened
to inform the bishop, who was at the time dwelling as a solitary in the
island of Farne, of what appeared to them a miraculous preservation of
the remains, and he desired them ‘to gird the body with fresh wrappings
instead of those which they had removed, and so place him in the chest
they had prepared.’ The monks did as they were commanded; ‘and the body
having been wrapped in new raiment and laid in a light chest, they
deposited it upon the pavement of the sanctuary.’[415] This is a very
early example of enshrining, and shows that the shrine they had prepared
was large enough to receive the entire body, and that the custom then
was to inter a saint in a stone coffin under the pavement, at the right
side of the altar; but to place a shrine, enclosing his remains, above
the pavement.[416]
[Sidenote: A.D. 688.
Strathclyde Britons conform to Rome.]
Adamnan’s first visit to Northumbria was made in the year 686; but we
know nothing of it beyond the fact that the object of it was to redeem
from Aldfrid the captives who had been carried off from Ireland by his
predecessor, King Ecgfrid. Cudberct was at this time bishop of
Lindisfarne, and it is extremely probable that they met. Adamnan’s
second visit, however, was in 688, after Cudberct’s death, but while the
whole kingdom was still full of his memory and the report of his sayings
and doings; and these may have probably had their effect in bringing
Adamnan over to the adoption of the Roman system, of which Cudberct had
latterly been such a strenuous supporter. Bede tells us that, through
his efforts, a great part of the Scots in Ireland, and some also of the
Britons in Britain, conformed to the proper and ecclesiastical time of
keeping Easter. By the latter expression, the Britons of Strathclyde,
who had recently regained their freedom from the yoke of the Angles, are
meant,[417] as the Britons of North Wales did not conform till the year
768, nor those of South Wales till the year 777. With the Britons of
Strathclyde, too, we may connect at this time Sedulius as their bishop,
who was present at a council held at Rome in the year 721, under Pope
Gregory II., and subscribes its canons as Sedulius, a bishop of Britain
of the nation of the Scots.[418] The Strathclyde Britons therefore, on
regaining their independence, appear to have obtained a bishop from
Ireland, probably from the southern Scots; and his presence at this
council proves that he was of the Roman party.
[Sidenote: A.D. 705-709.
Wilfrid founds chapels at Hexham, dedicated to St. Michael
and St. Mary.]
On Cudberct’s death, Wilfrid, who had been restored to his bishopric of
York by King Aldfrid in the previous year, held the episcopal see of
Lindisfarne one year, till such time as a bishop was chosen to be
ordained in his room,[419] and seems to have not a little troubled the
monks during his short rule, as no doubt Bede alludes to his temporary
government of the monastery when he says, ‘For in truth, after the man
of God was buried, so violent a storm of temptation shook that church,
that several of the brethren chose rather to depart from the place than
to encounter such dangers. Nevertheless Eadberct was ordained to the
bishopric the year after; and, as he was a man noted for his great
virtues and deep learning in the Scriptures, and above all given to
works of almsdeeds, he put to flight the tempest of disturbance which
had arisen.’[420] Wilfrid was not more fortunate in the management of
his restored diocese of York, for he was again expelled after having
held it five years.[421] Wilfrid, as usual, appealed to Rome, and the
Pope, as usual, decided in his favour; and we learn both from Bede and
Eddi that on his return journey he was suddenly seized with illness in
the city of Meaux in Gaul, where he lay four days and nights as if he
had been dead; but on the dawn of the fifth day he sat up in bed, as it
were awakening out of a deep sleep, and saw numbers of the brethren
singing and weeping about him. He asked for Acca the priest, and, when
he came, told him that he had a dreadful vision. ‘There stood by him,’
he said, ‘a certain person remarkable for his white garments, who told
him that he was Michael the Archangel, and was sent to recall him from
death; for the Lord had granted him life through the prayers and tears
of his disciples and the intercession of the blessed Virgin Mary; and
that he would recover from his illness. “But be ready,” he added, “for I
will return and visit thee at the end of four years. Go home and rear a
church in her honour who has won for thee thy life. You have already
built churches in honour of St. Peter and St. Andrew, but hast done
nothing for St. Mary who interceded for thee. Amend this, and dedicate a
church to her.”’[422] The bishop accordingly recovered, and setting
forward on his journey arrived in Britain. Notwithstanding the decision
of the Pope, King Aldfrid refused to admit him, but, on the king’s death
in 705, a synod was held near the river Nidd in the first year of the
reign of his successor Osred, and after some contention he was, by the
consent of all, admitted to preside over his church, and his two
principal monasteries—Ripon and Hexham—were restored to him; and thus he
lived in peace four years, that is, till the day of his death. His
troubled life came to an end in 709; and he was carried to his first
monastery of Ripon, and buried in the church of the blessed Peter the
apostle close by the south end of the altar. During this period of four
years Wilfrid had, as we have seen, regained possession of the monastery
of Hexham, which he had founded and dedicated to St. Andrew; and now,
according to the injunction of the archangel, as Eddi tells us, the
church of St. Mary at Hexham had its beginning; and, as a thank-offering
to St. Michael himself, another temple in the same place, or near it,
was erected soon afterwards.
[Sidenote: A.D. 709-731.
Relics of St. Andrew brought to Hexham by Acca.]
Wilfrid was succeeded, as Bede tells us, in the bishopric of the church
of Hagustald by Acca his priest, who, ‘being himself a most active
person and great in the sight of God and man, much adorned and added by
his wonderful works to the structure of his church, which is dedicated
to the blessed apostle Andrew. For he made it his business, and does so
still (for Acca was still bishop of Hexham when Bede wrote), to procure
relics of the blessed apostles and martyrs of Christ from all parts, to
erect altars in honour of them, dividing the same by porches in the
walls of the church. Besides which he very diligently gathered the
histories of their sufferings together with other ecclesiastical
writings, and erected there a most numerous and noble library.’ Bede
adds that ‘Acca was bred up from his youth and instructed among the
clergy of the most holy and beloved of God, Boza, bishop of York.
Afterwards coming to Bishop Wilfrid in the hope of improving himself, he
spent the rest of his life under him till that bishop’s death, and,
going with him to Rome, learnt there many profitable things concerning
the government of the holy church which he could not have learnt in his
own country.’[423] Among the relics of the blessed apostles thus
collected and brought to Hexham by Acca were most certainly the relics
of St. Andrew,[424] and among the histories gathered together by him
would no doubt be the legend of that apostle. When Bede finishes his
history in the year 731, he tells us that at that time four bishops
presided in the province of the Northumbrians. Wilfrid (second of the
name) in the church of York, Ediluald in that of Lindisfarne, Acca in
that of Hagustald, or Hexham, and Pecthelm in that which is called
Candida Casa, or the White House, ‘which, from the increased number of
believers, has lately become an additional see, and has him for its
first prelate.’[425]
[Sidenote: Monastery of Balthere at Tyninghame.]
From the time when the great diocese of York was broken up in the year
681, its history has had no bearing upon that of the churches of Cumbria
or Lothian. The diocese of Lindisfarne, however, extended to the Firth
of Forth; and about this time the monastery of Tyninghame, at the mouth
of the river Tyne in East Lothian, must have been founded within it by
Balthere the anchorite. Simeon of Durham, in his History of the Kings,
records in the year 756 the death of Balthere the anchorite, and, in his
History of the Church of Durham, he adds ‘in Tiningaham.’[426] He is
popularly known in the district as St. Baldred of the Bass. By Bower St.
Baldred is connected with Kentigern, and said to have been his suffragan
bishop; and he reports a tradition that, a contest having arisen between
the parishioners of the three churches of Haldhame, Tyninghame, and
Lyntoun, in Lothian, for the possession of his body, and arms having
been resorted to, they were at night overcome with sleep, and on awaking
found three bodies exactly alike, one of which was buried in each
church. This sufficiently connects St. Baldred with Tyninghame; and
Alcuin, who wrote in the eighth century, as clearly connects Balthere
with the Bass.[427] He was thus removed from Kentigern’s time by more
than a century, was in reality an anchorite, and connected, not with the
British diocese of Cumbria, but with the Anglic see of Lindisfarne. This
diocese contained the territory extending from the Tyne to the Tweed,
including the district of Teviotdale; and we learn from the anonymous
history of Cudberct that its possessions beyond the Tweed consisted of
the districts on the north bank from the sea to the river Leader, and
the whole land which belonged to the monastery of St. Balthere, which is
called Tyningham, from the Lammermoors to the mouth of the river
Esk.[428] Beyond this western boundary the church of Lindisfarne
possessed the monastery of Mailros with its territory; Tighbrethingham,
which cannot be identified with any certainty; Eoriercorn or Abercorn,
on the south shore of the Firth of Forth, and the monastery in which
Trumuini had his seat when he ruled over the province of the Picts
during their subjection to the Angles, and from which he fled after the
disastrous battle of Dunnichen; and Edwinesburch, or Edinburgh, where
the church dedicated to St. Cuthbert still bears his name.[429] The
history of the church of Hagustald, or Hexham, will be found to have an
important bearing upon that of one of the more northern churches.
[Sidenote: Anglic bishopric of Whithern founded about A.D. 730, and
comes to an end about 803.]
Between the diocese of Lindisfarne and the Western Sea lay that of
Glasgow, or Strathclyde, now freed from the yoke of the Angles and under
an independent bishop; but the district of Galloway was still under the
rule of the Angles of Northumbria, and here the church of Ninian appears
to have been revived under an Anglic bishop some few years before Bede
terminates his History. By the increased number of believers Bede no
doubt means those of the Anglic nation who had settled there. The line
of the Anglic bishops was kept up here for upwards of sixty years,
during which five bishops filled the see; and, when King Eadberct added
the plain of Kyle and other regions to his kingdom, they would become
more firmly seated. It was probably at this time that the veneration of
Cudberct and Osuald was extended into Ayrshire, where there are numerous
dedications; but soon afterwards the power of the Angles began to wane,
and the Anglic diocese of Candida Casa, or Whithern—owing, according to
William of Malmesbury, to the ravages of the Scots or Picts—came to an
end in the person of Beadulf, its last bishop, who lived to about
803.[430] In other words, the disorganisation of the Northumbrian
kingdom at this time and the decrease of its power enabled the native
population to eject the strangers and assert their independence.
-----
Footnote 355:
The life by Jocelyn is printed in Pinkerton’s _Vitæ Sanctorum_, but
very inaccurately. The fragment was first printed in the Glasgow
Chartulary; but both have been re-edited with a translation by the
late Bishop of Brechin, in his Life of Saint Ninian and Saint
Kentigern, forming the fifth volume of the _Historians of Scotland_.
Footnote 356:
This sentence would be in modern Gaelic, _A Dhia gur fior sin_, and
means, ‘O God, that that might be true.’
Footnote 357:
_Vit. Anon. S. Kent._, cc. i. ii. iii. iv. v.
Footnote 358:
In this narrative Servanus speaks a mongrel language. _Mochohe_ seems
a Gaelic form, as the prefix _Mo_ appears in the Gaelic interjections,
as _Mo thruaigh!_—woe’s me! and _Chohe_ is probably meant for _Oche,
Ochon!_—alas! well-a-day! but ‘Capitalis Dominus’ is only applicable
to the Welsh form of his name. Cyndeyrn and Munghu are pure
Welsh—_Cyndeyrn_ from _Cyn_, chief, _teyrn_, lord. _Mwyngu_ from
_Mwyn_, amiable; _Cu_, dear.
Footnote 359:
Jocelyn, _Vit. S. Kent._, cc. i. ii. iii. iv.
Footnote 360:
The Breviary of Aberdeen attempts to get over the difficulty by
supposing two Servanuses—one the disciple of Palladius, the other the
Servanus of the life; but this does not help matters much, as it
involves the improbability of both having founded Culenros, and both
dying on the same day, the 1st of July.
Footnote 361:
_Four Ancient Books of Wales_, vol. ii. p. 457. It is possible that
the epithet Garthwys may be the word Jocelyn has converted into
Cathures.
Footnote 362:
_Myvyrian Archæology_, vol. ii. p. 34.
Footnote 363:
See p. 37.
Footnote 364:
_Old Stat. Ac._, vol. x. p. 146.
Footnote 365:
_Id. Jan._ In Scotia sancti Kentigerni episcopi Glascuensis et
confessoris.—_Mart. Usuardi_, A.D. 875.
Footnote 366:
Jocelyn, _Vit. S. Kent._, cc. xxii. xxiii. xxiv.
Footnote 367:
Thomas’s _History of the Diocese of Saint Asaph_, p. 5. See also Index
of the Llyfr Coch Asaph, printed in _Archæologia Cambrensis_, 3d
series, vol. xiv. p. 151, where we have, ‘Nomina villarum quas
Malgunus rex dedit Kentigerno episcopo et successoribus suis episcopis
de Llanelwy.’
Footnote 368:
Jocelyn, _Vit. S. Kent._, c. xxv.
Footnote 369:
Jocelyn, _Vit. S. Kent._, cc. xxx. xxxi.
Footnote 370:
Jocelyn, _Vit. S. Kent._, c. xxxii.
Footnote 371:
Jocelyn, _Vit. S. Kent._, c. xxxiv.
Footnote 372:
Rees’s _Essay on Welsh Saints_, pp. 240 and 295. It is probable that
some others of the dedications north of the Firths of Forth and Clyde
have come through the Welsh Calendar, as Saint Modocus, or Madoc of
Kilmadock, but these are the only ones which can be directly connected
with Kentigern.
Footnote 373:
Diciul _de Mensura orbis terræ_, c. vii.
Footnote 374:
Adamnan, B. i. c. 8.
Footnote 375:
Jocelyn, _Vit. S. Kent._, c. xxxix.
Footnote 376:
Jocelyn, _Vit. S. Kent._, c. xliv.
Footnote 377:
The _Annales Cambriæ_ have at 612 ‘Conthigirni obitus.’—_Chron. Picts
and Scots_, p. 14. The 13th January fell on a Sunday in the years 603
and 614; and, if this is to regulate it, the first year is preferable,
as Jocelyn says that Kentigern and King Rydderch died in the same
year, and this is the year in which we find King Aidan of Dalriada
heading the Cumbrian forces, which he could hardly have done in the
life of King Rydderch. The Aberdeen Breviary, in the Life of Saint
Baldred, says he died on 13th January 503, by which 603 is probably
meant.
Footnote 378:
Bede, _Hist. Ec._, B. ii. c. 14.
Footnote 379:
Si quis scire voluerit quis eos baptizavit, Rum map, Urbgen baptizavit
eos, et per quadraginta dies non cessavit baptizare omne genus
Ambronum, et per predicationem illius multi crediderunt in
Christo.—_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 13.
Footnote 380:
Bede, _Hist. Ec._, B. iii. c. 3.
Footnote 381:
_Ib._, B. iii. c. 26.
Footnote 382:
_N. S. A._, vol. iii. p. 56.
Footnote 383:
_Vita S. Eatæ_ (Surtees).
Footnote 384:
_N. S. A._, vol. ii. p. 281.
Footnote 385:
Bede, _Vit. S. Cudbercti_, c. x.
Footnote 386:
Bede, _Vit. S. Cudbercti_, Præf.
Footnote 387:
Alio quoque tempore, in adolescentia sua, dum adhuc esset in populari
vita, quando in montanis juxta fluvium, quoad dicitur Leder, cum aliis
pastoribus pecos a domini sui pascebat.—_Vita Anon. S. Cuth.: Bedæ
Opera Minora_, p. 262.
Footnote 388:
_Vit. S. Cud._, cc. iv. vi.
Footnote 389:
Libellus de nativitate Sancti Cuthberti de Historiis Hybernensium
excerptus et translatus—a MS. of the fourteenth century, in the
Diocesan Library at York, printed by the Surtees Club.
Footnote 390:
Et miro modo in lapidea devectus navicula, apud Galweiam in regione
illa, quae Rennii vocatur, in portu qui Rintsnoc dicitur,
applicuit.—C. xix.
Footnote 391:
Post hæc, curroc lapidea in Galweia derelicta, navim aliam subiit, et
alio portu, qui Letherpen dicitur, in Erregaithle, quæ est terra
Scottorum, applicuit. Portus ille inter Erregaithle et Incegal situs
est, lacus vero, qui ibi proximus adjacet, Loicafan vocatus est. Non
tamen amplius quam tres viri cum matre et filio extiterant qui
applicuerant.—_Ib._
Footnote 392:
_Ib._, c. xx.
Footnote 393:
Scotia is here distinguished from Erregaithle, or Argathelia, which
indicates a certain antiquity.
Footnote 394:
_Ib._, c. xxi.
Footnote 395:
_Ib._, cc. xxii. xxiii.
Footnote 396:
Bede, _Hist. Ec._, B. iv. c. 27. Reverentissimus ecclesiæ
Lindisfarnensis in Britannia ex anachorita antistes Cuthberctus, totam
ab infantia usque ad senilem vitam miraculorum signis inclitam
duxit.—Bede, _Chronicon Adam._, 701.
Footnote 397:
See Preface to the volume containing the Life, p. ix.
Footnote 398:
It is on the authority of this life alone that a Columba is sometimes
called the first bishop of Dunkeld; but it is impossible to accept
this as historical.
Footnote 399:
This is true of the Columban monasteries generally.
Footnote 400:
This account is abridged from the Irish Life, cc. xxvi. and xxvii. See
Surtees’ edition, pp. 82, 83.
Footnote 401:
In the _Statistical Account_ we are told that there is a spring of
water about the middle of the Rock of Weem, of which St. David is said
to be the patron, who had a chapel on a shelf of the rock called
Craig-an-chapel. The fair is called Feill Dhaidh, and there is a
burying-ground called Cill Dhaidh. St. David seems to have superseded
St. Cuthbert here. The fair was held in March. St. Cuthbert’s day is
20th March.
Footnote 402:
Bede, _Hist. Ec._, B. v. c. 19.
Footnote 403:
Bede, _Vit. S. Cud._, c. ix.
Footnote 404:
Bede, _Vit. S. Cud._, cc. x. xi. See also for locality of Niduari
Picts vol. i. p. 133, note.
Footnote 405:
Bede, _Vit. S. Cud._, c. xvi.
Footnote 406:
Bede, _Hist. Ec._, B. iii. c. 27.
Footnote 407:
Eddii, _Vita S. Wilfridi_, cap. 22
Footnote 408:
Bede, _Vit. S. Cudbercti_, c. 17; Raine’s _North Durham_, p. 145.
Footnote 409:
Bede, _Vit. S. Cud._, c. xvii.
Footnote 410:
Bede, _Hist. Ec._, B. iv. c. 12.
Footnote 411:
_Ib._, B. iv. c. 28. Sim. Dun. _Opera_ (Surtees Club), p. 140.
Footnote 412:
Sarcophagum terræ cespite abditum.
Footnote 413:
Bede, _Vit. S. Cud._, cc. xxxvii. xxxviii. xxxix.
Footnote 414:
Bede, _Vit. S. Cud._, c. xl.
Footnote 415:
_Ib._, c. xlii.
Footnote 416:
The expression by Bede for the stone coffin is _arca_, and for the
shrine, _theca_ in the _Ecc. Hist._; and in the _Vita S. Cudbercti_,
_Sarcophagus_ and _theca_ are used.
Footnote 417:
Bede, _Hist. Ec._, B. v. c. 15. The expression is, ‘Nonnulla etiam de
Brettonibus in Britannia,’ and Bede uses a similar expression when he
says that a part of the Britons recovered their freedom in 655.
Footnote 418:
Sedulius, Episcopus Britanniæ de genere Scottorum, huic constituto a
nobis promulgato subscripsi.—Haddan and Stubbs’ _Councils_, vol. ii.
p. 7.
Footnote 419:
Bede, _Hist. Ec._, B. iv. c. 29; B. v. c. 19; Eddi, c. 43.
Footnote 420:
_Vit. S. Cud._, cap. 40.
Footnote 421:
Bede, _Hist. Ec._, B. v. c. 19; Eddi, c. 44.
Footnote 422:
Bede, _Hist. Ec._, B. v. c. 19; Eddi, _Vit. S. Wilf._, c. 54.
Footnote 423:
Bede, _Hist. Ec._, B. v. c. 20.
Footnote 424:
In the _Liber de Sanctis Ecclesiæ Hagustaldensis et eorum miraculis_
there is this statement—‘Ipsa insuper ecclesia pretiosis decorata
ornamentis et _Sancti Andreæ_ aliorumque sanctorum ditata _reliquiis_
tam advenientium quam inhabitantium devotionem adauxit.’—Mabillon,
_A.SS._, sec. iii. part i. p. 204.
Footnote 425:
Bede, _Hist. Ec._, B. v. cap. 23.
Footnote 426:
Eodem anno (DCCLVI.) Balthere anachorita viam sanctorum patrum est
secutus, migrando ad Eum Qui se reformavit ad imaginem Filii Sui.—Sim.
Dun., _Hist. Regum, ad an._ 756.
Footnote 427:
_Scotichron._, B. iii. c. 29. Alcuin, in his poem _De Pontificibus et
Sanctis Ecclesiæ Eboracensis_, has the following lines, obviously
referring to the Bass, under the head of ‘Nota. Baltheri Anachoretæ
res gestæ’:—
Est locus undoso circumdatus undique ponto,
Rupibus horrendis prærupto et margine septus,
In quo belli potens terreno in corpore miles
Sæpius aërias vincebat Balthere turmas, etc.
Gale, _Scriptores_, xv. p. 726.
Footnote 428:
Et illa terra ultra Tweoda ab illo loco ubi oritur fluvius Edre ab
aquilone, usque ad illum locum ubi cadit in Tweoda, et tota terra quæ
jacet inter istum fluvium Edre et alterum fluvium, qui vocatur Leder,
versus occidentem; et tota terra quæ jacet ab orientali parte istius
aquæ, quæ vocatur Leder, usque ad illum locum ubi cadit in fluvium
Tweoda versus austrum; et tota terra quæ pertinet ad monasterium
Sancti Balthere, quod vocatur Tinningaham a Lombormore usque ad
Escemathe.—Sim. Dun., _Opera_ (Surtees ed.), p. 140.
Footnote 429:
Omnes quoque ecclesia ab aqua quæ vocatur Tweoda usque Tinam australem
et ultra desertum ad occidentem pertinebant illo tempore ad præfatam
ecclesiam; et hæ mansiones, Carnham et Culterham et duæ Geddewrd ad
australem plagam Tevietæ, quas Ecgfridus episcopus condidit; et
Mailros, et Tigbrethingham, et Eoriercorn ad occidentalem partem,
Edwinesburch et Petterham, et Aldham, et Tinningaham, et Coldingaham,
et Tollmathe, et Northam.—Sim. Dun., _His. Rec._, p. 68.
Footnote 430:
Eum (Pehtelmum) subsecuti sunt Frithewald, Pectwine, Ethelbriht,
Beadulf, nec præterea plures alicubi reperio, quod cito defecerit
episcopatus, quia extrema, ut dixi, Anglorum ora est et Scottorum vel
Pictorum depopulationi opportuna.—W. Malm., _Gest. Pontific. Ang._,
Lib. iii. § 118.
CHAPTER VI.
THE SECULAR CLERGY AND THE CULDEES.
[Sidenote: No appearance of name of Culdee till after expulsion of
Columban monks.]
It is not till after the expulsion of the Columban monks from the
kingdom of the Picts, in the beginning of the eighth century, that the
name of Culdee appears. To Adamnan, to Eddi and to Bede it was totally
unknown. They knew of no body of clergy who bore this name, and in the
whole range of ecclesiastical history there is nothing more entirely
destitute of authority than the application of this name to the Columban
monks of the sixth and seventh centuries,[431] or more utterly baseless
than the fabric which has been raised upon that assumption. Like many of
our popular notions, it originated with Hector Boece, and, at a time
when the influence of his fabulous history was still paramount in
Scotland, it became associated with an ecclesiastical controversy which
powerfully engaged the sympathies of the Scottish people; and this gave
it a force and vitality which renders it difficult for the popular mind
to regard the history of the early Scottish Church through any other
medium. At this most critical period of its history we unfortunately
lose the invaluable light afforded by the trustworthy narratives of
Adamnan and Bede, but their very silence shows that it was a name not
identified with the Monastic Church, which then not only prevailed in
Ireland, but embraced likewise the churches of the Scots and the Picts,
of the Cumbrians and the Northumbrians, but rather associated with those
influences which affected the monastic system in both countries.
[Sidenote: Monastic Church affected by two opposite influences:]
The Monastic Church was broken in upon by two opposite influences,
which, though very different in their characters, yet possessed one
feature in common, and were eventually to unite. One of these influences
was external to the Monastic Church. The other developed itself within
it.
[Sidenote: First, by secular clergy.]
The first arose when the Irish Church came in contact with that of Rome,
and is associated with the controversy regarding Easter, and other Roman
usages which arose out of it. Although the monastic system was an
important and recognised institution in the Roman Church at the time, it
was subordinated to a hierarchy of secular clergy; and a church which
not only possessed monasticism as a feature, but was so entirely
monastic in its character that its whole clergy were embraced within its
rule, not only was alien to the Roman system, but necessarily produced
peculiarities of jurisdiction and clerical life which were repugnant to
it. Hence, where the Roman Church exercised a direct influence upon this
Monastic Church, its tendency necessarily was to produce a return to the
older system of a hierarchy of secular clergy, with monachism as a
separate institution existing within the church, but not pervading the
whole. It was this influence, which had been brought to bear upon the
church of the Picts, originating with Wilfrid of York and affecting them
through their connection with the Angles of Northumbria, that eventually
severed their connection with the Columban church, and brought to an end
the primacy of Iona over the churches of Pictland. We have hitherto
regarded this church as identified with that founded by Columba in Iona,
and, as such, intimately connected with the Church of Ireland. We have
also found the interpretation of the peculiarities of the former in the
institutions of the latter, and the leading facts of its history in the
Irish Annals. We must now, however, treat the history of the church in
the eastern districts, which formed the territory of the Picts,
separately from that of Iona; and as, with this connection with the
Irish Church, we likewise lose the invaluable guidance of Bede, we must
find our main source of information in an analysis of those
ecclesiastical traditions applicable to this period, which have come
down to us. We have already seen, from the narrative of Bede, how
Naiton, as he calls him, or Nectan, king of the Picts who inhabit the
northern parts of Britain, taught by frequent study of the
ecclesiastical writings, renounced the error by which he and his nation
had till then been held in relation to the observance of Easter, and
submitted, together with his people, to celebrate the Catholic time of
our Lord’s resurrection; how he sought assistance from the nation of the
Angles, and sent messengers to Ceolfrid, abbot of the monastery of
Jarrow, desiring him to write him a letter containing arguments by the
help of which he might the more powerfully confute those that persevered
in keeping Easter out of the due time, and also concerning the form and
manner of the tonsure for distinguishing the clergy; how he prayed to
have architects sent him to build a church in his nation after the Roman
manner, which he promised to dedicate to St. Peter; how, when he
received the letter he requested, he had it read in his presence and
that of the most learned men, and interpreted into his own language, and
issued a decree that, together with his nation, he would observe this
time of Easter, and that the coronal tonsure should be received by all
the clergy in his nation; how this decree, by public command, was sent
throughout all the provinces of the Picts to be transcribed, learned and
observed; and how all the ministers of the altar and monks adopted the
coronal tonsure, and the nation was placed under the patronage and
protection of St. Peter, the Prince of the Apostles. We have also
learned from the Irish Annals that this powerful confutation, like many
other efforts to enforce uniformity, resulted in the resistance of the
Columban monks and their expulsion from his territories.
[Sidenote: Legend of Bonifacius.]
The legend which mainly deals with this revolution is that of
Bonifacius, preserved in the Aberdeen Breviary; and his leading
statements harmonise so well with Bede’s narrative, and are so much
supported by the dedications of the churches mentioned in connection
with it, that we may safely import them into the history of this
period.[432] It is thus told:—Bonifacius was an Israelite by birth,
descended from the sister of St. Peter and St. Andrew, and born in
Bethsaida. In his thirty-sixth year he was ordained priest by John,
Bishop and Patriarch of Jerusalem. When he attained his forty-sixth year
he went to Rome, where he was made a bishop and cardinal, and then, by
the election of all the cardinals, he was elevated to the papacy. He
then called some of his brethren into the oratory, and informed them
that he proposed to set forth on a mission to the ends of the earth, for
the love of God and those people who dwelt in the northern regions
beyond the bounds of Europe. They said, ‘Send religious men, as your
predecessors Celestinus and Gregorius sent Palladius, Patricius and
Augustinus.’ But Bonifacius replied that it had been revealed to him by
St. Peter, in an angelic vision, that he should undertake this mission
himself. Accordingly, after due preparation, he shortly afterwards set
out from Rome. The mission consisted of Bonifacius, and of Benedictus,
Servandus, Pensandus, Benevolus, Madianus, and Principuus, bishops and
most devout men, who devotedly followed him, and two distinguished
virgins, abbesses, Crescentia and Triduana; seven presbyters, seven
deacons, seven sub-deacons, seven acolytes, seven exorcists, seven
lectors, seven doorkeepers, and a great multitude of God-fearing men and
women. They had a prosperous journey and voyage, and arrived in
Pictavia, sailed up the Scottish Sea or Firth of Forth, and proceeded as
far as Restinoth. Here they were met by Nectan, king of the Picts, at
the head of his army, who, seeing such a multitude of strangers, was
struck with astonishment, but finally, with all his nobles and officers,
received the sacrament of baptism at the hands of Bonifacius and his
bishops. The king then dedicated the place of his baptism to the Holy
Trinity, and gave it to Bonifacius, who then performed the usual
miracles, ‘wrote one hundred and fifty books, and founded as many
churches, with an equal number of bishops and a thousand presbyters, and
converted and baptized thirty-six thousand men and women; and finally,
in the eighty-fourth year of his age, on the 17th day before the kalends
of April, or 16th March, departed to Christ.’ Another form of the legend
states that his name was Albanus Kiritinus, surnamed Bonifacius; that he
founded a church at the mouth of the river Gobriat, or Gowry, in
Pictavia, after baptizing Nectanus the king; that he preached sixty
years to the Picts and Scots, and, at the age of eighty, died at
Rosmarkyn, and was buried in the church of St. Peter.
These legends are borne out by the dedications, as we find that the
churches of Restennot, near Forfar, and Invergowry, at the mouth of the
water of Gowry, are dedicated to St. Peter; and Rosemarky, on the north
shore of the Moray Firth, an old Columban monastery founded by Lugadius,
or Moluog, of Lismore, was dedicated to St. Peter and Bonifacius; while
the church of Scone, the chief seat of the kingdom, was dedicated to the
Holy Trinity. The legends are obviously connected with the revolution by
which King Nectan and the entire nation of the Picts conformed to Rome.
The earlier part of the narrative is of course fictitious, and
Bonifacius is here erroneously identified with one of the Bonifaces who
occupied the papal throne in the seventh century. The object of this was
no doubt to make more prominent and direct his character as a missionary
in the interest of the Roman party. He was in reality a bishop from that
party in the Irish Church which had conformed to Rome. When Adamnan went
to Ireland and held the synod in which his law was promulgated in the
year 697, its canons were signed, among others, by _Cuiritan epscop_, or
Bishop Cuiritan, and also by _Bruide mac Derili Ri Cruithintuath_, or
king of Pictavia, the brother and immediate predecessor of Nectan; and
in the old Irish Calendars he appears on the 16th March as _Curitan
epscoip ocus abb Ruis mic bairend_, that is, Curitan, bishop and abbot
of Rosmarkyn.[433] This is also the day in which Bonifacius appears in
the Scotch Calendars, and their identity seems beyond doubt. It is
equally clear that the legend also shows the introduction of a body of
secular clergy into the kingdom of the Picts, and, as we found that at
the council on the banks of the Nidd, at which it was resolved to
appoint Cuthbert bishop, and to place him at Lindisfarne, while Eata was
transferred to Hexham, a body of seven bishops were present and
confirmed the arrangement, so here the mission is composed of seven
bishops, with an equal number of presbyters, deacons, sub-deacons,
acolytes, exorcists, lectors and doorkeepers—that is, the entire
hierarchy of the secular clergy of Rome with its minor orders. Wynton,
in his notice of Boniface, well expresses this—
‘Sevyn hundyr wynter and sextene,
Quhen lychtare wes the Virgyne clene,
Pape off Rome than Gregore
The Secund, quham off yhe herd before,
And Anastas than Empryowre,
The fyrst yhere off hys honowre,
Nectan Derly wes than regnand
Owre the Peychtis in Scotland.
In Ros he fowndyd Rosmarkyne,
That dowyd wes wytht kyngys syne,
And made was a place Cathedrale
Be-north Murrave severalle;
Quhare chanownys ar seculare
Wndyr Saynt Bonyface lyvand thare.’[434]
[Sidenote: Legend of Fergusianus.]
Another legend which appears to belong to this period, and which is
likewise confirmed by the dedications, is that of Fergus, or
Fergusianus. His story is this: He was for many years a bishop in
Ireland, and then came to the western parts of Scotland, to the confines
of Strogeth, where he founded three churches. Thence he went to
Cathania, or Caithness, where for some time he occupied himself in
converting the barbarous people. After that he visited Buchan, resting
in a place called Lungley, where he built a basilica, which still
exists, dedicated to himself. Then he came to Glammis, where he
consecrated a tabernacle to the God of Jacob, and where he died full of
years. His bones were afterwards enshrined in a shrine of marble, and
his head taken with all due honour to the monastery of Scone, where many
miracles were performed.[435] Now, we find that among the bishops who
were present at the council held at Rome in the year 721, and signed the
canons, is ‘Fergus the Pict, a bishop of Ireland,’[436] who is no doubt
our Fergus before he passed over to Pictland in Britain, which appears
to have been his native country; and his appearance at the council of
Rome shows that he belonged to the party who had conformed to the Roman
Church. At Strageath, in the district of Stratherne, and in the
immediate neighbourhood, are three churches dedicated to St.
Patrick—those of Strageath, Blackford and Dolpatrick—which shows that
their founder had come from Ireland. In Caithness, the churches of Wick
and Halkirk are dedicated to St. Fergus. In Buchan the village called in
the legend Lungley is now named St. Fergus, and the neighbouring parish
of Inverugie, now called Peterhead, is dedicated to St. Peter. At
Glammis we have St. Fergus’ cave and St. Fergus’ well, and the statement
that his head was preserved at Scone is confirmed by an entry in the
accounts of the Lord High Treasurer, of a payment by James IV. for a
silver case for it.
[Sidenote: Churches dedicated to St. Peter.]
The distribution of the churches among the Picts which were dedicated to
St. Peter will show the extent to which the country at this time adopted
him as their patron. Among the southern Picts we have Invergowry,
Tealing, Restennot, and Meigle. Among the northern Picts we have in
Aberdeen and Banff, Cultyr, Fivy and Inverugie; and in Moray and Ross,
Drumdelgy, Ruthven, Glenbucket, Belty, Inverawen, Duffus and Rosemarky.
King Nectan himself is said by the Irish annalist Tighernac to have
become a cleric in the year 724,[437] and probably retired to the church
which he had built after the Roman manner by the architects sent him
from Northumbria, and which, as he had promised to dedicate that church
to St. Peter, must have been one of these we have named, either
Restennot or Rosemarky.
[Sidenote: Second influence: the Anachoretical life.]
These legends having thus so far indicated the external influence which
led to the introduction of the secular clergy into the church among the
Picts, we must now advert to another and more powerful influence of an
opposite kind, which arose within the Monastic Church itself, and
equally tended to break in upon the monastic character of that church.
This influence was that increasing asceticism which led the monks to
forsake the cœnobitical life for the solitary cell of the anchorite, and
induced those who wished to pass from a secular to a religious life to
prefer this more ascetic form of it. This form of the religious life had
long existed in the Christian Church, and, from a very early period,
there prevailed a feeling that the solitary life in the desert, or in
the anchorite’s cell, was a higher form of the religious life than that
afforded by the cœnobitical life of the monastery. Thus St. Jerome,
writing in the fourth century, tells us that ‘there were in Egypt three
kinds of monks. First, the Cœnobites, whom they call in the Gentile
tongue Sausses but whom we may term those living in common. Secondly,
the Anchorites, who live alone in desert places, and are so called as
living apart from men; and, thirdly, that kind which are called
Remoboth, the worst and most neglected;’[438] and John Cassian, a native
of Scythia, who founded two monasteries at Marseilles, one for men and
the other for virgins, and died about the year 440, writing what he
terms ‘Conferences with the Monks,’ speaks, in his eighteenth, of the
different sorts of monks in his day. He likewise distinguishes them into
three sorts. First the Cœnobites, who live in common, under an abbot,
imitating the life of the apostles. Second, Anchorites, who, after they
have been instructed and educated in monasteries, withdraw into the
deserts. The authors of this order were St. Paul the hermit and St.
Anthony. And third, the Sarabaites, who pretended to retire from the
world, and joined themselves together by two or three in a company, to
live after their own humour, not being subject to any man. He looks upon
these but as a corruption of the monastic state rather than a distinct
order. He adds to these a fourth sort of monks, made of those who, not
being able to endure the monastic life in a convent, retreated alone
into certain cells to live more at liberty, but praises the second as
the most perfect. In his nineteenth conference, an abbot called John,
who had been an anchorite and had entered a monastery, is asked which of
the two orders was to be preferred, and replies that he thought the life
of the cœnobites best for those who were not absolutely perfect, and
shows that none but those who have attained to a degree of eminent
perfection are capable of living the life of a hermit.[439] Another of
these ancient fathers, Nilus, who had betaken himself to a solitary life
in the desert of Sinai, and died about the year 451, writes a treatise
upon the question whether the life of the Anchorites, or Hermits, whom
he also calls Hesycasts, or Quietists, who dwell in solitude, is to be
preferred before the life of those religious who dwell in cities, and
states that this is a question about which the judgment of spiritual men
is much divided. Those who prefer the religious who live in communities
in cities before the anchorites, say that they have more worth because
they meet with more opposition; whereas those who live in solitude being
quiet and not subject to temptations, have not so much virtue; to which
Nilus replies that there are as many temptations in solitude as in
cities, and that the reason why some persons argue so is because they
regard outward sins only, not considering that there are infinite
temptations and spiritual sins which encounter us as well in privacy as
in cities; and he therefore supports the opinion that the solitary life
is the higher form of the religious life.[440] Isidore of Seville, too,
in the seventh century, distinguishes between the different kinds of
monks, and says that the Cœnobites are they that live in common, like
those in the days of the apostles, who sold their goods and had all
things in common; the Hermits, they that withdraw into desert places and
vast solitudes in imitation of Elias and John the Baptist, delighting,
with a wonderful contempt of the world, in total solitude; and the
Anchorites, they who, having perfected themselves in cœnobitical life,
shut themselves up in cells apart from the aspect of men, inaccessible
to all, and living in the sole contemplation of God.[441] But Bede, who
was a Benedictine monk, seems also to regard the life of an anchorite as
a higher form of religious life, when in his History he says of Cudberct
on his retiring to the island of Farne, that, ‘advancing in the merits
of his devout intention, he proceeded even to the adoption of a hermit
life of solitary contemplation and secret silence;’ and, in his Life,
that ‘he was now permitted to ascend to the leisure of divine
speculation, and rejoiced that he had now reached the lot of those of
whom we sing in the Psalm, The saints shall go from virtue to virtue;
the God of Gods shall be seen in Sion.’[442]
The preference for this mode of life, as the highest form of a religious
life that could be attained, seems to have arisen from an overstrained
interpretation of some passages of Scripture. Thus Bede, in the
beginning of his Life of Cudberct, tells us that he ‘would hallow its
commencement by quoting the words of the prophet Jeremiah, who, in
lauding the state of the perfection of the anchorite, says, “It is good
for a man who hath borne the yoke from his youth; he shall sit alone and
keep silent, because he shall raise himself above himself.”’[443] But
the preference of the solitary life as the highest form of asceticism
seems to have been mainly founded upon two passages in the New
Testament. One is that passage in the Epistle of St. James in which he
winds up his exhortation by saying, ‘Pure religion and undefiled, before
God and the Father, is to visit the widows and fatherless in their
affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world;’ or, as a
literal rendering of the old Latin version would be, ‘Pure and
immaculate religious service towards God and the Father is this, to
visit the infants and widows in their tribulation, and to keep oneself
immaculate from this world.’[444] By an overstrained interpretation of
this passage it was assumed that a person could only keep himself
immaculate from the world by withdrawing himself from it altogether, and
from all association with his fellow-creatures, except in works of
benevolence to those in distress; and that this was a form of religion
peculiarly acceptable to God and the Father. The other passage is that
in the First Epistle of St. Peter, where it is said, ‘But ye are a
chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar
people; that ye should show forth the praises of Him who hath called you
out of darkness into His marvellous light; which in times past were not
a people, but are now the people of God; which had not obtained mercy,
but now have obtained mercy. Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers
and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the
soul.’[445] And this was interpreted to mean that those who passed their
lives in mortifying the body and praising God by singing the psalter, in
living in this world as strangers from all society and as pilgrims to a
better world, were a peculiar people and entitled to call themselves the
people of God.
[Sidenote: Anchorites called _Deicolæ_ or God-worshippers.]
They thus came to the conclusion that a solitary life passed in devotion
and self-mortification, accompanied by acts of benevolence to the sick
and bereaved, was a ‘cultus’ or ‘religio’ peculiarly acceptable to God
and the Father; and hence they were called, if they did not call
themselves so, _Deicolæ_, or God-worshippers, in contrast to
_Christicolæ_, the name applied in a general sense to all Christians,
and, in a narrower application, to monks leading a cœnobitical life.
Thus in the Life of St. Anthony, written by Athanasius, bishop of
Alexandria, who introduced monachism into the Western Church, and
translated into Latin by Evagrius, a priest of Antioch, in the year 358,
we find it stated that ‘the neighbours and the monks whom he often
visited, seeing St. Anthony, called him a _Deicola_, and, indulging in
the expression of natural affection, they loved him, some as a son,
others as a brother.’[446] Again, Martinus, a bishop, who terms himself
Scotus, or a native of Ireland, writing to Miro, king of Gallicia, in
the sixth century, probably about the year 560, regarding ‘the rules of
an honest life,’ says that he will not urge him to follow ‘those more
arduous and perfect rules which are practised by a few very excellent
_Deicolæ_.’[447] Columbanus, too, in his second instruction or sermon to
his monks, says, ‘Whosoever, therefore, willeth to be made a habitation
for God, let him strive to become lowly and quiet, that not by glibness
of words, nor by suppleness of body, but by the reality of his humility
he may be recognised as a _Deicola_; for goodness of heart requireth not
the feigned religion of words;’[448] and a disciple of Columbanus, who
followed out this life after his master had been driven out of Luxeuil
with his monks, retired to a solitary spot called Luthra in the midst of
a forest, now Lure in the district of Besançon, ‘But his virtues having
attracted religious men to him from all quarters, he formed a community
of monks and erected two oratories; and, after governing his monastery
for several years, he appointed one of his disciples abbot in his stead,
and again withdrew to a solitary cell, where he devoted himself to
divine contemplation till his death about 625. This man bears no other
name in the calendars than _Deicola_, and his memory is still held in
high estimation by the people of that country, who call him Saint
Die.’[449]
[Sidenote: Anchorites called the people of God.]
We find, too, these solitaries also called the people of God. In the
ancient Life of St. Patrick written by Probus, he tells us that, after
Patrick had passed four years with St. Martin of Tours, where he was
trained in monastic life, an angel appeared to him and said, ‘Go to the
people of God, that is, to the hermits and solitaries, with naked feet,
and live with them, that you may be tried for some time; and he went
into a solitude, and remained with the hermits eight years.’[450]
The conception of this ‘cultus’ of God is well expressed in a passage of
Simeon of Durham, who, in his History of the Kings, under the year 781,
says, some 250 years after, of a certain Dregmo, in the territory of the
church at Hexham, that ‘he greatly feared God and diligently devoted
himself, as far as his means allowed, to the exercise of works of
charity, leading a life in all respects apart from the customs of his
countrymen—a man of remarkable simplicity and innocence, and of profound
devotion and reverence towards the saints of God; on which account his
neighbours held him in great honour, and called him a true
God-worshipper.’[451]
In the seventh century attempts were made by several councils to bring
the solitaries more under the monastic rule. By the fifth canon of the
Council of Toledo, held in 646, it was provided that ‘well-instructed
monks alone should be allowed to live separate from a cloister as
recluses, and become the trainers of others in the higher forms of
ascetic life. Those recluses and wanderers who are unworthy must be
brought within a cloister, and in future no one must be devoted to this
highest form of the ascetic life, as a recluse, who had not first been
trained in a monastery to the knowledge and practice of the monastic
life.’[452] By the Council of Trullo, held in 692, it was provided, by
canon 41, that those who would live separate in their own cells must
have first passed three years in a monastery, and that any one who has
once withdrawn himself to a solitary cell must not again leave it; and
by canon 42 that, as there are hermits who come to the towns in black
clothing and long hair, and associate with secular persons, it is
ordered that such persons shall be tonsured and enter a monastery,
wearing the monastic dress. If they will not do this, they must be
expelled from the town.[453]
[Sidenote: A.D. 747.
Order of Secular Canons instituted.]
Such attempts, however, seem to have had little effect, and the next
century was to see the Anchorites and Recluses, who lived apart from the
monastic rule, and practised what they considered the highest form of
asceticism, and the secular clergy, who had never come under the
monastic rule, but were subject only to the general canon-law of the
church, brought more together, a tendency to which indeed had probably
already manifested itself in the end of the previous century, which the
forty-second canon of the Council of Trullo was designed to check. For
though nothing could be more opposed in spirit, than the secular life of
the ordinary clergy on the one hand and the ascetic life of the
anchorites on the other, forming, as it were, the opposite poles of the
ecclesiastical system, yet they had one feature in common—that both
lived separately, in opposition to the cœnobitical life of the monks.
The new institution which thus brought them together was that of the
secular canons, founded by Chrodegang, bishop of Metz, in the year 747.
His rule was at first intended for his clergy of Metz alone, with a view
of leading them to adopt a more regular life in the ecclesiastical sense
of the term. This rule consists of thirty-four chapters. By the third he
directs that the canon clerics shall live together in a cloister, and
shall all sleep in one dormitory, with the exception of those to whom
the bishop shall give permission to sleep separately in their own
dwellings within the cloister; that no woman or layman is to enter the
cloister without an order from the bishop, the archdeacon, or the
‘primicerius’; that they shall eat in the same refectory, that laics
shall only be allowed to remain in the cloister as long as they have
work, and that those living separately within the cloister must live
alone and have no other cleric with them. By the ninth chapter he
enjoins them to perform the bodily labours in common as well as in
private. By the thirty-first he enjoins his clerics to give to the
church what real property they have, retaining the income only, but
gives them leave to reserve to themselves their moveable property, for
almsgiving, and to dispose of it as they please by their wills.[454]
[Sidenote: _Deicolæ_ brought under canonical rule.]
The object of this rule was certainly to bring the secular clergy of
this town to live a cœnobitical life, but with such relaxations as would
both allow it to be considerably modified towards certain of the body,
and to permit the recluses, though not expressly named, to be included
within it; but the new canonical life became so popular, that the rule
was revised and enlarged, so as to adapt it to the state of the clergy
generally, and enable it to be extended over the whole church. This
revised rule consists of eighty-six chapters. By the thirteenth it is
provided that within the cloisters there shall be dormitories,
refectories, cellars and other habitations; that all shall sleep in one
dormitory, living as brethren in one society, except those to whom the
bishop shall give leave to sleep separately on separate couches in their
own dwellings in the cloister, with seniors among them to watch over
them; and that no female or laic shall enter the cloister. Chapter
thirty-nine bears that, as there is an evil zeal of bitterness which
separates from God and leads to destruction, so there is a good zeal
which separates from vice and leads to God and eternal life: therefore
they ought to exercise zeal with the most fervent love, as servants of
God (_Servi Dei_). The eighty-first chapter, however, deals directly
with the _Deicolæ_, with the view of bringing them under the canonical
rule. It consists of ‘the epistle of a certain _Deicola_, sent in the
name of Christ to the priests and clerics for their instruction and
exhortation;’ and it is addressed ‘to the beloved priests in the
churches of Christ, the bishops and all the clergy therein everywhere,
and their servants, and to all the _Deicolæ_ living in the whole
world.’[455] He begs of them that, ‘living justly, piously and holily,
they should show a good example to others, and live with soul, heart and
body under the canonical rule.’ He exhorts ‘all clerics under them to
give humble obedience, and endeavour to fulfil the canonical rule
without murmuring, serving the Lord willingly; seeing that every man
ought to be subject to the higher powers and those put over them, how
much more should they, as servants of God (_Servi Dei_), humbly obey
their provosts?’ He finally exhorts them to be mindful ‘of the canonical
rules, and to have their precepts always before their eyes.’[456] By the
General Council held at Aix-la-Chapelle in 816 and 817, this canonical
rule was adopted, and a number of canons were passed to give effect to
it, with some modifications. They begin with the 114th canon. The 117th
canon provides that each bishop must see that the cloister in which his
clerics live is enclosed with a strong wall; the 120th, that those
clerics who possess property of their own and an income from the church
shall receive from the community their daily food only, with a share of
the oblations. Those who have no private means are entirely supported
and clothed. By the 135th, the boys and youths who are educated in the
canonry shall be well cared for and instructed, be placed under a senior
canon and dwell together in the upper floor of a house. By the 141st,
each bishop must provide a hospital for the poor and strangers, and each
cleric shall give the tenth of what he received for its support. By the
142d, canons are allowed to have separate dwellings, and proper places
shall be provided for the aged and the sick within the canonry; and by
the 144th, women must not enter the dwellings and the cloister, with the
exception of the church.[457]
[Sidenote: _Deicolæ_ in the Saxon Church.]
In the early English Church we find the name _Deicola_ in a Saxon form
applied to a community of solitaries. We find it stated in the
Peterborough MS. of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, in the year 655, that
‘Peada, king of the Mercians, and Oswiu, the brother of King Osuald,
came together and said that they would rear a monastery to the glory of
Christ and the honour of St. Peter; and they did so, and gave it the
name of Medeshamstede,’ now Peterborough. In 657 the monastery was
finished, and consecrated by Deusdedit, archbishop of Canterbury, in the
presence of King Wulfhere, the brother and successor of King Peada, and
his earls and thanes. There were also present four bishops, and Wilfrid,
who was then only a priest; and the king endowed it. Then ‘the abbot
desired that he would grant him that which he would desire of him, and
the king granted it to him. “I have here,” he said, “God-fearing monks,
who would pass their lives in an anchoretage, if they knew where. But
here is an island, which is called Ancarig,” now Thorney Isle, “and I
will crave this—that we may there build a monastery to the glory of St.
Mary, that they may there dwell who may desire to lead their lives in
peace and in rest.”’ The king accordingly grants the request, and endows
this monastery also.[458] The expression _Gode-frihte_, or God-fearing,
here applied to these anchorite monks, is obviously the Saxon equivalent
of _Deicola_. In the following century the canonical rule was introduced
into England, as we find in a legatine synod held in Northumberland, in
the year 787, that by the fourth canon bishops are required to take care
that all canons live canonically, and all monks or nuns regularly—that
is, according to monastic rule;[459] and that the title of
God-worshippers passed down to the canon clerics, at least to those who
lived separately, appears from this, that, when King Athelstan was on
his march against the Scots in 936, he halted at York, and there
besought of the ministers of St. Peter’s church, who were then called
_Colidei_, to offer up their prayers on behalf of himself and his
expedition. They are said to be ‘men of holy life and honest
conversation, then styled _Colidei_, who maintained a number of poor
people, and withal had but little whereon to live.’ ‘It would appear,’
says Dr. Reeves, ‘that these _Colidei_ were the officiating clergy of
the cathedral church of St. Peter’s at York in 946, and that they
discharged the double function of divine service and eleemosynary
entertainment;’[460] in other words, they were canon clerics, and the
name _Colidei_ is merely an inversion of that of _Deicolæ_. Those of
Canterbury we find called in a charter by King Ethelred, in 1006,
_cultores clerici_, or cleric God-worshippers, the word _Dei_ being
evidently implied.[461]
[Sidenote: Anchoretical life in Ireland and Scotland.]
In the early Monastic Church of Ireland, this tendency to prefer a
solitary life, as a higher form of the religious life, developed itself
at a very early period. It seems to have assumed two different aspects.
One when the abbot or one of the brethren of the monastery retired for a
time to a separate cell, for solitary prayer, or for penitential
exercises, during which time he held no intercourse with the other
inmates of the monasteries. The cells adopted for this purpose were
usually those primitive dwellings called by the Irish _Clochans_, built
of unmortared stone, with walls of great thickness, circular in shape,
with a dome-shaped roof, somewhat of a beehive form, and hence often
called beehive cells. When used for such retirement they were called
_Carcair_, or prison cells. Thus, in an old poem attributed to Cuimin of
Coindeire, he says of Enda, who founded the monastery on the principal
of the Arann Isles:—
Enda of the high piety loved
In Ara, victory with sweetness,
A _carcair_ of hard narrow stone,
To bring all unto heaven.[462]
Of Ultan of Arbreccan he says—
Ultan loves his children;
A _carcair_ for his lean side,
And a bath in cold water
In the sharp wind he loved.[463]
Of Molaissi of Devenish he says—
Molaissi of the lake loves
To be in a _carcair_ of hard stone.[464]
Adamnan, too, tells us of _Feargna_, or Virgnous, who, ‘after having
lived for many years without reproach in obedience among the brethren,
led an anchoretic life for other twelve years, as a victorious soldier
of Christ, in the abode of the anchorites in Muirbulcmar.’[465] This
was, he also tells us, in the island of Hinba, which can be identified
with _Eilean na Naomh_, one of the Garveloch isles, and here, in this
solitary isle where there is little to disturb them, we find the remains
of this abode of the anchorites in connection with other remains which
are evidently the foundations of an early monastic establishment. It
consists of two circular dome-shaped buildings joined together, built of
uncemented stone. The larger one is internally fourteen feet in
diameter; the other, a part of the beehive roof of which still remains,
is about a foot less. The two buildings communicate with each other by
means of a square-shaped doorway through the points of contact, and the
larger one with the outside by another doorway of a similar kind facing
south-west.[466]
The other form of this solitary life was one in which the inmate of a
monastery withdrew from it altogether, and sought out some remote and
desert spot or island in which he might pass the rest of his life in
total solitude. Such retreats were called emphatically ‘Deserts.’ Of
this desire, which with many became almost a passion, Adamnan gives us
an instance in Cormac ua Leathan. Adamnan calls him ‘a truly pious man,
who no less than three times went in search of a desert in the ocean,
but did not find it;’ and he says Columba thus prophesied of him: ‘In
his desire to find a desert, Cormac is this day, for a second time, now
embarking from that district which lies on the other side of the river
Moda, and is called Eirris Domno; nor even this time shall he find what
he seeks, and that for no other fault than that he has irregularly
allowed to accompany him on the voyage a monk who is going away from his
own proper abbot without obtaining his consent.’[467] Again he tells us
that Cormac made another attempt to discover a desert in the ocean, and
Columba, who was then at the court of King Brude, says to the king in
the presence of the ruler of the Orkneys, ‘Some of our brethren have
lately set sail, and are anxious to discover a desert in the pathless
sea. Should they happen, after many wanderings, to come to the Orkney
islands, do thou instruct their chief, whose hostages are in thy hand,
that no evil befall them within his dominions;’ and Adamnan tells us he
did arrive in the Orkneys. On his third voyage, Cormac sailed for
fourteen days and nights due north, before a south wind, without seeing
land; and, when the wind changed to the north, he returned again to
Iona,[468] without having in any of his three voyages succeeded in
discovering such a ‘desert’ as he sought for.
[Sidenote: Anchorites called _Deoraidh De_ or God’s pilgrims.]
Those who devoted themselves to such a solitary life were said to give
themselves up to God,[469] and the name of _Deoraidh_, literally
strangers, was applied to them as ‘strangers and pilgrims’ in the
religious sense of the term, and ‘_Deoraidh De_,’ or pilgrims of
God.[470] But their connection with the monastery from which they
emerged was not entirely severed; for, as we have seen, when the abbacy
became vacant, the _Deoraidh De_, or pilgrim, was entitled to succeed in
the fifth place; and the Brehon Laws provide that if a bishop commit
certain offences, ‘the Ferleginn, or lector, shall be installed in the
bishopric, and the bishop shall go into the hermitage or pilgrimage of
God’ (_Aibilteoiracht no in Deoruighecht De_).[471]
[Sidenote: The third order of Irish saints Eremitical.]
Towards the end of the sixth century this passion for a solitary life
had increased so much that it tended greatly to break up the monastic
system, and became embodied in what was termed the third order of
saints; and, while the second order expresses a purely monastic church,
this third order which succeeded it, was Eremitical. ‘It was,’ says the
Catalogue, ‘of this sort. They were holy presbyters and a few bishops;
one hundred in number; who dwelt in desert places, and lived on herbs
and water and the alms of the faithful. They shunned private property;
they despised all earthly things, and wholly avoided all whispering and
backbiting; and they had different rules and masses, and different
tonsures—for some had the coronal and others the hair; and a different
paschal festival—for some celebrated the Resurrection on the fourteenth
moon, or sixteenth, with hard intentions. These lived during four
reigns, and continued to that great mortality,’ that is, from about 600
to 666. In 634, as we have seen, the church of the southern half of
Ireland had conformed to Rome, while the northern Irish were not brought
over to the Roman system till the end of the century. What, therefore,
is alluded to, when they are said to have different masses and different
tonsures, is that this order consisted of two parties—one belonging to
the southern Irish which had adopted the coronal tonsure and the Roman
method of calculating Easter; while the other in these respects adhered
to the customs of their fathers. They appear at this time not only to
have lived a hermit life in the desert, but to have founded eremitical
establishments, where a number of hermits lived in separate cells within
the same enclosures. To both the name of Desert or _Diseart_ was usually
given; and Colgan mentions no fewer than ten establishments, and the
Annals of the Four Masters fourteen, the names of which commence with
the word _Diseart_.
Among those who belonged to the party who adhered to the customs of
their fathers was that ‘Beccan Solitarius,’ or the Solitary, to whom,
along with Segine of Iona, Cumine in 634 addressed his letter regarding
the proper time for keeping Easter; and it shows the importance now
attached to this mode of life, that he is placed on the same platform
with the abbot of Iona. Tighernac records, in the year 677, the death of
‘Beccan Ruimean in an island of Britain;’ and he appears in the
Martyrologies as ‘Becan Ruim.’[472] His hermitage was therefore in one
of the Western Isles; and what island that was we learn from his epithet
of Ruimean or Ruim, that is, of the island of Rum. The names of seven
bishops and eight presbyters who belonged to this order are given in the
Catalogue, but they were mainly connected with the party which had
conformed to Rome. The first of the presbyters named is Fechin of Fore;
he is the Vigeanus of the Scottish Calendar, to whom the church of
Arbroath was dedicated, and probably that of Ecclefechan, or Fechan’s
church, in Dumfriesshire. In an island on the west coast of Ireland
called Ardoilean, or High Island, an uninhabited and almost inaccessible
island off the coast of Connemara, is one of the most interesting and
best preserved specimens of these Anchoretical or Eremitical
establishments, which is attributed to this Fechin. It consists of a
_Cashel_, or uncemented stone wall, nearly circular, enclosing an area
of one hundred and eight feet in diameter. Within this enclosure there
is an oratory, one of the widest of these ancient structures, measuring
internally twelve feet by ten, and ten feet in height. The doorway is
two feet wide and four feet six inches high, having inscribed on its
horizontal a cross similar to one on the lintel of the doorway of St.
Fechin’s church at Fore. On the east side of the oratory is an ancient
stone sepulchre like a Pagan kistvaen. There are also within the
enclosure two _clochans_, or dome-roofed cells—one externally round, but
internally a square of nine feet, and seven feet six inches high. The
other is circular, and internally seven feet by six, and eight feet
high. The doorways are two feet four in width, and only three feet six
in height. On the other side are a number of smaller cells, about six
feet long by three wide and four feet high, and are mostly covered with
rubbish.[473] There are no buildings adapted for a cœnobitical life; and
it is probably a good specimen of the eremitical establishments of this
third order of the saints.
[Sidenote: _Deicolæ_ termed in Ireland _Ceile De_.]
The ancient document termed the Catalogue of the Saints, which affords
us such a valuable clue to the main characteristics of the Irish Church
during these different periods, leaves us at the period of the great
pestilence in the year 666; but we find that after that date the
nomenclature of the Continental anchorites begins to appear, in an Irish
form, attached to the eremitical class in the Irish Church. In lieu of
the term _Deicolæ_, which as we have seen, was from the earliest period
the designation of those who adopted what they considered the higher
form of religious life, peculiarly the ‘cultus’ of God and the Father,
we find these Irish anchorites having the term of _Ceile De_ applied to
them. These terms, though not etymologically equivalent, may be
considered as correlative,[474] and intended to represent the same
class; and as _Christicola_ becomes in Irish _Celechrist_, so _Deicola_
assumes in Irish the form of _Ceile De_.[475] There is a poem in the
Leabhar Breac attributed to St. Mochuda of Rathen, who died in 636,
which gives us a picture of the constituent elements of the Irish Church
at this period. It bears this title: ‘Here begins the rule of Mochuta of
Rathen, inculcating ten commandments upon every person;’ and consists of
nine sections. Of these, the title of the second is, ‘Of the occupations
of a bishop here;’ of the third, ‘Of the abbot of a church;’ of the
fourth, ‘Of the occupations of a priest;’ of the fifth, ‘Shouldst thou
be a person’s _anmchara_, or soul’s friend?’ of the sixth, ‘Of the
occupations of a monk;’ and of the seventh, ‘Of the _Cele De_, or of the
clerical recluse,’[476] thus distinguishing the _Cele De_ from the monk.
[Sidenote: _Deicolæ_ and _Ceile De_ show the same characteristics.]
These _Ceile De_, however, show precisely the same characteristics which
belonged to the _Deicolæ_ of the Continent. Like the _Deicolæ_, they
were Anchorites, for we find that, when the name of _Cele De_ appears as
a personal title, it is borne by one who had lived as a solitary in a
desert, or who is termed an Anchorite. Thus Angus the Hagiologist, who
founded a desert called after his name Disert Aengus, now Disert Enos,
is well known as Aengus _Cele De_; Comgan, whose death is recorded in
the Ulster Annals in 869 as ‘Comgan Fota, Anchorite of Tamhlacht,’
appears in the Calendar of Tamhlacht as ‘Comgan _Cele De_;’ and in the
earliest notice of the _Cele De_ at Clonmacnois, in 1031, we find that
Conn _nambocht_, or ‘of the poor,’ is termed Head of the _Cele De_ and
anchorite of Clonmacnois.[477] Again, like the _Deicolæ_, they are the
‘people of God.’ Thus the Ulster Annals tell us that in 921 ‘Armagh was
pillaged on the Saturday before St. Martin’s Day, which was the 10th of
November, by Gofrith, grandson of Ivar, and his army, who saved the
houses of prayer with their people of God, that is, _Cele De_, and their
sick, and the whole church town, except some houses which were burned
through neglect.’[478] Like the _Deicolæ_, they too claimed to be
strangers and pilgrims in the religious sense of the term; hence _Cele
De_ is occasionally used in the sense of stranger. Dr. Reeves gives us a
curious instance of this. In one of the Irish MSS. in the Bodleian
Library is an Irish translation of a Latin tract ‘de Bragmannis,’
containing a supposed correspondence between Alexander the Great and
Dindimus, king of the Brahmins. In this tract occurs the sentence, ‘We
are not, says Dindimus, inhabitants of this world, but _strangers_. Nor
did we come into this world that we might remain, but that we might pass
through. We hasten to the lares of our fathers,’ etc., which is thus
translated: ‘Not of the inhabitants of the present world are we, I tell
thee, O Alexander, said Dinnim; but _Cele De_ is our title. We do not
accept land unnecessarily in the world; for our patrimony is before us,
namely heaven, with its abodes and rewards.’[479] Thus fully expressing
the sentiment of the Brahmins being strangers and pilgrims in the same
sense as were the _Cele De_. In a lake in the county of Tipperary,
formerly called Lochcre, but afterwards Monaincha, there were two
islands: on one a monastery was founded in the sixth century; and on the
other, termed Innisnambeo, or the island of the living, a church was
founded in the eighth century by St. Elair, whose death is recorded on
7th September 807 as ‘anchorite and scribe of Loch Crea.’[480] This
island was visited by Giraldus Cambrensis in the twelfth century, and
his description will show us the two churches—the ancient monastic
church and the anchorite church of the _Cele De_—side by side. He says,
‘In South Munster is a lake containing two isles; in the greater is a
church of the ancient religion; and in the lesser a chapel wherein a few
celibates, called _Cœlicolæ_ or _Colidei_, devoutly serve. Into the
greater no woman or any animal of the feminine gender ever enters but it
immediately dies. This has been proved by many experiments. In the
lesser isle no one can die; hence it is called “insula viventium,” or
the island of the living.’[481]
[Sidenote: _Ceile De_ brought under the canonical rule.]
Like the _Deicolæ_, they evidently came under the canonical rule. The
Irish Annals record the following singular entry:—‘In this year (811)
the _Cele De_ came over the sea with dry feet without a vessel; and a
written roll was given him from heaven, out of which he preached to the
Irish; and it was carried up again when the sermon was finished. This
ecclesiastic (literally son of the church) used to go every day
southwards across the sea, after finishing his sermon.’[482] Eliminating
the miraculous element, we have here an ecclesiastic, whose title is
given in the Irish form of _Cele De_, coming from the Continent with a
written precept, which he urged upon the Irish. This was sixty-eight
years after Saint Chrodegang framed his rule for the canonical life, and
also after the revised rule was framed containing the urgent appeal of
the _Deicola_ to all the _Deicolæ_ over the world, and only five years
before the Council of Aix-la-Chapelle. We may therefore reasonably
conclude that what the ecclesiastic called the _Cele De_ introduced into
Ireland was the canonical rule. There is also preserved in the Leabhar
Breac a prose rule attributed to Maelruain of Tamhlacht, who died in
792, and the title is ‘Here beginneth the rule of the _Cele De_, from
what Maelruain composed.’[483] This rule, however, was evidently not
intended for a monastic body, and shows more resemblance to the
canonical rule.[484] The _Cele De_ are only mentioned in a few places in
Ireland. Nine only are enumerated by Dr. Reeves. These are Tamhlacht, if
Maelruain’s establishment belongs to this order, Armagh, Clonmacnois,
Clondalkin, Monaincha, Devenish, Clones, Pubble and Scattery. These
could hardly then be the representatives of the great monastic church,
but must have been a new order which had not spread very widely among
the churches; and Dr. Reeves admits that ‘possibly the institution of
Maelruain may have borrowed from or possessed some features in common
with the order of canons; for certain it is that in after ages both the
Keledei of Scotland and the Colidei of Ireland exhibited in their
discipline the main characteristics of secular canons.’[485] Thus we
find he again says, ‘the _Cele De_ of Armagh occupying very much the
same position as the Colidei of York, as canons of the cathedral, and
latterly having the name Latinised into the same form.’
[Sidenote: _Cele De_, called _Keledei_ in Scotland, and first appear in
territory of southern Picts.]
[Sidenote: Legend of Saint Servanus.]
In Scotland the name takes the form of _Keledei_; and they make their
first appearance in the territory of the southern Picts after the
expulsion of the Columban monks. This we learn from the history of
Servanus or St. Serf. His life is found in apparent connection with that
of Kentigern, but the tale that it tells is very different from that
which we find in the lives of the latter saint. Its story is as follows:
There was a king in the land of Canaan called Obeth, son of Eliud, and
his wife was Alpia, daughter of a king of Arabia. As usual in such
legends, the worthy couple had no children for twenty years, and then,
after they had often prayed to God and offered alms, and the whole
people had fasted three days and nights, comes the usual vision, and
they have two sons. The name of the one was Generatius, that of the
other Malachias, or Servanus. He was called Servanus because he served
God day and night; and this name was given him by Magonius, bishop of
Alexandria, who baptized him. His father dies when he was seven years
old. He then studies in Alexandria for thirteen years, when he receives
from the bishop the monastic habit. After thirty years he receives
priest’s orders from the same bishop, and then returns to Canaan, where
all the Canaanites elect him bishop. Here he remains twenty years
erecting monasteries and churches. An angel then appears and gives him
the usual mandate to leave his country and kindred. He takes leave of
all the clerics and laics of his bishopric, and he goes with sixty
soldiers (that is, of Christ) to the banks of the Nile, crosses it and
goes to the Red Sea, which he crosses, as usual, dryshod, and thence to
Jerusalem, where he remains seven years as its patriarch, in room of
bishop Jacob, patriarch of Jerusalem. Here an angel takes him up Mount
Sion, and shows him the wood of the true cross, from which he cuts three
pastoral staves. Then he goes to Constantinople, where he remains three
years. Thence to Rome, where he finds the papal throne vacant, and he is
elected pope and fills the vacant chair of St. Peter seven years. The
angel again tells him he must go forth to distant lands. He goes forth
followed by a great number of clerics and people, men and women, and he
tells them to divide themselves into two parts, one of which must remain
in Rome, and the other accompany him on his mission. He crosses the
Alps, and after several adventures, arrives at the Ictian Sea or Straits
of Dover, with seven thousand soldiers (of Christ), and crosses it
dryshod. They then go from place to place till they arrive at the river
Forth. Adamnan, at this time an abbot in Scotland, meets him on
Inchkeith, and receives him with much honour. Servanus asks him how he
is to dispose of his family and companions. Adamnan tells him they may
occupy Fife, and from the Mount of the Britons to the Mount which is
called Okhel, that is, the Ochil Hills. Servanus then goes with a
hundred followers to Kinel, and throws across the sea his rod, which
becomes an apple-tree, called Morglas by the moderns. He then goes to
the place called Culenros, purposing to live there, and removes the
thorns and brushwood which abounded there. The king who then ruled over
the Picts, Brude, son of Dargart, is wroth because he resided there
without his leave, and sends to have him killed. There is then the usual
deadly sickness of the king, and the cure through the prayers of the
saint; and the king gives him the place where he inhabits as an offering
for ever. Servanus then founds and dedicates the church and cemetery at
Culenros, or Culross. Then he goes to Lochleven to see Adamnan, who
receives him there, and shows him an island in that lake well adapted
for his religious community which is granted him. Servanus founds a
monastery in that island in which he remains seven years, and from
thence he goes about the whole region of Fife, founding churches
everywhere. The other places mentioned in this life in connection with
him are the cave at Dysart on the north shore of the Firth of Forth,
where he had his celebrated discussion with the devil, and where the
memory of St. Serf is still held in honour; Tuligbotuan, or Tullybothy,
Tuligcultrin, or Tillicoultry, Alveth and Atheren, now Aithrey, all in
the district on the north side of the Forth, extending from Stirling to
Alloa. The only other place mentioned is his ‘Cella Dunenense,’ or cell
at Dunning in Stratherne, where he slew a dragon with his pastoral
staff, in a valley still called the Dragon’s Den. Finally, ‘after many
miracles, after divine virtues, after founding many churches, the saint,
having given his peace to the brethren, yielded up his spirit in his
cell at Dunning, on the first day of the kalends of July;’ and his
disciples and the people of the province take his body to Culenros, and
there, with psalms and hymns and canticles, he was honourably buried;
and so ends the life.[486] Here we have the same strange eastern origin,
the same journey to the west, the same occupation of the papal throne,
as we found in the legend of Boniface. This feature seems to
characterise the legends of those missionaries who promoted the great
change by which a new order of clergy, under the influence of the Roman
Church, superseded the Columban monks in the eastern and northern
districts of Scotland; and probably the invention had no greater motive
than to separate them, in a very marked manner, from the clergy of the
older church, and to give weight and authority to their promotion of the
influence of the Roman party.
[Sidenote: Servanus introduces _Keledei_, who are hermits.]
In this case, however, an older Irish document gives him a closer
connection with the west. In the tract on the mothers of the saints,
which is ascribed to Aengus the Culdee, in the ninth century, we are
told that ‘Alma, the daughter of the king of the _Cruithnech_,’ or
Picts, ‘was the mother of Serb, or Serf, son of Proc, king of Canaan, of
Egypt; and he is the venerable old man who possesses Cuilenros, in
Stratherne, in the Comgells between the Ochill Hills and the sea of
Giudan.’[487] Here Alpia, a name which has a very Pictish look, the
daughter of the king of Arabia, becomes Alma, the daughter of the king
of the Picts, and the husband of a Pictish princess must have belonged
to a race nearer home than the people of Canaan, here placed on the west
bank of the Nile and connected with Egypt. The Scotch part of the
legend, like that of Bonifacius, is supported by the dedications, all
the churches in the places mentioned in connection with him being
dedicated to St. Serf. The chronology of this part of the Life, too, is
quite consistent; we find no anachronisms in it, and there is not a
syllable about his being a disciple of Palladius or the teacher of
Kentigern. The Brude, son of Dargart, of the Life, may be identified
with Brude, son of Derile, who reigned from 697 to 706, and preceded
that Nectan, son of Derile, who expelled the Columban monks from his
kingdom. Brude appears in one of the chronicles, which seems to have
been connected with Lochleven, as Brude, son of Dargart; and the
chronicle adds, ‘in which time came Saint Servanus to Fife.’[488] Then
Adamnan, who is brought into such close connection with Servanus, died
in 704, only two years before the death of Brude; and there were, as we
know, the most friendly relations between them. Now there is in the
Chartulary of St. Andrews a memorandum of some early charters in the
Celtic period, and one of them is a grant by which ‘Brude, son of
Dergard, who is said by old tradition to have been the last of the kings
of the Picts’—which however he was not—‘gives the isle of Lochlevine to
the omnipotent God, and to Saint Servanus, and to the _Keledei hermits_
dwelling there, who are serving, and shall serve, God in that island.’
In another, ‘Macbeth, son of Finlach, and Gruoch, daughter of Bodhe,
king and queen of the Scots, give to God omnipotent, and the _Keledei_
of the said island of Lochlevine, Kyrkenes.’ And in a third, ‘Macbeth
gives to God and Saint Servanus of Lochlevyne, and the _hermits_ there
serving God, Bolgyne.’[489] We thus see that the establishment founded
by Servanus about the beginning of the eighth century was one of
hermits, and that they bear the name of _Keledei_. There is nothing
inconsistent with probability that they may have been introduced by
Adamnan, after he had himself conformed to Rome and was endeavouring to
bring over his brethren, and that that part of the Life which brings him
to the south shore of the Firth of Forth—in other words, from
Northumbria—when he is met in Inchkeith by Adamnan, may be perfectly
true.
[Sidenote: _Keledei_ of Glasgow, who were solitary clerics.]
Jocelyn of Furness, in his Life of Kentigern, tells us that he ‘joined
to himself a great many disciples whom he trained in the sacred
literature of the Divine law, and educated to sanctity of life by his
word and example. They all with a godly jealousy imitated his life and
doctrines, accustomed to fastings and sacred vigils at certain seasons,
intent on psalms and prayers and meditation on the Divine Word, content
with sparing diet and dress, occupied every day and hour in manual
labour. For, after the fashion of the primitive church under the
Apostles and their successors, possessing nothing of their own, and
living soberly, righteously, godly and continently, they dwelt, as did
Kentigern himself, in single cottages, from the time when they had
become mature in age and doctrine. Therefore these solitary clerics were
called in common speech _Calledei_.’[490] In assigning the _Calledei_,
or _Keledei_ of Glasgow to the time of Kentigern, Jocelyn is no doubt
guilty of as great an anachronism as when he assigned to him Servanus as
a teacher; and the statement belongs to the same period in Kentigern’s
supposed history, when he first became bishop of Glasgow; but this part
of his life is very problematical, ‘and the historical part of his
legend probably begins only when he returned from Wales after the battle
of Ardderyd. Here, however, he appears connected with the Monastic
Church of Wales, he is followed by six hundred and sixty-six of his
monks of Llanelwy, and Jocelyn tells us that these monks all rest, as
the inhabitants and countrymen assert, in the cemetery of the church of
the city of Glasgow.’ Jocelyn, however, wrote while there existed bodies
of _Keledei_ in Scotland, and he is no doubt reporting a genuine
tradition as to the original characteristics of the Culdean clergy
before they became canons. What he here describes is simply a community
of anchorites, or hermits. Servanus was contemporary with that Scottish
Sedulius, bishop of the Britons, who had conformed to Rome, and whom we
find bishop of the Strathclyde Britons after they had acquired their
independence and became freed from the yoke of the Angles. It is to this
period that these _Calledei_ of Glasgow properly belong; and this
connection with the real Servanus may have led to the history of this
period having been drawn back, and both _Calledei_ and Servanus
associated with the great apostle of Glasgow in popular tradition.
[Sidenote: Legends connected with the foundation of St. Andrews.]
We have seen that in the year 710, Nectan king of the Picts placed his
kingdom under the patronage of St. Peter, and we have now reached the
period when that apostle was superseded by St. Andrew as the patron
saint of the kingdom. Two separate editions of the legend of the
foundation of St. Andrews have come down to us. The older of these is a
document of the twelfth century, and appears in connection with the
earliest of the chronicles in which the century which intervened between
the last of the Scottish kings of Dalriada and the first of the Scottish
dynasty which ascended the throne of the Picts is suppressed, and the
line of the Scottish kings of Dalriada made immediately to precede
Kenneth mac Alpin, the founder of the latter dynasty. The second form of
the legend is longer and more elaborate, and emerges, at a somewhat
later period, from St. Andrews itself. The older legend bears this
title: ‘How it happens that the memory of St. Andrew the apostle should
exist more widely in the region of the Picts, now called Scocia, than in
other regions; and how it comes that so many abbacies were anciently
established there, which now in many cases are by hereditary right
possessed by laymen.’[491] The legend itself obviously consists of five
parts, very inartistically put together. In the first, we are told that
St. Andrew, the brother-german of St. Peter, preached to the northern
Scythian nations, and sought the Pictones, then the Achæans, and finally
the town of Patras, where he was crucified on the second day before the
kalends of December, and where his bones were kept down to the time of
Constantine the Great, and his sons Constantine and Constans, that is,
for a space of two hundred and seventy years. In their reign they were
taken up and transferred to Constantinople and there enshrined, and
remained there till the time of the Christian emperor Theodosius, a
period of about one hundred and ten years. In the second part we are
told that a king of the Picts, called Ungus, son of Urguist, rising with
a great army against the British nations inhabiting the southern part of
the island, and cruelly ravaging and slaying, came at last to the plain
of Merc, or the Merse. Here he wintered. Then came nearly the whole of
the natives of the island and surrounded him, wishing to destroy him
with his army; but, next day, when the king was walking with his seven
most intimate companions, a divine light surrounded them, and, falling
on their faces, they heard a voice from heaven saying, ‘Ungus, Ungus,
hearken unto me, the apostle of Christ called Andrew, who am sent to
defend and protect you. Behold the sign of the cross in the air; let it
advance against your enemies. You must, however, offer up the tenth part
of your inheritance as an oblation to God omnipotent, and in honour of
St. Andrew.’ On the third day he divides his army into twelve troops,
each preceded by the sign of the cross, and they were victorious. The
king then returned home resolved to immolate the tenth part of his
inheritance to God and St. Andrew the apostle. The third part of the
legend tells us that one of the custodians of the body of St. Andrew the
apostle at Constantinople, when he had taken counsel and fasted for two,
three, nay four days, and prayed for the mercy of God, was admonished by
a vision that he must leave his country and kindred and home and go to a
land which would be shown him. Accordingly he went, conducted by the
angel, and arrived safely at the summit of the King’s Mount, that is,
_Rigmund_. The fourth part tells us that, in the same hour in which he
sat wearily with his seven companions, a divine light overwhelmed the
king of the Picts, who with his army was coming to a particular place
called Kartenan; and not bearing the light, they fell on their faces,
and deaf and blind were healed to the number of seven; and one, who had
been blind from his birth and received sight, cried with a loud voice
that he saw the place full of the visitation of angels; and the king
with his army came to the place which the Lord had shown to the blind
man. The fifth part begins, ‘Regulus, therefore, a monk, a pilgrim from
the city of Constantinople, with the relics of St. Andrew, which he had
brought with him, met the king at the gate which is called _Matha_, that
is, Mordurus. They saluted each other, and fixed their tents where now
is the Royal Hall.’ King Ungus then gave that place and city to God and
St. Andrew the apostle, that it should be the head and mother of all the
churches which are in the kingdom of the Picts. ‘Regulus, therefore,
abbot and monk, with his dear companions, occupied that place, leading a
monastic life, and serving God day and night, in holiness and justice
all the days of his life, and their bodies rest there. Regulus held in
his hand and power the third part of the whole of Scocia, and ordained
and distributed it in abbacies. This country commended itself, by the
situation and amenity of its localities, to Picts, Scots, Danes,
Norwegians, and others, who arrived to ravage the island; and, if they
needed refuge, it offered them always a safe receptacle, and received
them within her as in their own camp.’ The first part of this legend may
be put aside as connected with the history of the relics of St. Andrew
prior to the fifth century, and is true enough; but it is obvious that
the other parts are inconsistent with each other, and appear to be
derived from different sources and to have been inartistically brought
together. Thus, in the third part, an unnamed custodier of the relics
brings them from Constantinople and lands at _Rigmund_; but in the fifth
part Regulus, a monk, brings them from Constantinople and arrives at the
gate called _Matha_; and this last part seems unconnected and as if it
belonged to a different narrative from those that precede.
The second legend, which emanated from St. Andrews itself, is much more
elaborate.[492] The first part of this form of the legend states that in
the year 345 Constantine collected a great army to invade Patras, in
order to avenge the martyrdom of St. Andrew and remove his relics; that
an angel appeared and ordered Regulus, the bishop, with his clergy, to
proceed to the sarcophagus in which the bones of St. Andrew were
enshrined, and to take a part of them, consisting of three fingers of
the right hand, a part of one of the arms, the pan of one of the knees,
and one of the teeth, and conceal them; that the following day
Constantine entered the city and carried off to Rome the shrine
containing the rest of the bones; that he then laid waste the Insula
Tyberis and Colossia, and took from thence the bones of St. Luke and St.
Timothy, and carried them to Constantinople along with the relics of St.
Andrew. The second part of this legend is an elaboration of the second
part of the other. The Pictish king is called Hungus, son of Ferlon. His
enemy is Adhelstan, king of the Saxons; and he is encamped at the mouth
of the river Tyne. The night before the battle St. Andrew appears to
Hungus in a dream and promises him the victory, and tells him that his
relics will be brought to his kingdom, and the place where they are
brought will become honoured and celebrated. The people of the Picts
swear to venerate St. Andrew ever after if they prove victorious.
Adhelstan is defeated, and his head is taken off and carried to a place
called _Ardchinnechun_, or Queen’s Harbour. According to the third part
of this form of the legend, some days after this victory the angel of
God appears a second time to the blessed bishop Regulus, and warns him
to sail towards the north with the relics of St. Andrew which he had
reserved, and, wherever his vessel should be wrecked, there to erect a
church in honour of St. Andrew. Bishop Regulus, accordingly, accompanied
by holy men, sails towards the north, voyages among the islands of the
Grecian Sea for a year and a half, and wherever he lands erects an
oratory in honour of St. Andrew. At length they direct their sails
towards the north, and on the eve of St. Michael arrive at the land of
the Picts, at a place once called _Muckros_, but now Kylrimont; and, his
vessel being wrecked, he erects a cross he had brought from Patras, and
remains there seven days and nights. Having intrusted the care of this
place to the seniors St. Damian and his brother Merinach, Regulus and
the rest go with the relics to Forteviot, and find there the three sons
of King Hungus—viz. Owen, Nectan, and Finguine—who, being anxious as to
the life of their father, then on an expedition in the region of
Argathelia, give a tenth part of Forteviot to God and St. Andrew. They
then go to a place called Moneclatu, but now Monichi, and there Finchem,
the queen of King Hungus, is delivered of a daughter called Mouren, who
was afterwards buried at Kylrimont; and the queen gives the place to God
and St. Andrew. They then cross the mountain called the Mounth, and
reach a place called Doldencha, but now Chondrohedalvan, where they meet
King Hungus returning from his expedition. The king prostrates himself
before the relics, and this place also is given to God and St. Andrew.
They then return across the Mounth to Monichi, where a church was built
in honour of God and the apostle; thence to Forteviot, where also a
similar church is built. King Hungus then went with the holy men to
Chilrymont, and, making a circuit round a great part of that place,
immolated it to God and St. Andrew for the erection of churches and
oratories. King Hungus and Bishop Regulus and the rest proceeded round
it seven times, Bishop Regulus carrying on his head the relics of St.
Andrew, his followers chanting hymns, and King Hungus following on foot,
and after him the magnates of the kingdom. Thus they commended that
place to God, and protected it with the king’s peace; and, in
commemoration, the holy men surrounded it with twelve stone crosses.
King Hungus afterwards gave to the basilica of the holy apostle, as a
parochia, the land between the sea called Ishundenema and the sea called
Sletheuma, and in the district adjacent to it the land within a line
drawn from Largo through Ceres to Naughton. King Hungus gave this place,
viz. Chilrymont, to God and St. Andrew his apostle, with waters,
meadows, fields, pastures, moors and woods, as a gift for ever, and
granted the place with such liberty that its inhabitants should be free
and for ever relieved from the burden of hosting, and building castles
and bridges, and all secular exactions. Bishop Regulus then chanted the
Alleluia, that God might protect that place in honour of the apostle;
and, in token of this freedom, King Hungus took a turf in presence of
the Pictish nobles, and laid it on the altar of St. Andrew, and offered
that same turf upon it. This part of the legend concludes with the names
of thirteen Pictish witnesses of royal race, whose names have been
apparently taken at random from the earliest part of the list of the
Pictish kings.
[Sidenote: Older legend belongs to foundation of monastery in sixth
century.]
Now these two forms of the legend are in very striking contrast to each
other, especially in the part which Regulus plays in each. In the former
and older legend, he makes his first appearance when he meets the king
at the gate called _Matha_ with the relics. In the latter he is
introduced into the history of the removal of the relics from Patras,
and reserves a portion to be conveyed to a distant land; and thus, along
with him, the whole history is removed back to the fourth century. His
character too, and that of his foundation, is quite different in the two
legends. In the older he is presented to us as a monk and abbot. He and
all his people follow a monastic life at St. Andrews, and he founds
abbacies or monasteries. He possesses the third part of all Scotia, and
devotes it to the foundation of abbacies or monasteries throughout the
whole of it. In the later legend he appears as a bishop. He has two
presbyters and two Deacons among his followers, and he founds churches
and oratories which are dedicated to St. Andrew. In the one we have a
purely monastic foundation; in the other a church with secular clergy.
The older legend, therefore, takes us back for Regulus to the Monastic
Church which had been founded among the southern Picts by Columba
towards the end of the sixth century, and to it we must look for the
Regulus of this form of the legend. Now, we find it stated in the Acts
of Farannan that, after the great synod of Drumceitt in the year 573,
which was attended both by Columba and by Aidan, king of Dalriada, the
former, before he returned to Britain, founded a church in the Region of
Cairbre. This was the church of Drumcliffe, situated a little to the
north of Sligo, in the barony of Cairbury and diocese of Elphin, the
foundation of which is attributed to Columba in the old Irish Life. We
are then told that on this occasion he was met by the leading
ecclesiastics of the neighbourhood, with the men and women most noted
for sanctity, who accompanied him in some of his wanderings. Now, among
these ecclesiastics we find recorded the name of Regulus, or Riagail, of
Muicinis, an island in the lake formed by the river Shannon called Loch
Derg;[493] and this Regulus appears in the old Irish Martyrologies on
the 16th day of October. In the Felire of Angus the Culdee there is
commemorated, on that day, ‘Riagail, gifted was his career;’ and the
gloss is, ‘that is, Riagail of Muicinish, in Loch Derg.’[494] Regulus of
St. Andrews, however, is commemorated in the Scottish Calendar on the
17th of the same month; and we find that there is usually a confusion in
the celebrations on these two days, when the 16th day of the month is
also the 17th day before the kalends of the next month.[495] We also
find that, while the name of the Irish Regulus’ foundation is
_Muicinis_, or the isle of swine, the name of St. Andrews, before it
received that of Chilrymont, is said in the second legend to have been
_Muicross_, or the promontory of swine. It seems, therefore, to be a
reasonable conclusion that the Regulus of Muicinis, commemorated on the
16th October, and the Regulus of Muicross, on the 17th of that month,
were the same person, and that the historic Regulus belongs to a
Columban church founded among those which Columba established among the
southern Picts during the last years of his life, and at the same time
when Cainnech of Achaboe had his hermitage there; and to those older
foundations must be appropriated the churches dedicated to Regulus, or
St. Rule.
[Sidenote: The Columban monasteries among the Picts fell into the hands
of laymen.]
The title of the older legend states that the abbacies or monasteries
then founded ‘in the territory of the Picts, which is now called
Scotia,’ that is, in the districts between the Firth of Forth and the
river Spey, had to a great extent passed into the possession of laymen;
and the legend seems to attribute this to the depredations of the
occupiers of the land—the Picts, Scots, Danes, Norwegians and others who
took possession of them as a safe refuge. The order in which these
occupiers are enumerated is historically correct; and, though the
expressions are somewhat obscure, they seem to indicate that the
expulsion of the Columban monks, which terminated the Monastic Church in
these districts, had been followed by the same process as we learn from
Bede took place in Northumbria after the Scottish monks had withdrawn
from thence. The assimilation of the church there to that of Rome, and
the reaction towards a secular clergy, appear to have led there to a
secularisation of the monasteries to a great extent. Bede gives us an
account of this in a letter written in the last year of his life, that
is, in 735, to Bishop Ecgberct; and the picture he draws shows a
complete disorganisation of the monastic institution in the land, and
its usurpation by the secular world. ‘As you yourself very well know,’
he says, ‘those who are utterly regardless of a monastic life have got
into their power so many places under the name of monasteries, that
there is no place at all which the sons of the nobility or of veteran
soldiers may occupy.’ Again, ‘But there are others guilty of a still
more grievous offence. For, though they are themselves laics, and
neither habituated to nor actuated by the love of a regular life, yet,
by pecuniary payments to the kings, and under pretext of founding
monasteries, they purchase for themselves territories in which they may
have freer scope for their lust; and, moreover, they cause these to be
assigned to them by royal edicts for an hereditary possession;’ ‘and,
though they themselves are laymen, yet they have monks under their
rule,—or, rather, they are not monks when they assemble there, but such
as, having been expelled from the true monasteries for the crime of
disobedience, are found wandering up and down; or those whom they
themselves have succeeded in alluring from these monasteries; or, at any
rate, those among their own servants whom they have been able to induce
to take the tonsure and make a promise of monastic obedience to them.
With these motley bands they fill the cells which they have
constructed.’ ‘Thus,’ says Bede further, ‘for about thirty years, that
is, from the time when King Aldfrid was removed from the world, our
province has been so demented by this mad error, that from that period
scarcely has there been a single prefect who has not, during the course
of his prefectship, founded for himself a monastery of this description.
And, since this most wretched custom has become prevalent, the ministers
also and servants of the king were content to do the same. And thus,
contrary to the established order, numberless persons are found who
style themselves indiscriminately abbots and prefects, or ministers or
servants of the king; and, though laymen might have been instructed in
something of the monastic life, not indeed by experience but by hearsay,
yet these persons have nothing in common with the character or
profession whose duty it is to give the instruction. And indeed such
persons, at their own caprice, suddenly receive the tonsure, as you are
aware; and by their own decision are made from laymen, not monks, but
abbots.’[496] This piteous wail of the true-hearted Bede seems to find
an echo in the title of the older legend of St. Andrew. King Aldfrid
died in 705, and the thirty years Bede refers to extend to the year in
which he wrote this account, and which was indeed the last of his life.
It was but twelve years after King Aldfrid’s death that King Nectan
expelled the Columban monks from his dominions. The monasteries would
naturally fall into the possession of the tribe of the land; and, if we
substitute monasteries founded by the Columban church, from which their
monks were expelled, for monasteries and cells directly founded by
laymen, it is probable enough that the withdrawal of the Columban monks
in the one country and their expulsion in the other, with the
introduction of a secular clergy in both, was followed by similar
results; and that the kingdom of the Picts may have exhibited the
greater part of these monasteries in the hands of laymen, the semblance
and the nomenclature of the monastic institution being thus kept up
without the reality. Bede indicates that the motive for doing so was to
preserve the privileges of such foundations, such as exemption from
service and right of sanctuary, without the corresponding obligations;
and such grounds of action would be equally powerful in the one country
as in the other. Tighernac records in 747 the death of Tuathal, abbot of
_Cinnrighmonadh_,[497] or Kylrimont. He may have been one of those
titular abbots; but as this is the only instance in which an abbot of
Kilrymont is noticed in the Irish Annals, it is more probable that he
was the expelled abbot of the old monastery, who had died in Ireland.
[Sidenote: Second legend belongs to the later foundation to which relics
of St. Andrew were brought.]
But if the historic Regulus belongs to the older Columban foundation at
Muicross, and if the expulsion of the Columban monks was followed by
such results, it is equally certain that King Hungus and the reception
of the relics of St. Andrew, which is inseparably connected with him in
the legend, must be brought down to a later period, to which also the
fictitious Regulus belongs. The lists of the Pictish kings show no Angus
or Hungus, son of Fergus, till we come to the powerful king of that name
who reigned from 731 to 761; and the events ascribed to him in the
legend correspond with those of his reign. He was engaged in war in the
Merse, and he had penetrated into those parts of Argathelia which formed
the Scottish kingdom of Dalriada, on an expedition which had for its
object the entire conquest of that kingdom, and might well lead his sons
to fear for his safety. The narrative which Bede gives us of the
circumstances which led King Nectan to place his kingdom under the
patronage of St. Peter in 710 entirely excludes the possibility of the
national veneration of St. Andrew having been introduced before that
date; and, while it is obvious, from an analysis of the legends, that a
fictitious and artificial antiquity has been given to it, yet the
knowledge of its true date seems not to have been entirely extinguished
by the fabulous one: for we find a record of it in one chronicle, though
not a very early one, when it is said, ‘The zeire of God sevynn hundir
lxi ye relikis of Sanct Androw ye Apostle com in Scotland;’[498] and
this year synchronises with the last year of the reign of Angus mac
Fergus, who was one of the most powerful kings of the Picts. If, then,
the relics of St. Andrew were brought into Scotland in the reign of this
Angus, king of the Picts, the question at once arises, Where did they
come from?—and here the mind naturally reverts to the church of Hexham.
It too was dedicated to St. Andrew. It too possessed relics of St.
Andrew. But in both it preceded in date the foundation of St. Andrews in
Scotland; for Hexham was founded in 674 by Wilfrid, who dedicated it to
the apostle, and the relics were brought there by his successor, Bishop
Acca, whose episcopate lasted from 709 to 732. In one remarkable
respect, too, one church was a reflection of the other; for Wilfrid
dedicated his church to St. Andrew in consequence of his belief that he
had received the gift of persuasive eloquence through the intercession
of the apostle, in answer to his prayers offered up in the church of St.
Andrew in Rome; and he afterwards erected two chapels at Hexham,
dedicated to St. Mary and St. Michael, owing to his belief that he had
recovered from a mortal sickness through the intercession of the Blessed
Virgin Mary, announced to him in a vision by Michael the Archangel. This
peculiar combination, therefore, at Hexham, of a principal dedication to
St. Andrew with chapels to St. Mary and St. Michael, arose out of
incidents in Wilfrid’s life. And yet we find the same combination at St.
Andrews in Scotland, for the second legend tells us, after narrating the
foundation of St. Andrews, ‘Afterwards in Chilrymont the holy men
erected seven churches—one in honour of St. Regulus, the second in
honour of St. Aneglas the Deacon, the third in honour of St. Michael the
Archangel, the fourth in honour of St. Mary the Virgin, the fifth in
honour of St. Damian, the sixth in honour of St. Brigida the virgin, and
the seventh in honour of a certain virgin Muren.’ The first of these
churches belongs, of course, to the older foundation; but here we find
that the third and fourth are chapels dedicated to St. Michael and St.
Mary. There seems, too, to have been a tradition that about this time
the foundation of an episcopal see among the Picts proceeded from
Hexham. When Bede wrote his history in 731, Acca was still living at
Hexham, and exercising his episcopal functions there apparently without
disturbance; but Simeon of Durham tells us that in 732—that is, in the
following year—Acca was expelled from his see;[499] and Prior Richard of
Hexham adds to this statement, ‘By what urgent necessity he was driven
forth, or whither he directed his steps, I do not find recorded. But
there are some who say that at that time he commenced and prepared the
episcopal see at Candida.’[500] or Whithern. He certainly founded no see
at Whithern, for we have the contemporary authority of Bede for the fact
that it had been founded some years before, and that Pecthelm was its
first bishop; but, at the time Prior Richard wrote, the memory of the
great Pictish kingdom had passed away, the Picts of Galloway alone
retained the name, and writers of that period transferred to Galloway
events that truly belonged to the northern portion of the race. Thus
Florence of Worcester placed Trumuini as bishop of Candida, though it is
clearly stated by Bede that the Picts he presided over were those north
of the Firth of Forth; and Prior Richard, in quoting the passage from
Bede, where he says that Wilfrid’s bishopric extended over the Picts as
far as Osuiu’s dominion extended, over whom Trumuini was afterwards
placed, adds the expression, ‘because Whithern had not yet its own
bishop,’[501] thus transferring what was intended by Bede to apply to
the Picts north of the Forth to those of Galloway. The Hexham tradition
was probably no more than that it was believed Acca had gone to the
nation of the Picts and founded a bishopric among them. It is certainly
a remarkable coincidence that Acca, the venerator of St. Andrew, and the
importer of his relics into Hexham, should have fled in 732, and that a
report should have sprung up that he had founded a bishop’s see among
the Picts; and that St. Andrews should have been actually founded by a
Pictish king between the years 736 and 761, and part of the relics of
St. Andrew brought to it at that time. Indeed, the correspondence
between the church history of the Northumbrian and Pictish kingdoms in
this respect is at this time very striking:—the Northumbrians expelling
the Columban clergy, introducing secular clergy with dedications to St.
Peter, and then dedicating Hexham to St. Andrew, and receiving the
relics of the apostle brought there by one of its bishops; and, sixty
years later, the Picts expelling the Columban monks, introducing the
secular clergy, placing the kingdom under the patronage of St. Peter,
and then receiving from some unknown quarter the relics of St. Andrew,
and founding a church in honour of that apostle, who becomes the
national patron saint. The second legend concludes with this
statement:—‘These are the names of those holy men who brought the sacred
relics of St. Andrew the apostle into Scotia—St. Regulus himself;
Gelasius the deacon; Maltheus the hermit; St. Damian, presbyter, and his
brother Merinach; Nervius and Crisenius from the island Nola; Mirenus,
and Thuluculus the deacon; Nathabeus and Silvius his brother; Seven
hermits from the island of the Tiber—Felix, Juranus, Mauritius,
Madianus, Philippus, Eugenius, Lunus; and three virgins from Collossia,
viz., Triduana, Potentia, Cineria. These virgins are buried at the
church of St. Aneglas. Thana, son of Dudabrach, wrote this document for
King Pherath son of Bergeth, in the town of Migdele.’ The king here
meant is probably the last king but one of the Picts, called in the
Pictish Chronicle Wrad son of Bargoit, who reigned from 840 to 843; and
Migdele is Meigle in Perthshire.
[Sidenote: _Keledei_ of St. Andrews originally hermits.]
The church of St. Andrews, then, is represented in this legend as
consisting of three groups—First, one of secular clergy, viz., Bishop
Regulus himself, with two priests and two deacons, and three others,
whose quality is not given; secondly, a group of hermits, viz.,
Maltheus, with two from the island of Nola, and seven from the island of
Tiber—in all, a community of ten; and, thirdly, three virgins. The
second group is that of the hermits, representing a community of
_Keledei_ similar to those established by Servanus in Lochleven. The
legend of Triduana, which is preserved in the Aberdeen Breviary, tells
us that she led a heremitical life, with her virgins Potentia and
Emeria, in a desert place at Roscoby (Rescobie in Forfarshire). The
tyrant Nectanevus, prince of the neighbourhood, pursued her, whereupon
she fled to Dunfallad (Dunfallandy) in Athol. There his ministers coming
to her and telling her that the beauty of her eyes had attracted the
prince, she plucked them out and gave them to them. Triduana then
devoting herself to prayer and fasting in Lestalryk, now Restalrig, in
Laudonia, passed into heaven.[502] Here, as usual, the legend is
supported by the dedications. At Rescobie is St. Triduan’s fair.
Restalrig is also dedicated to her; and here too a connection with
Northumbria, to which it then belonged, seems to peep out.
[Sidenote: Canonical rule brought into Scotland, and _Keledei_ become
canons.]
The canonical rule appears to have been adopted in Scotland not long
after it had been introduced into Ireland; for, as we learn from the
Chronicles, two hundred and twenty-five years and eleven months after
the church of Abernethy had been founded by Gartnach, son of Domelch,
who reigned from 584 to 599, the church of Dunkeld was founded by
Constantin, son of Fergus king of the Picts, who reigned from 790 to
820. This places the foundation of Dunkeld some time between the years
810 and 820, and the tradition of Dunkeld, as reported by Alexander
Mylne, a canon of that church in 1575, is that he placed there
‘religious men who are popularly called Keledei, otherwise Colidei, that
is God-worshippers, who, according to the rite of the Oriental Church,
had wives, from whom, however, they withdrew while ministering, as was
afterwards the custom in the church of St. Regulus, now St.
Andrew;’[503] while Wyntoun, the prior of Lochleven, tells us that
Awcht hundyr wyntyr and fyftene
Fra God tuk fleysch off Mary schene,
Leo and Charlys bath ware dede,
And Lowys than in Charlys stede.
The kyng off Peychtis Constantyne
Be Tay than foundyd Dwnkeldyne,
A place solempne cathedrale,
Dowyd welle in temporalle.
The byschape and chanownys thare
Serẅys God and Saynct Colme, seculare,
Off oure byschoprykis, off renowne
The thryd, and reputatyowne.[504]
The date assigned by Wyntoun to the foundation of Dunkeld is probably
correct, and those religious men who Mylne says were popularly called
Keledei, Wyntoun here calls ‘chanownys seculare.’
[Sidenote: Conclusion as to origin of the Culdees.]
The result, then, that we have arrived at is that the Culdees originally
sprang from that ascetic order who adopted a solitary service of God in
an isolated cell as the highest form of religious life, and who were
termed _Deicolæ_; that they then became associated in communities of
anchorites, or hermits; that they were clerics, and might be called
monks, but only in the sense in which anchorites were monks; that they
made their appearance in the eastern districts of Scotland at the same
time as the secular clergy were introduced, and succeeded the Columban
monks who had been driven across the great mountain range of Drumalban,
the western frontier of the Pictish kingdom; and that they were finally
brought under the canonical rule along with the secular clergy,
retaining, however, to some extent the nomenclature of the monastery,
until at length the name of _Keledeus_, or Culdee, became almost
synonymous with that of secular canon.
-----
Footnote 431:
The latest and ablest supporter of the view that the Columban monks
were the Culdees is Ebrard, in his _Culdeische Kirche_. He rightly
gives, as the correct form of the name in Irish, _Ceile De_, and
properly explains _Ceile_ as meaning ‘Socius,’ but entirely fails in
his attempt to connect the name with the Columban Church. He finds the
word _Ceile_ in the Irish name of St. Columba, Coluim _cille_, which
he says should be Coluim _ceile_, or the Culdee, and that the name of
_Urbs Coludi_, given by Bede to Coldingham, means the town of the
Culdees. This is etymology of the same kind as that which makes
Kirkcaldy, the old form of which is Kyrc-aldyn, to mean the church of
the Culdees.
Footnote 432:
The legend of Bonifacius is printed in the _Chronicles of the Picts
and Scots_, p. 421.
Footnote 433:
Reeves’s _British Culdees_, p 45. Dr. Reeves remarks that, if
Rosmicbairend has been written for _Rosmbaircind_, the name would be
pronounced Rosmarkyn.
Footnote 434:
Wynton’s _Chronicle_, B. v. c. xiii., in series of _Scottish
Historians_, vol. ii. p. 58.
Footnote 435:
Bishop Forbes’s _Calendar of Scottish Saints_, p. 336.
Footnote 436:
Fergustus Episcopus Scotiæ Pictus huic constituto a nobis promulgato
subscripsi.—Haddan’s _Councils_, vol. ii. part i. p. 7. The epithet
Pictus at this period implies that he was of the race of the Scottish
Picts.
Footnote 437:
It is possible that Neachtan may have made up his quarrel with the
Iona monks and retired to Iona, as we find there, at the end of a
broad and elevated terrace near the present ruins, the remains of a
burying-ground called Cill-ma-Neachtan, which marks the site of an
oratory.
Footnote 438:
_Epist. ad Eustochium._
Footnote 439:
_Collationes_, xviii. and xix.; Migne, _Patrologia_, vol. xix.
Footnote 440:
See Dupin’s _Ecclesiastical History_ for an abstract of this treatise,
vol. iv. p. 18.
Footnote 441:
Isidore, _De Ecc. Off._, lib. ii. c. 16. Migne, _Patrologia_, vol.
xli.
Footnote 442:
Bede, _Hist. Ec._, B. iv. c. 28. _Vit. S. Cudbercti_, c. 17.
Footnote 443:
Bede, _Vit. S. Cudbercti_, c. 1.
Footnote 444:
Religio munda, et immaculata apud Deum et Patrem hæc est: visitare
pupillos et viduas in tribulatione eorum, et immaculatum se custodire
ab hoc sæculo.—Cap. i., 27.
Footnote 445:
Qui aliquando non populus, nunc autem populus Dei; qui non consecuti
misericordiam, nunc autem misericordiam consecuti. Charissimi, obsecro
vos tanquam advenas et peregrinos abstinere vos a carnalibus
desideriis, quæ militant adversus animam.—Cap. ii. vv. 10, 11.
Footnote 446:
Nam et vicini et monachi, ad quos sæpe veniebat, Antonium videntes,
_Deicolam_ nuncupabant; indultisque naturæ vocabulis, quidam ut
filium, alii ut fratrem diligebant.—Migne, _Patrologia_, vol. xxxv.
col. 129.
Footnote 447:
Non illa ardua et perfecta, quæ a paucis et peregregiis _Deicolis_
patrantur.—Martinus _de Vitæ honestæ Formula_: D’Achery, iii. 312.
Footnote 448:
Quicunque ergo se habitaculum Dei effici voluerit, humilem et quietum
se facere contendat, ut non verborum aviditate et corporis
flexibilitate, sed humilitatis veritate cognoscatur esse _Deicola_:
cordis enim bonitas non verborum fictis indiget religionibus.—Migne,
_Patrologia_, vol. xxxvii. col. 234.
Footnote 449:
Colgan, _A.SS._, p. 115; Fleury, l. 37, c. 27. Colgan supposes that
_Deicola_ may be the Latin form of the Irish name of Dichuill, and
this is usually assumed to be the case; but there is no authority for
it, and no other analogy between the names than an accidental
resemblance in appearance.
Footnote 450:
Peracto vero quadriennio, apparuit ei angelus Domini et dixit illi,
Vade ad plebem Dei, id est, Eremitas et solitarios nudis pedibus et
conversare cum eis, ut proberis per aliquot tempus. Et venit in
solitudinem et mansit cum Eremitis per 8 annos.—Colgan, _Tr. Th._, p.
48, recté 52.
Footnote 451:
Tempore illo fuit quidam Dregmo in territorio Hagustaldensis ecclesiæ,
Deum valde timens et elymosinarum operibus, prout facultas sibi
suppeditabat, haud segniter deditus ac per omnia a comprovincialium
moribus vita discordans. Erat enim miræ simplicitatis et innocentiæ
homo ac erga sanctos Dei devotionis et venerationis immensæ.
Quapropter eum omnes vicini sui in magno honore habebant, illumque
verum Dei cultorem appellabant.—Sim. Dun., _Hist. Regum_ (Surtees
Ed.), p. 26.
Footnote 452:
Hefele, _Concilien Geschichte_, vol. iii. p. 88.
Footnote 453:
_Ib._, vol. iii. p. 306.
Footnote 454:
Hefele, _Concilien Geschichte_, vol. iv. p. 18.
Footnote 455:
Dilectissimis sacerdotibus ecclesiarum Christi præsulibus et cunctis
cleris in eisdem ubique et famulantibus et _Deicolis_ omnibus per
totum mundum degentibus.
Footnote 456:
D’Achery, _Spicilegium_, vol. i. p. 565.
Footnote 457:
Hefele, _Concilien Geschichte_, vol. iv. p. 10.
Footnote 458:
Thorpe, _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_, vol. ii. p. 27.
Footnote 459:
Haddan and Stubbs’ _Councils_, vol. iii. p. 450.
Footnote 460:
Reeves, _The Culdees of the British Isles_, pp. 59, 144.
Footnote 461:
Dei servitium passim nostra in gente a Cultoribus Clericis defleo
extinctum et tepefactum.—_Statuta Ecclesiæ_, vol. i. p. ccxiii. See
other notices there mentioned.
Footnote 462:
_Mart. Don._, p. 83.
Footnote 463:
_Mart. Don._, p. 235.
Footnote 464:
_Ib._, p. 245.
Footnote 465:
Adamnan, _Vit. S. Col._, B. iii. c. 42.
Footnote 466:
See for a description and ground-plan the Appendix No. I., p. 322, to
the edition of Reeves’s _Adamnan_ in series of Scottish Historians.
Footnote 467:
Adamnan, _Vit. S. Col._, B. i. c. 6.
Footnote 468:
_Ib._, B. ii. c. 43.
Footnote 469:
A.D. 1007 Muredach mac Cricain _do deirgiu Comarbus Columcille ar Dia_
(resigns the corbeship of Columcille, or abbacy, for God).—_Chron.
Picts and Scots_, p. 366.
Footnote 470:
In the Irish Glosses, edited by Mr. Whitley Stokes, the Latin word
_advona_ is glossed by _Deorad_. Among the Charters of Kells is one
founding, in 1084, a _Diseart_, which is given to God and devout
pilgrims; ‘no wanderer (_Erraid_) to have any possession till he
surrenders his life to God (_do Dia_) and is devout;’ and in 1000
Tempull Gerailt is rebuilt for pilgrims of God (_Deoradaibh De_).
Footnote 471:
_Ancient Laws of Ireland_, vol. i. p. 59.
Footnote 472:
A.D. 677 Beccan Ruimean quievit in insula Britanniæ.—_Tigh._ 17th
March, Beccan Ruim.—_Mart. Don._
Footnote 473:
Abridged from Petrie’s description in his _Round Towers_, p. 421. See
also _Proceedings of R. S. A._, vol. x. p. 551.
Footnote 474:
_Ceile_, as a substantive, means literally, ‘socius, maritus,’ but it
has a secondary meaning, ‘servus,’ and as an adverb it means
‘pariter.’ Dr. Reeves, in his work on the British Culdees, adopts the
secondary meaning, and considers that it is simply the Irish
equivalent of Servus Dei, which, he says, was the ordinary expression
for a monk, and hence starts with the assumption that the _Ceile De_
were simply monks. This is one of the very few instances in which the
author has found himself unable to accept a dictum of Dr. Reeves. This
rendering appears to him objectionable—first, because no example can
be produced in which the term Servus Dei appears translated by _Ceile
De_; secondly, that the term _Ceile De_ is applied to a distinct class
who were not very numerous in Ireland, while the term Servus Dei is a
general expression applicable to religious of all classes, and
included, as we have seen, the secular canons as well as the monks.
Ebrard rejects the rendering by Servus Dei, and supposes that it is
the Irish equivalent of Vir Dei; but this is still more objectionable.
Vir Dei was a term applied to all saints of whatever class; and in the
Litany of Angus, who himself bore the name of _Ceile De_, or the
Culdee, it is translated _Fer De_, but in the glosses on the Felire of
Angus the word _Ceile_ is glossed _Carait_, or friend; and the author
long ago came to the conclusion that, though not etymologically
identic, it is the Irish equivalent of _Deicola_, God-worshipper, in
its primary meaning, that is, in the sense of companionship or near
connection with God. The late Dr. Joseph Robertson, when he was
preparing the Introduction to the _Statuta_, came by an independent
inquiry to the same result (see Introduction, vol. i. p. ccxii.); and
the author cannot help thinking that, had it not been for the
etymological considerations which weighed with Dr. Reeves, his
historical inquiry would have brought him to the same conclusion.
Footnote 475:
Colgan, _A.SS._, p. 454.
Footnote 476:
_Leabhar Breac_, part ii. p. 261. Dr. Reeves has printed the part that
relates to the _Cele De_ from a different MS., with a translation, in
his _British Culdees_, p. 82.
Footnote 477:
A.D. 869 Comgan fota Ancorita Tamlachta quievit.—_An. Ult._ 2 August,
Comgan _Cele De_.—_Mart. Tam._ A.D. 1031 _Cond na mbocht, cend Celed
nDe agus Ancoiri Cluana mic Nois_.—_An. F. M._, vol. ii. p. 525.
Footnote 478:
_An. Ult. ad an._ 921.
Footnote 479:
Reeves’s _British Culdees_, Pref. p. ix.
Footnote 480:
Elarius ancorita et scriba Locha Crea.—_An. Ult. ad an._ 806.
Footnote 481:
_Topog. Hib._, dist. 2, c. 4.
Footnote 482:
Reeves’s _British Culdees_, p. 79.
Footnote 483:
Printed with translations in Dr. Reeves’s _History of the British
Culdees_, p. 84.
Footnote 484:
Compare the rule in page 84 with canons of the Council of
Aix-la-Chapelle.
Footnote 485:
Reeves’s _British Culdees_, p. 10.
Footnote 486:
This life is printed from the Marsh MS., Dublin, in the _Chronicles of
the Picts and Scots_, p. 412.
Footnote 487:
_Alma ingen rig Cruithnech mathair Sheirb mec Proic rig Canand
Eigeipti acus ise sin in sruith senoir congeb Cuilendros hi Sraith
Hirend hi Comgellgaib itir sliab Nochel acus muir nGiudan._—_Book of
Lecan_, fol. 43. bb. Reeves’s _British Culdees_, p. 124. The sea of
Giudan is the Firth of Forth, so called from the city of Giudi, which
Bede says was in the middle of it, and which may be identified with
Inchkeith. It is called in the Latin life Mons Britannorum, a mistake
perhaps for Mare.
Footnote 488:
Brude fitz Dergert, xxx, ane. En quel temps ueint Sains Seruanus en
Fiffe.—_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 201.
Footnote 489:
_Registrum Prioratus S. Andreæ_, pp. 113-118. Reeves’s _British
Culdees_, pp. 125, 126.
Footnote 490:
Bishop Forbes’s _Lives of S. Ninian and S. Kentigern_, p. 66.
Footnote 491:
This legend is printed in the _Chronicles of the Picts and Scots_, p.
138.
Footnote 492:
_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 183.
Footnote 493:
Colgan, _A.SS._, p. 337.
Footnote 494:
_Riaguil raith arremsin_, i.e. _Riagail Muicindsi fa Loch Derc_.
Footnote 495:
Thus St. Patrick is commemorated at Auvergne on the 16th of March,
while his day in the Irish Martyrologies is the 17th of that month.
Footnote 496:
_Bædæ epistola ad Ecgberctum antistitem_, §§ 6 and 7.
Footnote 497:
747 Mors Tuathalain Abbas _Cindrighmonaigh_.—_Tigh. Chron. Picts and
Scots_, p. 76.
Footnote 498:
_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 387.
Footnote 499:
732 Acca Episcopus eodem anno de sua sede fugatus est.—Sim Dun. _Hist.
Regum_.
Footnote 500:
Qua autem urgente necessitate pulsus sit, vel quo diverterit, scriptum
non reperi. Sunt tamen qui dicunt quod eo tempore episcopalem sedem in
Candida inceperit et præperaverit.—Cap. xv.
Footnote 501:
Quia Candida Casa nondum episcopum proprium habuerat.—Cap. vi.
Footnote 502:
_Brev. Aberd. Pars Hyem._ fol. lxx.
Footnote 503:
Mylne, _Vitæ Episcoporum Dunkeldensium_, p. 4.
Footnote 504:
Wyntoun, _Chron._, B. vi. c. vii.
CHAPTER VII.
THE COÄRBS OF COLUMCILLE.
[Sidenote: A.D. 717-772.
Schism still exists in Iona.]
‘It appears to have been a wonderful dispensation of the Divine
goodness, that the same nation which had wittingly and without envy
communicated to the people of the Angles the knowledge of the true
Deity, should afterwards, by means of the nation of the Angles, be
brought, in those points on which they were defective, to the rule of
life;’ such is the reflection of the Venerable Bede when contemplating
the change which had taken place in the Columban Church in the beginning
of the eighth century, which he thus expresses: ‘The monks of _Hii_, or
Iona, by the instruction of Ecgberct, adopted the Catholic rites under
Abbot Dunchad, about eighty years after they had sent Bishop Aidan to
preach to the nation of the Angles.’[505] He had previously stated that,
not long after the year 710, ‘those monks also of the Scottish nation
who lived in the island of Hii, with the other monasteries that were
subject to them, were, by the procurement of our Lord, brought to the
canonical observance of Easter and the right mode of tonsure;[506] and
this had been effected by the most reverend and holy father and priest
Ecgberct, of the nation of the Angles, who had long lived in banishment
in Ireland for the sake of Christ, and was most learned in the
Scriptures and distinguished for the perfection of a long life, and who
came among them, corrected their error, and changed them to the true and
canonical day of Easter.’[507] Bede implies that this took place in the
year 716; but the change was not so general or so instantaneous as might
be inferred from this statement. The monks of Iona, or a part of them at
least, had certainly in that year adopted the Catholic Easter;[508] but
it is not till two years after that date, and a year after the death of
Abbot Dunchad, that they adopted the coronal tonsure. The expression of
the Irish annalist who records the event rather implies that it had been
forced upon an unwilling community;[509] and, so far from the other
monasteries that were subject to them having generally submitted to the
change in 716, the resistance of those within the territories of the
Pictish king to the royal edict commanding the adoption of the Catholic
Easter and the coronal tonsure throughout all the provinces of the Picts
led to the expulsion of ‘the family of Iona’—by which expression the
Columban monks are meant—from the Pictish kingdom in 717. This conflict
then appears to have led to two results. In the first place, it
separated the churches of the eastern districts from Iona, broke up the
unity of the Columban Church, and terminated the supremacy of the parent
monastery of Iona over the churches in the Pictish kingdom, which had
been subject to them; and, in the second place, it seems undoubtedly to
have caused a schism in the community on the island, as such innovations
usually do when the attempt to force upon an entire body the views of a
majority is sure to be met by a resisting minority.
[Sidenote: Two parties with rival abbots.]
There were thus at this time two parties among the brethren in Iona. One
party, who had reluctantly given way on some points, but in the main
adhered to the customs of their fathers, and clung with tenacity to the
monastic system hallowed by their veneration for the founder Columba;
the other, and probably the larger and more influential, conforming in
everything to the Roman party, and leaning towards a modification of
their monastic institution by the introduction of a secular clergy—each
party putting up a rival abbot as soon as they found themselves
sufficiently powerful to do so. By the death of Dunchad, in 717, Faelchu
was left for the time sole abbot of Iona. He was of the race of Conall
Gulban, and the legitimate successor of the old abbots according to the
law which regulated the succession to the abbacy in the Monastic Church;
and his party would be strengthened by those of the refugee monks from
the monasteries in King Nectan’s dominions who took shelter in Iona. Of
the monks who had been driven out of the Pictish kingdom, some would
merely pass over the Drumalban range into the territory of the Scottish
kings of Dalriada, or seek a farther home among the Columban monasteries
in Ireland; but many would no doubt be drawn to the parent monastery in
Iona, which was beyond King Nectan’s power, and add numbers and force to
what might be termed the Conservative party in the island. On the other
hand, Ecgberct was still alive and resident in Iona, and would naturally
be at the head of what may be called the Reforming party, and use all
his influence in promoting and extending their authority in the island.
The account Bede gives of his life there shows that his efforts were not
so immediately and entirely successful as one would infer from his other
statements, and that his progress was slow. He says, ‘This man of God,
Ecgberct, remained thirteen years in the aforesaid island which he had
thus consecrated again to Christ, by kindling in it a new ray of divine
grace, and restoring it to ecclesiastical unity and peace. In the year
of our Lord’s incarnation 729, in which the Easter of our Lord was
celebrated on the eighth day before the kalends of May—that is, on the
24th April—when he had performed the solemnity of the mass in memory of
the same resurrection of our Lord, on that same day he departed to the
Lord; and thus finished, or rather never ceases to celebrate, with our
Lord, the apostles and the other citizens of heaven, the joy of that
greatest festival, which he had begun with the brethren whom he had
converted to the grace of unity. But it was a wonderful provision of the
divine dispensation that the venerable man not only passed out of this
world to the Father at Easter, but also when Easter was celebrated on
that day on which it had never been wont to be kept in these parts. The
brethren, therefore, rejoiced in the certain and Catholic knowledge of
the time of Easter, and rejoiced in the protection of their father,
departed to our Lord, by whom they had been corrected. He also rejoiced
that he had been continued in the flesh till he saw his followers admit
and celebrate with him as Easter that day which they had ever before
avoided. Thus the most reverend father, being assured of their
correction, rejoiced to see the day of our Lord; and he saw it, and was
glad.’[510] These expressions are hardly consistent with the statement
that he had brought the entire community over to the adoption of the
Catholic customs thirteen years before, in 716; and we find that during
his life, after Faelchu had been left in sole possession of the abbacy,
it was not till he had possessed it for five years that a rival abbot,
Feidhlimidh, is put forward in the year 722, who is recorded as holding
the abbacy in that year,[511] though Faelchu was still in life. His
pedigree is not recorded, and he could have had no claim as belonging to
the tribe of the saint, to whom the succession belonged. Again, when
Faelchu dies in 724, we find that a certain Cillene Fada, or the Long,
succeeds Faelchu in the abbacy,[512] and on his death, in 726, another,
Cilline, surnamed _Droichteach_,[513] appears as abbot, though during
the whole of this time Feidhlimidh also is abbot of Iona. Ecgberct did
not, therefore, see entire conformity during his life, and the schism
was in full vigour up to the day of his death.
[Sidenote: Two missionaries, St. Modan and St. Ronan, in connection with
Roman party.]
We must place probably at this time and in connection with these events
two missionaries, who likewise appear to have proceeded from the south
towards the western districts and the Isles. These are Modan and Ronan.
Modan appears in the Scotch Calendars as an abbot on the 4th February,
and as a bishop on the 14th November; but the dedications to him are so
much mixed up together that it is probable that the same Modan is meant
in both. Ronan appears as bishop on the 7th of February. The dedications
to them are usually found so close together as to show that they both
belonged to the same mission. We first find Modan at Dryburgh, on the
south bank of the Tweed, and then at the church called by the Celtic
people _Eaglaisbreac_, and by the Anglic population _Fahkirk_, now
called Falkirk, both meaning ‘the speckled church.’ We then find him at
Rosneath, in the district of Lennox, and near it is the church of
Kilmaronok dedicated to St. Ronan.[514] They appear to have proceeded to
Lorn, where _Balimhaodan_, or ‘St. Modan’s town,’ is the old name of
Ardchattan, and where on the opposite side of Loch Etive, is again
Kilmaronog. Ronan appears then to have carried his mission to the Isles.
He has left his trace in Iona, where one of the harbours is Port Ronan.
The church, afterwards the parish church, was dedicated to him, and is
called Teampull Ronaig, and its burying-ground Cladh Ronan. Then we find
him at Rona, in the Sound of Skye, and another Rona off the coast of
Lewis; and finally his death is recorded in 737 as Ronan, abbot of
_Cinngaradh_, or Kingarth, in Bute.[515] The church, too, in the island
of Eigg again appears about this time, when we hear in 725 of the death
of Oan, superior of Ego.[516]
[Sidenote: A.D. 726.
An anchorite becomes abbot of Iona.]
A new element seems now to have been introduced into the controversies
at Iona, and probably still further complicated the state of parties
there. This was the appearance, after the death of Cillene the Long, but
while Feidlimidh, the rival abbot, was still alive, of an anchorite as
abbot of Iona. Tighernac tells us that in 727, the year after Cillene’s
death, the relics of St. Adamnan were carried to Ireland and his law
renewed,[517] that is, what was called the law of the innocents, which
exempted women from the burden of hosting. An ancient document, however,
in one of the Brussels MSS. explains this to mean not that the bones of
Adamnan had been enshrined and carried to Ireland, but other relics
which had been collected by him. The passage is this: ‘Illustrious was
this Adamnan. It was by him was gathered the great collection of the
relics (_martra_) of the saints into one shrine; and that was the shrine
which Cilline Droichteach, son of Dicolla, brought to Erin, to make
peace and friendship between the Cinel Conaill and the Cinel
Eoghain.’[518] Cilline Droichteach, however, appears in the Martyrology
of Tallaght as ‘Abb Iae,’ or abbot of Iona; and the Martyrology of
Marian expressly says, ‘Abbot of la Cholumcille was this Cilline
Droichteach;’[519] while his death is recorded by Tighernac in 752 as
‘anchorite of Iona.’[520] Here then we have an anchorite who was abbot
from 727 to 752 during the tenure of the same office by Feidhlimidh.
Cilline was not of the race of Conall Gulban, and therefore not of the
line of legitimate successors to the abbacy, but belonged to the
southern Hy Neill. The collecting of the relics of the saints by Adamnan
is clearly characteristic of that period in his history when he had
conformed to Rome; and Cilline’s bearing the shrine as a symbol of his
authority in renewing Adamnan’s law connects him also with the same
party. The results then of the controversy at Iona correspond with those
which we have already found among the Picts after the expulsion of the
Columban monks—that, besides the secular clergy who made their
appearance in connection with the Roman party, there likewise came
clergy belonging to the more ascetic order of the anchorites; and they
now appear as forming one of the parties in Iona. The epithet of
_Droichteach_ means literally bridger, or bridgemaker, a name apparently
little appropriate in an island where there are no streams large enough
to render bridges necessary; but behind the _vallum_ of the monastery,
and extending from the mill-stream to the hill called Dunii, was a
shallow lake, occupying several acres, which fed the stream, and which
was probably partly natural and partly artificial. Through the centre of
this lake, which is now drained, there runs a raised way pointing to the
hills. It is a broad and elevated causeway constructed of earth and
stones, and is now called _Iomaire an tachair_, or ‘the ridge of the
way.’ It is 220 yards long and about 22 feet wide.[521] In a hollow
among the hillocks to which it points, and at some little distance, is
the foundation of a small oval house measuring about 18 feet long by 14
broad, outside measure, now called _Cabhan Cuildeach_; and from the door
of the house proceeds a small avenue of stones, which grows wider as it
ascends to a hillock; and there are traces of walls which appear to have
enclosed it. It is difficult to avoid the conjecture that it was the
construction of this causeway which gave to Cillene, the anchorite
abbot, his epithet of Bridgemaker, more especially as it points towards
what appears to have been an anchorite’s cell, to which it was probably
designed to give ready access across the lake; and, if he constructed
it, we have only to look to an old anchorite establishment in Ireland to
find what afforded him his pattern. In the island of Ardoilen, on the
west coast of Ireland, already referred to as affording an example of an
early anchorite establishment, we find that ‘on the south side of the
enclosure there is a small lake, apparently artificial, from which an
artificial outlet is formed, which turned a small mill; and along the
west side of this lake there is an artificial stone path or causeway,
220 yards in length, which leads to another stone cell or house, of an
oval form, at the south side of the valley in which the monastery is
situated. This house is eighteen feet long and nine wide, and there is a
small walled enclosure joined to it, which was probably a garden. There
is also, adjoining to it, a stone altar surmounted by a cross, and a
small lake which, like that already noticed, seems to have been formed
by art.’[522] There is no appearance of a stone altar near the cell in
Iona. In other respects the resemblance seems too striking to be
accidental.
[Sidenote: The term _Comhorba_, or Coärb, applied to abbots of Columban
monasteries.]
It is during this period, while Feidhlimidh and Cilline the anchorite
appear as rival abbots, that a catastrophe is recorded by Tighernac in
737,[523] in which Failbe, son of Guaire, the heir of Maelruba of
_Apuorcrosan_, was drowned in the deep sea with twenty-two of his
sailors. The monastery founded by Maelruba at _Apuorcrosan_, now
Applecross, had therefore remained intact. The word ‘hæres,’ or heir, is
here the equivalent of the Irish word _Comharba_, pronounced coärb,
signifying co-heir or inheritor,[524] which occasionally appears as
applied to the heads of religious houses in Ireland during the preceding
century, in connection with the name of its founder, and which now makes
its first appearance in Scotland. In the Monastic Church in Ireland,
when land was given by the chief or head of a family, it was held to be
a personal grant to the saint or missionary himself and to his heirs,
according to the ecclesiastical law of succession. Heirs of his body
such a founder of a monastery, who was himself under the monastic rule,
of course could not have; but, as we have seen, when the tribe of the
land and the tribe of the patron saint were the same, the former
supplied the abbacy with a person qualified to occupy the position; and,
when they were different, the abbot was taken from the tribe to which
the patron saint belonged. These were his ecclesiastical successors and
co-heirs. As such they inherited the land or territory which had been
granted to the original founder of the church or monastery, and as such
they inherited, as coärbs, or co-heirs, his ecclesiastical as well as
his temporal rights.[525] When the integrity of the monastic
institutions in Ireland began to be impaired in the seventh century
under the influence of the party who had conformed to Rome, the heads of
the religious houses found it necessary to fall back more upon the
rights and privileges inherited from the founders; and hence in this
century the term of Coärb, in connection with the name of some eminent
saint, came to designate the bishops or abbots who were the successors
of his spiritual and temporal privileges, and eventually the possessor
of the land, bearing the name of abbot, whether he were a layman or a
cleric. Thus, at A.D. 590, the annals record the appointment of Gregory
the Great to be coärb of Peter the Apostle, that is, bishop of Rome. At
606 we have the death of Sillan, son of Caimin, abbot of Bangor and
‘coärb of Comgall,’ who was its founder. In 654 we find the superior of
the church of Aranmore called ‘coärb of Enda’ its founder; and in 680
the superior of the monastery at Cork is termed coärb of St. Barry, who
founded it.[526] Here in 737 the abbot of the monastery at Apuorcrosan
is termed the heir, that is coärb, of Maelruba, who founded it; and, as
we shall see, the abbots of Iona became known under the designation of
coärbs of Columcille. Twelve years afterwards a similar catastrophe
befell the family of Iona, who were drowned in a great storm in the year
749,[527] a not unnatural occurrence if they were caught in their curach
between Iona and Colonsay in a southwesterly gale; but which party
suffered by this loss we do not know—probably that which supported
Cilline the anchorite, as, on his death in 752, we find the abbacy
assumed by Slebhine, son of Congal, who was of the race of Conall
Gulban, and therefore belonged to what may be termed the Columban party.
In the same year Tighernac records the death of Slebhine’s brother
Cilline in Iona, and of Cuimine, grandson or descendant of Becc the
religious of Ego, or the island of Eigg.[528] Slebhine, the Columban
abbot, appears to have endeavoured to get his authority as the
legitimate successor of Columba recognised by the Columban monasteries
in Ireland; for we find him going to Ireland in 754, and enforcing the
law of Columcille three years after, when he seems to have returned to
Iona, but again went to Ireland in the following year.[529] Feidhlimidh,
the rival abbot, dies in the year 759, having completed the
eighty-seventh year of his age.[530] But this did not terminate the
schism: for we find a Suibhne, abbot of Iona, who goes to Ireland in the
year 765,[531] apparently for the purpose of endeavouring to win the
Columban monasteries there; but the death of Slebhine two years
after[532] leaves him sole abbot for five years, when, on his own death
in the year 772,[533] he is succeeded by Breasal, son of Seghine, whose
pedigree is unknown; and in him the schism seems to have come to an end.
Slebhine appears to have been the last of the abbots who at this time
were of the race of Conall Gulban and had thus a hereditary claim to the
abbacy; and more than a hundred years elapsed before another of the race
obtained the abbacy. The fall of the Scottish kingdom of Dalriada about
this time may have contributed to this suspension of the rights of the
tribe of the patron saint. But all opposition to the entire conformity
of the whole family of Iona to the Roman Church appears now to have
ceased, and there is no indication of any further division among
them.[534]
[Sidenote: A.D. 772-801.
Breasal, son of Seghine, sole abbot of Iona.]
Breasal appears to have held the abbacy without challenge for nearly
thirty years; and, five years after his accession, he seems to have been
fully recognised by the Columban monasteries in Ireland, as we find that
the law of Columcille was enforced in 778 by Donnchadh, king of Ireland,
and head of the Northern Hy Neill, and by him as abbot of Iona.[535] In
782 we have the first notice of a new functionary in Iona, in the death
in that year of Muredach son of Huairgaile, steward of Iona.[536] His
functions were probably connected with the law of Columcille, which
involved the collection of tribute. We find, too, during this period,
some incidental notices of two of the other foundations in the Isles. In
775 dies Conall of Maigh Lunge,[537] the monastery founded by Columba in
Tyree. In 776 the death of Maelemanach, abbot of Kingarth[538] in Bute,
and in 790 that of Noe, abbot of the same monastery, are recorded.[539]
We learn, too, that while Breasal was abbot two Irish monarchs retired
to Iona and died there. Niall Frosach, formerly king of all Ireland,
died there in 778.[540] Airtgaile, son of Cathail, king of Connaught,
assumed the pilgrim’s staff in 782, and in the following year retired to
Iona, and died there after eight years spent in seclusion.[541] The last
connection of the Scots, too, with Dalriada was severed for the time by
the removal of the relics of the three sons of Erc, the founders of the
colony, who had been buried in Iona, to the great cemetery of Tailten in
Ireland.[542]
[Sidenote: A.D. 794.
First appearance of Danish pirates, and Iona repeatedly
ravaged by them.]
Breasal’s tenure of the abbacy, however, was to be characterised by a
greater event, which was to exercise a fatal influence on the fortunes
of the Scottish monasteries for many a long and dreary year. This was
the appearance in the Isles, in 794, of a host of sea pirates from the
northern kingdom of Denmark, who were to render the name of Dane
equivalent in the ears of the Columban monks to the spoliation of their
monasteries and the slaughter of their inmates. In 794 there appears in
the Irish Annals the ominous entry of the devastation of all the islands
of Britain by the Gentiles, as they were at first called, followed, in
795, by the spoliation of Iae Columcille, or Iona, by them. Again, three
years after, the spoliation of the islands of the sea between Erin and
Alban by the Gentiles.[543] The Danes soon discovered that the richest
spoil was to be found in the monasteries, and directed their destructive
attacks against them. Breasal, however, though doomed to witness these
acts of spoliation, was spared the sight of the total destruction of his
monastery; for in 801 he died, in the thirty-first year of his tenure of
the abbacy.[544]
[Sidenote: A.D. 801-802.
Connachtach, abbot of Iona.]
In the following year the monastery of Iona was burnt down by the Danes,
and the Annals of the Four Masters place in the same year the death of
Connachtach, a select scribe and abbot of Iona; and four years
afterwards the community of Iona, then consisting of only sixty-eight
members, were slain by the Danes,[545] [Sidenote: A.D. 802-814.
Cellach, son of Congal, abbot of Iona.] Cellach, son of Conghaile, the
abbot who succeeded Connachtach, having apparently taken refuge in
Ireland. The monastic buildings thus destroyed belonged, no doubt, to
the original monastery, which, as we have seen, had been originally
constructed of wood, and repaired by Adamnan. Hitherto there had been no
feeling of insecurity in connection with such wooden buildings, but
since the ravages of the Danes began there is abundant evidence of the
frequent destruction of such buildings by fire; and in the present
instance there seems to have been not only the entire destruction of the
monastery, but also the slaughter of those of the community who remained
behind. So complete was the ruin, and so exposed had the island become
to the ravages of the Danes, that the abbot Cellach appears to have
resolved to remove the chief seat of the Columban order from Iona to
Kells in Meath, of which he had obtained a grant two years previously.
The Irish Annals record, in the year following the slaughter of the
community, the building of a new Columban house at Kells; and we are
told that in 814 Cellach, abbot of Iona, having finished the building of
the church at Kells, resigns the abbacy, and Diarmicius, disciple of
Daigri, is ordained in his place.[546] This monastery at Kells, which
thus took seven years to build, was constructed of stone,[547] which now
began universally to supersede wood in the construction of
ecclesiastical buildings, as less likely to suffer total destruction
from the firebrand of the Danes.
[Sidenote: A.D. 802-807.
Remains of St. Columba enshrined.]
At this time, too, the remains of St. Columba seem to have been raised
from the stone coffin which enclosed them, and carried to Ireland, where
they were enshrined. We know from Adamnan that the body of the saint had
been placed in a grave prepared for it, and apparently enclosed in a
stone coffin, and that the place in which it lay was perfectly well
known in his day. We also know that, at the time Bede wrote his History
in 735, his remains were still undisturbed; but, at the time the Book of
Armagh was compiled, that is, in 807, they were enshrined and preserved
at the church of Saul Patrick on the shore of Strangford Lough in the
county of Down in Ireland.[548] It is therefore between these dates, 735
and 807, that they must have been removed.
Among the customs which sprang up in the Irish Church after she had been
brought into contact and more frequent correspondence with the Roman
Church, and had, to some extent, adopted her customs, was that of
disinterring the remains of their saints and enclosing them in shrines
which could be moved from place to place, and which were frequently used
as a warrant for enforcing the privileges of the monasteries of which
the saint was the founder. Notices of such enshrining of their relics
first appear in the Irish Annals towards the middle of the eighth
century. Thus we read, in 733, of the enshrining of the relics of St.
Peter, St. Paul and St. Patrick for enforcing his law;[549] in 743, of
the enshrining of the relics of St. Treno of Celle Delgon, and in 776,
of those of St. Erc of Slane and St. Finnian of Clonard;[550] in 784, of
the relics of St. Ultan; in 789, of those of St. Coemgin and St.
Mochua.[551] Then, in 799, we have the placing of the relics of Conlaid,
who was the first bishop of Kildare, and, in 800, of those of Ronan, son
of Berich, in shrines of gold and silver.[552]
We have already seen that the remains of St. Cuthbert were enshrined
eleven years after his death; and the circumstances are given in so much
detail by Bede, who is a contemporary authority, that the proceedings of
the Lindisfarne monks will throw light upon those of the monks of Iona.
St. Cuthbert had wished to be buried in a stone coffin which had been
given him by the abbot Cudda, and was placed under ground on the north
side of his oratory in the island of Farne, but which he wished to be
placed in his cell on the south side of his oratory opposite the east
side of the holy cross which he had erected there.[553] However, he
accedes to the request of the Lindisfarne monks that they should bury
him in their church at Lindisfarne. Accordingly, after his death his
body was taken to Lindisfarne and deposited in a stone coffin in the
church on the right side, that is, the south side, of the altar.[554]
Eleven years later the Lindisfarne monks resolved to enclose his remains
in a light shrine, and, for the sake of decent veneration, to deposit
them in the same place, but above, instead of below, the pavement.[555]
On opening his sepulchre they find the body entire, and they laid it in
a light chest and deposited it upon the pavement of the sanctuary.[556]
Bishop Eadberct, St. Cuthbert’s successor, then died, and they deposited
his body in the tomb of St. Cuthbert, and placed above it the shrine
which contained the relics of the latter saint.[557]
We see then that at this time, and in a church which derived its origin
from Iona and preserved many of its Scottish customs, the place where
the patron saint was buried was on the right, or south, side of the
altar, and that when his remains were enshrined the shrine was placed in
the same situation, but above the pavement of the church, instead of
being sunk beneath it, that they might more readily be made the object
of veneration. As the saint’s body was said to have been found entire,
the light chest or shrine must have been large enough to contain it. We
know from Simeon of Durham’s History of the Church of Durham that, when,
owing to the cruel ravagings of the Danes, the monks resolved to abandon
Lindisfarne, they took this shrine with them, and that it was finally
deposited at Durham. He then tells us that in the year 1104 ‘the body of
St. Cuthbert was disinterred, on account of the incredulity of certain
persons, and was exhibited, in the episcopate of Bishop Ralph, in the
presence of Earl Alexander, who afterwards became King of Scots, and
many others. Ralph, abbot of Seez, afterwards bishop of Rochester, and
ultimately archbishop of Canterbury, and the brethren of the church of
Durham, having examined it closely, discovered that it was uncorrupted,
and so flexible in its joints that it seemed more like a man asleep than
one dead; and this occurred four hundred and eighteen years, five months
and twelve days after his burial.’[558] The description here given of
the state of the body of St. Cuthbert is a _verbatim_ repetition of that
given by Bede when his tomb was opened eleven years after his death, and
must be taken as having no other foundation; but we have from Reginald
of Durham what is more material, an exact description of the shrine
which enclosed it. He says—‘We have hitherto treated of the manner in
which St. Cuthberct, the glorious bishop of Christ, was placed in his
sepulchre; we will now give a description of the inner shrine (theca)
itself. In this inner shrine he was first placed in the island of
Lindisfarne, when he was raised from his grave; and in this his
incorruptible body has been hitherto always preserved. It is
quadrangular, like a chest (archa), and its lid is not elevated in the
middle, but flat, so that its summit, whether of lid or sides, is all
along level and even. The lid is like the lid of a box, broad and flat.
The lid itself is a tablet of wood, serving for an opening, and the
whole of it is made to be lifted up by means of two circles, or rings,
which are fixed mid-way in its breadth, the one towards his feet and the
other towards his head. By these rings the lid is elevated and let down,
and there is no lock or fastening whatever to attach it to the shrine.
The shrine is made entirely of black oak, and it may be doubted whether
it has contracted that colour of blackness from old age, from some
device, or from nature. The whole of it is externally carved with very
admirable engraving, of such minute and most delicate work that the
beholder, instead of admiring the skill or prowess of the carver, is
lost in amazement. The compartments are very circumscribed and small,
and they are occupied by divers beasts, flowers, and images, which seem
to be inserted, engraved, or furrowed out in the wood. This shrine is
enclosed in another outer one, which is entirely covered by hides, and
is surrounded and firmly bound by iron rails and bandages. The third,
however, which is decorated with gold and precious stones, is placed
above these, and, by means of indented flutings projecting from the
second, for which, in due order, similar projections are fabricated in
this, is closely attached and fastened to it by long iron nails. This
cannot possibly be separated from the rest, because these nails can by
no device be drawn out without fracture.’[559]
The Irish shrine was probably not so elaborate, but it too, as we have
seen, was decorated with silver and gold; and in the Life of St.
Bridget, written probably in the first half of the ninth century, and
attributed to Cogitosus, an account is given us of the shrines in the
church of Kildare. We have seen that the remains of Conlaid, the first
bishop of Kildare, were disinterred and enshrined in the year 799; and
Cogitosus, in his description of the church of St. Bridget, says, ‘in
which the glorious bodies both of Bishop Conleath and of this virgin St.
Bridget repose on the right and left sides of the altar, placed in
ornamented shrines decorated with various devices of gold and silver and
gems and precious stones, with crowns of gold and silver hanging above
them.’[560] If we are to look, then, to the period between the years 735
and 807 for the circumstances which led to the remains of St. Columba
being disinterred, taken over to Ireland, and enshrined at the church of
Saul Patrick, one of the nearest churches to Iona on the Irish coast,
the most natural inference certainly is that they were connected with
the piratical incursions of the Danes and the destruction of the
original monastery by fire in 802.
[Sidenote: A.D. 814-831.
Diarmaid abbot of Iona. Monastery rebuilt with stone.]
In the year 818, Diarmaid, abbot of Iona, returned to the island,
bringing with him the shrine of St. Columba.[561] This implies that
there had been by this time a reconstruction of the monastery at Iona.
The same causes which led to the new foundation at Kells being
constructed of stone applied with equal force at Iona; and, looking to
the time which was spent in erecting the buildings at Kells, which
required seven years to complete them, and that four years had elapsed
before Diarmaid could bring the shrine to Iona, there can be little
doubt that the new monastery there was now likewise constructed of
stone. The site, however, was changed. The position of the original
wooden monastery was, we have seen, in the centre of the open level
ground which extends between the mill-stream on the south and the rocky
hillocks which project from the east side of Dunii on the north, and
about a quarter of a mile to the north of the present ruins; but of this
no vestiges now remain, save the western _vallum_, or embankment, which
can still be traced, and the burying-ground near the shore, marked by
two pillar-stones about five feet high and three feet apart, across the
top of which a third stone lay, forming a rude entrance or gateway.[562]
This monastery had never before been exposed to any hostile attack; but,
now that it had become the object of the plundering and ravaging
incursions of the Danes, it was discovered to be in a very exposed
situation. In front was the sea, and behind it, on the west, from which
it was separated by the _vallum_, was the lake extending from the
mill-stream to the base of Dunii. The ground south of the mill-burn
presented a much more secure site, for here it was bounded on the west
by a series of rocky heights which could be fortified; and here, where
the present ruins of a late Benedictine monastery are situated, can be
discovered the traces of older stone buildings, which must have belonged
to an earlier monastery.[563] These no doubt may not be part of a stone
monastery erected so long ago as the beginning of the ninth century, but
the monastery then erected would merely be repaired, and such parts as
entirely gave way rebuilt from time to time; and it may be assumed that,
when the monastic buildings were once constructed of stone, the
monastery would always be preserved in the same place. Here, then, the
new stone monastery was probably constructed, consisting of an oratory
or church, a refectory, the cells of the brethren and an abbot’s house.
Behind the latter is a small rocky hillock called _Torrabb_, or the
abbot’s mount, in which is still to be found the pedestal of a stone
cross; and on a higher rocky eminence on the west, which overhangs the
monastery, are still to be seen the remains of entrenchments and
outworks by which it appears to have been strongly fortified.[564]
[Sidenote: Shrine of St. Columba placed in stone monastery.]
Here the brethren were reassembled, and hither was brought the shrine
containing the relics of St. Columba, which, according to what we have
seen was the usage of the time, would be placed on the right, or south,
side of the altar in the church, so as to be exposed for the veneration
of the inmates of the monastery. It might be supposed that the monks of
Iona would have felt a reluctance to leave a site hallowed by the
memories of their venerated patron saint, even though the new site may
have promised greater security; but it must be recollected that it is
the presence of the saint’s body that hallows the site of the monastery
he has founded, and confers upon it the privileges of an _Annoid_, or
mother church. Any spot to which his relics might be taken would be
equally sacred in the eyes of the community, and the new monastery
equally endowed with the privileges connected with them. It was so with
the monks of Lindisfarne, whose veneration accompanied the body of St.
Cuthbert when forced to retreat from their monastery under very similar
circumstances; and it hallowed every spot in which it was deposited,
till it finally invested the church at Durham, which held his shrine,
with the same feeling of devotion and reverence which had attached to
their first seat in the island of Lindisfarne.
[Sidenote: A.D. 825.
Martyrdom of St. Blathmac protecting the shrine.]
Whether the new stone monastery in Iona was to afford them better
security against their pagan plunderers the Danes was now to be tested,
as seven years had not elapsed before they renewed their attack; and we
now get a glimpse into the state of the monastery at this time from a
contemporary, in the metrical life of St. Blathmac, written by Walafrid
Strabo, who himself died only in the year 849.[565] He tells us that
Blathmac was of royal descent, heir of a throne in that rich Ireland
which had given birth to him as her future king; that, renouncing all
secular prospects, he resolved to lead a religious life and do honour to
his name, which signifies in Latin ‘pulcher natus;’[566] that he
surreptitiously joined a certain monastery, which his biographer does
not name, but which was in his father’s principality, and finally, as
abbot, ruled a venerable body of monks; that he finally, in order to
attain the height of perfection, coveted the crown of martyrdom, and, in
order to attain his desire, thought he could not do better than go to ‘a
certain island on the shores of the Picts placed in the wave-tossed
brine, called _Eo_,’ or Iona, ‘where Columba, the saint of the Lord,
rests in the flesh. This island he sought under his vow to suffer the
marks of Christ, for here the frequent hordes of pagan Danes were wont
to come armed with malignant furies.’ He seems to have had the care of
the monastery intrusted to him, and had not long to wait, ‘for the time
soon came when the great mercy of God decreed to associate his servant
with his glorious hosts above the stars, and confer a sure crown,’ viz.
that of martyrdom, ‘upon the pious victor.’ He became aware that an
attack on the island was about to be made by the Danes, and he thus
addressed the brethren:—‘“Ye, O companions, seek within your own minds
whether it be your determination to endure with me the coming fate, for
the name of Christ. Whoever of you can face it, I pray you arm
yourselves with courage; but those who are weak at heart and
panic-struck should hasten their flight, that they may avoid the obvious
danger, arming their hands for better vows. Before us stands the
imminent trial of certain death. May a firm faith keep us prepared for
future events; may the careful guardian of the flying protect those less
strong.” The community, touched by these words, determined to act
according to their strength. Some, with a brave heart resolved to face
the sacrilegious bands, and rejoiced to have to submit their heads to
the raging sword; but others, whom the confidence of mind had not yet
persuaded to this, hasten their flight to known places of refuge.’
Blathmac was aware that in attacking the monasteries the great object of
desire to the Danes was the shrines enriched with precious metals; and
therefore the monks ‘took the shrine from its place,’ which was, no
doubt, on the right side of the altar, and ‘deposited it in the earth in
a hollowed tumulus, or grave, and covered it with sods.’[567] The fatal
day is then ushered in rather poetically, showing how thoroughly the
narrator realised the scene. ‘The golden aurora,’ he says, ‘dispelling
the dewy darkness, dawned, and the glittering sun shone again with
glorious orb, when this pious cleric stood before the holy altar,
celebrating the holy offices of the mass, himself a victim acceptable to
God to be offered up to the threatening sword. The rest of the brethren
lay commending their souls with prayers and tears, when, behold, the
cursed bands rushed raging through the unprotected houses, threatening
death to those blessed men, and, furious with rage, the rest of the
brethren being slain, came to the holy father, urging him to give up the
precious metals which enclosed the sacred bones of Saint Columba,’—a
description which shows that there was a church or oratory, with an
altar—that the services of the church were again observed, and that
there were houses or cells for the monks. ‘This booty,’ he proceeds,
‘the Danes coveted; but the holy man stood firm with unarmed hand, by a
stern determination of the mind taught to resist battle and to challenge
encounter, unaccustomed to yield. He then poured out in the barbarous
tongue—that is, in Danish—the following words: “I know not truly what
gold ye seek, where it may be placed in the ground, and in what recesses
it may be hid; but, if it were permitted me to know, Christ permitting,
never would these lips tell this to your ears.[568] Savagely bring your
swords, seize their hilts and kill. O God, I commend my humble self to
Thy protection.” Hereupon the pious victim is cut in pieces with severed
limbs, and what the fierce soldier could not compensate with a price he
began to search for by wounds in the stiffened entrails. Nor is it a
wonder, for there always were and always will arise those whom evil rage
will excite against the servants of the Lord.’ And so Blathmac attained
his desire, and was made ‘a martyr for the name of Christ.’ This event,
so graphically described by the abbot of Augiadives, or Reichenau, took
place in the year 825.[569]
Four years after the martyrdom of Blathmac, we find Diarmaid, the abbot
of Iona of whose presence in Iona while the Danes attacked the monastery
in 825 we saw no trace, coming to Scotland with the _Mionna_ of
Coluimcille.[570] The word _Mionna_, as Dr. Reeves has pointed out,
‘signifies articles of veneration, such as the crozier, books, or
vestments of a saint, upon which oaths used in after-times to be
administered,’ in contradistinction to the word _Martra_, denoting the
bones or remains of the body of the saint. Thus we find Adamnan
mentioning the brethren endeavouring to avert the effects of a drought
by walking round a field, with the white tunic of St. Columba and some
book written in his own hand.[571] By this time, then, the brethren who
had escaped were reassembled at Iona under their abbot; and to this
period we may assign the construction, over the spot where the shrine
had been concealed, of a small oratory for its reception. At the west
end of the present ruins of the abbey church, and attached to the west
wall of the cloister, are the foundations of a small quadrangular cell
which goes by the name of St. Columba’s tomb. The walls are about three
and a half feet high, but it has been partly excavated, as the interior
floor is somewhat below the surface of the surrounding ground. It has at
the west end a regularly formed entrance, and within it—at the east
end—are two stone cists placed along the north and south walls, with the
space of a few feet between them. That this so-called cell is, in fact,
the remains of a small oratory, is at once evident when we compare these
remains of the building with oratories of this description in Ireland;
and of one of these, which is more entire, it seems to be almost a
reproduction. In the parish of Templemolaga and county of Cork there are
the remains of some ecclesiastical buildings. They consist of a central
or enclosing wall, within which are the remains of a church about
twenty-five feet long by twelve feet broad inside measure, and on the
north side of this, at a little distance, is a small oratory, which goes
by the name of Leaba Molaga, or St. Molaga’s bed. It measures internally
ten feet by seven feet two inches clear of walls, which are two feet
nine inches thick. The cell at Iona measures internally ten feet five
inches by seven feet, and the walls are about two feet thick. The west
gable of St. Molaga’s bed is partly preserved, and shows in the centre a
doorway formed of two upright stones for jambs, which support a massive
horizontal lintel. It is five feet six inches in height and two feet
four inches in width. The entrance to the cell at Iona is in the same
place and of the same width. This kind of oratory in Ireland has one
peculiarity, and that is a prolongation of the side walls beyond either
gable to the extent of from eighteen inches to two feet, which is
carried up the gables on a line with the stone roof, forming a species
of pilaster. These exist in Leaba Molaga, being about two feet three
inches wide and one foot four inches deep; and the same peculiar feature
is seen in the cell at Iona. At the east end of Leaba Molaga there were
a small window and an altar of stone on which were preserved two stones
believed to have been candlesticks; and on the south side of the altar,
and along the south wall of the oratory, was a stone cist, or tomb,
which measures five feet six inches in height, one foot eight inches in
width, and one foot in depth. Within the cell at Iona there are two
stone cists, one lying along the south wall of the oratory, and the
other along the north wall, with the space of a few feet between them.
The cist on the south wall is eight feet ten inches in length, and that
on the north wall six feet nine inches, and both cists are also one foot
eight inches broad. The east end of the cell now forms the wall of the
cloister, and, if a window existed, it has been built up, but the
resemblance between the two buildings is so striking, that we can hardly
doubt that it was an oratory of the same kind, and that the space
between the two cists was once filled, at the east end, by a stone
altar.[572] The stone cist on the right, or south, side of the altar
would, according to custom, contain the shrine of St. Columba, the
patron saint; that on the north side probably the remains of St.
Blathmac, who died a martyr in protecting it from the Danes and who, we
are told by his biographer, ‘reposes in the same place, where, for his
holy merits, many miracles are displayed.’[573]
[Sidenote: A.D. 831-854.
Innrechtach ua Finachta, abbot of Iona.]
Abbot Diarmaid did not remain long in Iona, for we find him in the year
831 returning to Ireland with the _Mionna_,[574] and we hear no more of
him. In 849 Innrechtach, abbot of Iona, is said to have gone to Ireland
with the _Mionna_ of Columcille, from which we may infer that they had
been restored to Iona, and that some time between the year 831 and 849
Innrechtach had become abbot. We know nothing of his race except that
his surname was Ua Finachta, and nothing of his history except that he
was slain by the Saxons when on a journey to Rome in the year 854, and
that he is then called heir, or coärb, of Columcille.[575] In the
meantime that great revolution had been effected which placed a Scottish
dynasty on the throne of the Picts. This is the most obscure portion of
the history of Scotland, and it is now hardly possible to trace the
circumstances which combined to elevate a Scot, in the person of Kenneth
mac Alpin, to a position of so much power, or to ascertain to what
extent the ecclesiastical element entered into this revolution; but we
can gather that it led to the reintroduction of the Scottish clergy into
the eastern districts thus added to Kenneth’s kingdom, and to an attempt
to reclaim for them these monasteries from which they had been expelled
in the preceding century. And this appears to have extended even to the
Scottish foundations in Lothian; for Kenneth, we are told, invaded
Saxonia, as the country south of the Firth of Forth was still termed,
six times, and burnt Dunbarre and Mailros, which had been usurped. In
whatever sense Dunbarre was held to be usurped, or whether this epithet
was intended to apply to it as well as to Mailros, the latter was
unquestionably founded by the Scottish missionaries from Iona, who were,
as we know, expelled from the monasteries they had founded, if they
would not conform to Rome; and it is possible that Dunbar may also have
been a Scotch foundation. It was undoubtedly in the possession of the
Angles of Northumbria; but Melrose appears to have been transferred to
the Britons of Strathclyde, as we find it afterwards in the diocese of
Glasgow; and it was probably in retaliation that the Britons burnt
Dunblane.[576] Be this as it may, Kenneth certainly resolved to
re-establish the Columban Church within the territories of the southern
Picts, which now formed the heart of his kingdom, on a different basis;
and, for this purpose, selected Dunkeld, where Constantine, king of the
Picts, had founded a church, probably as being the nearest of the
Pictish churches to the former Scottish kingdom of Dalriada, and the
most central for the whole kingdom.
[Sidenote: A.D. 850-865.
Tuathal, son of Artguso, first bishop of Fortrenn and abbot
of Dunkeld. Cellach, son of Aillelo, abbot of Kildare and of
Iona.]
Here, we are told, he built a church, and removed to it the relics of
St. Columba—that is, probably, only a part of them—in the seventh year
of his reign,[577] which corresponds with the year 850, the year after
Innrechtach had departed to Ireland with the _Mionna_. Iona, as we have
seen, had already lost her primacy over the Columban monasteries in
Ireland, which, in consequence of the destruction of her monastery by
the Danes, was transferred to Kells; and, in taking the relics to
Dunkeld, Kenneth constituted it too as an _Annoid_, or mother church,
over the Columbans in Scotland, and seems to have resolved to place the
abbot of his new monastery of Dunkeld as bishop over the church in the
territories of the southern Picts which had now come under his rule,
with a view to the more ready reorganisation of Scottish monasteries
within them, so that it should form one diocese, as it were, under one
bishop. Accordingly, five years after Kenneth’s death, we find recorded
the death of Tuathal mac Artguso, abbot of Dunkeld and first bishop of
Fortrenn, as the kingdom of the southern Picts was then called.[578] As
abbot of Dunkeld, a church dedicated to St. Columba and possessing part
of his relics, he thus occupied towards the Columban monasteries in
Scotland the same position as had belonged to Iona, and would be
regarded by them as coärb of Columcille. As bishop of Fortrenn he was
the recognised head of the Pictish church.[579]
The same year in which the death of the first bishop of Fortrenn is
recorded contains also the record of the death in the territory of the
Picts of Cellach son of Aillel, abbot of Kildare, and abbot of
Iona.[580] Nothing can better show how completely Iona had lost her
position for the time, and how difficult it now was to find a person to
occupy the post of danger, than the abbacy falling to an abbot of
Kildare; but, though he is said to have been also abbot of Iona, he did
not die either there or in his own monastery of Kildare, but in the
country of the Picts. He had probably been driven from his own monastery
in the province of Leinster by its exposure to the attacks of the Danes,
by whom it was plundered and its church burnt in the year 836; and in
845 its vice-abbot was slain,[581] a title which seems to indicate the
absence of the abbot. Kildare was, as we know, dedicated to the great
virgin saint of Ireland, St. Bridget, or St. Bride, and was the mother
church of all her foundations; but there was within the country of the
Picts one church in especial which was also dedicated to St. Bride, and
was held to be in a manner affiliated to that of Kildare, and that was
the church of Abernethy; and when we find an abbot of Kildare seeking
refuge in the Pictish kingdom and dying peacefully within its bounds, it
could hardly be elsewhere than in this church of Abernethy that he took
refuge; and he appears, when Innrechtach had left his monastery of Iona
and been slain on his way to Rome in 854, to have been appointed abbot
of Iona. Abernethy thus comes again into view for the first time since
it was refounded by St. Columba at the end of the sixth century. The
Columban monks were, no doubt, expelled from it in the beginning of the
eighth century, but now, in the reign of Kenneth mac Alpin, it was once
again occupied by Irish clergy. It is at this time probably that we may
place the erection of the round tower there, which could only have been
the work of Irish clergy; and this is the more probable as it is
undoubtedly of an older type than the round tower at Brechin, the date
of the building of which can be placed with some degree of certainty
late in the succeeding century, and as a round tower had been erected at
Kildare, which Dr. Petrie places at the close of the preceding
century.[582]
[Sidenote: A.D. 865-908.
Primacy transferred to Abernethy, where three elections of
bishops take place.]
The year 865, which saw the deaths both of the first bishop of Fortrenn
and of the abbot of Kildare, corresponds with the second year of the
reign of Constantine, the son of Kenneth; and he seems to have
transferred the bishopric from Dunkeld to Abernethy, for we find the
next abbot of Dunkeld, who died during this reign, called simply
superior of Dunkeld, while the title of bishop of Fortrenn is
dropped;[583] and Bower, the abbot of Inchcolm, tells us of Abernethy
that ‘in that church there had been three elections of bishops when
there was but one sole bishop in Scotland; and at that time it was the
principal royal and episcopal seat, for some time, of the whole kingdom
of the Picts.’[584] He is surely here reporting a genuine tradition, and
the statement as to the three elections during the time when there was
one sole bishop is so specifically made that it must have been derived
from some authentic record. But the time when there was one sole bishop
cannot have been before the nomination of the abbot of Dunkeld as first
bishop of Fortrenn. It must, however, have been before the bishops of
St. Andrews appear as sole bishops in the succeeding century. We are
driven, therefore, to place it in this interval between the death of
Tuathal, first bishop of the Picts, in the year 865, and the first
appearance of that position being occupied by a bishop of St. Andrews,
which, as we shall see, was in the year 908. We have no record of the
three bishops elected at Abernethy during this interval; but we may
possibly find the name of one of them in the dedication of a
neighbouring parish. The church of Lathrisk, now Kettle, was dedicated
to St. Ethernascus, whose day in the Scotch Calendar is the 22d
December; and we find on the same day in the Irish Calendar Saints
Ultan, Tua and Iotharnaisc, at _Claonadh_, now Clane, in the county of
Kildare, which too connects him with the mother church of St. Bridget of
Kildare.[585]
[Sidenote: Legend of St. Adrian.]
There is a legend which seems intimately connected with the events of
this very obscure portion of Scottish history. It is the legend of St.
Adrian, and, like all such legends, possesses some features which may be
considered historical. It is thus told in the Aberdeen Breviary at 4th
March, the day of St. Adrian:—Adrian, a distinguished soldier of Christ,
derived his origin from the province of Pannonia, a part of the region
of Hungary. He was, as usual, of royal descent, and, from his
transcendent merits, was early raised to the episcopate; and a large
number of clerics and laymen can testify to his labours among them.
Desirous of extending them to other countries, and inflamed with zeal
for the Christian religion, he took with him a venerable company and set
out for the central parts of Scotia, which were then occupied by the
Picts, and landed there, having with him confessors, clerics, and common
people to the number of six thousand and six, among whom the most
notable were Glodianus, who was crowned with martyrdom, Gayus and
Monanus, white-robed confessors, Stobrandus and other chief priests
adorned with the mitre. These men with their bishop Adrian, the Pictish
kingdom being destroyed, did many signs and wonders among the people,
but afterwards desired to have a habitation of their own on the Isle of
May, at the entrance of the Firth of Forth. But the Danes, who then
devastated the whole of Britain, came to the isle and there slew them.
In this island of May there was anciently a monastery founded, built of
fair-coursed masonry in honour of God and of his martyred saints, which
was afterwards destroyed by the nation of the Angles; but there still
remains a church often frequented by the faithful people on account of
their merits. There is also a celebrated cemetery where the bodies of
the martyrs repose.[586] At 1st March, on which day St. Monanus was
celebrated, the Breviary legend further tells us that ‘Monanus, born in
Pannonia, a province of the region of Hungary, belonged to that company
who, with the blessed Adrian, came from the pagan inhabitants of Noricum
to the Isle of May, where they were crowned with martyrdom. But, before
that the aforesaid company was destroyed by the fury of the Danes,
blessed Monanus preached the Gospel to the people on the mainland and in
a place called Inverry in Fyf. There his relics rest. Many miracles of
healing were performed there.’[587] The only other version we have of
this legend is that given by Wyntoun, who was prior of Lochleven and
there composed his Chronicle, and possessed no doubt sources of
information as to church legends now lost to us. He thus in his quaint
verse tells the tale in connection with Constantin, son of Kenneth, who
reigned from 863 to 876:—
This Constantyne than regnand
Oure the Scottis in Scotland,
Saynt Adriane wyth hys cumpany
Come off the land off Hyrkany,
And arryẅed into Fyffe,
Quhare that thai chesyd to led thar lyff.
At the king than askyd thai
Leve to preche the Crystyn fay.
That he grantyd wyth gud will,
And thaire lykyng to fullfille,
And to duell in to his land,
Quhare thai couth ches it mayst plesand.
Than Adriane wyth hys cumpany
Togydder come tyl Caplawchy.
Thare sum in to the Ile off May
Chesyd to byde to thare enday.
And sum of thame chesyd be northe
In steddis sere the Wattyr off Forth.
In Invery Saynct Monane,
That off that cumpany wes ane,
Chesyd hym sa nere the sé
Till lede hys lyff: thare endyt he.
Hwb, Haldane, and Hyngare
Off Denmark this tym cummyn ware
In Scotland wyth gret multitude,
And wyth thare powere it oure-yhude.
In hethynness all lyvyd thai;
And in dispyte off Crystyn fay
In to the land thai slwe mony,
And put to dede by martyry.
And upon Haly Thurysday
Saynt Adriane thai slwe in May
Wyth mony off hys cumpany:
In to that haly Ile thai ly.[588]
The chronology of this tale is quite clear. They came just at the time
when the so-called destruction of the Picts by Kenneth mac Alpin took
place; and they themselves perished by the Danes in the reign of his son
Constantin. Of so remarkable an event, however, as the invasion of Fife
by a body of six thousand and six Hungarians history knows nothing, and
it is obvious that we have here to deal with a myth somewhat similar to
that which brought St. Bonifacius and St. Servanus from Palestine. It
appears, however, that there were two traditions as to the origin of
these people, and Boece, who reports the fact, may probably here be
trusted. He says—‘There are not wanting those who write that these holy
martyrs of Christ were Hungarians, who, flying from the pagan fierceness
which was then rampant in Germany, passed into Scotland to preserve
their religion. Others say they were a company gathered together from
Scots and Angles.’[589] The first refers to the legend in the Breviary;
the second contains probably an admission of the truth; and an
examination of the legend will confirm this. The names of most of the
company are disguised under Latin forms, but one seems to preserve its
original shape. Monanus is simply the Irish _Moinenn_, with a Latin
termination. His relics are preserved at Inverry, now St. Monans, and he
is venerated on the 1st of March; but this is the day of St. Moinenn in
the Irish Calendar, who was first bishop of Clonfert Brenain on the
Shannon, and whose death is recorded by Irish annalists in 571.[590]
This leads us at once to Ireland as the country from whence they came;
and, so far from being accompanied by a living St. Monan, who lived at
Inverry, they had probably brought with them the relics of the dead St.
Moinenn, bishop of Clonfert, of the sixth century, in whose honour the
church, afterwards called St. Monans, was founded. But, when we turn to
the history of Ireland at this period, we find Turgesius the Dane had
placed himself at the head of all the foreigners in Ireland, and had
brought the whole of the south of Ireland under subjection to him. In
the year 832 he attacked Armagh and sacked it three times in one month.
During the next nine years he appears to have remained content with his
secular possession of the country, and did not attempt to overthrow the
power of the ecclesiastical authorities; but in 841 he banished the
bishop and clergy and usurped the abbacy of Armagh, that is to say, the
full authority and jurisdiction in Armagh and the north of Ireland; and
he seems not only to have aimed at the establishment of a permanent rule
of the Northmen over Ireland, but to have attempted the establishment of
his national heathenism in place of the Christianity which he found in
the country.[591] This continued for four years, till his death in 845.
Now, at this very time Kenneth mac Alpin was establishing his Scottish
kingdom in Pictland, and reclaiming for the Scottish clerics their old
ecclesiastical foundations. This must naturally have led to an extensive
immigration of Scots, both lay and cleric, into his new territories, and
we find that, after Turgesius had usurped possession of Armagh, he went
to Loch Ree, with a fleet of his countrymen, and from thence ‘plundered
Meath and Connaught; and Cluainmicnois was plundered by him, and _Cluain
Ferta Brenain_ and Lothra, and Tirdaglas, and Inisceltra, and all the
churches of Loch Derg-dheirc, or Loch Derg on the Shannon, in like
manner.’[592] This took place between 841 and 845; and under the latter
year the Irish Annals report the destruction as still more complete, for
they tell us that at Loch Ree ‘a fortress was erected by Turgesius for
the foreigners, so that they spoiled Connaught and Meath, and burned
Cluain mic Nois with its oratories, and _Cluainferta Brennain_, and
Tirdaglas, and Lothra, and numerous cities.’[593] Clonfert then was one
of a group of monasteries which were plundered and burnt by the Danes at
the very time when a body of clerics and laymen are said to have arrived
in Fife and erected a church at Inverry, which was dedicated to St.
Monenn, the first bishop of Clonfert, and where his relics were
deposited. It seems, therefore, a reasonable conclusion that the two
events were connected, and that it was probably owing to the state into
which the church in Ireland had been brought by the Danes, and to the
coincident establishment of a Scottish dynasty on the throne of the
Picts, that we find an abbot of Kildare appearing as also abbot of Iona,
and dying in the country of the Picts which had come under Scottish
rule, and that the arrival of so large a body of Scots in Fife is
intimately connected with the revolution which placed these Pictish
districts under the rule of a Scottish king.[594]
The Caplawchy of Wyntoun is now called Caiplie, on the shore of Fife
opposite the Isle of May, and Inverry is now called St. Monans. Both are
within the eastern district of Fife, which was said to have been given
to St. Regulus as a ‘parochia.’ Wyntoun tells us that some of the
company who landed there chose to remain on the Isle of May, and others
in places beyond the north shore of the Forth; and we may infer that,
while the great body of them spread over Fife and the neighbouring
districts, some resorted to an eremetical life and were slain by the
Danes.[595]
[Sidenote: A.D. 878.
Shrine and relics of St. Columba taken to Ireland.]
In the meantime the security of Iona was threatened by new enemies.
These were the Norwegian Vikings who occupied the Western Isles about
the middle of this century, and continued to do so from time to time,
till their permanent settlement in the Orkney Islands, towards the end
of the century, led to a more continued possession of the Isles; and in
the year 878 it appears to have been necessary to remove the relics of
St. Columba from Iona to Ireland for safety. These consisted not only of
the _Mionna_, or reliquaries, which had been so frequently taken to
Ireland, but also of the shrine which contained the remains of his body;
for we are told that in this year ‘the shrine of Colum Cille and all his
reliquaries were taken to Ireland to escape the foreigners,’[596] and
two years later Feradach, son of Cormac, abbot of Iona, dies.[597] He
was, no doubt, the successor of Cellach, the abbot of Kildare, but his
pedigree is unknown, and there is nothing to show whether he was
connected with any other religious house. The line of Conall Gulban,
however, the ancestor of the tribe of the patron saint, now comes in
again, but merely to give to the abbacy of Iona its last independent
abbot for many a long year. Flann, the son of Maelduin, whose death as
abbot of Iona is recorded in the year 891,[598] was a descendant of
Conall Gulban; but one of the same tribe, Maelbrigde, son of Tornan,
having been in 888 elected abbot of Armagh, the abbacy of Iona seems to
have fallen under his rule also, and thus he is described as ‘coärb of
Patrick and of Columcille’ in the Martyrology of Donegal, which adds
that he was ‘a man full of the grace of God, and a vessel of the wisdom
and knowledge of his time.’[599] His death is recorded in 927.[600]
In his time, however, the shrine of St. Columba must have been restored
to Iona, as we learn from the Life of St. Cadroë, a work of the eleventh
century. Cadroë was a native of Scotia, or Scotland,[601] and was born
about the year 900.[602] His father was Faiteach, a man of royal blood;
his mother, Bania, of similar wealth and nobility. She had been
previously married and had sons by her first husband; but after her
marriage with Faiteach she continued childless, till, with her husband,
she applied to the merits of St. Columba, and, going to his sepulchre
and passing the night in prayer and fasting, had hardly slept, when they
saw themselves in a vision holding two different candles, which suddenly
united into one light, and a man of shining apparel appeared and told
her that her tears had stained her stole and assisted her prayers in the
sight of God, and that she should bear a son called Kaddroë, a future
light of the church, who should have courage like his name; a warrior in
the camp of the Lord, he shall go up unconquered against the opposing
wall, prepared to stand in battle for the house of Israel.[603] They
awake full of joy, and after a time the woman has a son whom, according
to the divine command, they called Kaddroë. When the child is old
enough, his father’s brother Beanus, an aged priest, wishes to put him
to school, but the father objects, and insists that the child must be
dedicated to him who gave it. The mother then has another child called
Mattadanus. They then go a second time to the tomb of St. Columba, and
offer to him the second boy, and deliver the eldest to Beanus to be
educated.[604] The expressions used of the sepulchre and the tomb of St.
Columba imply that they went to Iona; and the small cell at the west end
of the abbey church, now called the tomb of St. Columba, is, as we have
seen, in all probability the remains of the oratory in which the shrine
of St. Columba was kept, and to which it must have been restored when
the parents of St. Cadroë passed the night in prayer and fasting before
it. And this connection with Iona is further indicated; for, when the
boy reaches an age to require more advanced instruction, he is sent to
Armagh, the metropolitan town of Ireland, to be further trained, at a
time when, as we have seen, the abbacy of Iona was under the rule of the
abbot of Armagh.
-----
Footnote 505:
Bede, _Hist. Ec._, B. v. c. 22.
Footnote 506:
_Ib._
Footnote 507:
_Ib._, B. iii. c. 4.
Footnote 508:
716 Pasca in Eo civitate commotatur.—_Tigh._
Footnote 509:
718 Tonsura corona super familiam Iae datur.—_Tigh._
Footnote 510:
Bede, _Hist. Ec._, B. v. c. 22.
Footnote 511:
722 Feidhlimidh principatum Iea tenet.—_Tigh._
Footnote 512:
724 Faelchu mac Dorbene abbas dormivit. Cillenius longus ei in
primatum Ie successit.—_Tigh._
Footnote 513:
726 Cillenius longus abbas Ie pausat.—_Tigh._ For Celline Droichteach,
see note 528.
Footnote 514:
This is an example of a peculiar form in which the names of many of
the saints appear in Irish. As a mark of affection, the syllable _mo_,
meaning ‘my,’ was prefixed, and the syllable _og_, meaning ‘little,’
added to the name; and when the name ended with the diminutive form
_an_, it was altered to _og_. Thus, Ronan becomes _Moronog_, or my
little Ronan; Colman, _Mocholmog_; Aedan, _Moaedog_ or Madoc, etc.
Footnote 515:
737 Bass Ronain abbatis Cindgaradh.—_Tigh._ For the legends of St.
Modan and St. Ronan see Bishop Forbes’s _Calendars of the Scottish
Saints_, pp. 400, 441.
Footnote 516:
725 Oan, princeps Ego, mortuns est.—_An. Ult._
Footnote 517:
727 Adamnani reliquie transferuntur in Hiberniam et lex
renovatur.—_Tigh._
Footnote 518:
This passage is quoted by Dr. Reeves in his edition of Adamnan (Ed.
1874, p. clxv.), on whose authority it is here given.
Footnote 519:
3d July. _Cilline Abb. Iae._—_Mart. Tam._
_Abb. Iae Cholaimcille an Cilline Droichteach sin._—_Mart. Marian._
_Ib._, p. clxxiii.
Footnote 520:
752 Mors Cilline Droichtigh ancorite Iea.—_Tigh._
Footnote 521:
Reeves’s _Adamnan_, ed. 1874, pp. cxxxix.-cxliii.
Footnote 522:
Petrie’s _Round Towers_, p. 423.
Footnote 523:
737 Failbe mac Guairi eires (hæres) Maelrubai in Apuorcrossan in
profundo pelagi dimersus est cum suis nautis numero xxii.—_Tigh._,
_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 76.
Footnote 524:
Colgan gives the following correct explanation of the word:—‘Vox autem
Hibernica _comhorba_ vel radicitus _comh-fhorba_, a qua desumitur,
derivata videtur a _comh_, id est, con vel simul; et _forba_, id est,
terra, ager, districtus; ut ex vocis origine Comhorbanus idem sit quod
Conterraneus.’—_Tr. Th._ p. 630.
Footnote 525:
See Dr. Todd’s _St. Patrick_, p. 155, for an account of the Coärbs;
also Dr. Reeves’s paper in _Proceedings of R. I. A._, vol. vi. p. 467.
Footnote 526:
See King’s _Introduction to the Early History of Armagh_, p. 17.
Footnote 527:
749 Ventus magnus. Dimersio familiæ Iea.—_Tigh._
Footnote 528:
752 Mors Cilline _Droictigh_ ancoritæ Iea. Cumine hua Becc religiosus
Eco mortuus est. _Bass_ Cilline mac Congaile in Hi.—_Ib._
Footnote 529:
754 Slebine abbas Iea in Hiberniam venit.—_Ib._
757 Lex Coluimcille la Slebine.—_Ib._
758 Reuersio Slebine in Hiberniam.—_Ib._
Footnote 530:
For this we have only the Annals of the Four Masters, who have in 754
(_recte_ 759) ‘_Feidhlimidh mac Failbe abb Iae decc iar secht
mbliadhna ochtmoghat a aeisi._’
Footnote 531:
766 Suibne abbas Iae in Hiberniam venit.—_An. Ult._
Footnote 532:
767 Quies Slebine Iae.—_Ib._
Footnote 533:
772 Mors Suibne abbas Iae.—_Ib._
Footnote 534:
It may be useful to insert here a table showing these rival abbots
from the death of Adamnan in 704 to the accession of Breasal in 772.
Those who belonged to the race of Conall Gulban are printed in old
English letters; the strangers in Roman.
=Adamnan=, abbot of Iona, dies 704.
704-710 Conamhail, son of │704-707 Interval of three years.
Failbhe, first abbot of a │
different race. │
710-712 Coeddi, bishop of Iona. │707-717 =Dunchadh=, son of
│Cinnfaeladh, abbot of Iona.
713 =Dorbeni= obtains chair of │
Iona, and dies same year. │
713-716 Interval of three years.│
716-724 =Faelchu= mac Dorbeni │717-722 Interval of five years.
obtains chair of Iona 29th │
August 716. │
724-726 Cillene the Long │722-759 Feidhlimidh mac Failbhe
succeeds Faelchu in abbacy. │holds abbacy of Iona.
726-752 Cilline Droichteach the │
anchorite, abbot of Iona. │
752-767 =Slebhine=, son of │759-766 Interval of seven years.
Congal, abbot of Iona. │
767-772 Interval of five years. │766-772 Suibhne, abbot of Iona.
772 Breasal, son of Seghine, becomes abbot for thirty years.
Footnote 535:
778 Lex Coluimcille la Donnchadh acus Bresal.—_An. Ult._
Footnote 536:
782 Muredach mac Huairgaile equominus Iae periit.—_Ib._
Footnote 537:
775 Mors Conaill Maighe Luinge.—_Ib._
Footnote 538:
776 Mors Maelemanach Ab. Cinngaradh.—_Ib._
Footnote 539:
790 Mors Noe abbatis Cinngaradh.—_Ib._
Footnote 540:
765 (_recte_ 770) Niall Frosach mac Ferghaile _secht mhliadhna os
Eirinn na righ, co nerbail in I Cholaimchille aga oilithre iar nocht
mhliadhna iaromh_ (was seven years king over Ireland, and died in Iona
on his pilgrimage eight years afterwards).—_An. F. M._
Footnote 541:
782 Bacall Airtgaile mic Cathail R. Conacht et peregrinatio ejus in
sequenti anno ad insulam Iae.—_An. Ult._
790 Artgal mac Cathail rex Conacht in Hi defunctus est.—_Ib._
Footnote 542:
784 Adventus reliquiarum filiorum Eirc ad civitatem Tailten.—_Ib._
Footnote 543:
794 Vastatio omnium insolarum Britanniæ a gentibus.—_Ib._
795 _Orcain Iae Choluimchille._—_An. Inis._
798 _Indreda mara doaibh cene itir Erinn et Albain._—_An. Ult._
Footnote 544:
801 Bresal mac Segeni, abbas Iae, anno principatus sui 31
dormivit.—_Ib._
Footnote 545:
802 _Hi Coluimbea cille_ a gentibus combusta est.—_An. Ult._
797 (_recte_ 802) Condachtach, _Scribbneoir tochaidhe acus_ abb. Iae
deg.—_An. F. M._
806 Familia Iae occisa est a gentibus .i. lx octo.—_An. Ult._
Footnote 546:
807 Constructio novæ civitatis Columbæ Cille _hi Ceninnus_ (in
Kells).—_Ib._
814 Ceallach, abbas Iae, finita constructione templi Cenindsa reliquit
principatum, et Diarmitius, alumpus Daigri, pro eo ordinatus
est.—_Ib._
Footnote 547:
This appears from the term ‘templum,’ usually applied to a stone
church, and from its being afterwards called a _Damhliag_ or stone
church.
Footnote 548:
Adamnan, B. iii. c. 24, says that the body of St. Columba was placed
in a coffin prepared for it, and buried. He uses the strange word
‘ratabusta,’ which the transcribers of the Life apparently did not
understand, as the MSS. present the following readings:—‘Rata busta,’
‘intra busta,’ ‘rata tabeta;’ and the Bollandists alter it to
‘catabusta,’ an inversion of ‘busticeta,’ which Ducange defines as
‘sepulchra antiqua,’ ‘sepulchra in agro.’ It seems to have been an
attempt to render in Latin the Irish _ferta_, which was either
generally a grave, or, as Dr. Reeves has shown in his _Ancient
Churches of Armagh_, p. 48, the equivalent of sarcophagus, or stone
coffin, in which sense it is used here; but in Adamnan’s time his
grave was undisturbed, and the place of his burial was well known; for
he says that the stone which he had used as a pillow stands to this
day as a monument at his grave, and that ‘until the present day the
place where his sacred bones repose, as has been clearly shown to
certain chosen persons, doth not cease to be frequently visited by
holy angels, and illuminated by the same heavenly light.’ Bede, also,
in talking of the ‘Monasterium insulanum’ founded by St. Columba,
adds, ‘in quo ipse requiescit corpore.’—_Hist. Ec._, B. iii. c. 4. The
passage in the Book of Armagh is as follows:—‘Colombcille, Spiritu
Sancto instigante, ostendit sepulturam Patricii, ubi est confirmat, id
est, in Sahul Patricii, id est, in ecclesia juxta mare proxima ubi est
conductio martirum, id est, ossuum Columbcille de Britannia et
conductio omnium sanctorum Hiberniæ in die judicii.’ The passage is
obviously somewhat corrupt, and has been well explained by Dr. Reeves
in the Introduction to his _Adamnan_, ed. 1874, p. lxxx. The word
‘proxima’ is in the original ‘pro undecima;’ but Mr. Henry Bradshaw,
of the University Library, Cambridge, has happily suggested that the
transcriber mistook the letters xi in proxima for the numeral undecim.
Conductio is the word frequently used in connection with enshrining,
and _Martra_, here rendered Martirum, has been shown by Dr. Reeves to
be the word used to designate the enshrined bones of a saint, the word
_Mionna_ being used for other relics, consisting of articles hallowed
by his use. The passage clearly shows that in 807, when the book of
Armagh was compiled, the bones of St. Columba had been enshrined, and
were then at the church of Saul Patrick.
Footnote 549:
734 Commutatio martirum Petri et Pauli et Patricii ad legem
perficiendam.—_An. Ult._
Footnote 550:
743 Commutatio martirum Treno Cille Deilgge.—_Ib._
776 Commutatio martirum Sancti Erce Slane et Finniain Cluaina
Irard.—_Ib._
Footnote 551:
784 Commutatio reliquiarum Ultani.—_Ib._
789 Commutatio reliquiarum Coimgin et Mochuæ mic Culugedon.—_Ib._
Footnote 552:
799 Positio reliquiarum Conlaid _hi Scrin oir ocus airgid_.—_Ib._
800 Positio reliquiarum Ronain filii Berich in arca auri et
argenti.—_Ib._
Footnote 553:
In hac mansione juxta oratorium meum ad meridiem contra orientalem
plagam Sanctæ Crucis, quam ibidem erexi.—_Vit. S. Cuth._, c. 37.
Footnote 554:
Atque in ecclesia beati apostoli Petri in dextera parte altaris
petrino in sarcophago repositum.—_Ib._, c. 40. At that time the right
side of the altar was the south side, but in 1485 this was altered in
the Roman Church, and the right side declared to be the north side,
because the right hand of the crucifix on the altar pointed to that
side.
Footnote 555:
Atque in levi arca recondita in eodem quidem loco, sed supra
pavimentum, dignæ venerationis gratia, locarent.—_Ib._, c. 42.
Footnote 556:
Et involutum novo amictu corpus levique in theca reconditum super
pavimentum sanctuarii composuerunt.—_Ib._
Footnote 557:
Cujus corpus in sepulcro beati Patris Cudbercti ponentes, adposuerunt
desuper arcam, in qua incorrupta ejusdem Patris membra
locaverunt.—_Ib._ c. 43.
Footnote 558:
Sim. Dun, _Hist. Reg._, ad an. 1104.
Footnote 559:
Reg. Mon. Dun. Lib. _de admirandis Beati Cuthberti_, c. 43.
Footnote 560:
Nec et de miraculo in reparatione ecclesiæ tacendum est, in qua
gloriosa amborum, hoc est, Episcopi Conleath et hujus virginis S.
Brigidæ corpora a dextris et a sinistris altaris decorati in
monumentis posita ornatis vario cultu auri et argenti et gemmarum et
pretiosi lapidis, atque coronis aureis et argenteis desuper
pendentibus requiescunt.—Messing. Florileg., _Vit. S. Brigidæ_, p.
199.
Footnote 561:
818 _Diarmaid Ab. Iae co sgrin Colaim Cille do dul a nAlbain_
(Diarmaid, abbot of Iona, went to Scotland with the shrine of St.
Columba).—_Chron. Scot._ The same notice appears in the Annals of the
Four Masters.
Footnote 562:
This burying-ground is now called _Cladh an Diseart_. It was carefully
examined this summer (1876) by the author and Mr. James Drummond,
R.S.A., and some excavations they made disclosed the foundations of a
rude stone oratory, about 26 feet long by 14 broad, the wall being two
feet thick. At the eastern end is a small recess in the wall, and in
this recess was found some years ago the stone which is figured in the
_Proceedings of the Antiq. Society_, vol x. p. 349, and believed to be
the stone pillow which was placed as a monument at St. Columba’s
grave. The oratory may have been erected over his grave by Abbot
Breasal, as he appears in the Calendars at 18th May as _Breasal o
Dertaigh_, or Breasal of the Oratory.—Colg. _A.SS._
Footnote 563:
In examining the existing ruins there is a peculiarity which cannot
fail to be observed. On the north side of the abbey church, and at a
little distance from it, is a chapel or oratory, about 33 feet long by
16 broad. This chapel, however, is not parallel to the abbey church,
but has an entirely different orientation. It points more to the
north, and the deflection amounts to no less than fourteen degrees. If
the chapel was connected with the abbey church, it is impossible to
account for this variation; but if it existed before the abbey church
was built, we can quite understand that the orientation of the latter
may have been quite irrespective of the former. Alongside of this
chapel are the foundations of a large hall, probably a refectory,
which have the same orientation. Then on the west of the ruins is a
building which goes by the name of Columba’s House, and this, too, has
nearly the same orientation. It was, no doubt, the abbot’s house. On
the south side of the present ruins there is, at a little distance,
another chapel called St. Mary’s Chapel, and here again we find the
same orientation. It can hardly be doubted that these buildings formed
part of the establishment which preceded the Benedictine monastery,
and this is confirmed by the discovery, between the abbot’s house and
the abbey church, of the foundations of an enclosure, the pavement of
which consists of monumental stones, two of them bearing Irish
inscriptions of the same character as the two oldest in the Relic
Orain.
Footnote 564:
Martin, in his account of Iona, speaking of St. Martin’s cross
says—‘At a little farther distance is _Dun Ni Manich_, i.e. _the
monks’ fort_, built of stone and lime in the form of a bastion, pretty
high. From this eminence the monks had a view of all the families in
the _Isle_, and at the same time enjoyed the free air’ (page 259). Dr.
Reeves remarks ‘that the artificial part does not now exist.’ He
looked for it, however, on the small eminence called Torr Abb; but
immediately behind it is a higher rocky eminence which better answers
the description, now called _Cnoc nan Carnan_, or the hillock of the
heaps or cairns, on which the remains of a fortification with outworks
are still quite discernible.
Footnote 565:
Printed in Messingham’s _Florilegium_, p. 399, and Pinkerton, _Vitæ
Sanctorum_, p. 459.
Footnote 566:
From _Blath_, beautiful, and _Mac_, a son.
Footnote 567:
... Quam quippe suis de sedibus arcam
Tollentes tumulo terra posuere cavato
Cespite sub denso....
This reminds one of St. Cuthbert’s ‘sarcophagus terræ cespite
abditus.’
Footnote 568:
The shrine appears to have been hid by the monks, and Blathmac
purposely remained ignorant of the spot where they buried it.
Footnote 569:
825 _Martre Blaimhicc mic Flainn o gentib in Hi Coluim Cille._ (The
martyrdom of Blaithmaic by the pagans in Iona.)—_An. Ult._
Footnote 570:
829 _Diarmait ab Iae do dul an Albain cominnaib Coluim Cille._—_Ib._
Footnote 571:
Reeves’s _Adamnan_, ed. 1874, p. 232; and the Life, B. ii. c. 45.
Footnote 572:
For a description of these Irish oratories, and especially St.
Molaga’s Bed, see Brash, _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Ireland_, p.
8, and Lord Dunraven’s magnificent work on _Irish Architecture_, p.
62, where it is figured.
Footnote 573:
Ille igitur Christi factus pro nomine Martyr,
Testis fert ut fama, loco requiescit eodem,
Multa ubi pro meritis dantur miracula sanctis.
At the west end of the oratory at Iona, overlapping its side walls, is
an enclosure, which is of late construction, but is filled with
gravestones, two of which bear Irish inscriptions. Inserted in the
west end of the enclosure is a cross, which, however, is not in the
centre, but directly faces the end of the cist on the south side of
the oratory.
Footnote 574:
831 _Diarmait totiachtain in hErin comminaib Coluim Cille._—_An. Ult._
Footnote 575:
849 _Innrechtach ab Iae do tiachtain do cum nErenn commindaib
Coluimcille._—_Ib._
854 Heres Columbecille sapiens optimus iv Id. marcii apud Saxones
martirizatur.—_Ib._
Indrechtaig hua Finechta abbas Iae _hi mardochoid oc dul do Roim
Saxanu_.—_An. Inis._
Footnote 576:
Concremavit Dunbarre atque Malros usurpata, Britanni autem
concremaverunt Dunblain.—_Pict. Chron._ The name Dunbarre seems
connected with St. Bar or Finbar, and may have been a Scotch
foundation, and been named from him, as Dunblane is from St. Blane.
Footnote 577:
Septimo anno regni sui reliquias Sancti Columbæ transportavit ad
ecclesiam quam construxit.—_Chron. Pict._ Dunkeld was dedicated to St.
Columba, and possessed some of the relics. Hickes, in his _Thesaurus_
(vii. 117), has published a Saxon document compiled about 1058, giving
the localities in England in which the relics of eminent saints were
placed; and in it we find a passage which he thus translates:—‘Sanctus
Columcylle requiescit in loco Duncahan juxta flumen Tau.’ This does
not imply that his body, or his tomb, was there, but merely part of
his relics; and that by Duncahan Dunkeld is meant—the letters _ld_
having been read _h_—appears from an incident preserved by Alexander
Mylne, a canon of Dunkeld, who died in 1549, in his Lives of the
Bishops of Dunkeld. He says that in the year 1500, when a severe
pestilence afflicted the whole kingdom of Scotland, the town of
Dunkeld alone remained unaffected by it through the merit of its
patron saint Columba, and that the bishop visiting some who were sick
of the pest in the church lands of Caputh, administered the sacrament
to them, and next day having blessed some water in which he had dipped
a bone of St. Columba, sent it to them by his chancellor to drink and
many receiving it were made whole.—Mylne, _Vit. Ep. Dunk._ pp. 40, 43.
Footnote 578:
865 Tuathal mac Artguso, primus episcopus Fortren et abbas
Duincaillenn dormivit.—_An. Ult._
Footnote 579:
Kenneth seems to have taken for his model the establishment of a
bishop from Iona in Northumbria, where the whole kingdom formed one
diocese under one bishop. The term ‘primus episcopus’ here
unquestionably means first in time, not in dignity. The Scotch
Episcopal Church appears to have understood it in the latter sense,
and thus presents the anomaly of one of the successors of a long line
of bishops bearing the title of ‘primus episcopus.’ An elective
primacy, too, is as great an anomaly.
Footnote 580:
865 Ceallach mac Aillelo abbas Cilledaro et abbas Ia dormivit in
regione Pictorum.—_Ib._
Footnote 581:
_Chron. Scotorum_, ad an. 836-845.
Footnote 582:
In a note by Dr. Petrie appended to Sir James Simpson’s Essay on a
Stone-Roofed Building in the Island of Inchcolm, as printed in his
_Archæological Essays_, edited by Dr. John Stuart, vol. i. p. 134, he
states that no one can doubt that the age of the Abernethy tower is
much greater than that of Brechin, and adds, ‘This is the opinion I
formed many years ago, after a very careful examination of the
architectural peculiarities of each, and I came to the conclusion that
the safest opinion which could be indulged as to the age of the
Abernethy tower was that it had been erected during the reign of the
third Nectan, _i.e._ between 712 and 727, and by those Northumbrian
architects of the monastery of Jarrow for whose assistance the king,
according to the high authority of Bede, had applied to build for him,
in his capital, a stone church in the Roman style.’ It appears to the
author that this opinion, though proceeding from so high an authority
as Dr. Petrie, is not tenable, for, first, Bede says nothing about the
church being in his capital, but he distinctly says that it was to be
dedicated to St. Peter, and there is no dedication to St. Peter at
Abernethy; secondly, though undoubtedly older than the tower at
Brechin, it cannot, he thinks, be taken so far back as the beginning
of the eighth century; and thirdly, the author has been unable to
discover any peculiarity so marked as to take it out of the class of
the Irish round towers altogether, or to warrant the supposition that
it is a solitary instance of a round tower built by Anglic architects
in the Roman style.
Footnote 583:
873 Flaithbertach mac Murcertaigh princeps Duincaillden obiit.—_An.
Ult._
Footnote 584:
Et in illa ecclesia fuerunt tres electiones factæ, quando non fuit
nisi unus solus episcopus in Scotia. Nunc fuit locus ille sedes
principalis regalis et pontificalis, per aliquot tempora, totius regni
Pictorum.—_Scotichron._, B. iv. c. 12.
Footnote 585:
Bishop Forbes’s _Calendars_, p. 334.
Footnote 586:
This legend is printed in the _Chronicles of the Picts and Scots_, p.
423.
Footnote 587:
_Breviary of Aberdeen_, Pars Hyem. f. lix.
Footnote 588:
Wyntoun, _Chron._, B. vi. cap. 8.
Footnote 589:
Non desunt qui scribant sanctissimos Christi martyres Hungaros fuisse
genere in Scotiam ethnicorum feritate, quæ sub idem tempus in Germania
debacchabatur fugientes, servandæ religionis causa trajecisse. Alii ex
Scotis Anglisque gregarie collectos.—_Boetii Scot. Hist._, fol.
ccxiii.
Footnote 590:
571 Moenen Eps Cluanaferta Brenand quievit.—_Tigh._ 1st March,
_Maoineann espoc Cluana Ferta Brenainn_.—_Mart. Don._
Footnote 591:
See this view brought out by Dr. Todd in his Introduction to the _Wars
of the Gaedhel with the Gaill_, pp. xlii.-xlviii.
Footnote 592:
_Wars of the Gaedhel with the Gaill_, p. 13.
Footnote 593:
_Annals of Ulster_, ad an. 844; _Chron. Scot._, 845.
Footnote 594:
How the Hungarian story should have arisen it seems difficult to
guess, but possibly it may have been brought forward about the time of
Queen Margaret, when her own connection with Hungary might lead some
of the ecclesiastical parties to suppose that a legend of this kind
would find favour with her. There is a cluster of Adrians in the
Martyrologies about this time. On 1st March, Adrianus, a Roman martyr
of Bologna; Adrianus, martyr in Africa; Adrianus of Marseilles. On the
4th March, Adrianus, martyr, with thirty-three companions of
Nicomedia, under Diocletian; and on the 5th, Adrianus, martyr of
Cæsarea; but there is no Adrianus of Hungary. Bishop Forbes notices,
in his _Calendars_ (p. 267), that Usuardus has also a St. Gagius on
the 4th, who seems to correspond with the Gayus of the legend. The
Irish name that seems to come nearest Adrian in form is Odhran; and
the Martyrology of Donegal has this name on 6th March, and we find a
subsequent bishop of St. Andrews called Mac Gilla Odran, or the son of
the servant of Odran. The parishes of Flisk and Lindores, both within
the parochia, are dedicated to a St. Macgidrin, and his name is
connected with Macduff’s Cross, the boundary-stone of the region of
Fife. It is possible that the name which appears under this form may
be that which was Latinised Adrianus. He may also have been one of the
three bishops elected at Abernethy.
Footnote 595:
See the interesting notice of the Coves at Caiplie and other places on
the coast of Fife in the _Sculptured Stones of Scotland_, vol. ii.,
appendix to preface, p. lxxxvii.; and Dr. John Stuart’s remarks in his
Preface to the _Chartulary of the Isle of May_, p. v.
Footnote 596:
878 _Scrin Coluim Cille ocus aminna orchena do thiachtain do cum
n-Erenn for teicheadh na Gallaibh_.—_An. Ult._
Footnote 597:
880 Feradach mac Cormac abbas Iae pausat.—_Ib._
Footnote 598:
891 Flann mac Maileduin abbas Iae in pace quievit.—_An. Ult._
Footnote 599:
_Mart. Donegal_, p. 55.
Footnote 600:
927 _Maelbrigda mac Tornain Comhorba Patraic et Coluimcille_, felici
senectute quievit.—_An. Ult._
Footnote 601:
At the time this Life was compiled, the name of Scotia had already
been transferred to Scotland, and a candid examination of the Life
shows the scene of his early years was in Scotland.
Footnote 602:
He is said in the Life to have died in the seventieth year of his age
and the thirtieth of his pilgrimage, but it began when Constantin was
king of Alban, and Eric ruled at York. Eric’s reign at York began
about 938, and Constantin died in 942, which limits us to four years
for the year of his birth.
Footnote 603:
Colgan explains Kaddroë as _Cath_, battle, _Roe_, the same as _Agon_,
place of contest.—_A.SS._, p. 503.
Footnote 604:
This part of the Life is printed in the _Chronicle of the Picts and
Scots_, p. 106.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE SCOTTISH CHURCH.
[Sidenote: A.D. 878-889.
First appearance of the name ‘the Scottish Church’ when freed
from servitude under Pictish law.]
‘This is he who first gave liberty to the Scottish Church which had been
until now under servitude, according to the law and custom of the
Picts.’[605] Such is the almost unanimous testimony of the chronicles as
to King Giric, who reigned from 878 to 889; and this is the first
appearance of the church under the name of ‘the Scottish Church.’ At
this time the kingdom ruled by the new dynasty of kings of Scottish race
was still the kingdom of the Picts, and the kings were still called
kings of the Picts. Giric therefore must be regarded as such; and he
seems also to have broken in upon the Tanistic law of succession, and
reintroduced the Pictish law, by which the throne descended to the
sister’s children in preference to the son’s; while by ‘the Scottish
Church’ could only be meant that church which his predecessor Kenneth
had constituted and placed under the rule of one bishop. The first, as
we have seen, was the abbot of Dunkeld; but the election of this bishop
was now in the hands of the church of Abernethy. Giric’s object
therefore probably was to secure the support of the Scottish clergy by
conferring a boon upon their church. Whatever that boon may have been,
the expression ‘that he first gave it’ seems to imply that it was
something which the Pictish kings had not previously given, but in which
he was followed by his successors. What then was implied by the church
being under servitude, and having liberty given to it? These are terms
which, in connection with the church lands, have a very definite
meaning. About thirty years before this date Ethelwulf, king of Wessex,
as we are told in the Saxon Chronicle, in the year 855, ‘chartered the
tenth part of his land, over all his kingdom, for the glory of God and
his own eternal salvation;’ and in the deeds rehearsing this grant we
find the same expressions used. Thus, in one grant he says that he has
not only given the tenth part of his lands to the holy churches, but
also ‘that our appointed ministers therein should have them in perpetual
liberty, so that such donation shall remain permanently freed from all
royal service, and relieved from all secular servitude;’ and in another
there is a still more detailed explanation of it. He grants the tenth
part of his lands ‘to God and St. Mary, and to all the saints, to be
safe, protected and free from all secular services, not only the greater
and lesser loyal tributes or taxations, which we call Witeredden, but
also free from every thing, for the remission of souls and my sins, to
the sole service of God, without hosting or construction of bridges or
fortification of citadels, that they may pray for us without ceasing, in
as far as we have freed them from their servitude.’[606] In the early
Irish Monastic Church, the land granted for the endowment of a church or
monastery to its first founder or patron saint, was usually called its
_Termon_ land, and was considered by right to have the privilege of
sanctuary and to be free from any rents, tributes, or other exactions by
temporal chiefs; but the close connection between the church and the
tribe, and the rights of the latter in connection with the succession to
the abbacy, led to a constant attempt on the part of the secular chiefs
to bring these lands under the same obligations towards themselves as
affected the tribe lands; and, when they succeeded in this, they were
held to have brought the church under servitude. This appears even as
late as the Synod of Cashel, in 1172, the fourth act of which is as
follows:—‘That all church lands, and possessions belonging to them, be
wholly free from exaction on the part of all secular persons, and
especially that neither petty kings, nor chieftains, nor any other
powerful men in Ireland, nor their sons with their families, are to
exact, as has been customary, victuals and hospitality in lands
belonging to the church, or presume any longer to extort them by
force;’[607] and there is an instructive passage in the Annals of the
Four Masters, about the same time, where we find it stated, in the year
1161, ‘It was on this occasion that the churches of Columcille in Meath
and Leinster were freed by the Coärb of Columcille, Flaithbheartach Ua
Brolchain; and their tributes and jurisdiction were given to him, for
they had been previously enslaved.’[608]
When the Columban monks were expelled from the Pictish territories in
the beginning of the preceding century, and a different system
introduced, the church lands would no doubt be brought under the same
burdens and exactions as applied to other lands. This appears to have
taken place about the same time in England; for St. Boniface, archbishop
of Mentz, who was himself an Englishman, writes to Cudberht, archbishop
of Canterbury about 745, regarding ‘the enforced servitude of the monks
in royal works and buildings, which is not heard of in the whole
Christian world save only among the nation of the Angles—which cannot be
acquiesced in or consented to by the priests of God—which is an evil
unknown to past ages.’[609] So it seems also to have been among the
Picts; and it had become their custom and usage that the church lands
and their occupants should not be exempted from secular services. It is
therefore probably by a prolepsis that the first grant of St. Andrews by
King Hungus is accompanied by exemptions really due to King Giric, when
we are told that the donation is ‘with such freedom that its occupiers
should always be free and quit from all hosting and construction of
castles and bridges, and the vexation of all secular exactions.’ The
ordinary burdens of the land among the Picts were exigible by their
kings, mormaers and toiseachs; and the proportion received by each was
termed their share, as appears from the grants in the Book of Deer. What
King Giric did, therefore, was probably to issue a decree, similar in
terms to that of the Synod of Cashel at a later period, ‘that all church
lands and possessions belonging to them be wholly free from exaction on
the part of all secular persons, and that neither kings nor mormaers nor
toiseachs are to exact, as has been customary among the Picts, victuals
and hospitality in lands belonging the church, or presume any longer to
extort them by force.’[610]
[Sidenote: A.D. 908.
Primacy transferred to St. Andrews. Cellach first bishop of
Alban.]
Though the church benefited by this act of King Giric, it does not
appear to have availed much, so far as his personal object was
concerned; for he was, along with his pupil the British son of Kenneth’s
daughter, driven out, and the throne was once more occupied by his male
descendants. They now were called no longer kings of the Picts, but
kings of Alban; and the districts between the Forth and the Spey are no
longer Fortrenn, or Pictland, but Alban. The reign of the second of
these kings of Alban was an important one for the Church, for in his
sixth year—that is, about 908—a great meeting was held on the Moothill
of Scone, at which King Constantin and Bishop Cellach ‘solemnly vow to
protect the laws and discipline of the faith, and the rights of the
churches and of the Gospel, equally with the Scots.’[611] Two facts may
fairly be deduced from the short notice of this meeting given in the
Pictish Chronicle; first, that it secured the rights and liberties of
the church as now amalgamated into one body; and secondly, that the
leading part taken in it by Bishop Cellach obviously places him at the
head of the church, and the primacy must now have been transferred from
Abernethy to St. Andrews. There are two lists of the bishops of St.
Andrews given to us; one by Bower, who was abbot of Inchcolm, and the
other by Wyntoun, who was primate of Lochleven. These lists agree, and
in both Cellach appears as first bishop of St. Andrews.[612] This
meeting may be held to have in fact finally constituted the Scottish
Church under its then organisation, in which it was placed under the
government of one bishop, who was designated _Epscop Alban_, or bishop
of Alban.[613]
[Sidenote: A.D. 921.
Introduction of canonical rule of Culdees.]
It is followed in some dozen years after by another event, which, though
the notice of it from another source is short enough, yet had evidently
a very important influence upon the church. We have already seen that a
fraternity of _Cele De_ are mentioned in connection with the Church of
Armagh as early as the year 921, when we are told by the Irish Annalists
that in that year Armagh was pillaged, on the Saturday before St.
Martin’s day, which was the 10th of November, by Gofirth, grandson of
Ivar, and his army, who spared the houses of prayer with their people of
God, the _Cele De_, and their sick, and the whole church town, except
some houses which were burnt through neglect; but two of the annalists
add in the same year that ‘Maenach _Cele De_, or the Culdee, came across
the sea from the west, that is, from Ireland, to establish the
ordinances of Erinn.’[614] We have thus the decrees of 908, followed by
a _Cele De_, or Culdee, coming over from Ireland and establishing laws,
which can only mean those rules which regulated the community of the
_Cele De_ at the time in Ireland, who had now been for a century under
the canonical rule; and at this period we must date the establishment in
Scotland of the form of canonical life which we find the Culdees in
Scotland afterwards exhibiting.
We get a glimpse into the state of the church in this reign too in the
Life of St. Cadroë. Having been fully instructed at Armagh, he returned
to Beanus, his uncle, and ‘scatters the seeds of wisdom throughout the
whole of Scotland; for, though the Scots have had many teachers, they
have not had many fathers. He here trained them in the knowledge of the
arts, whence, because he instructed many with his lips, he had no
associates; for, from the time of his arrival, none of the wise men had
crossed the sea, but still remained in Ireland. The old man rejoiced to
possess the youth, and had not his equal in anything which he tried.’ In
the meanwhile time passed on, and, as usual, he received a divine
warning that he was to leave his native country and go on a foreign
mission. There flowed near his residence a large river, close to which,
as it happened, was the trunk of a certain tree. Thither he went at
night, and removing his garments entered the stream in the extreme
rigour of cold, and, holding by the tree, that he might not be carried
off by the current, he recited Psalms, from the 118th to the 123d Psalm.
He then entered upon his pilgrimage, and as grief filled the whole
region, and the population assembled, the king of the country, called
Constantin, endeavoured to retain him. In his journey Cadroë, desiring
to pray, entered the monastery of St. Bridget, when the people coming
from different parts completely fill the noble and rustic church. All
begged him not to quit the country, and after some discussion a certain
abbot, called Maelodarius, came with the king and persuaded them to let
him go, and he departed to the land of the Cumbrians.[615] We need not
follow him any farther. As Cadroë was born about the year 900, his
return from Armagh was either coincident with or soon after the arrival
of the Culdee in 920, as is implied in his statement that he was the
last of the instructors who had come from Ireland. The large river was
no doubt the river Earn; and we may thus identify Beanus with the St.
Bean to whom the church of Kinkell in Strathearne, on the north bank of
the Earn, was dedicated. He commenced his foreign mission about the year
940. The monastery where he entered the Church of St. Bridget can have
been no other than that of Abernethy, and Maelodarius, or Maelodhar, was
no doubt its abbot. The first notice of the _Cele De_ at Armagh, as we
have seen, occurs in the same year in which Maenach the _Cele De_ came
to Scotland, and during the tenure of the abbacy by Maelbrigde, the
instructor of Cadroë; and he too probably was connected with the mission
which brought the _Cele De_ to Scotland, and with the establishment of
its rule. Constantin, who so strenuously urged his not leaving the
country, makes a fitting termination to his own reign when, according to
the Pictish Chronicle, worn out with age, he assumed the pilgrim’s
staff, and served the Lord, and resigned the throne to Malcolm, son of
Donald. This is echoed by St. Berchan when he says—
Afterwards God did call him
To the monastery on the brink of the waves,
In the house of the apostle he came to death;
Undefiled was the pilgrim.
By the house of the apostle St. Andrews is meant, and here, according to
the testimony of the same chroniclers who reported the grant in favour
of the church by King Giric, he becomes abbot of the _Keledei_, or
Culdees.[616]
[Sidenote: Fothad, son of Bran, second bishop of Alban.]
Whether Cellach the bishop was alive at this time we do not know, but
his successor was certainly Fothad, son of Bran. He appears in the
Chartulary of St. Andrews as having made an arrangement with the Keledei
of Lochleven, by which they gave the island of Lochlevyne to the bishop
of St. Andrews, who, in return, undertook to provide them with food and
clothing. This grant is said to have been made by ‘Ronan, monk and
abbot, a man of admirable sanctity, who first conveyed the place, by a
_precaria_, to the bishop Fothath, son of Bren, who then and since was
celebrated throughout all Scotland, and was of a commendable life. The
bishop gave his benediction to all who should observe that convention
and the friendship established between the bishop and the _Keledei_;
and, on the other hand, gave his malediction to all bishops who should
infringe or revoke that convention.’[617] Fothad remained bishop during
the whole of the reign of Malcolm, who succeeded Constantin; but we are
told that he was expelled by his successor, Indulph, who reigned from
954 to 962, and that he lived eight years afterwards. As his death is
recorded in the year 963, this places his expulsion in the year 955.
During the whole of this period the island of Iona was in the main cut
off from any connection with Scotland, by the occupation of the Western
Islands by the Norwegians, and its monastery had to fall back upon
Ireland for such nominal connection with the Columban monasteries as
could be kept up. One of the abbots of these monasteries was usually
elected coärb of Columcille, and the abbacy of Iona became a dependent
monastery under his rule. As we have seen, in the beginning of the
century a descendant of Conall Gulban, Maelbrigde, son of Tornan, had
been elected abbot of Armagh, and, as belonging to the tribe of the
patron saint, became coärb of Columcille; but on his death in 927,
Dubthach, son of Duban, who was also of the race of Conall Gulban,
became coärb of Columcille. He was abbot of Raphoe, in Ireland, and as
such was likewise coärb of Adamnan, and accordingly his death is
recorded by the Ulster Annals in 938 as coärb of Columcille and Adamnan;
but he is styled by the Four Masters ‘coärb of Columcille and Adamnan
both in Erin and Alban.’[618] During his time, however, the actual
government of the abbacy as a dependent monastery seems to have fallen
to the Anchorite, or _Deorad_ as he is termed in the Brehon Laws; for we
find that an anchorite had been elected abbot, though he died before his
right was confirmed, as in 937 the death is recorded of Angus, son of
Murcertach, a learned man, anchorite and abbot-elect of Iona.[619]
Dubtach’s successor was Robartach, who was likewise abbot of Raphoe, for
his death is recorded in 954 as coärb of Columcille and of Adamnan; and
during his time also we find an abbot of the dependent monastery in 947,
when Caen-comhrac, abbot of Iona, dies.[620]
[Sidenote: A.D. 955-963.
Malisius bishop of Alban.]
An attempt seems now to have been made to connect the monastery of Iona
with the Scottish Church, for the next two coärbs of Columcille,
Dubhduin and Dubhscuile, whose joint tenure of the coärbship extends
from the year 954 to 964,[621] do not appear to have had any connection
whatever with Iona; while Bower betrays the cause of the expulsion of
Fothad, when he tells us that his successor Malisius was a disciple of
the blessed St. Duthacus in Ireland, who had foretold of him that he
would be the future bishop of the Scots.[622] He quotes as his authority
a Life of St. Duthacus which does not now exist. This Duthacus can be no
other than that Dubhthach who was coärb of Columcille both in Erinn and
Alban from 927 to 938; and Indulph’s attempt was to bring Iona into
connection with the Scottish Church by placing a disciple of his in St.
Andrews as its bishop. The abbacy of Dunkeld, too, to which a Columban
monastery would naturally look as its head in Scotland, seems now to
have passed into the hands of laymen, and to have been held by a lay
abbot; for we find Dunchad, abbot of Dunkeld, taking part in the war of
succession between the kings Dubh and Cuilean, and being slain in the
battle of Duncrub.[623] Malisius is said to have been eight years
bishop, which is the exact time Fothad is said to have lived after his
expulsion; and St. Andrews seems at this time to have drawn pilgrims
from Ireland; for in 963 we find, in the Irish Annals, the death of
Aedh, son of Maelmithidh, in pilgrimage at _Cinnrimonadh_ or St.
Andrews.[624] But when Indulph was succeeded by Dubh, in 962, he appears
to have been restored in the last year of his life, as the first event
mentioned by the Pictish Chronicle in the reign of Dubh is the death of
Fothad the bishop, and in the year 963 the Annals of the Four Masters
record his death as that of Fothadh, son of Bran, scribe and bishop of
Inis Alban.[625]
[Sidenote: A.D. 963-970.
Maelbrigde bishop of Alban.]
The succeeding bishop was Maelbrigde, and during his time we find that
Dubhscuile, who is simply styled coärb of Columcille and died in 964,
was succeeded by Mughron, whose death is recorded in the Annals of
Ulster in 980 as ‘coärb of Columcille in Erinn and in Alban,’[626]
showing that Iona had once more fallen back upon the coärb of Columcille
in Ireland. During the first two years of Mughron’s possession of the
coärbship, the government of Iona as a dependent monastery seems to have
again fallen to the Anchorite, who joined with it the title of bishop,
but after his death, a new official makes his appearance—an _Aircinnech_
of Iona, whose death is recorded in 978.[627] The name of _Aircinnech_
first appears in the Irish Annals in the ninth century, when it is
occasionally mentioned, but more frequently in the succeeding centuries.
It was essentially a lay office, though we find it combined with the
titles of bishop, of abbot and of priest. The duties of the office were
to superintend the lands and farms of the church or monastery and their
tenants, to collect the rents or other tributes paid by them, and
perhaps also to distribute amongst the poor the alms or hospitality of
the coärb and his ‘familia.’[628] When the functions of abbot were
discharged by an anchorite, such an office became necessary for the
management of the secular concerns of the monastery.
[Sidenote: A.D. 970-995.
Cellach, son of Ferdalaig, bishop of Alban.]
The short and unsatisfactory notices of the church given in the Pictish
Chronicle show, in the reign of Cuilean, from 967 to 976, indications of
some disturbance in the church of St. Andrews, the nature of which we
can only guess at. We learn that a Marcan, son of Breodolaig, was slain
in the church of St. Michael, which was one of the seven churches of St.
Andrews; that Leot and Sluagadach go to Rome; that Bishop Maelbrigde
died, and that Cellach, son of Ferdalaig, ruled in his stead;[629] and
when Bower adds that he was the first who went to Rome for confirmation,
and lived twenty-five years after his confirmation,[630] we can see that
all these events were connected; but whether it was a violent attempt to
seize the bishopric, which ended in the pretender being slain in the
church, and whether Leot and Sluagadach went to Rome to obtain
absolution for the slaughter, or whether it was a contested election on
the death of Maelbrigde, and they went to obtain for Cellach the
additional authority of the pope’s confirmation, we cannot tell. The
reign of Kenneth, who succeeded Cuilean, was an important one both for
the Scottish Church and for Iona. The important event for the former was
the foundation of the church of Brechin, which appears to have taken
place early in his reign, and to have been dedicated to the Holy
Trinity. The short statement which the Pictish Chronicle gives us of
this donation to the church conveys no further information regarding it
than that Brechin was even then considered an important place.[631] We
can only infer, from its subsequent history, that it was a monastery
after the Irish model, in which form the Scottish foundations after the
accession of Kenneth mac Alpin appear to have been made, with which was
now combined a college of _Cele De_, and that it has left us, as a mark
of its early connection with Ireland, the only other specimen of the
round towers to be found in Scotland, besides that which had been
erected at Abernethy. The churches, too, which afterwards formed the
diocese of Brechin, were probably, even at this early period,
possessions of the new foundation at Brechin. In the districts of Angus
and Mearns the churches were shared between the dioceses of Brechin and
St. Andrews, in a manner so irregular and unsystematic as to point to a
mixed population in which some of the villages were still Pictish and
others had now a Scottish colony. It seems to have been through the
medium of the recovery of the old foundations, and the creation of new,
that a Scottish population was spread over the country; and the object
of King Kenneth in this foundation may have been to bring a Pictish
population more under the direct influence of the Scots. The church of
Brechin was founded during the time that Mughron was coärb of Columcille
both in Erinn and Alban, when probably there was freer intercourse
between the Scotch and Irish Churches; but his death, after he had held
the coärbship for sixteen years, was followed by events fatal for Iona.
[Sidenote: Iona ravaged by Danes. Shrine of St. Columba transferred to
Down.]
At this time the Western Isles, including the Isle of Man, were the
subject of a constant struggle between the Danes and the Norwegians, for
their acquisition by the former and their retention by the latter. The
Danes of Limerick had, during the latter part of this century, acquired
possession of the Isle of Man, and, as early as the year 973, we find
Maccus, son of Aralt, who was at their head, called king of many
islands;[632] but how far his sway over the Western Isles extended we do
not know. Of the two pagan races who infested Ireland and the West of
Scotland, the Danes were by far the more cruel and destructive in their
attacks upon the monasteries, and appear to have been most dreaded. The
last year of Mughron’s life had witnessed the arrival at Iona of one of
the most powerful kings of the Danes of Dublin, Anlaf Cuaran, who in
that year ‘went on a pilgrimage to Hi Coluimcille,’ where he died,
‘after penance and a good life;’[633] he was, however, closely connected
with the Scottish royal family, having been son-in-law of King
Constantin, and in close alliance with him, and had been baptized when
king of the Northumbrians; but Mughron’s successor, Maelciarain ua
Maigne, coärb of Columcille, ‘suffered red martyrdom from the Danes at
_Athcliath_,’—that is, was slain by the Danes at Dublin in 986; and in
the same year Iona is plundered by the Danes, on the eve of the
nativity, and the abbot and fifteen of the clergy of the church were
slain.[634] These were the Danes of Limerick, who were now under the
rule of Gofraigh mac Aralt, the brother of Maccus, and who is termed by
the Irish Annalists king of Innsigall, or the Western Isles. But he was
encountered by Sigurd, earl of Orkney, and we find that in the following
year a great slaughter was made of the Danes who had plundered Iona, and
three hundred and sixty of them were slain; while two years later their
king, Gofraigh, was himself killed in Dalriada, and the Isles once more
passed into the undisturbed possession of the Norwegians, and were
governed by the earls of Orkney.[635] The monastery which had been
plundered was of course that stone monastery which had been built after
the destruction of the wooden monastery by fire, and the small number of
monks slain indicates that the greater part had taken refuge in the
fort; but, like Blathmac, the abbot, whose name is not recorded,
remained at his post, and tradition still points out a bay in the north
end of the island, remarkable for its pure white sand, and called
_Traith ban na manach_, or the White Bay of the Monks, as the scene
where an abbot and fifteen monks were slain by the Danes. As this was
the last time that Iona was plundered by the Danes, who not many years
after were converted to Christianity, it is probably to this occasion
that the tradition regarding the shrine of Saint Columba, given by
Colgan on the authority of St. Berchan, may be referred. The story is
this: ‘Manderus, son of the king of Denmark and leader of a fleet of
Northmen, wasting the northern parts of Britain with fire and sword,
came to Iona, where these satellites of Satan, mixing sacred things with
profane, and pillaging everything which they met, excavated the ground
in search of hidden treasure. Among others they found the sarcophagus,
or shrine, in which was a true treasure, viz. the body of Saint Columba.
They took the shrine on board, and on their way to Ireland opened it;
but, finding nothing but the bones and ashes of a man, shut it again and
threw it into the sea. It was cast by the waves upon the shore at
Downpatrick, and the abbot, having found it, and being instructed by a
divine revelation that it contained the relics of Saint Columba, placed
it along with those of Saint Patrick and Saint Bridget.’[636] Certain it
is that in the following century the shrine was believed to be at
Downpatrick. In the old tract called the _Amra Coluimcille_ we find the
following statement:—‘In Dun’—that is Downpatrick—‘again, some say, the
resurrection of Coluimcille will be, as the poet has said—
Hy (Iona), with the multitude of its _martra_ (relics),
Of which was Colum, beauteous disciple;
He went out yet at last,
So that Dun is his blessed church.’[637]
St. Berchan, writing in the end of the eleventh or beginning of the
twelfth century, repeats as a saying of Saint Columba—
My grace on Hi (Iona) without crime,
And my soul in Derry,
And my body under the stone,
Under which are Bridget and Patrick.[638]
And we find that in the year 1127 ‘the shrine of Coluimcille was carried
off into captivity by the Galls of Atacliath’—or Danes of Dublin—‘and
restored again to its house at the end of a month,’[639] which certainly
implies that it was then in Ireland.
During the three years that followed this plundering of the monastery,
we find Dunnchadh Ua Robhacain coärb of Columcille and Adamnan, which
implies that he was abbot of Raphoe; but, on his death in 989, we find
that Dubdahthe, the abbot of Armagh, takes the coärbship of Columcille
by the advice of the men of Erinn and Alban.[640] The monastery of Iona,
however, appears soon after in an efficient state, as we find it
governed by a local abbot whose death is recorded in 1005.[641] In the
same year Malcolm the Second commenced his thirty years’ reign over
Alban, now for the first time called Scotia. He is said, in a chronicle
of the twelfth century, after the great battle of Carham in 1018, ‘to
have on that day distributed many oblations to the churches as well as
to the clergy.’[642] In Iona he appears for the time to have restored to
the abbot the title of coärb of Columcille, for we find that in 1007
‘Muredach mac Crican resigns the coärbship of Columcille for God’—that
is, becomes a recluse; and Ferdomnach is elected to the coärbship by the
advice of the men of Erinn at the fair of Taillten,[643] which implies
that his coärbship was limited to Ireland; and we find that he was in
fact abbot of Kells, as was his successor; while, on the other hand, the
death of Flannobra, coärb of Iona, is recorded in 1025.[644] In the
following year Maelruanaidh Ua Maeldoraigh, lord of Cinel Conall, that
is, of the tribe of Conall Gulban, went over the sea on his
pilgrimage.[645] The expression ‘over the sea’ implies that he went to
Iona.
[Sidenote: A.D. 1025-1028.
Alwynun bishop of Alban.]
Cellach, the bishop of Alban, is said to have filled that office for
twenty-five years, which brings his death towards the end of the tenth
century. The first bishop to whom we can assign a fixed date after that
is Alwynus, who is said to have been bishop three years, and whose death
must have taken place in 1028, which places his election as bishop in
the year 1025. Between Cellach and Alwyn we have two names given us by
Bower and Wyntoun, those of Malmore and Malisius; but we know nothing
beyond their names. During the tenure of one or other of them, the
district of Lothian was ceded to Malcolm the Second by Eadulf Cudel
after the battle of Carham in 1018, and the churches of Lothian
naturally fell under the superintendence of the bishop of St. Andrews as
sole bishop in Scotland. But not the least important event connected
with Malcolm the Second was that he gave his eldest daughter in marriage
to Crinan, lay abbot of Dunkeld, and by this marriage the hereditary lay
abbots of Dunkeld gave to the Scottish throne a dynasty of kings who
were destined to extinguish that ancient church, with its peculiar
institutions, from which their ancestors had emerged.
[Sidenote: Lay abbots of Dunkeld.]
We can readily trace this descent of Dunkeld from a high ecclesiastical
position to a lay possession. We see it first as a Culdee church,
founded shortly before the accession of the Scottish kings to the
Pictish throne; then as a Scottish monastery, its abbot filling the high
office of bishop of Fortrenn, the new kingdom acquired by the Scots.
Then the bishopric passes to Abernethy, and the successor to the abbot
who was first bishop, appears as ‘princeps,’ or superior, of Dunkeld, a
term which leaves it doubtful whether he was a cleric or a layman. Then
we find Duncan, abbot of Dunkeld, slain in battle while fighting for one
of the kings in a war of succession—evidently a layman. Then we have
Crinan, abbot of Dunkeld, marrying one of the daughters of the king,
while the other is given to Sigurd, earl of Orkney. The possessions of
Dunkeld were large and situated in the very heart of the kingdom, but
Crinan appears to have held, along with them, those of the monastery of
Dull, also secularised, which extended from Strathtay to the boundary
between Atholl and Argyll. Between the two, a large tract of country was
in his hands, and his following of men must have been very great. We
find him under the name of ‘Hundi jarl’ in the Orkneyinga Saga fighting
with the Norwegians along with other jarls, and in 1045 he is slain in
battle in a great contest between the people of Alban. The character of
these abbots as great lay lords seems plain enough, and their hereditary
descent equally so; for the name of Crinan’s son being Duncan gives a
strong presumption that he was himself the son or grandson of the former
abbot whose name was Duncan; and we find that the abbacy of Dunkeld
remained with his descendants. The abbey, too, seems, during his time,
to have come to an end, for we are told that in 1027 Dunkeld was
entirely destroyed by fire.[646]
[Sidenote: Hereditary succession in benefices.]
This state of matters, however, was not peculiar to Scotland, or very
different from what existed both in Ireland and in Wales at the time. In
the early Monastic Church of Ireland celibacy was enforced, at least
upon one class of the monks, for the saints of the second order ‘refused
the services of women, separating them from the monasteries;’ but still
there was a succession to the abbacy, the tribe or family in whom it was
vested providing a fit person in orders to fill the office; but when the
stringency of the monastic rule was broken in upon, under the influence
of the secular clergy, marriage was gradually permitted or connived at,
and at length became general, the rebound towards a secular state being
great in proportion to the enforced strictness of the previous system.
The natural consequence was that a direct descent from the
ecclesiastical persons themselves came in place of the older system of
succession, and the church offices became hereditary in their family.
The next step in the downward process was that the abbots and superiors
did not take orders, and became virtually laymen, providing a fit person
to perform the ecclesiastical functions, but retaining the name and all
the secular privileges and emoluments of the abbacy. The performance of
the church services was either intrusted to a secular priest, who was
called the ‘sacerdos,’ or _sagart_, or it fell to the _Cele De_, when
there was such a body connected with the monastery, or to both combined.
[Sidenote: Church offices held by laymen, and retained by their heirs.]
The great ecclesiastical offices thus became hereditary in the persons
of laymen in two ways; either by the usurpation of the benefice by the
lay chieftains from whose tribe or family it had been supplied, or in
the family of the abbot by whose direct descendants the office was
filled, and who ceased after a time to take orders. It must be borne in
mind that prior to 1139, though celibacy was enforced upon monks by
their monastic rule, and upon the clergy generally as a matter of
discipline, marriage, when it did take place, was not unlawful. It was
not till the second great Council of Lateran, held in that year,
declared all such marriages _ipso facto_ null and void, that they became
so; and the effect of this, where the benefice had become hereditary in
a particular family, was, instead of restoring the former clerical
character of its possessor, to stereotype their condition of laymen and
to convert them into a purely lay family. The well-known passage in
Giraldus Cambrensis’ _Itinerary of Wales_, in which, talking of the
church of Llanpadarn Vawr, he says ‘that this church, like many others
in Wales and Ireland, has a lay abbot; for a bad custom has prevailed
amongst the clergy, of appointing the most powerful people of a parish
stewards, or rather patrons, of their churches, who in process of time,
from a desire of gain, have usurped the whole right, appropriating to
their own use the possession of all the lands, leaving only to the
clergy the altars with their tenths and oblations, and assigning even
these to their sons and relations in the church. Such defenders, or
rather destroyers, of the church have caused themselves to be called
abbots, and presumed to attribute to themselves a title, as well as
estates, to which they have no just claim,’[647] gives us an
illustration of the first, and the equally well-known statement by St.
Bernard, in his Life of St. Malachy, as to the state of Armagh when
Celsus became coärb, or abbot, in 1105, affords an illustration of the
second. He says, ‘A scandalous custom had been introduced by the
diabolical ambition of certain of the nobles, that the holy see should
be obtained by hereditary succession. For they allowed no one to be
promoted to the bishopric unless such as were of their own tribe and
family. Nor was it for any short period this execrable succession had
continued, as nearly fifteen generations had already passed away in this
villainy; and so firmly had this wicked and adulterous generation
established their unholy right, or rather wrong, which deserved to be
punished with any sort of death, that although, on some occasions,
clergymen of their blood were not to be found among them, yet bishops
they were never without. In fine, there had been already, before the
time of Celsus, eight individuals who were married and without orders,
yet literates.’[648] The church of Armagh was situated in the
territories of a tribe descended from Colla-da-Chrioch, one of the
founders of the Oirghialla, or Oriel race; and Dr. Reeves tells us that
a descendant of Colla, named Sinach, founded a family, called from him
the Clann Sinaich, and that to this family the enjoyment of the abbacy
of Armagh, styled the coärbship of St. Patrick, became limited, so that
for a space of about two centuries it never left it. He adds that ‘from
the pedigrees of the Clann Sinaich, preserved in the Books of Lecan and
of Mac Firbis, illustrated by the details and chronology of the Irish
Annals, we are able to construct a genealogical table of the abbots of
Armagh, which answers with wonderful exactness to the statements of St.
Bernard.’[649] His account, too, of the state in which Malachy found the
great monastery of Bangor when he resolved to restore it, shows that it
also had fallen into the hands of a succession of lay abbots. After
referring to its ancient glory, and to its destruction by the Danes, in
which ninety of its inmates were slain in one day—which probably refers
to the event recorded in the Ulster Annals in 823, when ‘Bennchair was
plundered by the Gentiles, the oratory destroyed, and the relics of St.
Comgall shaken from their shrine’—he adds, ‘Still, from the time when
the monastery was destroyed, there were not wanting those who held it,
with its possessions; for they were appointed by the usual mode of
election, and called abbots, preserving in name, but not in reality,
what once existed.’[650] It was then possessed by a rich layman who was
St. Malachy’s uncle, and who retained the lands while Malachy refounded
the church.
The Irish Annals afford us several illustrations of the hereditary
succession, not only in abbacies, but in other offices at this time.
Thus, in the monastery of Lusk, in the list of abbots between the years
731 and 927, we find that the second and third abbots were brothers, and
sons of the first abbot named in it; that the fourth abbot and the prior
were brothers; that the son of the second abbot was ‘economus,’ or
house-steward; that the fifth abbot was son of the third; that the
eighth abbot was son of the sixth; and that the tenth abbot and the
bishop of Duleek and Lusk were brothers, and sons of the eighth
abbot.[651] Again, in the monastery of Gleann Uissean, near Carlow, we
find between 874 and 1016 the names of eight abbots and one
_Aircinnech_, or Erenagh. Of these, the second and third are brothers,
and sons of the first; the fourth and fifth are brothers, and sons of
the third; the sixth was foster-son to the second, while his son was
_Aircinnech_, or Erenagh; the seventh abbot was son of the fourth, and
the eighth, grandson of the second. Here the whole are direct
descendants of the abbot who died in 874.[652] Then we find also that
the office of ‘economus’ or house-steward of Armagh was hereditary from
779, when the death of Cearnach, son of Suibhne, who was bishop of
Armagh, is recorded, when he is called ‘economus’ of Armagh. He is
succeeded by three sons, one after another. His grandson by the third
son is bishop and anchorite of Lann Leire. Another grandson is abbot of
Lann Leire. The son of the latter is abbot of Lann Leire and ‘economus’
of Armagh, whose son again is abbot of Lann Leire.[653] But perhaps the
most instructive example is connected with the celebrated monastery of
Clonmacnois. Torbach, abbot or primate of Armagh in 812, was the son of
one abbot of Louth, and the father of another abbot of the same place;
and from him descended a family who filled many offices connected with
Clonmacnois, and among them we shall find that even the Anchorites
married and were succeeded by sons. This family were called the _Cinel
Torbaigh_. Their connection with Clonmacnois began with his son
Aedhagan, who died on his pilgrimage at Clonmacnois in 834; and his son
was Eoghan, the anchorite, who died in 845. Eoghan’s son Luchairen,
scribe and anchorite at Clonmacnois, died in 863; and in 893 his son
Egertach, the _Aircinnech_ or Erenagh of Eaglais-beg, or the little
church at Clonmacnois, died. In 947 the son of the latter, Aenagan,
Erenagh of the little church, and bishop and pure virgin—that is,
unmarried—died; and in 953 his brother Dunadhach, bishop of Clonmacnois;
whose son Dunchadh, _Ferleighinn_, or lector of Clonmacnois, and its
anchorite, afterwards head of its rule and history, died in 1005. He was
father of Joseph, who was _anmchara_, soul-friend or confessor of
Clonmacnois. Joseph’s son was Conn _na-mbocht_, or of the poor, who
appears in the Annals of the Four Masters in 1031 as ‘Head of the _Cele
De_ and Anchorite of Clonmacnois,’ the first that invited a party of the
poor of Cluain at Iseal Chiarain, and who presented twenty cows of his
own to it. Of this it was said—
O Conn of Cluain! thou wert heard from Erinn in Alban;
O head of dignity! it will not be easy to plunder thy church.
And Conn was father of Maolchiarain, coärb of Ciaran, or abbot of
Clonmacnois.[654] It is unnecessary to follow this further, but it is
obvious how prevalent at this time in Ireland was the marriage of the
clergy of all classes and the perpetuation of their ecclesiastical
offices in the lines of their own descendants, and that it had even
broken down the asceticism of the Anchorite and the canonical rule of
the _Cele De_ in this respect. In Scotland we find that the territory of
the old monasteries was called _Abdaine_, or Abbacy, a word represented
in Latin by ‘abbatia’ or ‘abthania,’ and had to a great extent passed
into the hands of laymen who often retained for several generations the
name of abbot.[655] The territory termed the Abthania of Dull, which was
of great extent and included the modern parishes of Dull and Fortingall,
seems to have been in the hands of Crinan, the lay abbot of Dunkeld,
and, along with the possessions of the latter abbacy must have placed
him on a par as to power and position with the great Mormaers of Alban.
[Sidenote: A.D. 1028-1055.
Maelduin bishop of Alban.]
During the reigns of his son Duncan, and of the usurper Macbeth, we find
that Maelduin, called by Bower son of Gillandris, was bishop. He appears
as Maldunus, bishop of St. Andrews, granting the church of Markinch with
all its land to God, St. Servanus and the _Keledei_ of the island of
Lochleven;[656] and his death is thus recorded in 1055 by Tighernac, who
was his contemporary: ‘Maelduin, son of Gillaodran, bishop of Alban, the
giver of orders to the Gael of the clergy, died in Christ.’[657] Wyntoun
tells us he was bishop twenty-seven years, which places the commencement
of his episcopate in 1028.
[Sidenote: A.D. 1055-1059.
Tuthald bishop of Alban.]
[Sidenote: A.D. 1059-1093.
Fothad last bishop of Alban.]
His successor was Tuthald, who is said by Bower to have held the
bishopric for four years only, and during his episcopate he grants the
church of Scoonie to the same Culdees.[658] This brings us to the year
1059 when Fothad became bishop, two years after Malcolm, surnamed
_Ceannmor_ or Great Head, had, by the defeat and death of Macbeth,
recovered for his family the kingdom of Scotia; and Fothad’s tenure of
the bishopric lasted throughout the whole of his reign. Probably the
most important act he performed, and one that exercised a most powerful
influence on his church, was the marriage of King Malcolm to the Saxon
Princess Margaret, which took place in the spring of 1069. Wyntoun tells
us—
Malcolme oure Kyng than till hys wyff
Weddyd Saynt Margret; wyth hyr hys lyff
In lele spowsale he thowcht to lede,
Departyd quhyll thai suld be wyth dede.
Off Saynt Andrewys the byschape than
The secund Fothawch, a cunnand man,
Devotly mad that sacrament,
That thai than tuk in gud intent.[659]
[Sidenote: Character of Queen Margaret and her reforms in the Church.]
There is perhaps no more beautiful character recorded in history than
that of Margaret. For purity of motives, for an earnest desire to
benefit the people among whom her lot was cast, for a deep sense of
religion and great personal piety, for the unselfish performance of
whatever duty lay before her, and for entire self-abnegation, she is
unsurpassed, and the chroniclers of the time all bear testimony to her
exalted character. Ordericus Vitalis says of her, in few words, ‘This
distinguished princess, descended from a long line of kings, was still
more eminent for her great worth and the sanctity of her life;’[660] and
the Saxon Chronicle considers that her marriage took place by divine
appointment, for ‘the prescient Creator knew beforehand what He would
have done by her; for she was to increase the praise of God in the land,
and direct the king from the erroneous path, and incline him, together
with his people, to a better way, and suppress the evil habits which the
nation had previously cultivated, as she afterwards did;’ and the
Chronicle sums it up by saying that she ‘performed many useful deeds in
the land to the glory of God, and also in royal qualities bore herself
well, as to her was natural.’[661] It was not unnatural that her
religion, though unquestionably pure and genuine, and the all-pervading
motive of her actions, should yet be identified with the church in which
this feature of her character had been developed, and that the rites and
customs of that church formed the standard to which she brought
everything as the only rule of right; and thus much that appeared
strange to her in the customs of the church of her adopted land could
only present itself to her mind as erroneous and as evil practices which
required to be corrected. Unfortunately the life of Queen Margaret which
has come down to us, and which has been attributed to Turgot, her
confessor, while it enters into details as to her private life which
amply bear out her personal character as a religious, pious and devoted
woman, is extremely meagre and unsatisfactory in describing her
relations with the native church.[662] It tells us that in the place
where her nuptials were celebrated, that is, in Dunfermline, she erected
a noble church, which she dedicated to the Holy Trinity; and she
decorated it with many ornaments, among which not a few of her gifts,
which were designed for the most holy service of the altar, consisted of
vases of solid and pure gold. She also introduced the crucifix into the
church, having presented one to this church richly ornamented with gold
and silver intermixed with precious stones; and similar crucifixes she
left to other churches, ‘as marks of her piety and devotion, of which
the church of St. Andrews affords an instance, where a beautiful
crucifix which she there erected is still to be seen.’[663] Her
attention, however, appears to have been soon directed towards the state
of the Scottish Church generally, in which she naturally found many
practices, peculiar to the old Celtic Church, which differed from those
she was accustomed to see in the church in which she had been reared.
Estimated by the standard of that church, they appeared to her ‘to be
contrary to the rules of the true faith as well as to the sacred customs
of the universal church,’ and she sought, by frequent councils, to have
them rectified. Her biographer tells us that ‘at the principal council
thus held she, with a few of her own ecclesiastics, contended for three
days with the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, against the
supporters of these strange customs; while her royal husband, who was
equally well acquainted with the Anglic language and with his native
Gaelic, acted as interpreter.’[664]
Margaret began by pointing out that they who agreed with the Catholic
Church in worshipping one God, in one faith, should not differ in regard
to certain new and strange practices. And she, first of all, ‘explained
they did not rightly observe the forty days’ fast, inasmuch as they did
not commence the fast, with holy church everywhere, on Ash Wednesday,
but on Monday in the following week. To which they replied, that what
they observed was a six weeks’ fast, on the authority of the Gospels
which narrate the fast of Christ. The queen answers that they differed
widely in this from the Gospel: for it is read thus, that our Lord
fasted forty days, which it is obvious you do not; for, if the six
Sundays during the six weeks are deducted from the fast, there only
remain thirty-six days for you to observe the fast. It is necessary,
therefore, to add four days to the time at which you commence the fast,
if you would follow the Lord’s example by fasting forty days; otherwise
you alone repudiate the authority of our Lord and the tradition of the
entire holy church. Convinced by this clear exposition of the truth,
they thenceforward commenced the solemn period of the Lenten fast at the
same time with the holy church everywhere.’ Here the whole point is
whether, as the Catholic Church at this time never fasted on the Lord’s
day, the Sundays should be counted in computing the forty days’ fast of
Lent, or not. That the forty days’ fast of our Saviour was a continuous
fast, is obvious, and in this the Scottish Church followed the
recognised practice of the earlier church. The queen then urged another
point, and ‘required them to explain why they refrained from partaking
of the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ on Easter day,
according to the custom of the holy and apostolic church.’ To this they
replied, ‘The apostle tells us, “He that eateth and drinketh unworthily,
eateth and drinketh judgment to himself;” and, as we feel that we are
sinners, we are afraid to partake of that sacrament, lest we eat and
drink judgment to ourselves.’ ‘What then,’ said the queen, ‘shall all
who are sinners refuse to partake of that holy mystery? No one in that
case ought to partake, for no one is free from the stain of sin, not
even the infant who has lived but a single day upon earth. But, if no
one ought to partake, why does the Gospel proclaim the saying of our
Lord, “Unless ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, ye
have no life in you”? But the saying of the apostle, which you quote,
must evidently, according to the judgment of the Fathers, be otherwise
understood; for he does not esteem all sinners to be unworthy to partake
of the sacrament of salvation. For when he said, “He eateth and drinketh
judgment to himself,” he added, “not discerning the Lord’s body,” that
is, not distinguishing it in faith from ordinary food, he eateth and
drinketh judgment to himself. So he who without confession and
penitence, with the stains of his trespasses, presumes to approach these
sacred mysteries, he, I say, eateth and drinketh judgment to himself.
But we, who having, many days before, made confession of our sins, are
chastened with penance, worn with fasts, and washed from the stains of
our sins with alms and tears, on the day of the Lord’s resurrection,
approaching his table in Catholic faith, partake of the flesh and blood
of the immaculate Lamb Jesus Christ, not to judgment but to the
remission of our sins, and to the salutary preparation for the enjoyment
of eternal blessedness.’ Having nothing to oppose to these propositions,
they afterwards observed the rules of the church in the reception of
this life-giving mystery. Besides this, there were certain of the Scots
who, in different parts of the country, were wont to celebrate masses in
I know not what barbarous rite, contrary to the custom of the whole
church, which the queen—full of godly zeal—resolved to suppress and
abolish, so that henceforth no one in the whole nation of the Scots
should be found to presume to do such a thing. They were wont also to
neglect the due observance of the Lord’s day, prosecuting their worldly
labours on that as on other days, which she likewise showed, by both
argument and authority, was unlawful. ‘Let us keep,’ she said, ‘the
Lord’s day in reverence, on account of the resurrection of our Lord from
the dead on that day, and let us do no servile work on that day on
which, as we know, we were redeemed from the slavery of the devil. The
blessed Pope Gregory lays this down, saying that “we must cease from
earthly labour on the Lord’s day, and continue instant in prayer, so
that, if aught has been done amiss during the six days, it may be
expiated by our prayers on the day of our Lord’s resurrection.” Being
unable to oppose anything to these weighty arguments of the queen, they
ever after observed the due reverence of the Lord’s days, no one being
allowed to carry burdens, or to compel others to do so, on these days.’
It cannot certainly be said to be very consistent with modern theories
to find the Roman Church reproving the so-called pure Culdean Church for
celebrating the eucharist without communicating, and for desecrating the
Sabbath. It is obvious, however, from the mode in which these two points
are stated, that there was no neglect in the native church in
celebrating the eucharist; but that, while in the Catholic Church the
people were accustomed to communicate on the great festivals, and
especially that of Easter, the Scots celebrated on that day without
communicating; and that in some parts of Scotland the eucharist was
celebrated in a manner contrary to the custom of the church. It is not
explained in what this peculiarity consisted, but it was something done
after a barbarous manner, so that it was impossible to tell how it was
celebrated, and it was entirely suppressed. This is hardly applicable to
the mere introduction of some peculiar forms or ceremonies, and the most
probable explanation of these expressions is that in the remote and
mountainous districts the service was performed in the native language
and not in Latin, as was the custom of the universal church. Her next
point was that they did not duly reverence the Lord’s day, but in this
latter instance they seem to have followed a custom of which we find
traces in the early Monastic Church of Ireland, by which they held
Saturday to be the Sabbath on which they rested from all their labours,
and on Sunday, on the Lord’s day, they celebrated the resurrection by
the service in church. Thus Adamnan tells us that St. Columba, on the
last Saturday of his life, said to his attendant Diormit, ‘This day, in
the holy Scriptures, is called the Sabbath, which means rest, and this
day is indeed a Sabbath to me, for it is the last day of my present
laborious life, and on it I rest after the fatigues of my labours; and
this night at midnight, which commenceth the solemn Lord’s day, I shall,
according to the sayings of Scripture, go the way of our fathers.’[665]
There was no want of veneration for the Sunday, though they held that
Saturday was properly the Sabbath on which they abstained from work.
The last point, one which also savoured somewhat of Judaism, was that it
was not unusual for a man to marry his stepmother or his deceased
brother’s wife; but Giraldus Cambrensis accuses the Irish church of the
very same custom—that in some parts of Ireland men married the widows of
their brothers;[666] and it does not appear in either case that this was
a custom sanctioned by the church. ‘Many other practices which were
contrary to the rule of faith and the observances of the church she
persuaded the council to condemn and to drive out of the borders of her
kingdom.’[667] It seems, however, strange that more important questions
than these were not touched upon. There is nothing said about the
marriage of the clergy, about high offices in the church being filled by
laymen, about the appropriation of the benefices by the laity, and their
being made hereditary in their families. But possibly she was restrained
by the knowledge that the royal house into which she had married owed
its origin to the lay abbots of one of the principal monasteries, and
was largely endowed with the possessions of the church; and if in the
Council her eye lighted upon her young son Ethelred, who, even in
boyhood, was lay abbot of Dunkeld, her utterances on that subject could
hardly be otherwise than checked.
[Sidenote: Anchorites at this time.]
The biographer of St. Margaret bears testimony, however, in favour of
the Anchorites. He says that at this time ‘there were many in the
kingdom of the Scots, who, in different places, enclosed in separate
cells, lived in the flesh, but not according to the flesh, in great
straitness of life, and even on earth lived the life of angels. In them
the queen did her best to love and venerate Christ, and frequently to
visit them with her presence and converse, and to commend herself to
their prayers; and, as she could not induce them to accept any earthly
gift from her, she earnestly requested them to deign to prescribe for
her some work of charity or of mercy. Whatever was their desire she
devoutly fulfilled, either in recovering the poor from their poverty, or
relieving the afflicted from the miseries which oppressed them; and as
the religious devotion of the people brought many from all parts to the
church of St. Andrews, she constructed dwellings on both sides of the
sea which divides Lodoneia, or Lothian, from Scotia—that is, the Firth
of Forth—that the pilgrims and the poor might put up there and rest and
find there ready everything required for the refreshment of the body.
Servants were placed there to minister to them, and vessels provided in
which they were ferried across without payment.’[668] It is probable
that among those anchorites who commended themselves so much to her
favour were the _Cele De_ of Lochleven, for we find Malcolm and
Margaret, king and queen of Scotia, giving devoutly the town of
Ballechristin to God the Omnipotent and the _Keledei_ of Louchleven,
with the same liberties as before;[669] and Bishop Fothad too, here
called Modach, son of Malmykel, ‘a man of most pious memory, bishop of
St. Andrews, with whose life and doctrine the whole region of the Scots
was happily enlightened, gives to God and St. Servanus and the hermit
_Keledei_ on the island of Lochleven, living there in the school of all
virtues devoutly and honourably, with the same liberties, the church of
Auchterderran.’[670]
[Sidenote: Queen Margaret rebuilds the monastery of Iona.]
The church of Iona, too, benefited by her. When, on the death of
Thorfinn, earl of Orkney, in 1057, the provinces of Scotland which he
had subjected to his sway reverted to their natural rulers, the native
population of the Western Isles appear to have placed themselves under
an Irish chief, Diarmed, son of Maelnambo, who ruled them till his death
in 1072.[671] This led to a renewed connection with Ireland; for, in the
same year, 1057, Gilchrist Ua Maeldoraid, who was of the race of Connal
Gulban, became coärb of Columcille both in Ireland and in Alban, and
died in 1062,[672] and three years later Dubhtach of Alban, the chief
_anmchara_, or soul-friend, of Erinn and Alban, died at Armagh.[673]
This is no doubt that St. Duthac who has left his name on the west coast
in Loch Duich, and in Bailedhuich or Tain. After Gilchrist’s death we
find the coärb of Columcille at Kells, while there appears at Iona a
separate abbot, who is simply called grandson of Baetan; but in 1070 he
is slain by Gilchrist’s son,[674] and the absence of the Christian names
of both, with what appears to have been a violent attempt to establish
hereditary succession in the family of Ua Maeldoradh, rather indicates
that these were laymen. Two years after, on the death of Diarmed, the
Isles seem to have fallen into the hands of King Malcolm, and the state
of Iona with a ruined monastery, and the decay of its clergy, seems to
have attracted the attention of Margaret; for Ordericus Vitalis tells us
that, ‘among the other good deeds of this illustrious lady, she restored
the monastery of Iona, which Columba, the servant of Christ, erected in
the time of Brude, son of Meilocon, king of the Picts. It had fallen to
ruin in the storms of war and the lapse of ages, but this faithful queen
rebuilt it, and furnished it with monks, with an endowment for
performing the Lord’s work.’[675] It is clear from this statement that
what the queen repaired was the monastery. The existing ruins show no
appearance of any work of the time of Queen Margaret, but they are the
remains of a later monastery. What she restored was the older stone
monastery which preceded the present buildings. The church, which is
situated on the south side of the choir of the abbey church, and the
small oratory which had enclosed the shrine of St. Columba, were
probably still entire, and their remains belong to a still older period;
but the other buildings of the monastery were no doubt in a ruinous
state, and had perhaps been so ever since the great attack of the Danes
upon it in 986; and these she now rebuilt, and reorganised the
establishment of monks. It is probable, too, that she has left traces of
her restoration in the Norman doorway of the chapel of St. Odhran. In
the last year, however, of King Malcolm’s life the Western Isles passed
again under the rule of the Norwegians, having been ceded by him to
Magnus surnamed Barefoot, king of Norway; and this cession was renewed
by his son Edgar in 1097. The two expeditions by King Magnus to the
Western Isles, which led to their cession in these years, have been
combined in the Norse Saga into one, so that it is difficult to know to
which of them to refer the following incident related in the Saga:—‘King
Magnus came with his army to the Holy Island, that is, to Iona, and gave
quarter and peace to all men that were there, and to the property of
every one. It has been said that King Magnus opened the smaller church
of Kollum-killa, but did not go into it. He immediately locked the door,
and said that no man should be so bold as to go in there, and that
church has never been opened since.’[676] This was no doubt the small
oratory which had held the shrine of St. Columba. The Saga was written
about the year 1221, and it is unlikely that a church used simply for
the service of the monks should have remained closed for a century and a
quarter; but it is probable that if, as in the case of Templemolaga, the
ecclesiastical buildings consisted only of the larger church, the
remains of which still exist in what is called the Nameless Chapel, on
the north side of the choir of the abbey, and of the small oratory of
the shrine, the latter would be meant by the expression of the little
church of Kollum-killa; and the awe and reverence with which King Magnus
regarded it, and his motive for closing it, would be natural enough. In
the last year of the century but one, 1099, died Donnchad, grandson of
Moenaig, the last of the old abbots of Iona.[677]
[Sidenote: A.D. 1093-1107.
After death of Fothad, no bishop for fourteen years.]
The line of the native bishops of Alban, too, was to come to an end in
this century, for in the last year of King Malcolm’s reign died also
Fothad, who is termed high bishop of Alban,[678] and no successor was
appointed to him for fourteen years, when a stranger, the first of a
line of bishops who were of foreign descent, was placed in the see of
St. Andrews. We get a glimpse into the state of the church at this time
from a grant to the _Keledei_ of Lochleven by Ethelred, a younger son of
King Malcolm. It runs thus:—‘Edelradus, a man of venerated memory, son
of Malcolm king of Scotia, abbot of Dunkeld and likewise earl of Fyf,
gave to God the Omnipotent and St. Servanus and the _Keledei_ of the
island of Louchleven, with the utmost reverence and honour, and with
every freedom, and without any exaction or demand whatever in the world
from bishop, king, or earl, Admore, with its rightful boundaries and
divisions; and, seeing that this possession was given him by his parents
while he was yet in boyhood, he with the more affection and love
immolates it to God and St. Servanus and those men serving God there;
and this collation and donation, when first made, was confirmed by the
two brothers of Edelradus, David and Alexander, in the presence of
several men worthy of credit, such as Constantin, earl of Fyf, a most
discreet man, and Nesse; and Cormac, son of Macbeath, and Malnethte, son
of Beollan, priests of Abernethy; and Mallebride, another priest; and
Thuadhel and Augustinus, a priest, who were _Keledei_; and Berbeadh,
rector of the schools of Abernethy; and before the rest of the whole
community of Abernethy then living there, and before God the Omnipotent
and all saints.’[679] Here we find Edelradus, or Ethelred, the young son
of King Malcolm and Queen Margaret, appearing as lay abbot of Dunkeld,
and granting lands to the _Keledei_ of Lochleven, who still continued to
be the same community of hermits which they were at the beginning. The
grant appears to have been confirmed at Abernethy. The community there
were its witnesses, and we find that they consisted, first, of secular
priests, of whom two are named; secondly, of a body of _Keledei_, three
of whom are named, two of them being priests; and, thirdly, of a
functionary here called rector, or governor, of the schools, but who can
have been no other than the _Ferleighinn_, or lector, of the Irish
churches.
[Sidenote: _Keledei_ of St. Andrews.]
To the same period we may apply the description of the church of St.
Andrews given at the end of the larger legend of St. Andrew. We there
read that the ‘kingdom of the Picts having been entirely destroyed and
occupied by the Scots, the substance and possessions of the church
alternately increased or decreased as kings and chiefs showed devotion
to St. Andrew. Of these we cannot speak in detail, but we must treat
compendiously of what relates to ourselves. The royal city was called
Rymont, or royal mount, which King Hungus gave to God and the holy
apostle. Those holy men who brought the relics of the blessed apostle
having departed this life, as well as their disciples and followers, the
religious service there died away, as the people were barbarous and
uncultivated. There were kept up, however, by carnal succession, in the
church of St. Andrew, such as it then was, thirteen, commonly called
_Keledei_, whose manner of life was shaped more in accordance with their
own fancy and human tradition than with the precepts of the holy
fathers. Nay, even to the present day their practice continues the same;
and although they have some things in common, these are trifling in
amount and value, while they individually enjoy the larger and better
portion, just as each of them happens to receive gifts, either from
friends who are united to them by some unavoidable tie, such as kindred
or connection, or from those whose soul-friends, that is, spiritual
advisers, they are, or from any other source. And after they are made
_Keledei_ they are not allowed to keep their wives within their
lodgings, nor any other women who might give rise to injurious
suspicions. Moreover, there were seven “personæ,” or beneficiaries, who
divided among themselves the offerings of the altar, of which seven
portions the bishop used to enjoy but one and the hospital another; the
remaining five were apportioned to the other five members, who performed
no duty whatever either at altar or church, and whose only obligation
was to provide, after their custom, lodging and entertainment for
pilgrims and strangers when more than six chanced to arrive, determining
by lot whom and how many each of them was to receive. The hospital, it
is to be observed, had continual accommodation for a number not
exceeding six; but, from the time that, by God’s goodness, it came into
the possession of the canons, it has been open to all comers. The
above-mentioned beneficiaries were also possessed of their private
revenues and property, which, upon their death, their wives whom they
openly lived with, and their sons or daughters, their relatives or
sons-in-law used to divide among themselves; even the very offerings of
the altar at which they did not serve—a profanation which one would
blush to speak of, if they had not chosen to practise it.’ We are
further told that at this time ‘there were none who served at the altar
of the blessed apostle, nor used mass to be celebrated there, except
upon the rare occasions when the king or the bishop visited the place.
The _Keledei_, however, were wont to say their office after their own
fashion in a corner of a church, which was very small.’[680]
From this account we can gather that there were at St. Andrews at this
time in point of fact two churches, and that the community consisted of
two divisions, connected with these churches respectively. The first was
the church containing ‘the altar of the blessed apostle’ St. Andrew, and
the revenues of this church were appropriated by seven persons, one of
whom was the bishop, the second the hospital, and the other five laymen,
or lay rectors as they might be termed, who were married, and whose
portions were inherited by their families. The only burden imposed upon
them was to provide lodging and entertainment for pilgrims and strangers
beyond the number which the hospital could accommodate. There was no
provision for service in this church, except on rare occasions when the
king or bishop visited the place. The second was a smaller church, which
belonged to a body of thirteen _Keledei_, probably the prior or provost,
and twelve brethren, who lived apart, had wives, and possessed private
property, as well as certain ecclesiastical dues which were inherited by
their families. In this church they performed divine service according
to their own rite, and they also provided from their body an _anmchara_,
soul-friend, or confessor.[681] That this was one of their proper
functions appears from the Rule of the _Cele De_, attributed to
Maelruain, which contains the following passage: ‘Difficult indeed is
the duty of the _anmchara_, or soul-friend, because, if he give the
proper remedy, it is oftener violated than observed; but if the
soul-friend does not give it, its liability falls upon himself, because
several deem it enough to make the confession without doing the penance;
but it is better to proclaim their welfare to them, though they do not
respond to the penance enjoined by the confessor. Another soul-friend
may be gone to, if necessary, after the permission of the first
soul-friend.’[682] The one party represented that portion of the
community which formerly consisted of secular clergy, but whose position
and revenues had, with the exception of those of the bishop and the
hospital, been usurped by laymen, while their clerical duties remained
unperformed. The other party consisted of the only clerical portion of
the community. They represented what had originally been a society of
Anchorites or Hermits, but now presented all the features of Secular
canons, as they became modified in Ireland on the introduction of the
canonical rule. The state of the church of St. Andrews, as we find it
here pictured, is almost an exact reproduction of what we find at Armagh
at the same time. Here, prior to 1126, the abbacy was in the hands of
laymen, and there is no appearance of any of the usual officers of a
great monastery. The only clergy who are mentioned in connection with
the houses of prayer are the _Cele De_. Dr. Reeves gives us the
following account of the _Cele De_ of Armagh. After stating that the
‘community of the Culdees was originally a college of secular clergy who
lived together and submitted to a rule, the principal requirement of
which was a common table:’ ‘that they were analogous to secular canons,
who in many instances formed the ancient chapters of cathedral and
collegiate establishments;’ and also that ‘the maintenance of divine
service, and, in particular, the practice of clerical worship, seems to
have been their special function, and on this account they formed an
important element in the cathedral economy;’ he adds, ‘These _Cele De_,
then, of Armagh continued to be the officiating clergy of the churches
here, and by degrees grouped themselves around the great church, where
they became the standing ministers of the cathedral. They were presided
over by a prior, and numbered about twelve individuals. This prior had
the charge of the services in church, and superintended the order of
public worship, which was principally choral;’[683] and this
correspondence between the _Cele De_ of the metropolitan churches of
Ireland and Scotland is what we might expect, as we have seen that the
rules adopted in Ireland for the _Cele De_ were introduced into Scotland
in 921 shortly after the church of St. Andrews had been placed at the
head of the Scottish Church.
[Sidenote: The _Cele De_ of Iona.]
The only other church where we obtain some insight into its condition is
the church of Iona. It remained for upwards of half a century under
Norwegian rule, and we hear nothing of it after King Magnus’s visit to
the holy island; but when, along with the southern portion of the
Western Isles, it again reverted to their native rulers, we obtain a
notice of the state of the community, which we may well consider equally
applicable to this period. No abbot appears; but the goodmen, or chiefs
of the family of Iona, who claimed the right of electing an abbot, were
four in number. These were, first, the _Sacart mor_, or great priest;
secondly, the _Ferleighinn_, or lector; thirdly, the _Disertach_; and
fourthly, the _Cenn_, or head, of the _Ceile De_, and the rest of the
chiefs of the family.[684] During this period, when Iona was in the
hands of the Norwegians, the coärbs of Columcille were the abbots of
Kells, and we find in that church the counterpart of the first three of
these chiefs of the family. In the Irish charters in the Book of Kells
we find mention of the _Sacart_ and the _Ferleighinn_. Thus, in the
oldest charter, granted before 1084, there is mention of ‘the coärb of
Columcille, that is, Domnall mac Robartaigh, with all the ecclesiastics
of Kells, in like manner, both _Sacart_, or priest, _Epscop_, or bishop,
and _Ferleighinn_, or lector.’[685] Again, a charter, some ten years
later, relates to ‘land which the _Sacart_, or priest of Kells and his
kinsmen purchased, that is, O’Breslen and his kinsmen,’[686] which
rather implies that the priesthood was hereditary in his family. Then,
in a charter granted between 1128 and 1138, we have the ‘coärb of
Columcille, viz., Gilla Adomnan O’Coirthen, and the _Sacart_ of Kells,
viz., Maelmartin O’Breslen, and the _Ferleighinn_ of Kells, viz., Guaire
O’Clucan;’[687] and finally, in a charter granted between 1128 and 1140,
the goodmen, or chiefs, of Kells are mentioned. They are ‘Muredach
O’Clucan, abbot of Kells; Conaing O’Breslen, the _Sacart_; Guaire
O’Clucan, the _Ferleighinn_; and Aedh, son of Mac Rechtogan, the
Vice-Erenagh.’[688] From these charters we see that the office of
_Sacart_, or priest, was hereditary in the family of O’Breslen. The
charters of Kells, too, throw light upon the chief of the family of Iona
termed the _Disertach_; for the oldest charter in the Book of Kells is
one before 1084, in which the king of Tara, or of Ireland,
Maelsechnaill, and the coärb of Columcille, ‘with all the ecclesiastics
of Kells, both priest and bishop and lector, and also the vice-erenagh,
with the young clerics of the congregation of Columcille, have all
granted for ever Disert-Columcille in Kells, with its garden, to God and
to pious _Deoradh_, or pilgrims, no pilgrim having any lawful possession
in it at any time until he devotes his life to God and is devout.’ This
last clause is obviously to prevent the _Disert_ falling into the hands
of a layman.[689] Then, in a later charter, ‘the family of Kells have
granted, for the support of _Deoradh_, or pilgrims, Ardcamma, that is,
Baile Ui Uidhrin, with its mill and all its land, and Baile Ui
Chomhgain, with all its land and with its mill, to God and to Columcille
and to the bishop O’Cellaigh, the senior of all the men of Meath, and to
Malmaire O’Robhartaigh, the _Cenn_, or head, of the _Disert_, on the
third of the Ides of November, the feast of Martin, in the year when the
kine and swine of Ireland perished by a pestilence. The Disert of Kells
is granted to pious pilgrims for ever. Whatever layman or clergyman
shall oppose this grant, he shall be accursed of Columcille and Finan
and the clergy of Ireland and of the Christian church in general.’[690]
We find then the name of _Cenn na Disert_, or Head of the Disert,
appearing at Kells about the same time as that of _Disertach_ makes its
first appearance in connection with the family of Iona, and that in the
former case it originated from the abbot of Kells, Domnall Ua
Robartaigh, in conjunction with the king of Ireland, founding what was
called a Disert for pious _Deoradh_, or pilgrims, and that this Disert
became known by the name of _Disert Coluimcille_. The old burying-ground
in Iona, which, along with the remains of the vallum, is the sole relic
of the original monastery of Columcille, bears the name of _Cladh an
Disert_, or the burying-ground of the Disert; and as Domnall, the abbot
of Kells, was coärb of Columcille from the year 1062 to 1098, that is,
during the entire life of Margaret as queen, who had shown such a warm
interest in the anchorites and pilgrims of Scotland, it is not an
unreasonable supposition that she too, in conjunction with the coärb of
Columcille, had included in her work of restoration at Iona the
foundation here of a _Disert_ for pious pilgrims.
Of the _Cele De_ there is no trace at Kells, at least under that name,
for by this time the name of _Cele De_ had long passed in Ireland from
the _Deoradh_, or pilgrims, to the Secular canons, nor do they appear in
connection with any of the Columban monasteries in Ireland; but we find
the type of the Iona _Cele De_ in another Irish monastery. This was the
celebrated monastery of Clonmacnois, which was founded on the banks of
the Shannon in the sixth century by St. Ciaran, one of the twelve
apostles of Ireland, and where St. Columba had been received with so
much honour in the later years of his life. And here, with the exception
of the _Disert_ and its _Disertach_, which, as we have seen, had been
derived from the Columban monastery of Kells, we find the same
ecclesiastical functionaries in the community as appear in that of Iona.
The _Sacart_, or priest, makes his appearance at Clonmacnois before the
year 914, when the death of Maelbairrfinn, _Sacart_, or priest, of
Clonmacnois, is recorded. In 948 we have the death of a _prim-sacart_,
or chief priest of Clonmacnois; and in 1109 he appears under the same
designation as he bears in Iona, and in the same position of being, in
the absence of an abbot, at the head of the community; for in that year
died Flaithbertach Ua Loingsigh, coärb of Ciaran, and _Sacart mor_, or
great priest, of Clonmacnois. We also find the _Ferleighinn_ frequently
mentioned both under that title and that of _Scribnidh_, or scribe,
during the eighth, ninth, tenth and eleventh centuries, as one of the
community of Clonmacnois; and here, as elsewhere, this office was
frequently combined with others in the community. But the most
remarkable feature of the community at Clonmacnois is the appearance of
a line of hereditary Anchorites, descending from father to son for
several generations, and finally merging in the title of _Cenn na Cele
De_, or head of the Culdees. The first of these is Eoghan, Anchorite of
Clonmacnois, who died in 845. His son Luchairen appears as scribe and
anchorite at Clonmacnois. Egertach, the son of the latter, is Erenagh of
the little church of Clonmacnois, and his son Dunadhach is bishop of
Clonmacnois; but Dunadhach’s son Dunchadh is first _Ferleighinn_, or
lector, of Clonmacnois and afterwards its Anchorite. His son Joseph
appears as Anmchara, or soul-friend, of Clonmacnois, and he was father
to Conn _na mbocht_, or of the poor, whose death is recorded in 1031 as
_Cenn na Cele De_, or Head of the Culdees, and Anchorite of
Clonmacnois.[691] A century later we find this title of Head of the
_Cele De_ of Clonmacnois hereditary in a family called Ua Neachtain; for
in 1132 is recorded the death of Uareirghe Ua Neachtain, _Cenn Cele De_,
or Head of the Culdees of Clonmacnois. In 1170 that of Maelmordha, son
of Uareirghe, ‘a learned charitable senior, the prosperity and affluence
of Clonmacnois and _Cenn na Chele De_,’ or Head of the Culdees; and in
1200 that of Uareirghe, son of Maelmordha, son of Uareirghe Ua
Neachtain, ‘one of the noble sages of Clonmacnois, a man full of the
love of God and of every virtue, and _Cenn Cele De_,’ or Head of the
Culdees of Clonmacnois.[692]
We thus find this title of Head of the Culdees emerging in the eleventh
century out of that of Anchorite at Clonmacnois; and at Iona we likewise
find that there were Anchorites in the tenth century who occupied an
important position in the community, while a century later the same
title of _Cenn na Cele De_, or Head of the Culdees, appears there also.
The origin and position of the _Cele De_ were probably the same in both
communities.[693]
-----
Footnote 605:
Hic primus dedit libertatem ecclesiæ Scoticanæ quæ sub servitute erat
usque ad illud tempus ex consuetudine et more Pictorum.—_Chron. Picts
and Scots_, p. 151. The Chronicle of St. Andrews has, for
consuetudine, constitutione. The Chronicon Elegiacum has
Hic dedit ecclesiæ libertates Scoticanæ
Quæ sub Pictorum lege redacta fuit.
Footnote 606:
See Haddan and Stubbs’ _Councils_, vol. iii. pp. 636, 638, 641.
Footnote 607:
See King’s Introduction to the _Church of Armagh_, p. 18.
Footnote 608:
O’Donovan, _Annals of Four Masters_, vol. ii. p. 1143.
Footnote 609:
Haddan and Stubbs’ _Councils_, vol. iii. p. 382.
Footnote 610:
See on this subject Mr. Robertson’s _Statuta Ecclesiæ_, vol. i. p. 19,
and Dr. John Stuart’s preface to the Book of Deer, where the whole
subject is well and fully treated.
Footnote 611:
In vi anno Constantinus rex et Cellachus episcopus, leges
disciplinasque fidei atque jura ecclesiarum evangeliorumque, pariter
cum Scottis, in colle credulitatis prope regali civitati Scoan
devoverunt custodiri.—_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 9.
Footnote 612:
_Scotichronicon_, B. vi. cap. 24; Wyntoun, _Chron._, B. vi. cap. 9 and
following chapters. In his first edition Bower places Fothad as first
bishop and Kellach as second; but in his revised edition, two years
after, in the Cupar MS. he corrects himself, and puts Kellach as first
bishop.
Footnote 613:
In the legend of St. Andrew it is said of the bishops of St.
Andrews—‘Sic et nunc quoque in vulgari et communi locutione _Escop.
Alban_, id est, Episcopi Albaniæ, appellantur.’—_Chron. Picts and
Scots_, p. 191.
Footnote 614:
921 _Maonach Cele De do thiachtain don fhairrge aniar dodhenamh
reachta h-Erenn_.—_Chron. Scot._; _An. F. M._, p. 605. This passage
has been misunderstood. Mr. O’Donovan translated it ‘Maonach, a Cele
De, came across the sea westwards to establish laws in Ireland;’ but
Mr. Hennessy correctly points out that _aniar_ is ‘from the west,’ not
‘to the west.’ In fact _aniar_ is generally used for ‘from Ireland to
Scotland,’ and _anair_ ‘from Scotland to Ireland;’ but _reachta
h-Erenn_ means the laws _of_ Ireland, Erenn being the genitive form.
What he brought over may have been the rule of St. Maelruain.
Footnote 615:
See _Vit. S. Cadroë_, _Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 113.
Footnote 616:
Et in senectute decrepitus baculum cepit et Domino servivit et regnum
mandavit Mael. filio Domnail.—_Pict. Chron._ Hic dimisso regno sponte
Deo in habitu religionis abbas factus est Keledeorum Sancti Andreæ,
quinque annis servivit ibi et mortuus est et sepultus.—_Chron. Picts
and Scots_, pp. 9, 151, 174, 288.
Footnote 617:
_Registrum Prioratus S. Andreæ_, p. 113.
Footnote 618:
938 Dubthach _Comharba_ Coluimcille et Adomnain in pace quievit.—_An.
Ult._
936 (_recte_ 938) _Dubhthach Comharba Coluimcille acus Adomnain i
nErinn acus i nAlbain_ deg.—_An. F. M._
Footnote 619:
935 (_recte_ 937) _Aonghas mac Muirchertaigh Saoi, Angcoire acus
tanaisi Abbaidh Iae_ decc.—_Ib._
Footnote 620:
945 (_recte_ 947) Caenchomhrac abb Ia decc.—_An. F. M._ 954 Robartach
_Comharba Coluimcille acus Adomnain_ in Christo pausavit.—_An. Ult._
Footnote 621:
959 Dubduin _Comharba Coluimcille_ obiit.—_An. Ult._ 964 Dubscuile mac
Cineda _Comhorba Coluimcille_ quievit.—_Ib._
Footnote 622:
Iste Malisius, ut legitur in vita gloriosi ac eximii confessoris beati
Duthaci, discipulus fuit beato Duthaco in Hibernia. Cui beatus
Duthacus vaticinando futurum episcopum Scotorum se dixit: quod et
adimpletum est.—_Scotichron._, B. vi. c. 24.
Footnote 623:
Bellum inter Nigerum et Caniculum super Dorsum Crup in quo Niger
habuit victoriam; ubi cecidit Du[n]chad abbas Duncalden et Dubdon
satrapas Athochlach.—_Pict. Chron._
Footnote 624:
963 Aodh mac Maoilmithidh in peregrinatione moritur, id est, _hi
Cindrimonaidh_.—_Chron. Scot._
Footnote 625:
Fothach episcopus pausavit.—_Pict. Chron._
961 (_recte_ 963) Fothadh mac Brain _Scribhnidh et Espucc Insi Alban_
decc.—_An. F. M._
Footnote 626:
980 Mugron _Comharba Coluimcille itir Erenn et Albain_ vitam felicem
finivit.—_An. Ult._
Footnote 627:
964 (_recte_ 966) Finghin, _angcoire et epscop Ia_ decc.—_An. F. M._
978 Fiachra _Aircinneach Ia_ quievit.—_An. Ult._
Footnote 628:
Dr. Todd, _Life of Saint Patrick_, pp. 60, 161. King’s _Introduction_,
pp. 23, 24.
Footnote 629:
Marcan filius Breodalaig occisus est in ecclesia Sancti Michaelis.
Leot et Sluagadach exierunt ad Romam. Maelbrigde episcopus pausavit.
Cellach filius Ferdalaig regnavit.—_Pict. Chron._
Footnote 630:
Dehinc secundus Kellach filius Ferdlager, qui fuit primus qui adivit
Romam pro confirmatione, et post confirmationem vixit xxv
annis.—_Scotichron._ B. vi. c. 24.
Footnote 631:
Hic est qui tribuit magnam civitatem Brechne Domino.—_Pict. Chron._
Footnote 632:
Florence of Worcester terms him, in 973, rex plurimarum insularum.
Footnote 633:
_Wars of the Gaedhel with the Gaill_, p. 47; _Annals of the Four
Masters_, p. 713. See also Tighernac.
Footnote 634:
985 (_recte_ 986) _Maolciarain Ua Maighne Comharba Coluimcille do dul
i ndergmhartra las na Danaraibh i nAthcliath._—_An. F. M._
986 _I Coluimcille do arcain do Danaraibh aidhchi n-otlac coromarbhsat
in Apaidh et_ xv. viros _do Sruithibh na Cille_.—_An. Ult._
Footnote 635:
See vol. i. p. 376.
Footnote 636:
Colgan, _Tr. Th._, p. 446. Though this appears in Colgan’s Latin
version of Magnus O’Donnel’s _Life of St. Columba_, it is not to be
found in the Irish text.
Footnote 637:
_Amra Coluimcille_, by O’Byrne Crowe, p. 39.
Footnote 638:
_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 81.
Footnote 639:
_Annals of the Four Masters_, p. 1027. Among the relics said to have
been preserved at Durham we find ‘De ossibus et reliquiis Sancti
Columkelli abbatis. De ossibus Sanctæ Brigidæ gloriosæ virginis. De
ossibus et reliquiis Sancti Patricii episcopi et Hyberniæ
apostoli.’—_Hist. Dun. Script._ Tres, p. cccxxx. These are obviously
the same relics which were said to be at Down, but how they came to be
claimed by the coärbs of Durham we cannot tell.
Footnote 640:
989 _Dunchadh hua Robacan Comhorba Coluimcille_ mortuus est.
_Dubdalethe Comharba Patraicc do gabhail Comharbain Columcille a
comhairle fer n-Erenn acus Albain._—_An. Ult._
Footnote 641:
1005 Maelbrigda hua Rimedha abbas Ia in Christo.—_Ib._
Footnote 642:
Ipse etiam multas oblationes tam ecclesiis quam clero ea die
distribuit.—_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 131.
Footnote 643:
1007 Muredach Mac Cricain _do deirgiu comarbus Coluimcille ar Dia_.
Ferdomnach _i comorbus Coluimcille con a comairle fer n-Erinn isin
oenach sin_.—_An. Ult._
Footnote 644:
1025 Flannobra _Comharba Ia_ in Christo quievit.—_An. Ult._ In the
_Annals of the Four Masters_ he is called _Comharba Ia Cholumcille_,
and the death of Maeleoin Ua Torain, _Comharba Doire Cholumcille_,
follows, which shows the division of the coärbship of Columcille at
this time.
Footnote 645:
1026 Maolruanaidh Ua Maoldoraidh _tigherna Cenuil Conaill, do dul tar
muir dia oilitre_.—_An. F. M._
Footnote 646:
1027 _Duncaillenn in Alban do uile loscadh_ (entirely burnt).—_An.
Ult._
Footnote 647:
Giraldus Cambrensis, _Itinerary of Wales_, Book ii. chap. iv.
Footnote 648:
_Vita S. Malachiæ_, cap. 7. _ap._ Messingham Flor., p. 358.
Footnote 649:
_Proceedings R. I. A._, vol. vi. p. 450.
Footnote 650:
Siquidem a tempore, quo destructum est monasterium, non defuit, qui
illud teneret cum possessionibus suis. Nam et constituebantur per
electionem etiam, et abbates appellabantur, servantes nomine (etsi non
re) quod olim extiterat.—_Vita S. Malachiæ_, Messingham Flor. p. 356.
Footnote 651:
See King’s _Introduction_, p. 20, for this list.
Footnote 652:
_Ib._
Footnote 653:
See King’s _Introduction_, p. 73.
Footnote 654:
See King’s _Introduction_, p. 21; _An. F. M._, vol. ii. p. 825.
Footnote 655:
See vol. iii. p. 261, and Fordun’s _Chronicle_, vol. ii. p. 413, for
an account of these Abthainries. From this word Abthania Fordun formed
his fictitious office of Abthanus, and from its apparent resemblance
to the word Thanus, with which it has no real connection, made him
supreme over the Thanes.
Footnote 656:
Maldunus episcopus Sancti Andreæ contulit ecclesiam de Marchinke cum
tota terra honorifice et devote Deo et S. Servano et Keledeis de
insula Louchleven cum prefata libertate.—_Chart. Prior. St. And._, p.
116.
Footnote 657:
1055 _Maelduin mac Gillaodran epscop Alban et ordan Gaedel o cleircib_
in Christo quievit.—_Tigh._
Footnote 658:
Tuadal episcopus Sancti Andreæ contulit ecclesiam de Sconyn prefatis
viris religiosis devote et integre cum omni libertate et honore pro
suffragiis orationum.—_Chart. Prior. St. And._, p. 116.
Footnote 659:
Wyntoun, _Chron._, B. vii. cap. 3.
Footnote 660:
Orderic. Vital., B. viii. c. 22.
Footnote 661:
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Thorpe’s edition, vol. ii. p. 172.
Footnote 662:
This life has been printed by Pinkerton in his _Vitæ Sanctorum_, and
also in the appendix to the edition of Simeon of Durham edited for the
Surtees Club, vol. i.
Footnote 663:
_Vita S. Margaretæ_, cap. iv.
Footnote 664:
_Ib._ cap. viii.
Footnote 665:
Adamnan’s _Life of St. Columba_, ed. 1874, p. 96.
Footnote 666:
Girald. Camb., _Topogr. Dict._, iii. c. 19.
Footnote 667:
See _Vit. S. Margaretæ_, cap. viii.
Footnote 668:
_Vit. St. Margaretæ_, c. ix.
Footnote 669:
Malcolmus rex et Margareta regina Scotiæ contulerunt devote villam de
Ballechristin Deo omnipotenti et Keledeis de Louchleven cum eadem
libertate ut prius.—_Chart. Prior. S. Α._, p. 115.
Footnote 670:
_Chart. Prior. S. A._, p. 117.
Footnote 671:
Tighernac, who is a contemporary historian, has, in 1072, ‘Diarmed,
son of Maelnambo, king of Breatan and Innsegall—or the Western
Isles—and Dublin and the south half of Ireland, slain by Concobur
O’Malsechlan in the battle of Odba, and great slaughter made of the
Galls and men of Leinster with him.’—_Chron. Picts. and Scots_, p. 78.
Footnote 672:
1062 _Gilchrist hua Maeldoradh comorba Coluimcille etir Erinn et
Albain_ in Christo quievit.—_An. Ult._
Footnote 673:
1065 _Dubhtach Albannach prim anmchara Erinn acus Albain_ in Ardmacha
quievit.—_Ib._
Footnote 674:
1070 _Abbas Ia_, id est, _Mac mic Baetan domarbhadh do mac ind Ab._
(slain by the son of the abbot) _hua Maeldoradh_.—_Ib._
Footnote 675:
Inter cætera bona quæ nobilis hera fecerat, Huense cœnobium, quod
servus Christi Columba tempore Brudei regis Pictorum filii Meilocon,
construxerat, sed tempestate præliorum cum longa vetustate dirutum
fuerat, fidelis regina reædificavit, datisque sumptibus idoneis ad
opus Domini monachis reparavit.—_Orderic. Vital._, B. viii. c. 22.
Footnote 676:
_Magnus Saga, Collect. de Rebus Alb._, p. 348.
Footnote 677:
1099 _Donnchadh mac mic Moenaig Ab._ Ia in pace pausavit.—_An. Ult._
The form of Mac mic, which appears in the names of the two last abbots
of Iona instead of the Irish form _hua_, rather indicates that these
two abbots were Scotchmen.
Footnote 678:
1093 _Fothadh Ardepscop Albain_ in Christo quievit.—_An. Ult._ The
legend of St. Andrew says, speaking of the title Episcopus Scottorum,
‘Sic quippe ab antiquo episcopi Sancti Andreæ dicti sunt et in
scriptis tam antiquis quam modernis invenientur dicti Summi
Archiepiscopi sive Summi episcopi Scotorum, Unde et conscribi fecit in
theca Evangelii Fothet episcopus, maxime vir authoritatis, versus
istos—
‘Hanc Evangelii thecam construxit aviti
Fothet qui Scotis Summus Episcopus est.’
Bower altered the expression ‘Summus Episcopus’ to ‘Primus Episcopus,’
and applied it to the first Fothad, whom he made first bishop, though
in the revised edition of the _Scotichronicon_ in the Cupar MS., he
corrects his mistake. Wyntoun takes the same view, but ‘Summus
Episcopus’ is the exact equivalent in Latin of the Irish _Ard epscop_,
and there is no doubt that the last Fothad is the bishop meant. The
Gospel he so carefully protected may have been a gift from Queen
Margaret.
Footnote 679:
_Regist. Prior. S. Andreæ_, p. 115.
Footnote 680:
_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 188. See also Dr. Reeves’s _British
Culdees_, p. 106, and the very valuable commentary in the notes.
Footnote 681:
Dr. Reeves was the first to give the correct explanation of this
passage in the legend. See _British Culdees_, p. 107, note.
Footnote 682:
Dr. Reeves on the _British Culdees_, p. 75.
Footnote 683:
Dr. Reeves on the _Ancient Churches of Armagh_, p. 21.
Footnote 684:
See _infra_, p. 414, note 780, for original of this passage.
Footnote 685:
_Miscellany of the Irish Archæological Society_, vol. i. p. 131.
Footnote 686:
_Ib._ p. 133.
Footnote 687:
_Ib._ p. 141.
Footnote 688:
_Miscellany of the Irish Archæological Society_, vol. i. p. 129.
Footnote 689:
_Ib._, p. 131.
Footnote 690:
_Ib._, p. 129.
Dr. Reeves has printed in the appendix to Bishop Colton’s Visitation,
edited for the Irish Archæological Society, p. 109, a rule of
Columcille taken from one of the Burgundian MSS. It is obviously the
same rule which Colgan describes as ‘aliam regulam eremiticam seu
præscriptum fratribus scripsit.’ It cannot be connected with St.
Columba himself, and it is probably a rule compiled for the _Deoradh
De_ at the time the Disert Columcille was founded at Kells. It will be
found in the Appendix.
Footnote 691:
See _antea_, p. 342.
Footnote 692:
These notices are taken from the Annals of the Four Masters, where
they will be found under their respective dates.
Footnote 693:
St. Ciaran, the founder of Clonmacnois, has left a trace of his name
in Iona; for a rising ground south of Martyr’s Bay is called Cnoc
Ciaran.
CHAPTER IX.
EXTINCTION OF THE OLD CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.
[Sidenote: Causes which brought the Celtic Church to an end.]
The causes which combined to bring the old Celtic Church to an end may
be classed under two heads—internal decay and external change. Under the
first head the chief cause was the encroachment of the secular element
upon the ecclesiastic, and the gradual absorption of the latter by the
former. As long as the old monastic system remained intact there was a
vitality in its ecclesiastical organisation which to a great extent
preserved the essential character of these monasteries as great
ecclesiastical foundations; but this was to some extent impaired by the
assimilation of the church to that of Rome in the seventh and eighth
centuries, which introduced a secular element among her clergy; and the
Danish invasions, with all their devastating and destructive
consequences, completed the total disorganisation of the Monastic
Church. The monasteries were repeatedly laid waste and destroyed, and
her clergy had either to fly or to take up arms in self-defence; her
lands, with their ruined buildings and reduced establishment, fell into
the hands of laymen, and became hereditary in their families; until at
last nothing was left but the mere name of abbacy applied to the lands,
and of abbot borne by the secular lord for the time. The external change
produced in the church was the result of the policy adopted towards it
by the kings of the race of Queen Margaret. It was in the main the same
policy as that adopted towards Ireland by the Norman kings of England.
It mainly consisted, first, in placing the church upon a territorial in
place of a tribal basis, and substituting the parochial system and a
diocesan episcopacy for the old tribal churches with their monastic
jurisdiction and functional episcopacy; secondly, in introducing the
religious orders of the Church of Rome, and founding great monasteries
as centres of counter influence to the native church; and, thirdly, in
absorbing the Culdees, now the only clerical element left in the Celtic
Church, into the Roman system, by converting them from secular into
regular canons, and merging them in the latter order.
[Sidenote: A.D. 1093-1107.
See of St. Andrews remains vacant and churches founded in
Lothian only.]
During the war of succession which followed the death of Malcolm the
Third and ended in the firm establishment of the sons of the Saxon Queen
Margaret upon the throne of Scotland in the person of Edgar, her eldest
son, no successor appears to have been appointed to Fothad, the last
native bishop of St. Andrews, and no attempt appears to have been made
to follow out the policy which had been inaugurated by that queen of
assimilating the native church to that of Rome. During this interval
Scotland north of the Firths of Forth and Clyde was left without a
bishop, and the conflict between the Celtic and the Saxon element in the
population of the country, which was to determine whether Scotland was
to remain a Celtic or a Teutonic kingdom, probably threw the northern
portion of it into too great a confusion to render any attempt to
reorganise the church possible. The only ecclesiastical foundations made
during this period were confined to the southern districts, where the
sons of Malcolm, who owed to English assistance the vindication of their
right to the throne, showed their gratitude by grants to the church of
Durham. Duncan, the eldest son of Malcolm, made over to the monks of
Durham Tiningeham, Aldeham, Scuchale, Cnolle, Hatherwich, and all right
which Bishop Fodan had in Broccesmuthe.[694] These lands are in East
Lothian, and formed part of the possessions of St. Balthere’s monastery
of Tyningham. The allusion to the rights of Bishop Fodan or Fothad shows
that this part of Lothian at least had by this time come under the
bishops of St. Andrews; and we find that these lands afterwards reverted
to that see.[695]
Edgar, the eldest son of Queen Margaret, had no sooner made good his
right to the throne by English assistance, than we find him refounding
the monastery of Coldingham, which had been destroyed by the Danes. In
his charter he says that he had come to the dedication of the church of
St. Mary at Coldingham, which dedication had been honourably completed
to the praise of God and to his contentment, and that he had immolated
on the altar to the same church, in endowment, and granted, the whole
town of Swintun, to be held for ever free and quit from all claim, and
to be disposed of at the will of the monks of St. Cuthbert. He adds that
he had ordained to the men of Coldinghamshire, as they themselves have
chosen and confirmed in his hand, that they every year pay to the monks
half a mark of silver for each plough.[696] The mention of
Coldinghamshire, and the burden imposed upon the men of the district to
contribute to the support of the church, indicate something like a
parochial district attached to the church; and we find, in another
charter, the establishment of a parish church clearly presented to us,
as well as the process by which it was accomplished. In this document,
Thor informs his lord, Earl David, that King Edgar had given him
Ednaham, now Ednam, in Berwickshire, waste; that he had inhabited it,
and built from the foundation the church which King Edgar caused to be
dedicated to Saint Cuthbert, and had endowed it with one plough; and he
prays his son to confirm the donation he had made of the church to St.
Cuthbert and the monks of Durham.[697] Here we have in fact a formation
of a manor with its parish church, and in a subsequent document it is
termed the mother church of Ednam.[698]
[Sidenote: A.D. 1107.
Turgot appointed bishop of St. Andrews, and the Sees of Moray
and Dunkeld created.]
Edgar appears to have made no attempt to introduce a parochial church
north of the Forth, or even to fill up the vacancy in the see of St.
Andrews; but, on his death, when the territory which formed his kingdom,
with its heterogeneous population, was divided between his two
brothers—the districts north of the Forth and Clyde, with Lothian as far
as the Lammermoors, falling, under his will, to Alexander as king, and
the districts of the Cumbrian Britons, with the rest of Lothian, to
David as earl—the policy which had been inaugurated by their Saxon
mother, Queen Margaret, of assimilating the native church to that of
England, was at once resumed by both. Alexander’s first step was to fill
up the vacancy in the bishopric of St. Andrews, by the appointment, in
the first year of his reign, of Turgot, prior of Durham, and at the same
time to create two additional bishoprics for the more remote and Celtic
portion of his kingdom. The first was that of Moray, to which he
appointed a bishop named Gregorius; and the second was that of Dunkeld,
which he revived in the person of Cormac.[699]
[Sidenote: Establishment of the bishopric of Moray.]
The districts beyond the Spey were at this time so little under the
influence of the Crown, and their connection with what formed the
kingdom proper so slender, that the position of a bishop of Moray
appointed by the king can have been little more than nominal. In fact,
we know very little of the state of the church in that great Celtic
district at this time, except what may be gathered from the dedications
of the churches. The low-lying portion of its territory, extending along
the south shore of the Moray Firth from the Spey westward, with its
fertile soil and temperate air, must always have formed an attractive
position for ecclesiastical establishments; and in that part of it which
lies between the Spey and the Findhorn three churches come now rather
prominently forward. These are the churches of Brennach, or Birnie,
Spyny and Kenedor; and we learn something of this last church from the
legend of Saint Gervadius or Gernadius, whose day is the 8th of
November. He was a native of Ireland, and leaving his home to preach the
Word of Life in Scotland, he came to the territory of Moravia or Moray,
in which place he associated with himself many fellow-soldiers in
Christ, and under angelic direction, as it is said, built an oratory or
cell in a place called Kenedor. Here he had a stone bed, and led the
life of an Anchorite.[700] A cave near Elgin and a spring of water in
the rock above bear his name. An allusion in his legend to a war by the
king of the Angles against the Scots, which brought the Anglic soldiers
to his neighbourhood, fixes his date to the year 934, when Athelstane,
king of Northumbria, invaded Scotland both by sea and land; and his
establishment has all the features of a Culdee church. There was no
trace, however, of the name of Culdee in this district when Alexander
founded his bishopric, and it was not till the time of Bricius, the
sixth bishop of Moray, who filled that position from 1203 to 1222, that
the bishops had any fixed residence in the diocese. They are said before
his time to have had their episcopal seat in one or other of the three
churches of Birnie, Spyny and Kenedor. When Bricius became bishop in
1203 he fixed his cathedral at Spyny, and founded a chapter of eight
secular canons, giving to his cathedral a constitution founded on the
usage of Lincoln, which he ascertained by a mission to England.[701]
After his death the seat of the bishopric was removed to Elgin.
[Sidenote: Establishment of bishopric of Dunkeld.]
The bishopric of Dunkeld was in a very different position, and its
relations with the Crown were of the most intimate character. A church
had been built there by Kenneth mac Alpin, the founder of the Scottish
dynasty, and a part at least of the relics of St. Columba had been
transferred to it by him. The abbot, in his time, was the first bishop
of his Pictish kingdom. It had then, along with the great territory
forming the lay abbacy of Dull, passed into the possession of a line of
lay abbots, from whom the family on the throne were the male
descendants; and it had now, probably by the death of Ethelred the young
lay abbot, again reverted to the Crown, as we hear no more of him after
the reign of Edgar. Mylne, who was a canon of Dunkeld in the fifteenth
century, tells us in his Lives of the Bishops of Dunkeld ‘that, when it
seemed good to the Supreme Controller of all Christian religion, and
when devotion and piety had increased, St. David, the sovereign, who was
the younger son of King Malcolm Canmor and the holy Queen Margaret,
having changed the constitution of the monastery, erected it into a
cathedral church, and, having superseded the _Keledei_, created, about
the year 1127, a bishop and canons, and ordained that there should in
future be a secular college. The first bishop on this foundation was for
a time abbot of that monastery, and subsequently a counsellor of the
king.’[702] Mylne is, however, wrong both in the date and in the name of
the founder; for, as we have seen, the bishopric was founded by
Alexander, the predecessor of King David, as early as the year 1107. The
possession of the ample territories belonging to the lay abbacy of
Dunkeld would enable him at once to refound the bishopric with its
cathedral and chapter in proper form. And here we find the remains of
the old Columban Church brought into sharp contact with the Culdee
foundations. The church which Kenneth had founded there certainly
inherited, along with a part of the relics of the great founder of the
Columban Church, to a certain extent also the primatial jurisdiction of
the monastery of Iona over the Columban monasteries on the mainland.
These monasteries had, with few exceptions, become lay abbacies, and
Mylne appears so far to have given a correct representation of the
revival of the episcopate, as we find that the rights of the original
monastery of Dunkeld over the Columban foundations do appear to have
been now exercised by the bishop. Besides the two great lay abbacies of
Dull and Glendochart, founded respectively by St. Adamnan and St. Fillan
in the seventh century, whose united territory comprised the entire
western districts of Atholl, bounded by Drumalban on the west, and the
districts beyond this range, which afterwards formed the diocese of
Argyll, we find the new bishopric possessing within the limits of other
dioceses disconnected parishes which represented old Columban
foundations. In Stratherne it had the parishes of Madderty and Crieff,
the former dedicated to St. Ethernanus, whose death is recorded by
Tighernac in 669, and who therefore belonged to the Columban Church; and
here we find the bishop dealing with the rights of Can and Conveth which
the clerics of the church of Dunkeld had from ‘the lands of Madderty,
which in Scotch are termed Abthen.’[703] In charters to the monastery of
Dunfermline the rights of Dunkeld in Fife and Fotherif are specially
reserved;[704] and here the bishopric possessed Incholm, dedicated to
St. Columba, and adjacent lands on the mainland. In Angus it possessed
the parishes of Fearn and Menmuir, dedicated to St. Aidan, the Columban
bishop of Lindisfarne; and it even penetrated beyond the Firth of Forth
on the south, where it possessed Cramond dedicated to St. Columba, and
on the north beyond the Mounth, when we find in a charter granted by the
Mormaer, or earl of Buchan, in the earlier years of the reign of King
David, of the lands of Pet-mec-Cobrig ‘for the consecration of a church
of Christ and Peter the apostle (at Deer) and to Columcille and to
Drostan,’ that is, for the reconsecration of the church of Deer to St.
Peter, which had previously been dedicated to St. Columba and St.
Drostan, and the lands are granted ‘free from all exactions with their
tie to Cormac, bishop of Dunkeld.’[705] This monastery of Deer is one of
the few Columban foundations which preserved its clerical character
intact down to this period, and here we find no trace of the name of
Culdee in connection with it.
[Sidenote: Rights of _Keledei_ pass to St. Andrews.]
On the other hand, and in contrast to these rights of Dunkeld, Turgot
was no sooner elected bishop of St. Andrews than the fate and fortunes
of the Culdee establishments were committed into his hands; for we are
told that ‘in his days the whole rights of the _Keledei_ over the whole
kingdom of Scotland passed to the bishopric of St. Andrews.’[706] The
appointment of Turgot, the prior of Durham, to the bishopric of St.
Andrews, in conformity with the policy adopted towards the native church
by the sons of Queen Margaret, had one result which probably King
Alexander did not anticipate when he made it. It brought upon him the
claim of the archbishop of York to supremacy over the Scottish Church,
whose bishops he regarded as his suffragans. It is not necessary for our
purpose to enter at length on this intricate subject. His claim was, no
doubt, founded upon the original commission by Pope Gregory to Augustine
in the end of the sixth century, by which he placed all the churches
north of the Humber under the bishop of York, and to the convention
between the archbishops of Canterbury and York in 1072, by which it was
attempted to revive this arrangement, and to place all the churches of
the northern province, as far as the extreme limits of Scotland, under
the latter;[707] but such a right had never been either recognised or
exercised, and the only substantial ground upon which it could be based
was one very similar to that on which the supremacy claimed by the king
of England over Scotland could be founded. It is certain that the
province of York extended ecclesiastically, as the kingdom of
Northumbria did civilly, to the Firth of Forth; and so far as concerned
the churches of Lothian and Teviotdale, the former of which were now
under the rule of the bishop of St. Andrews, while the latter were
claimed by Glasgow, there may have been some ground for the assertion of
such a right, similar to that which the annexation of Lothian to the
kingdom of Scotland gave for the civil claim; but beyond the Firths of
Forth and Clyde the claims of both were shadowy in the extreme, and
Alexander, in his jealousy for the independence of his kingdom, saw the
necessity of resisting the threatened encroachment of the ecclesiastical
jurisdiction of York. In the end Turgot was consecrated at York on 1st
August 1109, with reservation of the rights of either see. He died on
31st August 1115, and during his tenure of office, owing mainly to these
disputes, he appears to have done nothing to affect the rights of the
Culdees. In order to avoid a recurrence of this question, Alexander
applied to the archbishop of Canterbury to recommend him an English
cleric as bishop, stating that the bishops of St. Andrews had hitherto
been consecrated either by the Pope or by the archbishop of Canterbury.
The former assertion was probably true in so far as regards the later
bishops; but the incautious admission of the latter, which was totally
inconsistent with fact, led the king into a new and unprofitable
dispute, which had an equally awkward bearing upon the more important
question of the independence of the kingdom. Eadmer, a monk of
Canterbury, was sent, but was not elected till 1120; and in the
following year he returned to Canterbury,[708] and the bishopric
remained unfilled up for three years.
[Sidenote: Canons regular introduced into Scotland.]
During this time, however, while St. Andrews was, practically speaking,
without a bishop, Alexander commenced to carry out another part of this
policy, by introducing the canons-regular of St. Augustine, or the black
canons, as they were called, into Scotland; and for this purpose he
selected the most central and important position in his kingdom, that of
Scone, which was peculiarly associated with the very heart of the
monarchy, and had been the scene of previous legislation regarding the
church. Here he brought a colony of canons regular from the church of
St. Oswald at Nastlay, near Pontefract, in Yorkshire, and founded a
priory in the year 1115, which was confirmed by the seven earls of his
kingdom, and by Gregory and Cormac, the bishops of the two additional
bishoprics he had created, who here term themselves bishops by the
authority of God, and of the holy apostles Peter and Paul and of Saint
Andrew the apostle. The church, which was previously dedicated to the
Trinity, was placed under the patronage of the Virgin, St. Michael, St.
John, St. Lawrence and St. Augustine.[709] Some years later Alexander
introduced the regular canons into the diocese of Dunkeld. In the year
1122 he founded a priory of canons on an island near the east end of
Loch Tay, which became a cell of Scone, and here his queen, Sibylla,
died and was buried; and in 1123 he founded a monastery for the same
canons in the island of Inchcolm in the Firth of Forth.[710] In the
following year Alexander heard of the death of Eadmer, and filled up the
bishopric of St. Andrews by appointing Robert, the English prior of
Scone; but, four months after this appointment, and before Robert was
consecrated, he died in the April of that year. Probably the last act of
his life was the right which he conferred upon the church of the Holy
Trinity of Scone, to hold a court, in a charter which is addressed to
the bishops and earls of Scotland, and is witnessed by Robert,
bishop-elect of St. Andrews, Cormac the bishop, and Gregory, bishop of
Moray.[711]
[Sidenote: Diocese of Glasgow restored by Earl David.]
During the whole period of Alexander’s reign, his younger brother David
was carrying out the same policy in the southern districts of Scotland,
over which he ruled as earl. In the year 1113 he founded a monastery at
Selkirk, in which he placed Benedictine monks of the order of Tyron; but
his great work there was the reconstitution of the bishopric of Glasgow.
This diocese he restored about the year 1115, and caused an inquisition
to be made by the elders and wise men of Cumbria into the lands and
churches which formerly belonged to the see of Glasgow. In this
document, which has been preserved, and which may be placed in the year
1120 or 1121, its framers relate the foundation of the church of Glasgow
by St. Kentigern, and that he was succeeded by several bishops in the
see; but that the confusion and revolutions of the country at length
destroyed all traces of the church, and almost of Christianity, till the
restoration of the bishopric by Earl David, and the election and
consecration of John, who had been his tutor, and is commonly called the
first bishop of Glasgow. The bishopric, as reconstituted after the
information derived from this inquisition, extended from the Clyde on
the north to the Solway Firth and the march with England on the south,
and from the western boundary of Lothian on the east to the river Urr on
the west; and it included Teviotdale, which had remained a part of the
diocese of Durham while the Lothian churches north of the Tweed were
transferred to St. Andrews, and which was now reclaimed as properly
belonging to Glasgow. Here we find no traces of the _Keledei_, who had
formerly formed the chapter of Glasgow; but in the reign of Malcolm the
Fourth the pope confirmed a constitution of the dean and chapter, which
had been introduced after the model of Sarum by Herbert, elected bishop
in 1147.[712] Here, too, the foundation of the new bishopric of Glasgow
brought upon him the claims of the archbishop of York, which were
equally resisted, and the non-dependence of the diocese on any
metropolitan bishop established. The rights of York were, however,
recognised in the case of the bishopric of Candida Casa, likewise
restored some years later, when Gilda Aldan was appointed its first
bishop, as this see had been first established by the Anglic king of
Northumbria in the eighth century. Galloway, though civilly united to
Scotland, was considered ecclesiastically to belong to England, and its
bishop owed obedience as one of his suffragans to the archbishop of
York, by whom Gilda Aldan was consecrated soon after David’s accession
to the throne of Scotland.[713]
[Sidenote: Bishoprics and monasteries founded by King David.]
Ailred of Rivaux, who was King David’s contemporary, tells us of him
that ‘he seemed not undeservedly loved both by God and men. He was
plainly beloved by God, for at the very outset of his reign he
diligently practised the things which belong to God in erecting churches
and founding monasteries, which he endowed with possessions and covered
with honours. For whereas he had found in the whole kingdom of Scotland
three or four bishops only, the other churches, without a shepherd or
bishop, going to wrack and ruin in respect both of morals and substance;
what with ancient ones which he restored and new ones which he founded,
he left nine at his death. He left also monasteries of the Cluniac,
Cistercian, Tyronian orders (who were Benedictines), and the Arovensian,
Præmonstratensian, and Belvacensian (who were canons-regular from
Aroise, Prémontré, and Beauvais), not few in number or small in size,
but full of brethren.’[714] There is a catalogue of religious houses at
the end of Henry of Silgrave’s Chronicle, written about A.D. 1272, which
belongs however to an earlier period, and does not come down later than
the reign of William the Lion; and from it alone do we obtain any
information as to the _Keledean_ character of these foundations.[715]
The bishoprics which he found at his accession were those of St.
Andrews, Moray, and Dunkeld, to which Ailred, probably with some
hesitation, adds Glasgow. Galloway was not included, as it properly
belonged to England. We find no trace of _Keledei_ in either Glasgow or
Moray; and the catalogue mentions only secular canons, that is, the
chapters established after their restoration. The greater part of the
new bishoprics which he added were founded in the first few years of his
reign; and he appears to have commenced his proceedings by having
Robert, bishop-elect of St. Andrews, consecrated in 1128 by the
archbishop of York, in the same manner as Turgot had been consecrated,
that is, reserving the rights of both sees; and by completing the
division of Scotland north of the great range of the Mounth into
separate sees.
[Sidenote: Establishment of bishopric of Ross.]
The first of these appears to have been the diocese of Rosemarky, or
Ross. A charter granted by King David to the monks of Dunfermline,
between the years 1128 and 1130, is witnessed by Robert bishop of St.
Andrews, who had now been consecrated, John bishop of Glasgow, Cormac
bishop of Dunkeld, and Gregory bishop of Moray—these are the four
bishoprics alluded to by Ailred—and there now appears as a witness an
additional bishop—Makbeth, bishop of Rosmarkyn, or Rosemarky.[716] This
church, as appears by its dedication, was originally founded as a
Columban monastery by Lugadius, or Moluoc, abbot and bishop of Lismore,
whose death is recorded in 577; but, as we have seen, Bonifacius
refounded it in the eighth century, and dedicated the church to St.
Peter. Here he placed, according to Wyntoun, secular canons, and we now
find the canons designated as _Keledei_ in the catalogue of religious
houses. The chapter, however, was reconstituted early in the succeeding
century, when the term _Keledei_ disappears, and instead there is a
regular cathedral body of canons under a dean.[717]
[Sidenote: Establishment of bishopric of Aberdeen.]
The next bishopric established appears to have been that of Aberdeen,
embracing the extensive districts between the Dee and the Spey, and
including the earldom of Mar and Buchan. The memorandum of the charter
by the Mormaer, or Earl, of Buchan, refounding the church of Deer, which
has been already referred to, in which Cormac, bishop of Dunkeld, is
mentioned, is witnessed by Nectan, bishop of Aberdeen; and this is the
earliest notice of that see. According to Fordun, it succeeded an
earlier see founded at Mortlach, on the banks of the river Fiddich,
which falls into the Spey, and therefore not far from the western
boundary of the diocese. Fordun gives the following account of its
foundation. After narrating a victory by King Malcolm the Second over
the Norwegian army in the north, he proceeds:—‘In the seventh year of
his reign Malcolm, thinking over the manifold blessings continually
bestowed upon him by God, pondered anxiously in his mind what he should
give Him in return. At length, the grace of the Holy Ghost working
within him, he set his heart upon increasing the worship of God; so he
established a new episcopal see at Murthillach, not far from the spot
where he had overcome the Norwegians and gained the victory, and endowed
it with churches and the rents of many estates. He desired to extend the
territory of the diocese, so as to make it reach from the stream or
river called the Dee to the river Spey. To this see a holy man and one
worthy the office of bishop, named Beyn, was at the instance of the king
appointed, as first bishop, by our lord the Pope Benedict.’[718] The
church of Aberdeen appears, however, somewhat earlier to have had a
tradition that the see was originally founded at Mortlach, and was
transferred to Aberdeen by King David in the thirteenth year of his
reign; but the foundation of the church at Mortlach is ascribed to
Malcolm Canmore in the sixth year of his reign. This tradition is
contained in five charters, or memoranda of charters, prefixed to the
Chartulary of Aberdeen, and the interval between Beyn, the supposed
first bishop, and Nectan is filled up by Donercius, the second bishop,
and Cormauch, the third bishop.[719] That a bishopric was founded there
by Malcolm the Second is clearly at variance with the undoubted fact
that there was at that time but one bishop in Scotland, whose seat was
at St. Andrews, and who was termed the _Epscop Albain_, or Episcopus
Scottorum; and the five documents which contain the Aberdeen tradition
have been shown by the learned editor of the Chartulary to be
unquestionably spurious.[720] The first authentic writ in that
Chartulary is a bull by Pope Adrian IV. in 1157, confirming to Edward,
bishop of Aberdeen, the church of Aberdeen, the church of St. Machar,
with the town of Old Aberdeen and other lands, in which are included the
monastery of Cloveth and the town and monastery of Murthillach, with
five churches and the lands belonging to them.[721] There is here no
allusion to Murthillach having been an episcopal see, the seat of which
had been transferred to Aberdeen. The designation of monastery points
unequivocally to these churches having been old Columban monasteries;
and accordingly we find that Murthillach was dedicated to St. Moluoc,
the founder of the churches of Lismore and Rosemarky in the sixth
century. Of the three bishops who are said to have preceded Nectan, Beyn
probably belongs to the Columban period,[722] Donercius has all the
appearance of a fictitious name, and Cormauch is probably Cormac, bishop
of Dunkeld, who, as we have seen, appears in the charter in which Nectan
is first mentioned as having rights connected with the church of Deer,
and who may have possessed similar claims upon the monasteries of
Cloveth and Murthillach, as old Columban foundations, from which
probably any clerical element had by this time disappeared.
[Sidenote: Monasteries of Deer and Turiff.]
We fortunately now possess an invaluable record in the Book of Deer,
which throws some light upon two Columban foundations in the district of
Buchan, forming the north-eastern portion of the diocese of Aberdeen, as
well as upon the social organisation of the Celtic inhabitants of that
district. These are the monasteries of Deer and Turriff, the one founded
by St. Columba and placed under the care of his nephew St. Drostan, the
other founded by St. Comgan in the following century; and the notices in
the Book of Deer are peculiarly valuable, as it shows these monasteries
retaining their clerical element and Celtic character unimpaired down to
the reign of David I. It is here, if anywhere, that we should expect to
find, according to popular notions, these Columban clergy bearing the
name of Culdees; but the term _Cele De_ nowhere appears in this record
in connection with them. The peculiar value of this MS. consists in
memoranda of grants to the monastery of Deer, written in the Irish
character and language on blank pages or on the margins. These are in
two handwritings. The first contains notices of grants preceding the
time of Gartnait, Mormaer or Earl of Buchan, who lived in the earlier
years of King David’s reign. These are written on three blank pages at
the end of the MS. and on the margin of the first page. The second
begins with the grant by Gartnait refounding the church and dedicating
it to St. Peter, and is followed by a short notice of a grant, by the
same earl, which probably preceded it, as the grant is to Columcille and
Drostan alone, without mentioning St. Peter; and on the margin of the
second page, in the same handwriting, is a grant by Colban, the
son-in-law and successor of Gartnait. The scribe appears to have added
to two of the grants in the first handwriting the important statement
that they were made in freedom from Mormaer and Toisech to the day of
judgment, with ‘his blessing on every one who shall fulfil, and his
curse on every one who shall go against it.’ The second of the grants by
Earl Gartnait, which appears to have immediately preceded the
reconstitution of the church, is witnessed by ‘Gillecalline the
_sacart_, or priest, Feradach, son of Maelbhricin, and Maelgirc, son of
Tralin,’ in whom we have probably the small society to which the clerics
of Deer had by this time been reduced, and which rendered a refoundation
necessary. As the grant refounding the church is witnessed by the
_Ferleighinn_, or man of learning, of _Turbruad_, or Turriff, it is not
a very violent supposition that he may have been the scribe. The charter
granted by King David towards the end of his reign, declaring that the
clerics of Deer shall be free from all lay interference and exaction, as
written in their book, shows that they had become exposed to the
encroachments of the laity and required protection; and the foundation
by William, earl of Buchan, of the Cistercian abbey of Deer in the year
1219 seems to have brought to a close its history as a Celtic monastery.
The monastery of _Turbruad_, or Turriff, appears also to have existed as
a Celtic monastery at the same time, and we have some incidental notices
of it in the Book of Deer. Domingart, _Ferleighinn Turbruad_, or ‘lector
of Turriff,’ witnesses one of Earl Gartnait’s grants, and that by his
successor Colbain is witnessed by Cormac, _Abb. Turbruad_, or ‘abbot of
Turriff;’ but it probably passed into lay hands before the end of
David’s reign, as his charter of confirmation is witnessed by ‘Cormac de
Turbrud,’ or Cormac of Turriff, without any designation implying a
clerical character.[723] The charter by Cainnech, Mormaer or Earl of
Buchan, refounding the church of Deer, contains the last notice of
Cormac bishop of Dunkeld; and Gregorius, the bishop of Moray, appears to
have been translated to Dunkeld, as in a charter by David the First to
Dunfermline, granted before the death of his queen, Matilda, in 1130, we
find as witnesses Robert bishop of St. Andrews and Gregorius bishop of
Dunkeld; and along with them appears, for the first time, Andreas bishop
of Cataness, or Caithness.[724]
[Sidenote: Establishment of bishopric of Caithness.]
This great district, which comprised both the modern counties of
Caithness and Sutherland, and extended from the Dornoch to the Pentland
Firths, was at this time in the possession of the Norwegian earl of
Orkney; and, though he held the earldom of Caithness nominally under the
crown of Scotland, its connection with the Scottish kingdom was as yet
but a slight one. The erection of it into a diocese and the appointment
of a bishop by the king of Scotland could have had little reality in
them till they were accepted by the Norwegian earl; and David appears to
have provided his new bishop with the means of supporting his position
by conferring upon him the church of the Holy Trinity at Dunkeld, with
its possessions of Fordouin, Dunmernoch, Bendacthin, or Bendochy,
Cupermaccultin, Incheturfin and Chethec, or Keithock. Towards the end of
David’s reign Andrew probably obtained a footing in Caithness, as he
made over this church to the monks of Dunfermline;[725] and we find his
immediate successors, John and Adam, living in Caithness, and claiming
certain subsidies from the people. The principal church of the diocese
was that of Dornoch, situated in the district of Sutherland, on the
north side of the Dornoch Firth. This church was dedicated to St. Bar or
Finbar, and his festival was held on the 25th of September. This is the
day of St. Bar or Finbar, bishop of Cork in the Irish Calendar; but the
legend given in the Aberdeen Breviary obviously identifies him with St.
Finbar of Maghbile, the preceptor and friend of St. Columba, whose day
in the Irish Calendar is the 10th of September. There seems, therefore,
to be some confusion between the two, and it is more probable that it
was, like Rosemarky, a Columban foundation. The name of St. Duthac, to
whom the church of Tain on the opposite shore of the firth is dedicated,
is connected also with the church at Dornoch, where he is said to have
performed a miracle on St. Finbar’s day;[726] and in his time the
_Keledei_ may have been introduced here, where we find them in the
catalogue of religious houses. In the year 1196 that portion of the
earldom of Caithness which lay between the Ord of Caithness and the
Dornoch Firth appears to have been taken from the Norwegian earl and
bestowed upon Hugh of Moray, of the then rising family of De Moravia;
and the appointment of another member of the family, Gilbert de Moravia,
soon after to the bishopric of Moray led to the proper organisation of
Dornoch as a cathedral. But the Culdees had by this time disappeared,
and the clerical element reduced, as was usual, to a single priest; for
his deed establishing a cathedral chapter of ten canons, with the usual
functionaries of dean, precentor, chancellor, treasurer and archdeacon,
proceeds on the narrative ‘that in the times of his predecessors there
was but a single priest ministering in the cathedral, both on account of
the poverty of the place and by reason of frequent hostilities; and that
he desired to extend the worship of God in that church, and resolved to
build a cathedral church at his own expense, to dedicate it to the
Virgin Mary, and, in proportion to his limited means, to make it
conventual.’[727]
[Sidenote: The communities of _Keledei_ superseded by regular canons.]
As far as we have gone, the Celtic Church appears mainly as dying out by
internal decay, and as being superseded by the bishoprics founded in the
earlier years of King David’s reign, and the establishment of the
ordinary cathedral staff of canons with their dean and other
functionaries. We have now arrived at that period of David’s reign when
an active war against the Culdee establishments commenced, and every
effort was made to suppress them entirely, and when the process of
internal decay was accompanied by a course of external aggression which
we must now follow as it rolled from St. Andrews, into whose hands their
fate was committed, westward, till it finally reached the far shores of
the island of Iona.
[Sidenote: Suppression of _Keledei_ of St. Andrews.]
In the year 1144, Robert, bishop of St. Andrews, who had been prior of
the monastery of regular canons of St. Augustine at Scone, founded a
priory for the same canons at St. Andrews, and, besides various lands,
granted to them two of the seven portions of the altarage of St.
Andrews, which then belonged to lay persons, and likewise the hospital
of St. Andrews, with the portion which belonged to it; and this grant
was confirmed in the same year by the pope Lucius II. The object of this
foundation evidently was that it should in time supersede the Culdees.
Accordingly, in the same year King David grants a charter to the prior
and canons of St. Andrews, in which he provides that they shall receive
the _Keledei_ of Kilrimont into the canonry, with all their possessions
and revenues, if they are willing to become canons-regular; but, if they
refuse, those who are now alive are to retain them during their lives,
and, after their death, as many canons-regular are to be instituted in
the church of St. Andrews as there are now _Keledei_, and all their
possessions are to be appropriated to the use of the canons. Three years
later Pope Eugenius III., by a bull directed to the prior of St.
Andrews, deprived the _Keledei_ of their right to elect the bishop, and
conferred it upon the prior and canons of St. Andrews, and at the same
time decreed that, as the _Keledei_ died out, their places were to be
filled up by canons-regular. The _Keledei_ appear to have resisted these
changes, and to have continued to assert their right to participate in
the election of the bishop, as the decree depriving them of it was
renewed from time to time by subsequent popes down to the year 1248.
About the year 1156, Robert, bishop of St. Andrews, granted to the prior
and brethren of St. Andrews the whole of the portions of the altarage,
with the exception of the seventh, which belongs to the bishop, thus
adding three more later to the three portions they already possessed;
and six years later Bishop Arnald gave the whole of the altarage, which
was divided into seven portions, and had been held by seven persons not
living a conventual life, to the canons professing a regular life and
living in community.[728] Of the two bodies into which the community of
St. Andrews had been divided, that one which had passed, with the
exception of the bishop’s share, into the hands of secular persons, thus
came to be represented by the priory of regular canons. In 1220 we find
a bull by Pope Honorius III. requiring the legate of the apostolic see
to inquire into a dispute between the Prior and convent of St. Andrews
on the one hand, and the Bishop and those clerics of St. Andrews who are
commonly called _Keledei_ on the other, in regard to their respective
possessions. The Keledean community at St. Andrews now appears under the
name of the Provost and _Keledei_ of the Church of St. Mary; and they
are so designated in a document connected with the controversy between
the prior and convent of St. Andrews and the provost of the church of
St. Mary of St. Andrews and the Keledei living there as canons and their
vicars;[729] and in the same year there is a bull by Pope Innocent the
Fourth to the prior and canons, who are now termed the Chapter of St.
Andrews in Scotland of the order of St. Augustine, which narrates that
it had been ordained by his predecessors that, on the decease of the
_Keledei_, their place should be filled up by canons-regular, and their
prebends and possessions made over for their use; but that, the prebend
of Gilbert the _Keledeus_ having become vacant, the _Keledei_ refused to
give it up or to allow a regular canon to be introduced in his place,
contrary to these statutes; and it directed the _Keledei_ to be
excommunicated if they did not obey them. Master Richard Vermont,
_Keledeus_, appears on behalf of the _Keledei_, and resigns the prebend,
which is made over to the canons. Three years later we find in another
bull ‘the provost and chapter of the _Caledei_ of the church of St. Mary
in the city of St. Andrews’ still claiming to participate in the
election of the bishop, and supported by the archdeacon. In a subsequent
bull, two years after, addressed to the prior and chapter of the
cathedral church of St. Andrews of the order of St. Augustine, on the
narrative that ‘two of the _Keledei_ of the church of Saint Mary of
Kilrimont, who term themselves canons,’ had been allowed to take part in
the election of a previous bishop, it is decreed, with consent of the
_Keledei_, that this shall not operate to their prejudice.[730] In the
year 1258 they are finally deprived of their parochial status as vicars
of the parish church of the Holy Trinity of St. Andrews.[731] It is
evident from these deeds that the _Keledei_ asserted their claim to be
considered as canons, and did not submit without a struggle to be
deprived of the right of participating in the election of bishop, from
which they are finally excluded in the year 1273. We again find them in
a document in 1309, and the position which they had now come to occupy
is clearly defined. It is a decision given by Sir Thomas Randulph, the
guardian of Scotland north of the Firth of Forth, in a controversy
between the _Keledei_ and the bishop regarding territorial jurisdiction,
in which he finds that ‘within the bounds of the district termed the
Boar’s Chase there are only three baronies, viz., the barony of the
bishop of St. Andrews, the barony of the prior of St. Andrews, and the
barony of the _Keledei_, and that these baronies with their inhabitants
are under the immediate jurisdiction of the bishop of St. Andrews and of
the church, and of no one else.’[732] While, therefore, the priory of
the canons-regular of St. Andrews ‘soon took its place as first in rank
and wealth of the religious houses of Scotland, and the prior, with the
ring and mitre and symbols of episcopacy, had rank and place in
Parliament above abbots and all other prelates of the regular
clergy,’[733] the name of _Keledei_ gradually disappears, being
mentioned for the last time in the year 1332, when the usual formula of
their exclusion in the election of a bishop is repeated; and instead of
them we hear only of the provostry of ‘the church of Saint Mary of the
city of St. Andrews,’ of ‘the church of the blessed Mary of the Rock,’
and of the ‘provostry of Kirkheugh,’ the society consisting of a provost
and ten prebendaries.[734]
[Sidenote: Suppression of _Keledei_ of Lochleven.]
The _Keledei_ of Lochleven fared no better than those of St. Andrews,
and were extinguished in much the same manner by being converted into
canons-regular, though the process was a shorter one. They were a small
community, and preserved, even as late as the reign of Malcolm Canmore,
their original character of an eremetical society. They were the oldest
_Keledean_ establishment in Scotland, and thus exhibited its earliest
form. By an arrangement between them and the bishop of St. Andrews,
their establishment had been made over to him prior to the year 961; and
this enabled Bishop Robert, when he established the priory of regular
canons in St. Andrews, to convey to the prior ‘the abbacy of the island
of Lochleven, with all its pertinents, in order that he might establish
in it a body of canons-regular. He conveys to him all the lands which
had from time to time been granted to the _Keledei_ of Lochleven, with
all their revenues, and likewise the ecclesiastical vestments which
belonged to the _Chelede_, as well as the books which constituted their
library.’[735] This was followed by a charter by King David, in which he
declared ‘that he had given and granted to the canons of St. Andrews the
island of Lochleven, that they might establish canonical order there;
and the _Keledei_ who shall be found there, if they consent to live as
regulars, shall be permitted to remain in society with and subject to
the others; but, should any of them be disposed to offer resistance, his
will and pleasure was that such should be expelled from the
island.’[736] A century later we find that the conversion of the
community of _Keledei_ into a priory of canons-regular had been fully
accomplished, as in the year 1248 the prior and convent of
canons-regular of St. Andrews, on the narrative that ‘Kings David and
William of Scotland and Bishops Robert and Richard of St. Andrews had
given and confirmed to them the abbacy of _Keledei_ in Lochleven, and
that it was desirable to improve the position of their priory of
Lochleven and of their brethren the canons-regular of the order of St.
Augustine instituted and dwelling there, make over to the church of St.
Servanus of Lochleven the property of the island of St. Servanus
situated on that lake;’[737] and we hear no more of the _Keledei_ of
Lochleven.
[Sidenote: Suppression of _Keledei_ of Monimusk.]
Another community of _Keledei_ connected with the church of St. Andrews
was treated much in the same manner. Among the possessions of that
church beyond the great chain of the Mounth was Monimusk, situated in
the vale of the river Don. The popular tradition of its foundation is
that Malcolm Canmore, when proceeding on a military expedition against
the people of Moray, came to Monimusk, and, finding that the barony of
Monimusk belonged to the crown, he vowed it to St. Andrew in order to
procure him victory. This tradition is so stated by Hector Boece, and if
it rested upon no better authority it could hardly be received as
historical; but it is certain that Malcolm Canmore did make an
expedition against the race of Moray in 1078, from which he returned
victorious;[738] and in a bounding charter said to have been transcribed
from the Register of St. Andrews, between the lands of Keig and
Monimusk, there is added that ‘these are the marches which King Malcolm
gave to God and the church of Saint Mary of Monimusk on account of the
victory granted to him.’[739] So far we may infer that it was not an
ancient Columban foundation; and it is certain that the bishop of St.
Andrews was termed the founder of the house, and that it, like the
church of _Keledei_ at St. Andrews, was dedicated to St. Mary, and
contained a community of _Keledei_ which probably emanated from that
church. Their possessions, too, included those northern churches which
were connected with the legend of St. Andrew, or were dedicated to him,
as Kindrochet in Mar, Alford and Eglismenythok in Angus. The notices of
these _Keledei_ are all to be found in the Register of the Priory of St.
Andrews, which contains various grants made to them. They first appear
in the year 1170 simply as the ‘_Keledei_ of Munimusc,’ when they
receive a grant from Roger, earl of Buchan; but their principal
benefactor was Gilchrist, earl of Mar, who flourished between the years
1199 and 1207. He appears to have built them a convent, and enforced the
canonical rule upon the _Keledei_, who now call themselves canons; for
we find him granting the church of Loychel to God and St. Marie of
Munimusc and the _Keledei_ serving there, and the bishop of Aberdeen
confirms this grant to the church of the blessed Mary of Munimusc and
the canons, who are called _Keledei_, serving God there; and again the
bishop confirms the grant which Gilchrist, earl of Mar, had made to this
monastery which he had founded at Munimusc in the church of St. Mary in
which the _Keledei_ previously were. In another confirmation by the same
bishop, as well as in one by the bishop of St. Andrews, they are termed
simply the canons of Munimusc.[740] So far then the _Keledei_ seem to
have been recognised and favoured, but the storm soon after broke upon
them. In 1211 a complaint was laid before the pope by William, bishop of
St. Andrews, that ‘certain _Keledei_ who professed to be canons, and
certain others of the diocese of Aberdeen in the town of Munimusc, which
pertained to him, were endeavouring to establish a regular canonry,
contrary to justice, to the prejudice of his church;’ whereupon a
commission was issued to the abbots of Melrose and Dryburgh and the
archdeacon of Glasgow to inquire into the matter, which resulted in a
convention between the bishop of St. Andrews and the _Keledei_ of
Munimusc to the following effect:—‘That the _Keledei_ in future should
have one refectory and one dormitory in common, and one oratory without
a cemetery; and that the bodies of the _Keledei_ and of clerks or laymen
who might die when with them should receive the rights of sepulture at
the parish church of Munimusc; further, there were there twelve
_Keledei_ and a thirteenth, Bricius, whom the _Keledei_ were to present
to the bishop of St. Andrews for confirmation, in order that he should
be their master, or prior; that on his retirement or death the _Keledei_
were to choose three of their society, from among whom the bishop was to
select the one he considered best suited to become their prior, or
master, and who was to do fealty to him as the founder of the house of
the _Keledei_;’ that the election of the prior, or master, of the
_Keledei_ should be so conducted in future, with this addition, that it
should not be lawful for them at any future time to profess the life or
order of monks or canons-regular without the bishop’s consent, or to
exceed the number; that, when a _Keledeus_ died or withdrew, those who
remained were at liberty to fill up the vacant place; but that such
_Keledeus_ was, upon his admission, to swear before the bishop or his
deputy that he would observe the terms of this composition. The
_Keledei_ were to retain the lands called Eglismenythok, which they had
received from Robert, bishop of St. Andrews, and other dues commonly
belonging to _Keledei_. They promised to do nothing to the prejudice of
the church of St. Andrews or the parish church of Munimusc; and when the
bishop of St. Andrews came to Munimusc, the _Keledei_ were to receive
him with a solemn procession.[741] They were thus brought under the more
direct control of the bishop of St. Andrews, who is there called the
founder of their house, and assimilated to the state into which the
_Keledei_ of St. Andrews had been brought. Like them, they consisted of
a prior, or head, with twelve members. Like them, they were excluded
from all parochial functions. As their position gave them no claim to be
considered as a capitular body, it was unnecessary to exclude them from
participation in the election of a bishop; and the same provision seems
to have been made, though in a more correct manner, for gradually
superseding them by regular canons and inhibiting them as each
_Keledeus_ died. In a charter granted a few years after by Duncan, earl
of Mar, of the church of Loychel and other possessions, they are termed
_Keledei_ or canons; but in the confirmation by Alexander the Second the
former term is dropped, and they are called simply canons; and in 1245
the _Keledei_ of Munimusk have entirely disappeared, and instead we
have, in a confirmation by Pope Innocent IV., ‘the prior and convent of
Munimusc, of the order of Saint Augustine.’[742]
[Sidenote: Monastic orders of Church of Rome introduced.]
Another feature of the policy by which the kings of this race
endeavoured to assimilate the native church to that of Rome, was that of
introducing the monastic orders of that church, and establishing
monasteries which should form centres of influence for the spread of the
new system. Upon these monasteries the remains of the old Columban
foundations were to a large extent conferred, and in this policy the
monarchs were very generally seconded by the great earls and barons of
Scotland. King David, soon after his accession, remodelled the church at
Dunfermline which had been founded by Queen Margaret, and placed in it
Benedictine monks, consisting of an abbot and twelve brethren, brought
from Canterbury;[743] and he introduced the same monks into the district
of Moray, by founding at Urquhart, not far from its eastern boundary, a
priory of Benedictines which became a cell of Dunfermline.[744] Towards
the end of his reign, and after the great district of Moray had been
brought under subjection to the Crown, he founded at Kinloss, somewhat
farther west, and not far from the mouth of the Findhorn, a monastery,
in which he placed Cistertians brought from Melrose.[745] In the
following reign another colony of the same monks was brought from
Melrose by Malcolm IV., and placed at Cupar-Angus, in the diocese of St.
Andrews, where he founded a monastery in the year 1164.[746] In the
reign of his successor another order of Benedictines—those of Tyron—who
had been established by King David at Kelso, was introduced into the
diocese of St. Andrews. Their principal house was that of Aberbrothock,
or Arbroath, founded by King William the Lion in 1173, and dedicated to
St. Mary and St. Thomas the Martyr. The same year his brother David,
earl of Huntingdon, founded a monastery at Lindores in Fife, for the
same order, and in the following year the earl of Buchan, founded at
Fyvie, in the diocese of Aberdeen, a priory which was affiliated to
Arbroath, and belonged to the same order.[747]
[Sidenote: Columban abbacies, or _Abthens_, in possession of lay
abbots.]
During the reign of King William the possessions of their principal
monastery at Arbroath increased with great rapidity, and estates in
land, churches and tithes were heaped upon the new foundation by the
earls and barons of Angus and the north. These included many of the old
Columban foundations; and, if the Book of Deer throws much light upon
the state of Buchan, both as regards the position of its Columban
monasteries and the social organisation of its old Celtic population,
the Chartulary of Arbroath is in this respect the most important record
we have, and we derive from it much insight into the state and
characteristics of the old territorial system south of the great range
of the Mounth. Among the churches granted by King William, we find in
Angus the church of St. Mary of Old Munros, with its land, called ‘in
the Scottish speech _Abthen_,’ or, as it is afterwards termed, ‘the land
of the abbacy of Munros,’ with other churches there; in Mar, the
churches of Banchory St. Ternan and Coul; in Buchan, Fyvie, Tarves and
Gameryn; and in Banff, the churches of St. Marnan of Abirchirdir,
Inverbondin, or Boindie, dedicated to St. Brandan, and Banff; and the
king likewise grants to them the lands of Forglen, the church of which
was dedicated to St. Adamnan, with the custody of the Brecbennach, or
banner of St. Columba. Margery, countess of Buchan, grants to them the
church of _Turfred_, or Turriff, dedicated to St. Comgan, which, as we
have seen, had preserved its Celtic character as late as the reign of
David I. The grants by the earls of Angus give us, however, the most
interesting information; and in one of these we come upon an incidental
mention of the Culdees. Gilchrist, earl of Angus, grants to the monks of
Arbroath ‘the church of Monifod, with its chapels, lands, tithes and
oblations, and with the common pasturage and other privileges belonging
to it,’ which grant is confirmed by King William.[748] Malcolm, earl of
Angus, grants about the year 1220 the land of the _Abthein_ of Munifeth
to Nicholas son of Bricius, priest of Kerimure; and this grant is
confirmed by his daughter, Countess Matilda, whose charter is witnessed
by William, vicar of Monifeit. Another charter by the same countess is
witnessed by William vicar of Monifodh, and Nicholas abbot of Monifodh.
Countess Matilda then grants to the monks of Arbroath ‘the land on the
south side of the church of Monifodh, which the _Keledei_ held in the
life of her father, with a croft at the east end of the church;’ and
finally Michael, lord of the _Abbathania_ of Monifoth, holds this croft
in feu-farm from the monks of Arbroath.[749] Here we see an old
_Abthen_, or abbacy, granted to the son of a priest, who then calls
himself abbot, while the church is served by a vicar; and a late
descendant appears, as in other cases, with the simple designation of
‘de Monifoth,’ and calls himself lord of the _Abbathania_, or territory
of the abbacy. The ancient monastery had therefore now passed into the
hands of a hereditary lay abbot, but we also find part of the land held
by a body of _Keledei_, who are only once mentioned, and then pass away
for ever. The dedications throw some light on this. The church of
Monifieth, situated on the north shore of the Firth of Tay, was
dedicated to St. Regulus, or St. Rule; but within the parish was the
chapel of Eglismonichty, dedicated to St. Andrew. The dedications,
therefore, reflect the two legends of the foundation of St. Andrews—the
older Columban foundation under St. Regulus, and the later Pictish one,
when the relics of St. Andrew were really introduced. The lay abbacy
represents the former. The _Keledean_ establishment belongs to the later
foundation. We find, too, John Abbe, son of Malise, granting to the
monks the privilege of taking charcoal in the wood of Edale, which is
confirmed by Morgund, son of John Abbe. The church of Edale, now Edzell,
was dedicated to St. Drostan, the founder of the church of Deer; and
here, too, we find one of the old Columban foundations in the possession
of a lay family, who seem even to have adopted Abbe as a surname.
[Sidenote: Establishment of bishoprics of Dunblane and Brechin.]
Among other churches granted to the monks of Arbroath by King William
was ‘the church of Abyrnythy, with its chapels, lands, tithes and
oblations, its common pasturage, and all other privileges belonging to
it;’[750] but this church belonged to the diocese of Dunblane, one of
the latest bishoprics founded by King David I. Towards the end of his
reign he appears to have added two bishoprics to those already founded
by him. These were the bishoprics of Dunblane and Brechin. They are
mentioned as already existing, in a bull by Pope Adrian addressed to the
bishops of Glasgow, Whithern, St. Andrews, Dunblane, Dunkeld, Brechin,
Aberdeen, Moray, Ross and Caithness, ten in number, in the second year
after King David’s death, in which he directs them to submit to the
archbishop of York,[751] a command which was not obeyed except by the
bishop of Candida Casa, or Whithern. The struggle for the independence
of the Scottish Church was, however, terminated in the year 1188, when
the pope, Clement III., in a bull addressed to King William the Lion in
that year, recognised the independence of the Scottish Church, and
declared ‘the Church of Scotland to be the daughter of Rome by special
grace, and immediately subject to her.’[752] In this bull the church is
said to contain the following episcopal sees—viz., St. Andrews, Glasgow,
Dunkeld, Dunblane, Brechin, Aberdeen, Moray, Ross and Caithness, that
is, nine of the bishoprics mentioned in the previous bull—that of
Candida Casa, or Whithern, remaining subject to the archbishop of York;
and these nine bishoprics are obviously the episcopal sees referred to
by Ailred of Rivaux, when he states that King David found at his
accession only three or four bishops, and founded or restored so many as
to leave nine at his death. We find accordingly Samson, bishop of
Brechin, witnessing the charter granted by King David to the Church of
Deer in the last year of his reign; and again, along with Laurence,
bishop of Dunblane, a charter granted by Malcolm IV. to the monks of
Dunfermline between 1160 and 1162;[753] but, although Laurence is first
mentioned in the bull of Pope Adrian in 1155, his bishopric is included
in the nine left by King David at his death, and must have been founded
shortly before and probably at the same time as that of Brechin. The
reorganisation of the church under a diocesan episcopacy was thus
completed during the lifetime of King David; and during the subsequent
reigns we find the occasional appearance of a representative body of
seven bishops, in obvious connection with that other body termed the
seven earls of Scotland.[754] The seven bishops of Scotland appear to
have consisted of the bishops of St. Andrews and Glasgow, and the five
bishops added by King David himself during his reign, omitting the
bishops of Dunkeld and Moray, whose bishoprics had been restored in the
previous reign of Alexander the First.
[Sidenote: Bishoprics of Brechin and Dunblane formed from old see of
Abernethy.]
The two bishoprics of Brechin and Dunblane thus founded towards the end
of King David’s reign were probably formed from the remains of the old
Pictish bishopric of Abernethy, in so far as the churches which had been
subject to it had not been absorbed by the growing bishopric of St.
Andrews which immediately succeeded it. We may infer this from the facts
that, though Abernethy was within the limits of the diocese of St.
Andrews and surrounded on all sides by her churches, it belonged
ecclesiastically to the diocese of Dunblane; that Abernethy was
dedicated to St. Bridget, and that we find a Panbride in the diocese of
Brechin and a Kilbride in that of Dunblane, indicating that the
veneration of the patroness of Abernethy had extended to other churches
included in these dioceses. Abernethy, too, was the last of the
bishoprics which existed while the kingdom ruled over by the Scottish
dynasty was still called the Kingdom of the Picts, while that of St.
Andrews was more peculiarly associated with the Scots; and it was in
Stratherne and in the northern part of Angus and in the Mearns that the
Pictish population lingered longest distinct from that of the Scots,
while the latter had their main seat in the central region consisting of
the rest of Angus, Gowrey, Fife and Fothrif. The two bishoprics of
Dunblane and Brechin on the one hand, and that of St. Andrews on the
other, to some extent represented what had at one time been the main
territory occupied by the two populations. Abernethy has, by popular
tradition, always been peculiarly associated with the Pictish
population, and its history, so far as it can be ascertained, shows its
connection with the church among the southern Picts from the very
earliest period. The legend of its first foundation connects it with the
church of St. Ninian, when a church is said to have been established
there by King Nectan, who had, while in exile, visited Kildare in the
fifth century, and who dedicated his church to St. Brigid, or St. Bride.
When the Columban church entered the province of the southern Picts in
the end of the sixth century, it was refounded by King Garnard for
Columban monks, while the dedication to St. Bride was preserved; but,
like Kildare itself, it now contained an establishment of monks. What
its fate was during the interval between the expulsion of the Columban
monks in the beginning of the eighth century and their reintroduction
under Kenneth mac Alpin—whether the monks of Abernethy were expelled and
secular clergy introduced, or whether they conformed to the decree of
the Pictish king and were allowed to remain—we do not know; but during
the reign of the first king of the Scottish dynasty, when the abbot of
Dunkeld became the first bishop of his kingdom, Abernethy appears to
have been visited and reorganised by the abbot of the mother church of
Kildare, and to this period the erection of its round tower can be most
probably assigned. On the death of the bishop-abbot of Dunkeld, it
became the seat of the bishop of the kingdom, and three elections of
these bishops had taken place there when it was in its turn superseded
by St. Andrews.
[Sidenote: Suppression of _Keledei_ of Abernethy.]
In the reign of Edgar the _Keledei_ of Abernethy first appear on record,
but whether they were introduced, as at Lochleven in the eighth century,
or, as at St. Andrews, in the tenth, we have no means of ascertaining;
but we are told by Bower that this community of _Keledei_, whom he terms
the prior and canons, possessed the lands and tithes which formerly
belonged to St. Bridget and her times, and that, as usual with the
_Keledei_, their church had become dedicated to St. Mary.[755] By King
William the church of Abernethy was granted to Arbroath; and we now find
the one half of the church and its dependencies in the possession of a
hereditary lay abbot, while the other half belonged to the _Keledei_,
for in that reign—some time between 1189 and 1198—Laurence, son of Orm
de Abernethy, conveys to the church and monks of Arbroath his whole
right ‘in the advowson of the church of Abernethy, with its pertinents,
that is, the chapel of Dron, the chapel of Dunbulcc, with the chapel of
Erolyn and the lands of Belache and Petenlouer, and with the half of all
the tithes which belonged to him and his heirs, the other half belonging
to the _Keledei_, and with all the tithes of the territory of Abernethy
and its proper rights, with the exception of those tithes which are
appropriated to the churches of Flisk and Cultram and the tithes from
his lordship of Abernythy, which the _Keledei_ of Abernethy have and
which properly belong to him, viz., those of Mukedrum and Kerpul and
Balehyrewelle and Ballecolly and Invernythy on the east side of the
river,’ that is, the land extending along the south shore of the Firth
of Tay from the river Nethy to the east boundary by Mugdrum. This very
instructive grant thus presents to us a picture of Abernethy in which
the ancient abbacy is now represented by a family of lay abbots, while
the possessions of the old nunnery are held by _Keledei_, and the lay
lord of the territory conveys his abbatial rights to Arbroath, retaining
the land, and becomes to all intents and purposes a secular baron of
Abernethy, from whom sprang the baronial house of Abernethy. In the
succeeding century we find a dispute between the abbot and monks of
Arbroath and the prior and _Keledei_ of Abernethy regarding the tithes
of certain lands which the abbot declared belonged to their parish
church of Abernethy; but it was decided by the bishop of Dunblane
against the _Keledei_.[756] These _Keledei_ were eventually disposed of
in the same manner as the others had been, and were in 1272 converted
into a community of canons-regular of St. Augustine. We have no record
of the process; but there is no reason to doubt the fact as stated by
Bower,[757] and the name of _Keledei_ no longer occurs in connection
with Abernethy.
[Sidenote: Failure of the Celtic Church of Brechin.]
The church of Brechin, which became the seat of the bishopric founded by
King David, has no claim to represent an old Columban monastery; for its
origin as a church is clearly recorded in the Pictish Chronicle, which
tells us that King Kenneth, son of Malcolm, who reigned from 971 to 995,
immolated the great town of Brechin to the Lord; and its dedication
likewise indicates a later foundation, for it was dedicated to the Holy
Trinity. Like the other churches which belong to the period after the
establishment of a Scottish dynasty on the throne in the person of
Kenneth mac Alpin, it emanated from the Irish Church, and was
assimilated in its character to the Irish monasteries; and to this we
may, no doubt, attribute the well-known round tower at Brechin. We hear
nothing more of this church till the reign of David the First; but one
of the witnesses to the charter granted by him, in the eighth year of
his reign, to the church at Deer, is ‘Leot, abbot of Brechin.’ The later
charter granted by the same king to the church of Deer is, as we have
seen, witnessed by Samson, bishop of Brechin; and that, in this case as
well as that of Dunkeld, the abbot had become the bishop is probable,
for a charter granted by his successor Turpin, bishop of Brechin, is
witnessed by ‘Dovenaldus, abbot of Brechin;’ and the same Dovenaldus,
abbot of Brechin, grants a charter to the monastery of Arbroath, of the
lands of Ballegillegrand for the health of the souls, among others, of
his ‘father Samson,’ thus showing that though Samson had become bishop,
the abbacy passed to his son. The charter of Bishop Turpin, which is
witnessed by this Dovenaldus, contains among the witnesses ‘Bricius,
prior of the _Keledei_ of Brechin,’ who ranks immediately after the
bishop of St. Andrews; and it is apparent that the abbacy had now become
secularised, for Dovenaldus does not appear among the clerical
witnesses, but follows Gilbride, earl of Angus. Brechin thus presents at
this time the same features as Abernethy, and shows us the abbacy in the
possession of a lay abbot and a community of _Keledei_ under a prior.
That the abbacy now passed into the possession of a family of hereditary
lay abbots, who, as in other cases, bore the name of Abbe, appears from
the chartulary of Arbroath, where we find a grant to the monastery by
‘Johannes Abbe, son of Malisius,’ which is witnessed by Morgund and
John, his sons, and Malcolm his brother. He himself too witnesses a
charter as ‘Johannes, abbot of Brechin,’ and this grant is confirmed by
‘Morgundus, son of Johannes Abbe.’ The community of _Keledei_ with their
prior appear as in other cases to have formed the chapter of the
diocese, till they were gradually superseded by a regular cathedral
chapter. In the charter by Abbot Dovenaldus we find the prior, who in
the earlier charters ranked after the bishop, giving place to the
archdeacon of Brechin, while the appearance of ‘Andreas, parson of
Brechin,’ indicates that they had now lost their parochial functions.
They then appear conjoined with other clergy in forming the chapter in a
charter granted by the prior and _Keledei_ and the other clerics of the
chapter of the church of Brechin to the monks of Arbroath, and a dean
appears among the witnesses. In a charter granted by the bishop of
Brechin, the archdeacon, the chaplain of Brechin, and two other
chaplains and the dean take precedence of the prior of the _Keledei_.
After the year 1218 we find the _Keledei_ distinguished from the
chapter; and in 1248 they have entirely disappeared, and we hear only of
the dean and chapter of Brechin.[758]
[Sidenote: Failure of the Celtic Church in the bishopric of Dunblane.]
The other bishopric, however, which had been formed by King David from
the old Pictish bishopric of Abernethy, and to which that church was
more immediately attached—the bishopric of Dunblane—was undoubtedly
connected with an old Columban foundation. The church of Dunblane dates
back to the seventh century, and seems to have been an offshoot of the
church of Kingarth in Bute, for its founder was St. Blane. He was of the
race of the Irish Picts, and nephew of that Bishop Cathan who founded
Kingarth; and was himself bishop of that church, and his mother was a
daughter of King Aidan of Dalriada.[759] The church of Dunblane was
situated in the vale of the river Allan, not far from its junction with
the Forth, and is mentioned in the Pictish Chronicle under the reign of
Kenneth mac Alpin, when it was burnt by the neighbouring Britons of
Strathclyde. We hear no more of this church till the foundation of the
bishopric by King David. The catalogue of religious houses places
_Keledei_ as the religious community of the church, but the only
_Keledei_ we have any record of appear as located at Muthill, situated
farther north, and not far from the river Earn; while a later record
shows us that the Columban monastery, like many others, had fallen into
lay hands, and the clerical element then was limited to a single cleric,
who performed the service. In a document containing the judgment of the
pope’s delegates in a question between the bishop of Dunblane and the
earl of Menteith, in the year 1238, we read that the bishop had gone in
person to Rome and represented to the pope ‘that the church of Dunblane
had formerly been vacant for a hundred years and more, and almost all
its possessions had been seized by secular persons; and, although in
process of time several bishops had been appointed to her, yet by their
weakness and indifference the possessions thus appropriated had not only
not been recovered, but even what remained to them had been almost
entirely alienated; in consequence of which no one could be induced to
take upon himself the burden of the episcopate, and the church had thus
remained without a chief pastor for nearly ten years; that the present
bishop, when appointed, had found the church so desolate that he had not
a cathedral church wherein to place his head; that there was no
collegiate establishment; and that in this unroofed church the divine
offices were celebrated by a certain rural chaplain, while the bishop’s
revenues were so slender that they scarce afforded fitting maintenance
for half the year.’[760] This picture of clerical desolation does not
differ from what we have found in other churches the possessions of
which had fallen into the hands of lay families, and it is quite
inconsistent with the statement that there was a body of _Keledei_ in
the church of Dunblane. The _Keledei_ referred to must have been those
at Muthill, which at this time was one of the principal seats of the
earls of Stratherne. We unfortunately know little of the early history
of this church. It adjoins the old parish of Strageath, which has been
united to it from beyond the memory of man; and, as we have seen, after
the expulsion of the Columban monks in the beginning of the eighth
century, St. Fergus or Fergusanius, a bishop of the Roman party who came
from Ireland, is said to have founded three churches in the confines of
Strageath. The church of Strageath was dedicated to St. Patrick, and the
other two churches were probably those of Blackford, also dedicated to
St. Patrick, and of Muthill, within the bounds of which parish were St.
Patrick’s well and a chapel dedicated to him; but whether we are to
place the introduction of the _Keledei_ at this period or in the reign
of Constantine, the son of Kenneth mac Alpin, when the _Keledei_ were
re-established under the canonical rule in Scotland, and when St. Cadroë
was reviving religion in Stratherne under the auspices of his uncle St.
Bean of Foulis and Kinkell, neighbouring parishes, there is nothing now
to show. We find the _Keledei_ with their prior at Muthill from 1178 to
1214,[761] when they disappear from the records, and Muthill becomes the
seat of the dean of Dunblane, who had already taken precedence of the
prior of the _Keledei_. It is probable that under the growing importance
of Dunblane as a cathedral establishment, the possessions of the
_Keledei_ had fallen into secular hands. In the meantime the earls of
Stratherne had introduced the canons-regular from Scone into the diocese
by the foundation of the priory of Inchaffray, separated from the
parishes of Muthill and Strageath only by the river Earn. This took
place some time before the year 1198. The founders were Earl Gilbert and
his countess, and it was dedicated to St. Mary and St. John the apostle,
to whom they give ‘Incheaffren, which is called in Latin Insula
Missarum,’ placing it under the care of Malise, the parson and hermit,
for canons under the rule of St. Augustine, and bestowing upon it the
ancient Columban foundations of St. Cattan of Aberruthven and St.
Ethernan of Madderdy, and the more modern churches of St. Patrick of
Strageath, St. Makessog of Auchterarder and St. Bean of Kinkell.[762]
Bower, whose authority in matters of church history at this period must
not be underrated, tells us that, when Earl Gilbert founded this
monastery, he divided his earldom into three equal portions, one of
which he gave to the church and bishop of Dunblane, another to the
canons of Inchaffray, and the third he reserved for himself and his
heirs;[763] but this is inconsistent with the account which the bishop
of Dunblane gives of the state of the church five years after the death
of that earl, and probably its only foundation was the arrangement
proposed by the adjudicators, by which a fourth of the tithes of all the
parish churches in the diocese was to be assigned to the bishop, in
order that he might, after receiving a sufficient part for his own
maintenance, appropriate the rest to the establishment of a dean and
chapter; otherwise the episcopal see was to be transferred to the
monastery of Inchaffray, whose canons were to form the chapter, and the
bishop was to receive the fourth part of the tithes of those churches
which had been appropriated by secular persons. This alternative plan
did not take effect; and what Bower reports of the lands of the earldom
may have been true in so far as regards the tithes of the secularised
churches.
[Sidenote: Failure of the Celtic Church in the bishopric of Dunkeld.]
The bishopric of Dunkeld prior to the thirteenth century was not
confined to the district of Atholl alone, with the isolated churches
which belonged to it within the limits of other dioceses, but extended
as far as the Western Sea, and included the districts stretching along
its shores, from the Firth of Clyde to Lochbroom, and forming the great
province of _Arregaidhel_, or Argyll. It possessed this extensive
jurisdiction as representing the primatial supremacy of Iona over the
Columban churches, though the monastery of Iona itself, being within the
bounds of the Norwegian kingdom of the Isles, came to belong to the
metropolitan diocese of Trontheim. It is within the bounds of this
diocese that, if popular notions regarding the Culdees are correct, we
ought to find the most abundant traces of them; but, except in the
church of Iona itself, they have left no record of their presence, and
we do not find their name connected with any of the old Columban
foundations. The great abbacy of Dull, founded in the seventh century by
St. Adamnan, had, with its extensive territory, long been in lay hands.
The church of Dull had been granted to the priory of St. Andrews by
Malcolm, earl of Atholl, in the reign of King William the Lion, ‘after
the decease of his own cleric,’ and the grant was confirmed by his son
Henry and by the bishop and chapter of Dunkeld; and, in a memorandum of
the proceedings of a court held at Dull by the prior in 1264, we find
mention of a vicar of Dull and of a cleric of Dull. The names of William
of Chester and John of Carham, canons, indicate a foreign infusion, and
the name of a solitary _clerauch_ witnesses for the Celtic element, but
there is no appearance of any _Keledei_.[764] Another great Columban
abbacy—that founded by St. Fillan in the same century in the vale of
Glendochart—appears also to have passed into the hands of a lay abbot.
In one of the laws of King William, ‘called Claremathane,’ we find the
abbot of Glendochart ranking as a great lord with the earls of Atholl
and Menteith, and sharing with the former the jurisdiction over the
dwellers of the adjacent part of Argyll.[765] And, in 1296, among the
barons holding of the crown who do homage to Edward the First are
Malcolm of Glendochart and Patrick of Glendochart,[766] of the county of
Perth, who are obviously simple laymen taking their name from the
abbacy. But while the lands of the monastery thus passed into the
possession of a secular family, the monastery seems, like many others,
to have had connected with it a _Deoradh_, or anchorite, to whose
descendants as coärb, or heir, of St. Fillan, the ecclesiastic
jurisdiction, with the custody of his pastoral staff, called the
Coygerach, seems to have fallen, as we find from an inquest held at
Kandrochid, or Killin, on the 22d April 1428, that ‘the office of
bearing the said relique belonged hereditarily to the progenitor of
Finlay Jore, who appeared before the jury as the successor of Saint
Felan with that office, and that these privileges had been preserved in
the time of King Robert Bruce, and in the time of the subsequent kings
to the present day,’ in virtue of which the family possessed a certain
jurisdiction which bears an obvious relation to that possessed in the
reign of King William by the abbot of Glendochart; and in the year 1487
there is a letter by King James, in which the king states that his
‘servitour Malice Doïre and his forebearis has had ane relik of Sanct
Fulane, called the quegrith, in keping of us and of our progenitors’
since the time of ‘King Robert the Bruys and of before, and made nane
obedience nor answer to na persone spirituale nor temporale in ony thing
concerning the said haly relik,’ and charging all and sundry to ‘mak him
nane impediment, letting, or distroublance in the passing with the said
relik throch the contre as he and his forebearis wes wount to do.’[767]
[Sidenote: Formation of the diocese of Argyll or Lismore.]
The districts, belonging to the bishopric of Dunkeld, which lay to the
west of the great range of Drumalban were, about the year 1200,
separated from it and formed into a new bishopric termed first that of
Argyll and afterwards that of Lismore. Canon Mylne of Dunkeld tells us,
in his Lives of the Bishops,[768] that John, called the Scot, but an
Englishman by birth, who had been archdeacon of St. Andrews, was elected
bishop in the year 1167, and that he divided the diocese of Dunkeld, and
obtained letters from the pope constituting his chaplain Eraldus bishop
of Argyll. This name is no doubt the Norwegian Harald, which had become
naturalised among the Gael in the form of Arailt or Erailt. The seat of
the bishopric appears to have been fixed first in the district of
Mucarn, or Muckairn, on the south side of Loch Etive, which belonged in
property to the bishop of Dunkeld, and here his church bore the name of
_Killespeckerrill_, or the church of bishop Erailt. The catalogue of
religious houses states the community of the bishopric of ‘Argiul’ to
have been _Keledei_, but we find no trace of this name in connection
with any church in the diocese. It is possible, however, that some of
the _Keledei_ from Dunkeld may have accompanied the new bishop, and been
established here. In 1230 or 1231 the priory of Ardchattan was founded,
on the opposite shore, for monks of the order of Vallis Caulium by
Dunkan mak Dougall, the head of the great family of lords of Lorn, and
like most of these foundations, had many of the older churches bestowed
upon it. The dependencies upon this priory were the churches of
Balivedan, within which parish it was situated, and which was dedicated
to St. Modan; of Kilninvir in Lorn, Kilbrandan in Seil, Kirkapol in
Tiree, Kilmanivaig in Lochaber, and Kilmarow in Kintyre.[769] A few
years later it was resolved to remove the seat of the bishopric,
probably for greater security, to the island of Lismore. In this island
a Columban monastery had been founded by St. Lughadh, or Moluoc, but
like many others, it had become secularised, and the possessions of the
monastery, including the territory on the mainland which had formed part
of the Abthania, or abbey lands—a name corrupted into Appin—had now
passed into the hands of the great lords of Lorn. Like the abbacy of
Glendochart, the only vestige of its former character was the existence
of a family of hereditary custodiers of the old bishop’s crozier, called
_bachuill more_; and we find ‘in 1544 Archibald Campbell, fiar of the
lands of Argyll, Campbell and Lorn, in honour of the blessed Virgin, and
of his patron saint Moloc, mortifying to John mac Molmore vic Kevir and
his heirs-male half the lands of Peynabachalla and Peynchallen,
extending to a half-merk land in the island of Lismore, with the keeping
of the great Staff of St. Moloc, as freely as his father, grandfather,
great-grandfather and other predecessors held the same.’[770] In order
to carry this resolution into effect, the bishop of the Isles, within
whose diocese the island of Lismore was, prays the pope to relieve him
from the care of this episcopal church, which, he says, from the
perverseness of the times, had been brought into a state of extreme
destitution; and the pope addresses a mandate to the bishop of Moray, in
the year 1236, directing him to dissever the church of Lismore from the
bishopric of the Isles, in order that another bishop might be placed
there.[771] Lismore now became the seat of the bishop, and the
designation became changed from that of Argyll to that of Lismore. On
the death of Bishop William, who was drowned in the year 1241, the
bishopric remained vacant for some years, and we find Pope Innocent the
Fourth directing the bishops of Glasgow and Dunblane in 1249 to take
steps for supplying the church of Argyll, which had been deprived of a
chief pastor for more than seven years, with a canonically elected
bishop; and in another mandate he directs the same bishops, as the seat
of the bishopric was now situated in a certain island in the sea, and
almost inaccessible from the stormy channel, across which the people
could not pass without danger, to transfer it to a more convenient
site.[772] The first mandate was carried into effect by the election, in
1250, of Bishop Alan, but no attempt was made to carry out the second;
and the position of the bishop in Lismore was improved by grants of land
and the institution of a cathedral chapter, for we find in 1249
Alexander the Second granted to the episcopal see of Argyll, for the
episcopal table, the parish church of St. Brigid the Virgin in Lorn,
that is, Kilbride; and two years after, in 1251, Eugenius the knight,
the son of Duncan of _Erregeithill_, or Argyll, grants to William,
bishop of Argyll, fourteen penny lands in Lismore, free of all secular
exactions; and this charter is witnessed by Gillemeluoc, dean of
Lismore, and the whole chapter.[773]
[Sidenote: Condition of Columban Church of Kilmun.]
Of the Columban foundations in this great western district, we find
traces of only two which throw light upon the condition of the church.
In the southern division of the district, which was usually termed
‘Argyll pertaining to Scotia,’[774] on the north shore of the Holy Loch,
was the church of Kilmun, which had been founded by St. Fintan Munnu of
Teach Munnu in Ireland, whom St. Adamnan notices as having wished to
become a monk under St. Columba, but having arrived in Iona only after
his death.[775] We find this church in lay hands in the thirteenth
century, as, between 1230 and 1246, Duncan, son of Fercher, and his
nephew Lauman, son of Malcolm, grant to the monks of Paisley lands which
they and their ancestors had at Kilmun, with the whole right of
patronage in the church of Kilmun; and in 1294 a charter to the monks of
Paisley is witnessed by Humfred of Kylmon;[776] and here, too, we have
traces of certain lands on the west side of Loch Long being held with
the hereditary custody of the staff of St. Mund, to which the name of
‘Deowray’ was attached.[777]
[Sidenote: Condition of the Columban Church of Applecross.]
We have also traces of the condition to which a much more important
monastery in the northern part of the district had been brought. This
was the monastery of Apurcrosan, now Applecross, founded by St.
Maelrubha, in the year 673, in that part of the province which was
termed Ergadia Borealis, or North Argyll. Of the abbots of this
monastery the Irish Annals, as we have seen, notice three—Maelrubha, who
died in 822; Failbe, son of Guaire, termed his heir, or coärb, who was
drowned with twenty-two of his crew, who were probably brethren of the
monastery, on his passage to Ireland in 736; and Macoigi of
Apuorchrosan, who became abbot of the monastery of Bangor in Ireland,
the monastery from which Maelrubha had proceeded on his mission to
Britain, and died there in 801. The possessions of this monastery were
very extensive, and comprehended the entire district extending along the
shores of the Western Sea from Loch Carron on the south to Loch Broom on
the north. They appear to have fallen into the hands of a family of
hereditary _sagarts_ or priests, who, according to tradition, bore the
name of O’Beollan. The name of one of these priests is connected with an
upright slab in the churchyard, bearing the figure of a collared cross,
which is known as the stone of _Ruairidh mor mac Caoigan_, who was said
to have been proprietor of Applecross, and to have been slain by the
Danes. His name undoubtedly connects him with abbot Macoigi; but we find
ourselves on surer ground in the reign of Alexander the Second, when
Ferchar, called _Macintsagart_, that is, the son of the _sagart_, or
priest, gave such powerful support to the king in suppressing
insurrections both in the north and in Galloway, that he was created
earl of Ross as his reward. His position as hereditary lord of the
extensive possessions of the monastery made him, in fact, a very
powerful chief; and from him the later earls of Ross were descended.
From him, too, descended, according to Mac Vurich, ‘Gillapatrick the
Red, the son of Ruairidh, the son of the green abbot,’ who is known in
tradition as the ‘red priest,’ and whose daughter brought the
possessions of the monastery into the family of the Macdonalds, Lords of
the Isles. Besides other churches dedicated to St. Maelrubha, there was
one in the parish of Muckairn, on a small island in a lake called
Kilvarie Loch; and here was the usual relic of the crozier kept by the
possessors of a small portion of land; for, in 1518, Sir John Campbell
of Calder receives the services of some of the small clans, ‘who were
sworn upon the mess buik and the relic callit the _Arwachyll_, at the
isl of Kilmolrue;’ and there is a township near it called Ballindore,
that is, _Baile-an-deoradh_, the town of the _Deoradh_, or Dewar, as he
came to be called.[778]
[Sidenote: State of the Celtic monastery of Iona.]
It only remains for us now to terminate this inquiry into the decadence
of the old Celtic Church with the island of Iona, whence it originally
took its rise; and here too we shall find that the efforts made to
preserve the old Celtic establishment failed, and that it had to give
way before the invasion of one of the religious orders of the Roman
Church. The last of the old abbots, of whom we have any notice, died in
the last year of the eleventh century; and for upwards of fifty years
there is an unbroken silence regarding Iona. During this period the
whole of the Western Islands were under the rule of the Norwegian kings
of the Isles, and the connection between the church in the Isles and the
mainland of Scotland, on the one side, and Ireland, on the other, must
have been to a great extent cut off. The abbots of the Irish monastery
of Kells were at this time the coärbs of Columcille there; but they do
not appear to have had anything to do with Iona, and there is no trace
of the bishop of Dunkeld having at this time exercised any jurisdiction
over the island. The Norwegian kings of the Isles, though professing
Christianity, showed no desire to foster the church; and the whole
establishment in Iona was probably in a state of decay. The Norwegian
king of the Isles was at this time Godred, who succeeded his father,
Olaf Bitling, in the year 1154; but his rule becoming too tyrannical and
oppressive to be borne, a powerful Norwegian chief, Thorfinn, went to
Somerled, the Celtic kinglet of Argyll, who had already almost entirely
expelled the Norwegians from that mainland district, and requested to
have his son Dubgal, whose mother was the daughter of Olaf Bitling, that
he might set him on the throne of the Isles. To this Somerled gladly
consented, and Thorfinn took the young prince, and, conducting him
through all the Isles, forced the chiefs to acknowledge him for their
king. This led to a war between Godred and Somerled, and in 1156 a naval
battle was fought between them during the night of the Epiphany, with
great slaughter on both sides. Next morning, however, at daybreak, they
came to a compromise, and divided between them the sovereignty of the
Isles, ‘so that,’ says the Chronicle, ‘from that period they have formed
two distinct kingdoms to the present day.’[779] The part assigned to
Somerled consisted of the islands which lay to the south of the point of
Ardnamurchan; and among them was the island of Iona. Somerled appears,
some years after, to have endeavoured to restore the abbacy of Iona to
its original state by placing it under the care of the abbot of Derry,
Flaithbertach O’Brolchan, who had been raised in 1158 to the dignity of
a bishop, and had the coärbship of Columcille conferred upon him; and we
find in 1164 that the chiefs of the family of Iona went to him and
invited him to accept the abbacy of Iona by the advice of Somerled and
the men of Argyll and the Isles, but the abbot of Armagh, the king of
Ireland and the chiefs of Cinel Eoghan prevented it. The chiefs of the
family of Iona, who thus represented the community at this time, were
the _Sacart mor_, or great priest, the _Ferleighinn_, or lector, the
_Disertach_, or head of the _Disert_ for the reception of pilgrims, and
the head of the _Cele De_ or Culdees;[780] and the ground of the
opposition of the civil and ecclesiastical heads of the state in Ireland
is not told us. Somerled was slain two years afterwards, and, in the
division of his extensive territories among his sons, the Isles and
Kintyre fell to the share of his second son Reginald or Ranald.
Macvurich, the sennachy of the clan, says of him that he was ‘the most
distinguished of the Galls (that is, the Norwegians) and of the Gaels
for prosperity, sway of generosity, and feats of arms;’ and undoubtedly
the church benefited largely by these qualities. He appears to have
rebuilt the ruined monastery of Iona on a larger scale. The Catalogue of
religious houses places _Keledei_ in the ‘abbatia in insula,’ or abbacy
of Iona, at this time; and apparently it was at this time under the
charge of Donald O’Brolchan, whose name is inscribed on one of the
pillars of the abbey church as having built it, and whose death as prior
is recorded in the year 1202 as having taken place on the 26th of
April;[781] but the annalist who records it does not tell us of what
place he was prior. His name, however, connects him with Derry; and,
though the heads of the Irish Church and State may have objected to the
bishop of Derry being also abbot of Iona, they may have consented to
Iona being placed under the prior.
[Sidenote: A.D. 1203.
Foundation of Benedictine abbey and nunnery, and
disappearance of Celtic community.]
The Lord of the Isles seems, however, to have resolved to adopt the
policy of the Scottish kings, and to introduce into his territories the
religious order of the Roman Church; and Macvurich tells us that ‘three
monasteries were formed by him—a monastery of black monks in I, or Iona,
in honour of God and Saint Columchille; a monastery of black nuns in the
same place; and a monastery of grey friars at Sagadul or Saddle, in
Kintyre.’ We learn from other sources that Reginald did found a
religious house at Saddle for Cistercian, or white, monks;[782] and he
appears to have established the Benedictines, or black monks, in Iona in
the year 1203, after the death of the prior Donald O’Brolchan, and to
have founded in connection with it a nunnery for Benedictine, or black,
nuns, of which Beatrice or Bethok, the sister of Reginald, was the first
prioress. It is of this Benedictine monastery and nunnery that the
present ruins are the remains; and they were formerly connected by a
causeway which extended in a straight line from the nunnery to the
monastery. On the west side of it, next the nunnery, was the church
called _Teampul Ronain_, which became the parish church; and on both
sides of the causeway were the houses which formed the town
traditionally called _Baile Mor_, in the middle of which stood the cross
called Maclean’s Cross, and between it and the abbey was, on the west
side of the causeway, _Relic Odhrain_, with its chapel termed _Teampul
Odhrain_. The deed of confirmation of the Benedictine monastery still
exists in the Vatican. It is dated on the 9th December 1203, and is
addressed to Celestinus, abbot of St. Columba, of the island of Hy, and
his brethren professing a religious life; and the pope takes the
monastery of St. Columba under the protection of St. Peter and the Pope,
in order that the monastic order which has been instituted in that place
according to the rule of St. Benedict may be preserved inviolate in all
time to come; and he confirms to them the place itself in which the said
monastery is situated, with its pertinents, consisting of churches,
islands and lands in the Western Isles.[783] King William at the same
time grants to the abbey of Holyrood four churches in Galloway which had
belonged to the abbacy of Hy Columcille.[784] These churches are not
included in the pope’s confirmation of the possessions of the new
monastery, and must have belonged to the prior abbacy. This Benedictine
monastery was no sooner established than its abbot, Celestine, appears
to have attempted to thrust out the prior Celtic community and place
them in a separate building nearer the town; for we are told in the
Ulster Annals that in 1203 ‘a monastery was erected by Cellach’—no doubt
the Celestinus of the Benedictine monastery—‘in the middle of the Cro of
Iona (_Croi Ia_), without any legal right, and in despite of the family
of Iona, so that he did considerable damage to the town (_Baile_). A
hosting by the clergy of the north (of Ireland), viz., by Florence
O’Carolan, the bishop of Tyrone, Maelisa O’Deery, bishop of Tyrconnell,
and abbot of the abbey church of Saints Paul and Peter at Armagh, and by
Aulay O’Ferghail, abbot of Derry, with a great number of the family of
Derry and of the northern clergy beside; and, in obedience to the law of
the church, they pulled down the monastery.’[785] Although the right of
the old Celtic community to remain in the monastery which had been
rebuilt by Reginald was thus vindicated by the assistance of their Irish
brethren, we hear no more of the _Keledei_ at Iona. They probably
adopted the Benedictine rule and became amalgamated with the monks;
while the functionary formerly known as the Head of the Culdees was
represented by the prior of Iona, whom we afterwards find in the
monastery.
[Sidenote: Remains of the old Celtic Church.]
And thus the old Celtic Church came to an end, leaving no vestiges
behind it, save here and there the roofless walls of what had once been
a church, and the numerous old burying-grounds to the use of which the
people still cling with tenacity, and where occasionally an ancient
Celtic cross tells of its former state. All else has disappeared; and
the only records we have of their history are the names of the saints by
whom they were founded preserved in old calendars, the fountains near
the old churches bearing their name, the village fairs of immemorial
antiquity held on their day, and here and there a few lay families
holding a small portion of land, as hereditary custodiers of the
pastoral staff or other relic of the reputed founder of the church, with
some small remains of its jurisdiction.
[Illustration:
Map illustrating
STATE OF CHURCH
IN REIGN OF DAVID I.
_J. Bartholomew, Edin^r._
]
-----
Footnote 694:
_National MSS._, part i. p. 4. This is the charter which has formed
the subject of so much controversy, in which Duncan calls himself
‘constans hereditarie Rex Scotiæ,’ but the genuineness of which is now
admitted.
Footnote 695:
See Theiner, _Monumenta Historica_, p. 9.
Footnote 696:
_National MSS._, part i. p. 5.
Footnote 697:
_National MSS._, part i. p. 8.
Footnote 698:
Mater ecclesia de Hedenham.—_Ib._ p. 15.
Footnote 699:
They are first mentioned by name when they confirm the charter of
erection of Scone in 1115; but Eadmar mentions in his History that,
when Turgot was elected, the bishop of Durham proposed that he should
consecrate him ‘associatis sibi episcopis Scotiæ et Orcadarum
insularum.’ These ‘episcopi Scotiæ’ can only have been these two
bishops, who must have been already appointed.—Haddan and Stubbs’
_Councils_, vol. ii. p. 171.
Footnote 700:
_Brev. Aberd, Pars Æstiv._ f. cxlviii.
Footnote 701:
_Regist. Ep. Morav._, p. 40.
Footnote 702:
_Vit. Dunk. Ec. Ep._ pp. 4, 5.
Footnote 703:
_Lib. Insulæ Missarum_, 15, 26, 71, 73, 76.
Footnote 704:
_Regist. de Dunf._, pp, 6, 20, 29, 41, 47.
Footnote 705:
_Book of Deer_, p. 93. Mr. Whitley Stokes translates _conanascad_
‘with the gift of them,’ but _nascad_ is the modern _nasgadh_, an
obligation, from _nasgain_, to bind or tie, and in his Irish glosses
he so renders it (817).
Footnote 706:
In diebus illis totum jus Keledeorum per totum regnum Scotiæ transivit
in episcopatum Sancti Andreæ.—Quoted by Dr. Reeves, _British Culdees_,
p. 36; and Haddan and Stubbs’ _Councils_, p. 178.
Footnote 707:
Usque ad extremos Scotiæ fines.—Haddan and Stubbs’ _Councils_, vol.
ii. p. 159.
Footnote 708:
See Haddan and Stubbs’ _Councils_, vol. ii. pp. 189-208, for the
account of these disputes.
Footnote 709:
_Lib. Ec. de Scon._, p. 1.
Footnote 710:
_Ib._ p. 3; Fordun, _Chron._ B. v. c. 28.
Footnote 711:
_Lib. Ec. de Scon._, p. 4.
Footnote 712:
_Regist. Ep. Glasg._, Nos. 1 and 28.
Footnote 713:
Haddan and Stubbs’ _Councils_, vol. ii. pp. 24, 25.
Footnote 714:
Pinkerton, _Vit. Sanct._, p. 442.
Footnote 715:
This document, so far as it relates to Scotland, is printed in the
Appendix.
Footnote 716:
_Regist. de Dunf._, p. 3.
Footnote 717:
Reeves’s _British Culdees_, p. 46; _Orig. Par. Scot._, vol. ii. p.
573-580.
Footnote 718:
Fordun, _Chron._, B. iv. c. 40.
Footnote 719:
_Regist. Ep. Ab._, pref. pp. xvii. xviii.
Footnote 720:
See Preface to _Chartulary of Aberdeen_ by the late Cosmo Innes.
Footnote 721:
_Regist. Ep. Ab._, p. 5.
Footnote 722:
In the Scotch Calendars St. Beyn appears both on 26th October and on
16th December. The Breviary of Aberdeen has, on 26th October, Beyn
Episcopus, and in Adam King’s Calendar he is called bishop of
Murthillach; but in the Martyrology of Aberdeen he is identified with
St. Beyn of Fowlis in Stratherne, who, we learn from the Life of St.
Cadroë, lived in the ninth century. Dempster, in his Menologium, has
him also at 16th December as bishop of Murthlach, but this is also the
day of St. Mobheoc in the Irish Calendar, whose name was also Beoan;
and, as he is mentioned in the Felire of Angus, he must have lived
before the eighth century. See _Mart. Donegal_, p. 337.
Footnote 723:
For these notices see the _Book of Deer_, edited for the Spalding Club
by Dr. John Stuart, and his valuable Preface.
Footnote 724:
_Regist. de Dunf._, p. 5.
Footnote 725:
_Regist. de Dunf._, p. 74.
Footnote 726:
_Brev. Ab., Pars Hyem._, fol. lxvi.
Footnote 727:
Original at Dunrobin, quoted in _Orig. Par._, vol. ii. part ii. p.
601.
Footnote 728:
These deeds will be found conveniently brought together in Reeves’s
_British Culdees_, Evidences, M.
Footnote 729:
Reeves’s _British Culdees_, p. 114.
Footnote 730:
Theiner, _Vetera Monumenta_, pp. 16, 53, 59, 67.
Footnote 731:
Reeves’s _British Culdees_, p. 113.
Footnote 732:
_Regist. Prior. S. And._, appendix to preface, p. xxxi.
Footnote 733:
_Ib._, p. xiii.
Footnote 734:
Reeves’s _British Culdees_, p. 41.
Footnote 735:
Reeves’s _British Culdees_, p. 130. Dr. Reeves remarks that the name
here appears in its Irish form of _Cele De_.
Footnote 736:
_Ib._, p. 52.
Footnote 737:
Reeves’s _British Culdees_, p. 132.
Footnote 738:
See Vol. I., p. 426.
Footnote 739:
_Collections for a History of the Shires of Aberdeen and Βanff_
(Spalding Club), pp. 169, 171.
Footnote 740:
See Reeves’s _British Culdees_, p. 136, for a note of these charters.
Footnote 741:
_Regist. Prior. S. And._, pp. 368, 369.
Footnote 742:
Reeves’s _British Culdees_, p. 141.
Footnote 743:
_Scotichron._, B. v. c. 48; _Regist. de Dunf._, pp. 1, 3.
Footnote 744:
_Regist. de Dunf._, p. 17.
Footnote 745:
_Records of Kinloss_, edited by Dr. J. Stuart, pref. p. ix.
Footnote 746:
Anno Mclxiv de consilio Walthevi, abbatis de Melros, rex Malcolmus
fundavit nobile monasterium de Cupro in Angus—_Scotichron._, B. viii.
c. 7.
Footnote 747:
See _Regist. vetus de Aberbrothoc_ and _Liber Sanctæ Mariæ de
Lundois_.
Footnote 748:
See for these grants _Regist. Vetus de Aberbrothoc_.
Footnote 749:
Reeves’s _British Culdees_, pp. 142, 143.
Footnote 750:
_Regist. Vet. de Aberbrothoc_, p. 5.
Footnote 751:
Haddan and Stubbs’ _Councils_, vol. ii. p. 231.
Footnote 752:
_Ib._, p. 273.
Footnote 753:
_Book of Deer_, p. 95; _Regist. de Dunf._, p. 24.
Footnote 754:
Fordun’s _Chron._, vol. ii. pp. 436, 437.
Footnote 755:
Postquam illuc introduxit beatus Patricius Sanctam Brigidam, sicut in
quadam chronica ecclesiæ de Abirnethy reperimus, cum suis novem
virginibus in Scotiam, et obtulit Deo et beatæ Mariæ et beatæ Brigidæ
et virginibus suis omnes terras et decimas quas prior et canonici
habent ex antiquo.—_Scotichron._, B. iv. c. 12.
Footnote 756:
Reeves’s _British Culdees_, pp. 133, 134.
Footnote 757:
Hoc anno factus est prioratus de Abernethy in canonicos regulares, qui
prius fuerunt Keldei.—_Scotichron._, B. x. c. 33.
Footnote 758:
The charters referred to will be found conveniently brought together
in Reeves’s _British Culdees_, Evidences, O.
Footnote 759:
He appears in the Felire of Angus as _Blann cain Chindgarad_—‘Blann
the mild of Kingarth;’ and the gloss has _.i. Espuc Cind-garadh .i.
Dumblaan a prim cathair agus o Chindgaradh do .i. hi n
Gallgaedelaib_—that is, ‘Bishop of Kingarth—_i.e._ Dumblaan is his
principal city, and he is also of Kingarth among the Gallgael.’
Footnote 760:
_Lib. Ins. Missarum_, app. to preface, p. xxix.
Footnote 761:
See Reeves’s _British Culdees_, Evidences, S, p. 141.
Footnote 762:
_Lib. Ins. Missarum_, p. 3. This Malisius, ‘persona et eremita,’ was
probably the Malisius, ‘persona de Dunblane,’ who witnesses a charter
of the bishop about 1190.—Reeves’s _British Culdees_, p. 142.
Inchaffray comes from _Inisaifrenn_, ‘the island of masses.’ This word
_aifrenn_, ‘an offering or mass,’ has in the river names been
corrupted into Peffer and Peffery.
Footnote 763:
Qui divisit comitatum suum in tres equales portiones, unam ecclesiæ et
episcopo Dumblanensi, aliam Sancto Johanni Evangelistæ et canonicis de
Insula Missarum, tertiam vero sibi et suis usibus et heredibus suis
reservavit.—_Scotichron._, B. viii. c. 73.
Footnote 764:
_Regist. Prior. S. And._, pp. 245, 246, 294, 295, 296, 349.
Footnote 765:
Item si calumpniatus vocaverit warentum aliquem in Ergadia quæ
pertinet ad Scociam tunc veniat ad comitem Atholiæ vel ad abbatem de
Glendochard et ipsi mittent cum eo homines suos qui testentur supra
dictam assisam. Si autem warentus vocatus fuerit de Kintire vel de
Comghal similiter Comes de Menteth mittet homines suos cum calumpniato
qui testentur supra dictam assisam.—_Acta Parl._, vol. i. p. 50 (now
373).
Footnote 766:
_Instrumenta Publica_ (Bannatyne Club), pp. 125, 128, 137.
Footnote 767:
_Black Book of Taymouth_ (Ban. Club), preface, pp. xxxv. xxxvi. The
Coygerach has now been acquired by the Antiquarian Society, and is
deposited in the National Museum.
Footnote 768:
Mylne, _Vitæ Ep. Dunk._, p. 8.
Footnote 769:
_Orig. Par._, vol. ii. pp. 149, 151.
Footnote 770:
_Origines Parochiales_, vol. ii. p. 163, where there is a
representation of the staff.
Footnote 771:
Theiner, _Monumenta_, p. 33.
Footnote 772:
Theiner, _Monumenta_, p. 54.
Footnote 773:
_Reg. Mag. Sig._, B. xiv. No. 307. The name Gillemeluoc is obviously
_Gillemaluog_, ‘the servant of St. Maluog.’
Footnote 774:
Ergadia quæ ad Scotiam pertinet.—_Act. Parl._, vol. i. 50.
Footnote 775:
Adam. _Vit. S. Col._, B. i. c. 2.
Footnote 776:
_Chart. of Paisley_, pp. 132, 203.
Footnote 777:
In 1497, John Colquhoun of Luss sold to John, earl of Argyll, the
lands and superiority of the two Ardinblathis, the two Craigquholdis,
and a half-merk land in the territory of Innerquhappel, occupied by a
certain procurator, ‘cum baculo sancti Mundi,’ called in Scotch
_Deowray_, and in the tenendas it is called ‘medietatem unius mercatæ
nuncupat _per deowry_.’—_Orig. Par._, vol. ii. p. 72.
Footnote 778:
All the notices above referred to will be found in a valuable and
exhaustive paper by Dr. Reeves on St. Maelrubha: his History and
Churches, in the _Proc. Ant. Soc. Scot._, vol. iii. p. 258. Dr. Reeves
considers that this family sprang from the _herenachs_, or hereditary
farmers of the abbey lands, but the notices rather indicate a family
of hereditary _sagarts_ or priests.
Footnote 779:
_Chron. of Man_, ed. by Munch, p. 10.
Footnote 780:
1164 _Maithi muinnteri Ia .i. in Sacart mor Augustin agus in
Ferleighinn .i. Dubside agus in Disertach .i. MacGilladuibh agus Cenn
na Ceile n-De .i. Mac Foirrcellaigh agus Maithi Muinnteri Ia archena
do thiachtain ar cenn Comarba Coluimcille .i. Flaithbertach ua
Brolcain do gabail abdaine Ia a comairli Shomarlidh agus fer
Aerergaidhel agus Innsegal coro astaei comorba Patraic agus Ri Eirenn
.i. ua Lochlainn agus maithi Cenel Eoghain e._—_An. Ult._; _Chron.
Picts and Scots_, p. 372.
Footnote 781:
One of the columns which supports the great tower of the abbey church
has on the upper portion the inscription ‘Donaldus O’Brolchan fecit
hoc opus;’ and the Irish Annals have at 1202, ‘_Domnall h. Brolchain
prior uasal shenoir togaide ar ceill ar cruth ar deilb ar
dutchus ar mine ar mordhacht ar midchaire ar crabud ar ecna_’ (Donald
O’Brolchan, prior of , an elect noble senior, for sense, for
shape, for form, for birth, for gentleness, for majesty, for
affability, for piety, for wisdom), post magnam tribulationem et
optimam penitentiam in quintas Kalendas Maii ingressus est viam
universæ carnis.—_An. Ult., A. F. M._, etc.
Footnote 782:
_Orig. Par._, vol. ii. p. 23.
Footnote 783:
Reeves’s _Adamnan_, ed. 1874, p. 353. It has usually been stated that
the monks established here were Cluniacs; but the only authority for
this is Spottiswoode, in his account of religious houses. The deed of
confirmation, however, is in exactly the same terms as those of
Arbroath and Lindores, founded for Benedictines of Tyron, and differs
from that of Paisley, founded for Cluniacs. It was also a peculiarity
of the Cluniacs that the parent house at Clugny was alone governed by
an abbot, and the affiliated houses by priors only. See the paper on
the ruins at Iona in Reeves’s _Adamnan_, ed. 1874, p. 342.
Footnote 784:
_Lib. Cart. S. Crucis_, p. 41.
Footnote 785:
_Mainistir do dhenumh do Chelluch ar lar Croi Ia gan nach dlighedh,
tar sarugadh muinnteri Ia, coro mill an baile co mor. Sloghadh, dno,
le Cleirchibh Erenn .i. la Florent hua Cerballan la hEspuc tiri
h-Eogain acus la Maelisa hua nDoirigh .i. Espuc tiri Conaill acus la
hAbbadh Reiclesa Phoil acus Phetair in Ardmacha acus la h-Amalgaidh
hua Cobthaidh acus sochaidhe mor do muinntir Doire acus sochaidhe mor
do cleirchibh an tuaiscert coro sgailset in mainistir do reir dlighidh
na hecailsi._—_An. Ult._; Reeves’s _Adamnan_, ed. 1874, p. 351. Dr. R.
suggests that the glen in Iona called _Gleann-an-teampul_ may have
been the site of this monastery and taken its name from it; but the
passage implies that the _Baile_, or town, was situated in _Cro Ia_,
and was injured by it. It was probably near where the parish church is
situated, behind which there are the remains of an old burying-ground.
CHAPTER X.
LEARNING AND LANGUAGE.
[Sidenote: Character of the Irish Monastic Church for learning.]
One of the most striking features of the organisation of the early
Monastic Church in Ireland and Scotland was its provision for the
cultivation of learning and for the training of its members in sacred
and profane literature; so that it soon acquired a high reputation for
the cultivation of letters, and drew to it students from all quarters,
as the best school for the prosecution of all, and especially
theological, studies. The fathers and founders of this Monastic Church
had, as we have seen, been themselves taught, some in the monastic
school of Candida Casa, where they were trained in the rules and
institutions of monastic life and in the knowledge of the Holy
Scriptures,[786] and others in the monasteries in Wales, presided over
by David, Gildas and Cadoc, wise and learned men, where they were
instructed in learning and religion, and studied with assiduity.[787]
The school of Clonard, founded by Finnian, who had himself been trained
in the Welsh monasteries, soon equalled them in reputation, and from it
issued those fathers of the Monastic Church termed the Twelve Apostles
of Ireland. We are told in the life of one of them, Ciaran of Saighir,
that he with other saints of Ireland went to Finnian of Clonard,
renowned for his wisdom, and in his holy school used to read in the
divine Scriptures, and that he lived both to learn and to hear the holy
Scriptures.[788]
[Sidenote: Resorted to by foreign students.]
The Monastic Church of Ireland soon became so celebrated as a school of
learning that students flocked to it from all quarters; and in the
seventh and eighth centuries, when intercourse between it and the
continental churches was renewed, it certainly occupied in this respect
the first position among them. Bede tells us that, when the great
pestilence devastated Ireland in the year 664, ‘many of the nobility and
of the middle ranks of the Anglic nation were there at that time, who,
in the days of the bishops Finan and Colman, forsaking their native
island, had retired thither, for the sake either of divine studies or of
a more continent life; and some of them presently devoted themselves
faithfully to a monastic life, others chose rather to apply themselves
to study, going about from one master’s cell to another. The Scots most
willingly received them all, and took care to supply them gratuitously
with daily food, as also to furnish them with books to read and their
teaching, without making any charge;’[789] and of Aldfrid, son of King
Osuiu, who succeeded his brother Ecgfrid, when he was slain by the Picts
in 685, as king of Northumbria, Bede says that ‘he was a man most
learned in Scripture,’ ‘that he at that time lived in exile in the
islands of the Scots for the sake of studying letters,’ and that,
previous to his accession to the throne, ‘he had for a considerable time
gone into voluntary exile in the regions of the Scots, for the sake of
acquiring learning, through the love of wisdom.’[790] We hear, too, in
the Life of Senan, of ‘fifty Roman monks who came to Ireland for the
purpose of leading a life of stricter discipline, or improving
themselves in the study of the Scriptures then much cultivated in
Ireland, and became pupils of those holy fathers who were most
distinguished for sanctity of life and the perfection of monastic
discipline.’[791]
[Sidenote: Iona as a school of learning.]
The Monastic Church, founded by Columba in Iona, was not behind its
mother church of Ireland in this respect; and we are told by his
biographer, Adamnan, that Columba ‘never could spend even one hour
without study, or prayer, or writing, or some other holy occupation.’ He
tells us, also, of a book of hymns for the office of every day in the
week, which had been written by Columba, and of his transcribing the
Psalter. We read also of a prefect ‘learning wisdom with them.’[792]
Columba, too, appears to have cultivated his own language and not to
have despised his native literature; for, according to a quatrain quoted
in the old Irish life,
Thrice fifty noble lays the Apostle made,
Whose miracles are more numerous than grass:
Some in Latin, which were beguiling;
Some in Gaelic, fair the tale.
And we learn, from the anonymous Life of Cuthbert, that when King
Aldfrid of Northumbria had, before his accession to the throne, resorted
to the islands of the Scots for study, one of these islands was that of
Iona.[793]
[Sidenote: Literature of the Monastic Church.]
The remains of the literature of this period of the Monastic Church
which have come down to us bear ample testimony to the intellectual
development which characterised it. Of these perhaps the most complete
are the works of Columbanus. Besides his monastic rule, we possess six
of his letters connected with important questions regarding
ecclesiastical matters, seventeen instructions or sermons addressed to
his monks, and one or two poetical pieces. They are all written in
Latin, and show a mastery of that language as it was then used by
ecclesiastical writers, a thorough acquaintance with the holy
Scriptures, with the spirit and language of which they are indeed
saturated, and a perfect knowledge of the contemporary history and
literature of the church. He places the holy Scriptures as the highest
standard of authority in all matters of Christian faith. As we have
seen, he gives as the character of his church that ‘it received nothing
beyond the teaching of the Evangelists and Apostles;’ and the same
spirit is manifested in one of his instructions, when he says,
‘Excepting those statements which either the Law or the Prophets or the
Gospels or the Apostles have made to us, solemn silence ought to be
observed, as far as other authorities are concerned, with respect to the
Trinity. For it is God’s testimony alone that is to be credited
concerning God, that is, concerning himself.’[794] Cummian’s letter
regarding the Easter festival, also written in Latin, shows a perfect
mastery of his subject, and may compare with any ecclesiastic document
of the time. Then we have the Latin lives of Columba by two of the
abbots of Iona; and, besides Adamnan’s Life, we also possess his tract
on the Holy Places, works which give proof of his classical attainments
as well as his acquaintance with ecclesiastical writings.
[Sidenote: The _Scribhnidh_, or scribes in the monasteries.]
The seventh century, which had seen the church distracted by the Easter
controversy, the withdrawal of the Columban monks from Northumbria, and
the conformity of the church of the northern Scots of Ireland to Rome,
likewise witnessed some other changes in its intellectual life. One was
the appearance, in the end of this century, of a functionary in the
monasteries, termed in Irish _Scribhnidh_, or _Scribhneoir_, and in
Latin ‘Scriba,’ a learned man among the monks, who was selected for the
purpose not only of transcribing and preserving the ancient records of
the monastery, but likewise of exercising the functions of teacher and
public lecturer.[795] One of the earliest monuments of their industry is
the MS. termed the Book of Armagh. It was compiled by Ferdomnach, ‘a
sage and choice _Scribhnidh_ of the church of Armagh,’ at the instance
of Torbach, abbot of Armagh, who had himself been a scribe and lector of
the church; and, as he was only one year in the abbacy, and died in the
year 808, this fixes the date of the compilation of the book at the year
807.[796]
[Sidenote: The Book of Armagh.]
The contents of this MS. will show somewhat of the literature of the
church at the time. The volume commences with certain memoirs of St.
Patrick, which are the oldest we now possess, and they are followed by
the Confession of St. Patrick, an undoubtedly genuine work. After this
comes St. Jerome’s Preface to the New Testament; and then the Gospels in
their usual order. In the enumeration of the apostles in the Gospel of
St. Matthew, the name of Judas has opposite to it, on the margin, the
Irish word _trogaun_ or wretch, and at the end of the Gospel is the
following prayer of the writer, in Latin:—‘O God, whose mercy is
unbounded, and whose holiness passeth speech, with humble voice have I
boldness to implore that, like as Thou didst call Matthew to be a chosen
Apostle, from being a receiver of customs; so, of Thy compassion, Thou
wilt vouchsafe to direct my steps during this life into the perfect way;
and place me in the angelic choir of the heavenly Jerusalem, that, on
the everlasting throne of endless joy, I may be deemed worthy to join
with the harmonious praises of archangels in ascribing honour to Thee;
through Thy only-begotten Son, who liveth with Thee, in the unity of the
Holy Spirit, throughout all ages. Amen.’ After the Gospels follow St.
Paul’s Epistles, to which are prefixed prefaces chiefly taken from the
works of Pelagius. Between the Epistle to the Colossians and the First
Epistle to Timothy is inserted the spurious Epistle to the Laodiceans,
which is found in a great variety of Latin MSS. of the New Testament;
and in the First Epistle of St. John the passage concerning the
witnesses (v. 7) is omitted, as it also is in the oldest copy of the
Vulgate. The Epistles are followed by the Apocalypse, after which comes
the Acts of the Apostles, an order peculiar to this MS.; and the Book of
Armagh closes with the Life of St. Martin of Tours, written by Sulpicius
Severus, and with a short litany, or intercession, on behalf of the
writer.[797] This MS., compiled at Armagh in 807, probably contained the
only memoirs of its patron saint which were then known to exist.
[Sidenote: Hagiology of the Irish Church.]
The oldest lives of the Irish saints belong to the seventh century, and
the rise of the hagiology of the Irish Church corresponds with that of
the Easter controversy and with the conformity of the church to that of
Rome. It was followed in the next century by the enshrining of the
relics of the saints most venerated. Prior to the conformity of part of
the Monastic Church to Rome in that century, we do not find much
appearance of the memory of the early fathers of the church having been
preserved in written memoirs. The early Monastic Church, as we have
seen, either knew or said little about St. Patrick as the great apostle
of Ireland; and Cummian, who first mentions him in this century,
belonged to the Roman party, and does so in connection with the Easter
controversy. The oldest memoir of St. Patrick in the Book of Armagh
consists of what are called Annotations by Tirechan, a bishop, who calls
himself pupil of Bishop Ultan, son of Conchubar, that is, of the bishop
of Ardbraccan, whose death is recorded in 657.[798] The second is a life
of which part only of the first book is preserved; but the second book
appears to be entire, and the headings of the chapters of the whole of
the first book are fortunately given, which affords us some indication
of the contents of the missing leaves. It bears to be written by Muirchu
Macumactheni, at the dictation of Aedh, bishop of Sleibhte; and the
names of both appear among the subscribers to the Synod of Tara in 697,
while the death of the former is recorded in 699.[799] Muirchu, however,
prefaces his memoir by the following statement, addressed to Bishop
Aedh:—‘Forasmuch as many, my lord Aedus, have taken in hand to set forth
in order a narration, namely this, according to what their fathers and
they who from the beginning were ministers of the Word have delivered
unto them; but by reason of the very great difficulty of the narrative,
and the diverse opinions and numerous doubts of very many persons, have
never arrived at any one certain track of history; therefore (if I be
not mistaken, according to this proverb of our countrymen, Like boys
brought down into the amphitheatre), I have brought down the boyish
rowboat of my poor capacity into this dangerous and deep ocean of sacred
narrative, with wildly-swelling mounds of billows, lying in unknown seas
between most dangerous whirlpools—an ocean never attempted or occupied
by any barks, save only that of my father Cogitosus. But, lest I should
seem to make a small matter great, with little skill, from uncertain
authors, with frail memory, with obliterated meaning and barbarous
language, but with a most pious intention, obeying the command of thy
belovedness and sanctity and authority, I will now attempt, out of many
acts of Saint Patrick, to explain them, gathered here and there with
difficulty.’[800] Now both Ultan of Ardbraccan and Aedh of Sleibhte
belonged to that part of the Church of Ireland which had conformed to
Rome; and this party seems to have fallen back upon the traditions of
the earlier church, which had preceded the Monastic Church, and to have
revived the veneration of its great founder St. Patrick. The oldest
lives of St. Bridget, the other great saint of this earlier church,
belong also to the same period, and are attributed, one to Bishop Ultan,
and another to Cogitosus the father of Muirchu.[801] The oldest memoir
of Columba is that by Cummene, who was abbot of Iona from 657 to 669,
and it too was, as we have seen, called forth by the Easter controversy,
but was written to maintain the authority of Columba, as the father of
the Columban Church against that of Rome, and to claim for him a high
position by the sanctity of his character and the possession of
miraculous power and spiritual gifts. Adamnan too, who writes the second
life, was the first abbot of Iona who gave his adhesion to the Roman
party; and it seems to have been called forth by his connection with the
Northumbrian Church. These early lives gave rise to a great hagiologic
literature, consisting of the lives of all the leading saints and
founders of churches, in which every effort was made to magnify their
power and sanctity by a record of so-called miracles and prophecies. It
is to this literature that we are obliged in a great measure to resort
for the early history of the Celtic Church; but, for historic purposes
these lives must be used with great discrimination. There is nothing
more difficult than to extract historical evidence from documents which
confessedly contained a mixture of the historical and the fabulous; but
the fiction, in the form in which it appears, pre-supposes a stem of
truth upon which it has become encrusted; and it is only by a critical
use of authorities of this kind that we can hope to disentangle the
historical core from the fabulous addition.
[Sidenote: Analysis of the Lives of St. Patrick.]
The Lives of St. Patrick afford a good illustration of this. There is a
continuous series of them from the seventh century to the twelfth. Space
will, of course, not admit of anything like a complete analysis of them,
but a comparison of the lives, in the order in which they appear to have
been compiled, will show the growth of the legendary and fabulous
additions to the real facts of his life, and the process by which it
passed, from the few leading features of it which can be extracted from
his own authentic writings, to the extraordinary mixture of fact, legend
and fable which now makes up the popular conception of his life. The
oldest memoirs of St. Patrick are the Annotations of Bishop Tirechan,
‘written from the mouth or book of Ultan the bishop, whose pupil and
disciple he was.’ He tells us that he ‘found four names given to
Patricius in the book of Ultan: Magonus, which is “clarus;” Succetus,
which is Patricius; and Cothirthiac, because he served four houses of
“magi,” and one of them, whose name was Miliuc, bought him, and he
served him seven years.’ That he was taken captive in his seventeenth
year, and obtained his liberty in his twenty-second year, which
corresponds with his own statement in his Confession; but Tirechan adds
‘that in seven other years he walked and sailed over the waves, and over
country parts, and through valleys and over mountains, through Gaul and
all Italy, and the islands which are in the Terrene sea, as he says in
the commemoration of his labours.’ There is no foundation, however, for
this in his Confession, except his sixty days’ wanderings through the
desert before he reached the house of his parents. Tirechan then adds,
‘He was in one of these islands, which is called Aralanensis, for thirty
years, as was testified by Bishop Ultan.’ He then gives us the following
chronological data:—‘All things which happened you will find clearly
written in his history, and these latest wonders were fulfilled and
brought to a close in the second year of the reign of Loigaire mac
Neill. From the passion of Christ to the death of Patricius are four
hundred and thirty-six years. Loigaire reigned two or five years after
the death of Patricius. The whole period of Loigaire’s reign was
thirty-three years, as we think.’ Now we may assume as a fixed point the
death of Loigaire in the year 463.[802] His reign, therefore, commenced
in 430. His second year brings us to 432 for the termination of St.
Patrick’s wanderings in foreign countries; and his death, if it occurred
five years before that of Loigaire, would fall in the year 458, or, if
two years only, in 461; but the Irish Annals agree in placing under the
year 458 the death of _Sen Patraic_,[803] or old Patrick, which
identifies him with the Patricius of Tirechan’s Annotations. It is
unnecessary for our purpose to advert to Tirechan’s account of his
proceedings in Ireland; but he adds at the end some further data. He
says ‘the age of Patricius, as it was delivered to us, may be thus
stated:—In his seventh year he was baptized. In the tenth year (after)
he was taken captive. Four years he served. Thirty years he studied.
Seventy-two years he taught. His whole age was one hundred and twenty.
In four points he resembled Moses: _1st_, He heard an angel from a bush
of fire. _2d_, He fasted forty days and forty nights. _3d_, He
accomplished one hundred and twenty years in this present life. _4th_,
Where his bones are no one knows. In the XIII year of Theodosius the
emperor Patricius the bishop was sent by Bishop Celestine, Pope of Rome,
for the instruction of the Irish, which Celestine was the forty-second
bishop of the apostolical see of the city of Rome after Peter. Palladius
the bishop was the first sent, who is otherwise called Patricius, and
suffered martyrdom among the Scots, as the ancient saints relate. Then
the second Patricius was sent by an angel of God, named Victor, and by
Pope Celestine, by whose means all Ireland believed, and who baptized
almost all the inhabitants.’ Now here Tirechan betrays at once the party
in the church to which he and Ultan belonged, by asserting that St.
Patrick, as well as Palladius, had been sent by Pope Celestine; and he
gives us the important fact that Palladius was also known to the Irish
by the name of Patricius. If St. Patrick had taught for seventy-two
years, and died in 458, it is plain that his mission to the Irish must
have long preceded that of Palladius; but at the same time, as Palladius
is termed by a contemporary writer the first bishop sent to the Scots,
St. Patrick could not have been consecrated a bishop till after him. He
himself tells us that he was forty-five when he was consecrated a
bishop; and, if this took place in the year 432, it would place his
birth in the year 387; and, if he died in 458, the period of seventy-two
years would thus represent his entire life. Tirechan has thus, by
interpolating his thirty years’ study in Gaul, and by taking seventy
years as representing his teaching in Ireland, lengthened out his life
to one hundred and twenty-three years, and thus obtained his parallelism
with Moses in this respect. If Palladius and Patricius were known to the
Irish by the same name, it is hardly possible that, when the traditions
regarding them were first collected and formed into a regular biography
in the seventh century, they should not have been confounded together.
The mission from Pope Celestine and the thirty years’ study in Gaul and
Italy are entirely inconsistent with St. Patrick’s account of himself,
and no doubt truly belong to the acts of Palladius.
The next life is that by Muirchu. The first membrane of the Book of
Armagh, containing the commencement of the life, is unfortunately
wanting; but the preface and the headings of the chapters have been
preserved in a different part of the MS. The preface has already been
given, and the headings of the missing chapters are these:—
‘Concerning the birth of St. Patrick and his first captivity.
Concerning his journeys and sea voyage to the Gentiles, and his
sufferings among the nations ignorant of God.
Concerning his second captivity, which he suffered for sixty days
from hostile men.
Concerning his reception by his parents when they recognised him.
Concerning his age when going to visit the apostolic see where he
wished to learn wisdom.
Concerning his discovery of holy men in Gaul, and that therefore he
went no farther.’
The fragment of the first book commences with his journey to the
apostolic see at Rome, and mentions that Germanus ‘sent an elder with
him, that is Segitius, that he might have a companion and witness,
because he was not as yet ordained by the holy lord Germanus to the
pontifical degree.’ It then mentions the mission of Palladius, and that
‘his disciples Augustinus and Benedictus and the rest, returning,
related in Ebmoria the circumstance of his death.’ Patrick then proceeds
no farther, but goes to a certain man, an illustrious bishop
Amathorex,[804] living in a neighbouring place, and receives from him
the episcopal degree, after which he returns to Britain. This statement,
taken in connection with the heading of the chapter, implies that St.
Patrick, though he intended to go to Rome, went no farther than the town
of Ebmoria, which must have been in Gaul, and near it was consecrated
bishop by Amathorex. St. Patrick is in this life also brought into
contact with Germanus; but the connection with Rome is less directly
stated than in the previous life. The chronological summary at the end
of the life is as follows:—‘Patrick was baptized in his sixth year,
taken captive in his twentieth, served in slavery twelve years, studied
forty years, taught sixty-one. His entire age was one hundred and eleven
years.’ These dates, however, when added together, make up a period of
one hundred and thirty-three years, and the process by which his life is
thus lengthened is apparent enough. His captivity is placed in his
twentieth in place of his sixteenth year. The period of his slavery is
doubled. The period of his study with Germanus is increased from thirty
to forty years, and his mission reduced from seventy-two to sixty-one
years. But, if this latter period is deducted, his life prior to his
mission is here made to have been seventy-two years. In the life itself,
however, St. Patrick is said to have died ‘on the sixteenth day of the
Kalends of April, having attained the age of one hundred and twenty
years, as is celebrated every year over the whole of Ireland, and kept
sacred;’ and in the last paragraph it is more correctly stated ‘that he
was taken captive in the thirteenth year of his age, and was in bondage
six years.’ If these two numbers are substituted for the twentieth year
and the twelve years of the summary, the entire years of his life will
be reduced from one hundred and thirty-three to one hundred and twenty.
This life also distinctly states that St. Patrick was buried at
Dunlethglaisse, or Down, while Tirechan as distinctly states that ‘where
his bones are no one knows.’ The tradition, therefore, which places his
relics at Down must have arisen after the time when Tirechan wrote. In
some additions to Tirechan’s Annotations, which appear to have been made
about the time when the rest was written, another tradition is given. It
is there said that ‘Columbcille, instigated by the Holy Spirit, pointed
out the sepulchre of Patrick where he lies, that is to say, at _Sabul
Patricii_,’ or ‘Saul Patrick, in the nearest church next the sea, where
the relics or bones of Columcille were brought from Britain, and where
the relics of all the saints of Ireland will be brought in the day of
judgment.’[805] The Annals of Ulster contain the following curious entry
under the year 552:—‘I have found what follows in the Book of Cuanach,’
a chronicle the date of which is unknown, but which cannot be much
earlier than the eighth or ninth century. ‘The reliques of St. Patrick
were deposited in a shrine, sixty years after his death, by Columcille.
Three precious swearing reliques were found in his tomb, viz., the
_Coach_, or cup, the Gospel of the Angel, and the Bell of the Testament.
The angel thus showed to Columcille how to divide these reliques, viz.,
the _Coach_ to Down, the Bell to Armagh, and the Gospel to Columcille
himself; and it is called the Gospel of the Angel because Columcille
received it at the angel’s hands.’ The church of Saul is on the
sea-shore in the immediate neighbourhood of Down; but that either Saul
or Down could have been marked out as the place where St. Patrick’s
bones were enshrined prior to the eighth century is quite inconsistent
with the distinct statement, by his first biographer, that no one in his
day knew where they were. As we have seen, Cellach, abbot of Iona,
appears to have taken the relics of Columba to Ireland on the slaughter
of the community by the Danes in 806; and, as the Book of Armagh was
transcribed in 807, and the name of Cellach appears on the margin of one
of the leaves, it is probable that this tradition owes its origin to
him.[806]
About the same period when the Book of Armagh was transcribed, or not
long after, was written the short Life of St. Patrick, by Marcus the
Anchorite, annexed to Nennius’ History of the Britons. Marcus is said by
Heric, in his Life of St. Germanus, to have been a Briton by birth, but
educated in Ireland, where he was for a long time a bishop, and to have
at length settled in France, where he died;[807] and his notices of St.
Patrick show that he was acquainted with the lives in the Book of
Armagh. He states, correctly enough, that Patrick had been captive in
Ireland seven years; but, when he says that ‘when he had attained the
age of seventeen he returned from his captivity,’ he confuses his age
when he was taken captive with that of his liberation. He says that ‘by
the divine impulse he was afterwards instructed in sacred literature,
and went to Rome, and remained there a long time studying the sacred
mysteries of God’—here agreeing with Tirechan in bringing him to Rome;
but he adopts the statement of Muirchu in regard to the mission of
Palladius, substituting the land of the Picts for that of the Britons as
the place of his death.[808] He also follows Muirchu in Patrick’s being
sent by Germanus with Segerus to the bishop Amatheus, by whom he is
consecrated bishop; but he follows Tirechan in his statement that in
four particulars he resembled Moses, that he lived one hundred and
twenty years, and that no one knew where his sepulchre was, adding that
‘he was buried in secret no one knowing.’[809] He concludes his life by
saying that ‘he was sixteen years in captivity,’ here confusing the
duration of his captivity, with his age when made captive, that ‘in his
twenty-fifth year he was consecrated bishop by King Matheus,’ and that
he was eighty-five years ‘apostle of the Irish,’ which would give him a
life of one hundred and ten years only; but in another passage in
Nennius four hundred and five years are said to have elapsed from the
birth of Christ to the arrival of Patrick among the Scots, and sixty
years from his death to that of St. Bridget. As the latter event,
moreover, is said to have taken place four years after the birth of
Columba, which gives us a fixed date of 521, this would place the death
of Patrick in 465, and his birth, if he was taken captive in 405, in
389, dates which very nearly correspond with those of Tirechan, and of
the older Patrick termed _Sen Patraic_.
The next biography of the saint introduces some new features into the
legend. It is the hymn in praise of St. Patrick, attributed to St. Fiacc
of Sleibhte, who is said to have been ordained by him. So early a date,
however, cannot be assigned to the poem, and it belongs in reality to
the ninth century.[810] This poem has formed the nucleus around which a
number of floating legends, whether founded on genuine tradition or the
fruit of supposititious narrative, have clustered in the shape of a
commentary or scholiasm, which is, of course, of even later date;[811]
and the two together have given an entirely different aspect to the
legendary life of the apostle of Ireland. The so-called Fiacc commences
his hymn by giving a new name to the place of St. Patrick’s birth. He
tells us that
Patraicc was born in Nemthur, and it is this that has been declared in
tales;[812]
And the scholiast adds, ‘That is a city which is in North Britain—viz.,
Ailcluaide,’—the ancient name of Dumbarton. This accords so far with
what we gather from his own Confession, that he was a native of the
Roman province in Britain; and we find the same place obviously referred
to in an old poem preserved in the Black Book of Caermarthen under the
name of _Nevtur_.[813]
The hymn then proceeds:—
A child of sixteen years when he was brought under tears.
Succat his name it was said; who was his father is to be known:
Son of Calpurn, son of Potitus, grandson of deacon Odisse.
He was six years in slavery....
This corresponds with his own statement in his Confession; but here the
scholiast adds other names to his family, and for the first time
connects them with Armorica in Gaul. His statement is as follows:—‘This
was the cause of the servitude of Patrick; his father was Calpuirnn;
Conches, daughter of Ochmuis, was his mother and of his five sisters,
namely, Lupait and Tigris and Liamain and Darerca, and the name of the
fifth was Cinnenum. His brother was Sannan. They all went from the
Britons of Alcluaid, across the Iccian sea southwards, on a journey to
the Britons who are in the sea of Icht, namely, the Britons of Letha,
because they had brethren there at that time. Now, the mother of these
children, namely, Conches, was of the Franks, and she was sister to
Martin. At that time came seven sons of Sectmaide, king of Britain, in
ships from the Britons; and they made great plunder on the Britons,
viz., the Britons of Armuric Letha, where Patrick with his family was,
and they wounded Calpuirnn there, and carried off Patrick and Lupait
with them to Ireland. And they sold Lupait in Conaille Muirthemne, and
Patrick in the north of Dal-araidhe.’[814] Here Patrick is brought from
Alcluaid, the place of his birth, to Armorica, in order to be carried
off from thence by Britons and not by Scots; and Armorica is thus thrust
somewhat violently into his own narrative, where he distinctly implies
that he was made captive in the place of his birth.
We are then introduced to Germanus, and told of Patrick that
He went across all Alps—great God! it was a marvel of a journey,
Until he stayed with German in the south, in the south part of Latium.
In the isles of the Tyrrhene Sea he remained; therein he meditated;
He read canon with German; it is this that writings declare.[815]
Here the scholiast introduces the mission of Palladius and the
consecration of Patrick by Amathorex the bishop, whom he identifies with
Amator, bishop of Auxerre, who was the predecessor of Germanus, and died
A.D. 418. He also makes Patrick accompany Germanus to Great Britain in
429, leaving little doubt that the whole connection of Patrick with
Germanus has been transferred to him from the acts of Palladius. The
author of the hymn gives sixty years as the period during which Patrick
preached to the Irish.[816] He mentions Armagh as the seat of his
primacy, and Dun Lethglasse, or Down, as a great church, and implies
that he died there; but the scholiast indicates _Sabhall Patraic_, or
Saul, as the place of his death. In the concluding lines of the hymn we
find the strange statement—
When Patrick departed, he visited the other Patrick:
It is together they ascended to Jesus, Mary’s Son.
And the comment of the scholiast is equally remarkable. He says that the
other Patrick was _Sen Patrick_. ‘It is what Patrick, the son of
Calpuirnn, promised to _Sen Patrick_, that together they would go to
heaven. And it is related that Patrick was from the xiii. (xvi.) of the
kalends of April to the ninth of the kalends of September upon the
field, and angels around him, praying to _Sen Patrick_.’[817] We are
here introduced to two Patricks, and a second Patrick has been created,
to whom the acts of the historic Patrick, so far as they have as yet
been compiled, have been transferred, while the latter retires into the
background under the designation of _Sen Patrick_, or old Patrick. Their
original identity, however, is obscurely hinted at in the hymn, when
they are made to ascend to heaven together. The two Patricks likewise
appear in the ninth century in the Felire of Angus the Culdee; and here
the second Patrick comes forward, under the 17th of March, as the great
apostle of Ireland, and the older Patrick retires to the 24th of August,
when he is designated the tutor of the former. The stanzas which
commemorate them may be thus rendered. On the 17th of March we have
The blaze of a splendid sun,
The apostle of stainless Erinn,
Patrick with his countless thousands;
May he shelter our wretchedness.[818]
On the 24th of August we have
The blaze of the people of Srenat
Is the tale which is heard.
Old Patrick, head of battle,
Mild tutor of our patron.[819]
The chronology of the second Patrick was formed by adding the sixty
years, during which, according to the hymn attributed to Fiacc of
Sleibhte, he preached to the Irish, to the year 432, when, according to
Tirechan, his mission commenced, which gives 492 as the termination of
his work. His death would thus fall on 17th March 493, and it is so
placed in an old quatrain quoted by Tighernac—
From the birth of Christ, a true reckoning,
Four hundred and fair ninety,
Three years add to these,
Till the death of Patrick, chief Apostle.[820]
The second Patrick thus created, with a life which lasted one hundred
and twenty years and terminated in 493, is now regarded as the Apostle
of Ireland, and to him are appropriated the leading features of his
career, while the Patrick of the older lives retains nothing but his
designation of _Sen Patrick_. How much, however, the separate existence
of this older Patrick embarrassed the martyrologists, we see from the
glosses upon the Felire of Angus the Culdee, which are comparatively of
much later date, and now first connect him with Glastonbury. The gloss
on the word _Srenat_ is ‘that is, in _Gloinestir_ of the Gael in Saxan,
that is, in Britannia.’[821] The gloss on the last line is ‘Tutor of
Patraic of Macha;’[822] and on the margin of the MS. is written the
following note:—‘That is, old Patrick of Ros-dela in Magh Locha; but it
is more true that he is in Glastonbury of the Gael, in the south of
England, for the Scots were dwelling there on a pilgrimage. But his
reliques are in Ulster. _Sen Patraic_ in Armagh.’[823]
Besides the metrical life attributed to Fiacc of Sleibhte, Colgan has
collected and printed six prose lives, seven in all. Four of the prose
lives—the second, third, fourth and seventh—are anonymous, the fifth
life bears to be by a certain Probus, and the sixth by Jocelyn of
Furness, whose date is known. It is the latest of the six, and must have
been written about the year 1185. These lives fall naturally into two
groups.[824] The first, consisting of Colgan’s second and fourth lives,
must have been written after the Book of Armagh and the metrical life
attributed to Fiacc, but before the compilation of the glosses added to
the latter. They give Nemthor as the place of Patrick’s birth, and place
it in the plain of Taburna, thus identifying it with the Bannaven
Taberniæ of his Confession. They make him to be carried into captivity
from thence by an Irish fleet; but they introduce a number of incidents,
connected with his childhood, which bear the usual miraculous character.
They know nothing of the story told by the scholiast in Fiacc’s hymn, of
the transference of the family from Alclyde to Armorica; but the fourth
life opens with the strange statement that some thought St. Patrick was
sprung from the Jews; that, when they were dispersed after the fall of
Jerusalem, a part of them took refuge in Armorica among the Britons, and
from thence his parents migrated to the regions of Strathclyde; but this
statement is peculiar to this life. Both of these lives make Patrick
thirty years old when he went to Germanus, with whom he studied thirty
years, and state that he preached to the Irish for sixty years, thus
adopting the chronology of the second Patrick.
The second group consists of the life by Probus, Colgan’s third life,
the Tripartite life, and that by Jocelyn. These were all compiled later
than the tenth century, and that by Probus appears to be the oldest. He
was acquainted with the Book of Armagh, part of the lives contained in
which are inserted verbatim; but he was also acquainted with the glosses
to the hymn of Fiacc, for he inserts the story of the migration of
Patrick’s family to Amorica. He places his birth in the Roman province
(_in Britanniis_), in the village of Bannauc of the Taburnian region,
which region he considers to be also the Nentrian province, where giants
are said to have formerly inhabited. But the main addition to the
incidents of Patrick’s life, which characterises this group, is his
connection with St. Martin of Tours. The scholiast on the hymn
attributed to Fiacc had already made his mother Conches St. Martin’s
sister, and St. Patrick is now made to reside for four years with him at
Tours, where he was instructed in the rules of monastic life, and
received the tonsure; but, as St. Martin died in 397, the date is too
early for St. Patrick. On the other hand, it is probably true of St.
Ninian, who is also said to have been a nephew of St. Martin and
associated with him, and with the dates of whose life it is more
consistent. Probus, however, seems to have preserved one incident which
is true of the historic Patrick, when he states that, after he was
ordained priest by a bishop, whom he calls St. Senior, he preached to
the Irish before the mission of Palladius, and before his own
consecration as a bishop. This short analysis of the lives of St.
Patrick will be sufficient to show how the real events in the life of
the historic Patrick, so far as they can be ascertained, were gradually
overlaid by spurious additions, till at length the legendary life of a
spurious Patrick, as we now have it, was developed out of it.
[Sidenote: Lives of St.Bridget.]
Besides the great legendary apostle of the Irish, the virgin St. Bridget
seems also to occupy a prominent place in Irish hagiology. That she was
a historic character, belonging to the earliest period of the Irish
Church, there seems little reason to doubt, and it is exceedingly
probable that St. Patrick himself in his Confession alludes to her when
he says, ‘There was one blessed Scotic maiden, very fair, of noble birth
and of adult age, whom I baptized; and after a few days she came to me,
because, as she declared, she had received a response from a messenger
of God desiring her to become a virgin of Christ and to draw near to
God. Thanks be to God, on the sixth day from that, she with praiseworthy
eagerness seized on that state of life which all the virgins of God
likewise now adopt;’ but her life too was now overlaid with spurious
tales and fabulous incidents, till it assumed an aspect far removed from
its probable reality. Space will not permit us to analyse these lives,
or to enter further into the history of the origin and development of
the great hagiologic literature of Ireland; suffice it to mention that
the two oldest lives of Bridget are attributed to Bishop Ultan, under
whose auspices Tirechan compiled his Annotations, and to Cogitosus, who
can now be identified with the father of Muirchu, who wrote the second
life in the Book of Armagh.
[Sidenote: Hagiology of the Scottish Church.]
Besides the Lives of St. Columba by Cummene and Adamnan in the seventh
century, the oldest lives in the Scotch hagiology of which we can fix
the dates, are the Life of St. Ninian by Aelred, who died in the year
1166, the Life of St. Kentigern, of which a fragment only remains, which
was written during the episcopate of Herbert, who was bishop from 1147
to 1164, and that by Jocelyn of Furness, written at the request of his
namesake, who was bishop of Glasgow from 1174 to 1199. These lives
therefore belong to the twelfth century, when the manipulation of the
old chronicles of Scotland had already commenced, which laid the
foundation of that fictitious scheme of history, both civil and
ecclesiastic, which was reduced to a system by John of Fordun; and to
some extent they bear the marks of that influence. The Life of Servanus,
however, which has been preserved in the Marsh MSS. in Dublin, belongs
probably to a somewhat earlier period. With the exception of these
lives, we are dependent almost entirely upon the lections in the
‘Propria Sanctorum’ of the Aberdeen Breviary, and on the works of
Dempster and Camerarius, for notices of the Scottish saints; but the
former were compiled after Fordun’s great work, and are tainted by the
false chronology of his Chronicle; and the two latter works, after the
publication of Hector Boece’s work, and are under the influence of the
fictitious history elaborated by him. The dates attached to the saints
in the Scotch Calendar are in the main fictitious, and cannot be
depended on.
[Sidenote: Bearing of the Church on the education of the people. The
_Ferleiginn_, or lector.]
Such is a short view of the hagiologic literature of Ireland and
Scotland, which forms so remarkable a feature in the literature of the
church. Its bearing upon the education of the people presents an equally
important feature. In the later part of the eighth and in the ninth
centuries we find a new functionary appearing in the monasteries, and
gradually superseding the _Scribhnigh_, or scribe. This was the
_Ferleiginn_, lector or man of learning, whose functions were more
closely connected with education. He appears first in Clonmacnois; and
we find in 794 the death of ‘Colgu Ua Duineachda _Ferleiginn_ of
Cluainmicnois, he who composed the _Scuaip-Chrabhaidh_,’ recorded in the
Annals of the Four Masters. There is no doubt that he is the ‘Colcu
lector in Scotia,’ to whom Alcuin wrote an epistle.[825] It appears from
his life that he was ‘supreme moderator and prælector of the school of
Clonmacnois, and that he arrived at such eminence in learning and
sanctity that he was called chief scribe and master of the Scots of
Ireland.’[826] In the following century the _Ferleiginn_ appears also at
Armagh, and we are told that in the year 876 Maelrobha, son of
Cuimmhach, abbot of Armagh, was taken prisoner by the Galls of
Loch-Cuan, as was also the _Ferleiginn_, Mochta.[827] During the tenth,
eleventh and twelfth centuries these lectors, or _Ferleiginn_, are
repeatedly mentioned in the Irish Annals in connection with the various
monasteries in Ireland.[828] They also appear in the Columban
monasteries both of Ireland and of Scotland. In 992 we find the death of
‘Dunchadh ua h-Uchtain, _Ferleighinn of Cenannus_,’ or Kells, recorded;
and in 1034 ‘Macnia ua h-Uchtain, _Ferleighinn_ of Kells, is drowned
coming from Alban with the bed of Columcill and three of Patrick’s
relics, and thirty persons along with him.’[829] In Scotland he appears
in the early part of the reign of David I., in connection with the
Columban monastery of _Turbruad_, or Turriff, founded by Comgan, where
‘Domangart, _Ferleginn Turbruad_, or of Turriff, witnesses a charter by
Gartnait, Mormaer of Buchan, and Eta his wife, to the church of
Deer;’[830] and we find him at Iona in 1164, when the _Ferleighinn
Dubside_ appears among the prominent functionaries of the
monastery.[831] In the following century the name of _Ferleiginn_ is
still preserved in connection with the church of St. Andrews and its
schools. Between the years 1211 and 1216, a controversy which arose
between the prior of St. Andrews and his convent, on the one part, and
the master of the schools and the poor scholars of the city of St.
Andrews, on the other, in regard to certain lands and dues which the
latter claimed, was amicably settled ‘with the assent and goodwill of
Master Laurence, who was both archdeacon and Ferleyn of the said city;’
and the prior and canons became bound ‘to pay to the foresaid Laurence
the _Ferleighinn_ (_Ferlano_) and his successors, at the house of the
_Ferleighinn_ (_in domo Ferlani_) of the said city, for the use of the
poor scholars,’ certain dues from these lands. ‘Thus was agreement made
between the parties, and by authority confirmed, so that neither
archdeacon nor Ferleighinn (Ferlanus), nor master of the schools, nor
poor scholars, shall hereafter move controversy against the same.’[832]
[Sidenote: The Scolocs.]
These scholars seem to have been the lowest order of the ecclesiastical
community, and to have been clerics who were undergoing a course of
training and instruction to fit them for performing the service of the
church. Their Pictish name was _Scolofthes_, as we learn from Reginald
of Durham, who mentions the clerics of the church (of Kirkcudbright),
the _Scolofthes_ as they are called in the Pictish speech, and gives
‘Scholasticus, a scholar,’ as its Latin equivalent. We find them under
the name of _Scolocs_ in three of the churches belonging to St. Andrews.
In the church of Ellon, which was of old the capital of the earldom of
Buchan, they appear in 1265 as holding certain lands under the bishop of
St. Andrews; and in 1387 the church lands of Ellon are called the Scolog
lands, and were hereditary in the families of the Scologs who possessed
them. An inquest regarding these lands, held in that year, bears that
from one quarter or fourth part of these lands ‘there are to be found
for the parish church of Ellon four clerks with copes and surplices,
able to read and sing sufficiently;’ another quarter or fourth part ‘is
bound to find a house for the scholars;’ a third ‘is bound to find twice
in every year twenty-four wax candles for the ‘park’ or ‘perk,’ that is,
the bracket or corbel before the high altar; and the fourth quarter is
bound to find a smithy. These lands are indiscriminately called the
‘Scolog lands’ and the ‘Scholar lands,’ and are described as ‘lying in
the schoolry (_Scolaria_) of Ellon.’ The Scolocs are also found in the
church lands of Arbuthnot in the Mearns, which they likewise held of the
see of St. Andrews. Here, in an inquest regarding the lands of the
Kirkton of Arbuthnot, held in the year 1206, we find the ecclesiastical
territory held by certain tenants called parsons, who had subtenants
under them, having houses of their own and cattle which they pastured on
the common; and the tenants of these lands are termed by several of the
witnesses Scolocs, and are also termed the bishop’s men. These Scolocs
were finally ejected altogether from the land which they appear to have
tilled. They also appear at the neighbouring church of Fetteresso,
likewise belonging to the bishop of St. Andrews.[833] The name of Scoloc
is also found in connection with one of the Columban monasteries in
Ireland; for in one of the charters preserved in the Book of Kells,
which must have been granted between the years 1128 and 1138, we find
that among the functionaries of the monastery, after the Coärb of
Columcille, or the abbot, the _Sacart_ or priest, the _Ferleiginn_ or
lecturer, the _Aircennech_ or Erenagh of the house of guests, and the
_Fosaircennech_ or vice-Erenach, appears the _Toisech na Scoloc_, or
Chief of the Scologs, Aengus O’Gamhna.[834]
[Sidenote: Influence of the Church on literature and language.]
Whether there existed in Ireland a pagan literature, in the proper sense
of the term, prior to the introduction of Christianity, and whether the
art of writing was known in any shape to its pagan population, is a very
difficult question, and one into which it is not necessary for our
purpose to enter. [Sidenote: Art of writing introduced.]But whether
there existed among them an ante-Christian civilisation of any kind or
not, there can be no doubt that the early Celtic Church, such as we have
found it to be, must have been a powerful agent in civilising the
people, and not less in fixing a standard of language; and the earliest
lives of St. Patrick certainly attribute to him the introduction of the
written alphabet. Thus Tirechan, having mentioned that Patrick had
consecrated three hundred and fifty bishops in Ireland, adds: ‘Of
presbyters we cannot count the number, because he used to baptize men
daily, and to read letters and _abgetoriæ_, or alphabets, with them; and
of some he made bishops and presbyters, because they had received
baptism in mature age.’[835] Of the two alphabets known to have existed
among the Irish, the one now called the Irish alphabet, and supposed to
be peculiar to the Irish language, is, as Dr. Todd well remarks, nothing
more than the Roman alphabet, which was used over all Europe in the
fifth and some following centuries. The other, called the Ogham, which
is mainly confined to inscriptions upon stone monuments, though it
occasionally appears in MSS.,[836] is of the same character as the
Scandinavian Runes, and has now also been clearly shown to have a
post-Christian origin.[837]
[Sidenote: Spoken dialects of Irish.]
Before letters were introduced, however, there could have been no fixed
standard of language. Each _Tuath_, or tribe, had probably its own
variety of the common speech; but these all, no doubt, belonged to that
branch of the Celtic language called Gaelic. There would thus be as many
varieties of the spoken Gaelic as there were independent tribes.[838]
The tendency of language at this stage is to go through a process of
corruption and decay. It is then easily modified by surrounding
circumstances and affected by external influences, which an oral
literature, consisting of the songs and legends of a rude people, is
powerless to control. This tendency would be arrested only when a
written and cultivated language was formed under the influence of the
Christian Church, and a common standard of the language, in its most
perfect shapes and preserving its older forms, was established, which
was spoken and written by the cultivated class of the community, and to
a knowledge of which a portion of the people were raised by education.
Under its influence the numerous varieties of the spoken language became
more assimilated, until at length we find that in the main there remain
only four forms of the vernacular Irish, which were peculiar to the four
great provinces of Munster, Ulster, Leinster, and Connaught, into which
the country was divided. There was also an old division of Ireland by a
line drawn across the island from Dublin to Galway into two parts,
termed respectively _Leth Cuinn_ and _Leth Mogha_. This division was
known to Bede, who distinguished between the northern provinces of the
Scots and the nations of the Scots dwelling in the northern districts of
Ireland.[839] The northern half contained the provinces of Connaught and
Ulster and the old province of Meath, which is now included in Leinster,
and the seaboard of which formed the plain of Bregia, or Magh Bregh,
mentioned more than once by Adamnan.[840] The southern half consisted of
the old provinces of Leinster and Munster; and the difference in the
spoken language between the northern and southern Irish was somewhat
more marked.
[Sidenote: Peculiarities of Irish dialects.]
The peculiarities in the spoken Gaelic of the four provinces are thus
expressed in the following sayings current in most parts of Ireland:—
The Munster man has the accent without the propriety.
The Ulster man has the propriety without the accent.
The Leinster man has neither the propriety nor the accent.
The Connaught man has both the accent and the propriety.[841]
The difference in these four dialects is mainly in words, pronunciation,
and idiom; but the grand difference between the vernacular Irish of the
northern and that of the southern part of Ireland consists in the
position of the accent, in the vowel sounds, and in the form of the
verb. In the north the primary accent is on the root of the word, or the
first syllable, and the secondary accent on the termination; but in the
south the primary accent is on the termination, and the secondary accent
on the root, if short.[842] The vowel sounds vary very much, their most
perfect pronunciation being in Connaught. In the verb, the analytic
form—or that in which the verb has a common form for all the persons,
and these are expressed by separate pronouns, while the auxiliary verb
is more employed—is used in the spoken language of the north, and
principally in Ulster. The synthetic or inflected form, which is the
more ancient, is generally used in the south of Ireland; and in this
respect it approaches more closely the forms of the written or
cultivated language, and shows a less degree of corruption than the
vernacular of the north.
[Sidenote: Written Irish.]
In the written Irish, the more ancient verbal forms have been preserved
in their entirety, and there is a complete system of inflections, with a
very copious vocabulary, of which several glossaries have been
preserved. The most ancient is that attributed to Cormac mac Cuilennan,
king and bishop of Cashel, who was killed in the year 903; and the
greater part of it undoubtedly belongs to that period.[843] There has
also been preserved an ancient Grammar termed _Uraicecht na m-Eiges_, or
Precepts of the Poets, which is certainly not much later in date;[844]
but Zeuss’ great work, the _Grammatica Celtica_, exhibits the grammar of
this written language in its most complete shape, as he has constructed
it from materials furnished by MSS. of the eighth and ninth centuries.
[Sidenote: Scotch Gaelic.]
Such being, in the main, the position of the Gaelic language in Ireland
and the relation between the written and cultivated language and the
spoken dialects, we find that Scotland presents to us, in connection
with the distribution of her languages, somewhat peculiar phenomena,
which are more difficult of solution. If a line is drawn from a point on
the eastern bank of Loch Lomond, somewhat south of Ben Lomond, following
in the main the line of the Grampians, and crossing the Forth at
Aberfoil, the Teith at Callander, the Almond at Crieff, the Tay at
Dunkeld, the Ericht at Blairgowrie, and proceeding through the hills of
Brae Angus till it reaches the great range of the Mounth, then crossing
the Dee at Ballater, the Spey at lower Craigellachie, till it reaches
the Moray Firth at Nairn—this forms what was called the Highland Line,
and separated the Celtic from the Teutonic-speaking people. Within this
line, with the exception of the county of Caithness which belongs to the
Teutonic division, the Gaelic language forms the vernacular of the
inhabitants, and beyond it prevails the broad Scotch. The one is as much
a dialect of Irish, and is substantially the same language, as the other
is of the Anglic or Anglo-Saxon. There are small and unimportant
provincial varieties observed in both; yet each forms essentially one
dialect; and Scotch Gaelic must be viewed as simply a provincial variety
of the spoken Gaelic, of the same class as the provincial varieties of
the vernacular Gaelic in Ireland. It exhibits some differences which are
peculiar to itself. In other points it corresponds with one or other of
the Irish dialects. The primary accent in Scotch Gaelic is invariably on
the first syllable of the word, and the analytic form of the verb, with
the use of the auxiliary verb, is preferred to the synthetic. In these
respects it corresponds with the spoken language of the north of
Ireland, and its vowel sounds approach most nearly to those of the
Connaught dialect. Scotch Gaelic is, in fact, so far, more closely
allied to the northern Irish than the latter is to the spoken language
of the south; but there are other peculiarities of Scotch Gaelic which
seem due to influence from another quarter. It forms the genitive plural
of some nouns by adding the syllable _an_, in which it resembles Welsh
forms. It does not use that phonetic change of the initial consonant,
termed by Irish grammarians ‘eclipsis.’ It drops the final vowel in some
substantives, and the future tense of its verb resembles the present
tense of the Irish verb, while for the present it uses the auxiliary
with the present participle. These peculiarities Scotch Gaelic shares
with Manx, or the Gaelic of the Isle of Man; and it indicates that this
vernacular form of Gaelic had been arrested at a somewhat later stage in
its process of disintegration than the northern dialects of Irish.
[Sidenote: Origin of the Scotch Gaelic.]
The whole of the mountain region of Scotland with its islands within the
Highland line, with the exception of Caithness, thus possessing a
dialect of spoken Gaelic which must be ranked with the vernacular
dialects of Ireland, the natural inference is that it must at all times
have been peopled by a homogeneous race. But when we inquire into the
elements which enter into its early population, we find that, prior to
the ninth century, it consisted, in name at least, of two different
races. In that part of Argyllshire which formed the kingdom of Dalriada,
with the islands south of the promontory of Ardnamurchan, were the
Scots, who unquestionably immigrated from Ireland in the beginning of
the sixth century; while the whole of the rest of this region, with the
islands north of Ardnamurchan, was peopled by the Pictish tribes. If
these two races were not homogeneous, the question arises, How did this
Gaelic dialect spread over the whole of it? To this question Irish
writers usually return a very short and ready answer. They tell us that
the Irish colony of Scots spread gradually over the western districts;
that in the ninth century they subjugated the Picts; that the Pictish
population was superseded by the Scottish; and that the language spoken
by the Highlanders was invariably termed by them Erse or Irish. This
solution will not, however, stand the test of investigation. The former
part of the statement, when compared with the ascertained facts
regarding the relative position of the two races, requires an assent to
a philological proposition which is almost impossible; and the latter
assertion is not true. It is obvious from the statements of both Adamnan
and Bede that, as late as the eighth century, the Scots of Dalriada were
still confined within those mountain barriers which separated them from
the great Pictish race; and, however we may view the revolution which
took place in their relative position, it is obvious that the spoken
dialect which prevailed over the rest of the Highlands prior to the
ninth century, whatever it was, could not have been derived from the
Scots of Dalriada. But is it credible that a language spoken in such a
mountainous and inaccessible region as the northern and eastern
Highlands, with the islands north of Ardnamurchan, could have so
entirely disappeared as to leave not a trace even in its topography?
Though we do not possess written evidence of the early speech of this
part of the country, we have a record in the names of its great natural
features—its mountains, its lochs, and its great rivers; and all
experience tells us that, though the population of a country may change,
these generally remain unaffected by it, and retain the stamp of its
earliest race, by whom these names were imposed. We find that the names
of farms and homesteads, houses and villages, may change and bear the
impress of each succeeding population; but those of the grand and
unchangeable features of a country bearing the physical aspect of
Scotland remain unchanged, and these names, throughout the whole of the
districts peopled by the northern Picts, are unmistakably Gaelic. There
may enter into these names some vocables which are not intelligible in
the modern vernacular Gaelic; but it must be recollected that the names
were imposed at a much earlier stage of the language, and we usually
find that they are obsolete words of the same language, and are
preserved in the old glossaries.[845]
But, further, the phenomena exhibited in these districts of Scotland, in
the relation of the early races which peopled it to the language which
we find at a later period pervading the whole range of country, are not
very dissimilar from those which appear to have existed at a much
earlier period in the north of Ireland. There we find the tradition that
the Pictish race once extended over the whole of the north of Ireland;
and the remembrance of the Pictish kingdom of Ulster, with its capital
of _Emhan Macha_, or Emania, is preserved almost to historic times. The
remains of this Pictish race still existed, within the historic period,
in the smaller kingdom of _Dalnaraidhe_, or Dalaradia, and in the plain
of Bregia in Meath; and their close connection with the Picts of
Scotland was not dissevered till the middle of the sixth century. Here,
too, we have an extended Pictish race, over which however the race of
the Scots were more rapidly, and at a much earlier period, superinduced,
and the same phenomena of the spoken language of the whole country
forming one dialect of that branch of Celtic termed Gaelic, while there
is no trace of any other language having prevailed. We may therefore
infer that the language spoken by the Pictish race which peopled the
Highlands and Islands likewise belonged to the Gaelic branch of the
Celtic, and that, like the Irish, before a cultivated standard of
language was formed by the introduction of letters, it was characterised
by local varieties of speech, and that there were as many dialects, in
the most limited sense of the term, as there were districts and tribes.
We do not find, however, that St. Columba, when he commenced his mission
among the Picts, had any difficulty in conversing freely with them, or
preaching the Word intelligibly to them. There are only two instances
mentioned by Adamnan where he had to call in the aid of an interpreter,
and in both cases it was resorted to in preaching the Word of Life, and
not in conversing. These are the cases of the old chief of the Geona
cohort, who came by sea to the north end of Skye, and of a peasant in
the province of the Picts;[846] but we are not told to what part of the
country these men belonged, and the dialect of one part may have been
more removed from the Irish form of it than that of another.
[Sidenote: A written language introduced by Scottish monks.]
A very powerful agency, however, was soon brought to bear upon the
language of that part of the country, that, namely, of the Christian
Church. Whatever may have been the case in Ireland, it is unquestionably
to the Columban Church issuing from Ireland that the northern Picts owed
the introduction of letters and of a written language. For centuries her
clergy were entirely Scottish, and the instruction of the people and the
education of the young was in the hands of the Scottish monks of the
Columban Church. By them the standard of the written Irish was
introduced. It became the language of the church, the monastery and the
school. There was, probably for generations, not a Pictish child, who
secured any education at all, who had not learned his alphabet and been
taught to read by a Scottish monk. And with the spread of knowledge and
of cultivation there must have arisen a coalescing of the numerous
varieties of the vernacular into one spoken dialect, and the
assimilation of the whole to the cultivated language of Ireland. Towards
the close of the period during which this Celtic Church was predominant,
and just before its extinction, we have a specimen of the written
language of the Columban Church in the Book of Deer. It is a MS. which
belonged to the church of Deer, one of the few Columban monasteries in
the Pictish territory which retained its clerical character throughout.
It contains the Gospel of St. John, portions of the other three Gospels,
the fragment of an office for the visitation of the sick, and the
Apostles’ Creed, all in Latin, and is written in a character which may
be ascribed to the ninth century. A few of the rubrics in the office for
the visitation of the sick are, however, in Irish, and, as was usual in
such monasteries, there are written on the blank pages notices in
Gaelic, written in the Irish character, giving the legend of the
foundation of the church, and memoranda of the different grants of lands
and privileges made to it. These are all in the same handwriting, and
appear to have been written in the early part of the reign of David I.
They thus furnish us with a specimen of the written language of the
period, and, though it possesses some unimportant peculiarities, it is
unquestionably identic with the written Irish of the period.[847] Not
long after, we find the vernacular Gaelic appearing under the name of
the Albanic, or language of Alban, and exhibiting some of the
peculiarities of the Scotch Gaelic. Jocelyn of Furness, who wrote in the
twelfth century, gives us in his Life of Kentigern two etymologies of
the saint’s name. One is unquestionably from Cymric, or the Welsh
language; but in the other the interpretation is derived from the
Gaelic. He says that ‘not in vain, but of set purpose, had he been
called Kentigern by Servanus, because by the will of the Lord he sought
to become the head lord of all, for _Ken_ is “caput” in Latin, and the
Albanic _Tyern_ is interpreted “dominus.” in Latin.’[848] _Cen_, now
_Ceann_, however, is ‘the head’ both in Irish and Scotch Gaelic, and
_Tyern_ is the phonetic spelling of _Tighearn_, Lord, in Scotch Gaelic,
the Irish form of which is _Tighearna_, thus showing the elision of the
final vowel peculiar to Scotch Gaelic. The written language, however, he
appears to term Scotic, when he says that he had ‘found a little volume,
written in the Scotic dialect, filled from end to end with solecisms,
but containing at greater length the life and acts of the holy
bishop.’[849]
[Sidenote: Gaelic termed Scottish, and Lowland Scotch, English.]
During the last two and a half centuries of this period the intercourse
between the north and west of Scotland and Ireland had, to a great
extent, been interrupted by the Norwegian conquest of the Western Isles,
and the formation of the Norwegian kingdom of the Isles; but the rise of
the Celtic chief Somerled, and the foundation of the dynasty of Gaelic
Lords of the Isles in his descendants, renewed the intercourse with
Ireland; and we find that, during the three centuries in which these
powerful Celtic kinglets ruled over the western Highlands and Islands,
there was not only a close political connection with Ireland, but the
literary influence was equally close and strong, and Ireland was
resorted to for instruction in the literature and written language of
the country. It was at the commencement of this period, that the name of
Scotia became finally and absolutely transferred from Ireland to
Scotland, and superseded the older name of Alban, or Albania; and,
during the whole of this period, the name applied to the Gaelic language
of Scotland was that of Scotic, or Scotch. We find abundant evidence of
this during the earlier portion of this period, when the term ‘Scotice’
is invariably applied to the Gaelic forms of the names of places. Thus,
in the ‘Descriptio Albaniæ,’ in the twelfth century, the river Forth is
said to be called ‘Scottice Froch, Brittanice Werid, Romane vero
Scottewattre,’ the term Roman being here curiously enough applied to the
Anglic. A charter by William the Lion mentions that spring near Karel
‘quæ Scotice _Tobari_ nuncupatur;’ and the same designation for the
Gaelic language of Scotland appears frequently in the Chartularies,
while the term Anglic is used for the Teutonic. Thus, in a perambulation
of the lands of Kingoldrum in Forfarshire, in 1256, we have
‘_Hachethunethouer_ quod Anglice dicitur Midefeld,‘ and ‘Marresiam
quamdam quæ Scotice dicitur _Moynebuche_.’[850] And in the fourteenth
century Fordun gives us a very distinct account of the distribution of
the vernacular dialect in his day. He says, ‘The manners and customs of
the Scots vary with the diversity of their speech. For two languages are
spoken amongst them, the Scottish (_Scotica_) and the Teutonic
(_Theutonica_); the latter of which is the language of those who occupy
the seaboard and plains, while the race of Scottish speech (_Scoticæ
linguæ_) inhabits the Highlands and outlying districts.’[851]
[Sidenote: Α.D. 1478-1560.
Period of neglected education and no learning.]
The dynasty of the Celtic kings of the Isles came to an end in 1478,
when the last Lord of the Isles was forfeited; and there followed upon
their fall a period of great confusion in the Highlands, when the clans
which had been united under their sway were thrown loose, and struggled
for the possession of their lands. During this period of darkness
education was neglected, and all knowledge of the cultivated or written
Irish seems to have perished out of the land. It is during this period
that a solitary exception, Dean Macgregor of Lismore, endeavoured to
rescue from oblivion the oral literature of the Highlands by
transcribing, in 1512, such poems as he could collect; but he was fain
to write them down in a phonetic spelling, which has rendered his
collection valuable, as indicating the pronunciation of the language at
the time, and the degree of divergence between the spoken dialects and
the standard Irish.[852] His collection, however, contains also several
poems by Irish bards, and among others some of a religious cast by
Teague og O’Huggin, whose death is recorded in the Annals of the Four
Masters in 1448 as ‘chief preceptor of the poets of Erin and Alban;’ and
the same annals record in 1554 the death of Teague O’Coffey, ‘chief
teacher of poetry in Erin and Alban.’ A contract of fosterage, by Sir
Roderick Macleod, in 1614, in Gaelic, has been preserved, which is
written in the Irish character; but it is evident that he had to resort
to Ireland for his scribe, as the writer of it is obviously an Irishman,
and he alone subscribes as a witness in the Irish written language, the
three other witnesses all bearing Gaelic names, and two of them,
respectively ministers of Duirinish and Bracadale, in Skye, being unable
to do so.[853]
[Sidenote: After 1520 Scotch Gaelic called Irish, and the name Scotch
passes over to Lowland Scotch.]
The spoken language of the Highlands now begins to be called Irish in
place of Scotch. John Major, who wrote in 1520, not long after the Dean
of Lismore had made his collection, thus describes the languages in his
day: ‘In the island of Britain there are three different languages, as
we know, which are mutually unintelligible. The first towards the south
is the Welsh (_Vallica_), which the Britonised Britons use. The second,
more extended than the first, the wild Scots and Islanders use, and this
is Irish, though somewhat broken (_Hibernica licet quodammodo fracta_).
The third language, the principal one in the island, is the English
(_Anglicana_), which the English and the civilised Scots have.’[854]
Thus, what Fordun called _Scotica_ in the fourteenth century, John Major
calls _Hibernica_ in the sixteenth; and what Fordun termed _Teutonica_,
Major calls _Anglicana_. The expression used by John Major, with regard
to the Gaelic spoken in the Highlands and Islands, shows that the
differences between it and the written language of Ireland were then
quite apparent. While, however, all learning had perished out of the
Gaelic-speaking part of the country, there had arisen a literature in
the language of the lowlands. Barbour, who was archdeacon of Aberdeen,
leads the way not long after Fordun’s time; but he terms the language in
which he wrote ‘Inglis,’ or English.[855] He was followed in the next
century by Wyntoun, prior of Lochleven, in his Metrical Chronicle. But
Gawin Douglas, who wrote in the same Lowland dialect in 1516, terms the
language in which he wrote ‘Scottés,’ or Scotch. We thus find in the
beginning of the sixteenth century the term Scotic, or Scotch, passing
from the written Gaelic to the Anglican dialect of the Lowlands, and the
spoken Gaelic of the Highlands coming to be denominated Irish.
[Sidenote: After Reformation Scotch Gaelic becomes a written language.]
The Reformation, however, soon after gave rise to a religious
literature, which was printed for the use of the Gaelic-speaking people;
but here too it became necessary to resort to Ireland for the written
language. Bishop Carsewell printed, in 1567, a translation of John
Knox’s liturgy, with a prefatory epistle, in which he says that ‘we, the
Gael of Alban and Erin, have laboured under the want that our dialects
of the Gaelic have never been printed;’ and the language he uses is
unquestionably the written Irish of the time. In the following century
translations of the metrical version of the Psalms, of Calvin’s
Cathechism, and of the Bible, were printed in Gaelic by the Synod of
Argyll and by the Rev. R. Kirke of Balquhidder. These were thoroughly
Irish in form, and the latter was simply taken from the Irish version of
the Bible. Various editions of the Bible were issued in the succeeding
century by the Society for Propagating Christian Knowledge in Scotland;
but, from the divergence which now existed between the spoken language
of the people and the written language of Ireland, it was found that
these translations were not readily understood, and in each succeeding
edition they were brought nearer to the spoken idiom, till, for the
cultivated Irish, which formed their written dialect in common with
Ireland, there was now substituted a written Scotch Gaelic, in all
respects assimilated to the spoken language. There can be little doubt
that the spoken or vernacular language remained throughout pretty much
the same, exhibiting in a greater or less degree those features which
distinguished it from the spoken dialects of Ireland; and to this
language the Highlanders themselves have never given any other name than
the simple designation of Gaelic. It possessed, too, an oral literature
in the popular poetry and prose tales of the Highlanders, handed down by
recitation; and in 1741 a vocabulary of this Scottish Gaelic was first
printed by Alexander Macdonald, schoolmaster of Ardnamurchan, a scholar
and a good Gaelic poet. Ten years later he printed a collection of his
own poems, written in the vernacular dialect of the Highlands. To this
work he gave the title of ‘Resurrection of the Ancient Language of
Alban,’[856] and in the preface announced that it was only the prelude
to a greater collection of poetry ‘from those of the earliest
composition to modern times; their antiquity either proved by historical
accounts, or ascertained by the best traditions; with a translation into
English verse, and critical observations on the nature of such writings,
to render the work useful to those that do not understand the Gaelic
language.’[857] It is to be regretted that he never carried this
intention into effect. In 1764 the poems of Duncan Ban Macintyre, also
composed in the vernacular, were printed, and these collections were
followed by numerous others, till this oral literature of the Scottish
Gaelic, too, assumed a written form.
And thus, at length, has been created a standard of written Scotch
Gaelic, which has stereotyped the language spoken by the Highlanders in
its native form and idiom.
-----
Footnote 786:
S. Monenni disciplinis et monitis in Rosnatensi Monasterio, quod alio
nomine Alba vocatur, diligenter instructus in virum perfectum scientia
et moribus est provectus.—_Vit. S. Tigernaci._
In monasterio præfato sub discipulatu illius permansit, et postquam
vita atque doctrina ibi sufficientur floruit.—_Vit. S. Endæ._
In ejus sede quæ magnum vocatur Monasterium regulas et institutiones
monasticæ vitæ aliquot annis probus monachus didicit atque in
sanctarum Scripturarum paginis non parum proficiens.—_Vit. S.
Finniani_, Colgan, _A.SS._, p. 438.
Footnote 787:
Cum S. Kannechus crevisset et perfectus esset sensibus voluit
sapientiam legere et religionem discere. Perrexit trans mare in
Britanniam ad virum sapientem ac religiosissimum Docum legitque apud
illum sedule et mores bonos didiscit.—_Vit. S. Kannechi_, c. 4.
Footnote 788:
Iste S. Kieranus valde erat humilis in omnibus, qui multum diligebat
divinam Scripturam audire et discere. Ipse cum ceteris Sanctis
Hiberniæ illius temporis ad virum sanctum Finnianum Abbatem
sapientissimum monasterii Cluain Eraird exivit et in divinis
Scripturis in sancta schola ejus legebat.—Colgan, _A.SS._, p. 463.
Footnote 789:
Bede, _Hist. Ecc._, B. iii. c. 27.
Footnote 790:
Bede, _Hist. Ecc._, B. iv. c. 27; _Vit. S. Cud._, c. 24.
Footnote 791:
In ea namque navi diferebantur 50 monachi patria Romani quos vel
arctioris vitæ vel Scripturarum peritiæ, tunc in ea multum florentis,
desiderium in Hiberniam traxerat, ut ibi vivant sub magisterio
quorundam sanctorum patrum, quos vitæ sanctitatæ et monasticæ
disciplinæ rigore intellexerant esse conspicuos.—Colgan, _A.SS._, p.
533.
Footnote 792:
Adamnan, _Vit. S. Col._, Præf., B. ii. c. 8; B. iii. c. 22.
Footnote 793:
Illa jam cito rememoravit de Alfrido, qui nunc regnat pacifice, fuisse
dictum, qui tunc erat in insula quam Hy nominant.—_Vit. S. Cuth. auct.
anon._; Bede, _Opera minora_, p. 274.
Footnote 794:
Et exceptis his, quæ aut Lex, aut Prophetæ, aut Evangelium, aut
Apostoli loquuntur, grande debet esse ab aliis de Trinitate silentium.
Dei enim tantum de Deo, hoc est, de seipso credendum est
testimonium.—Migne, _Patrologia_, vol. xxxvii. col. 233. When
Columbanus goes on to say, ‘Cæterum disputatio, seu ingenium humanum,
aut aliqua superba sapientia, quæ vel mundi in ratione fallitur, de
Deo magistra esse non potest, sed sacrilega et impia in Deum
præsumenda est,’ it is hardly possible to avoid the suspicion that it
was intended as a protest against the Athanasian Creed and its
metaphysical definitions, which probably made its appearance about
this time in the Church.
Footnote 795:
See for an account of these scribes Colgan, _Tr. Th._, p. 631, where a
list of them during the eighth and ninth centuries is given. The first
mention of them is in 697, when the death of ‘_Caisan_ Scriba
_Luscan_’ is recorded in the Ulster Annals.
Footnote 796:
A.D. 807 (808) Torbach mac Gormain _Scribhnidh Leghthoir agus Abb_
Ardamacha _esidhe_ decc.
844 (845) _Feardomhnach eagnaidh agus Scribhnidh toghaidhe_ Ardamacha
decc.—_A. F. M._ See _Proc. R. I. A._, vol. iii. p. 316, 356, for
papers by Rev. Charles Graves, now bishop of Limerick, on the date of
the Book of Armagh.
Footnote 797:
The Book of Armagh by Dr. Reeves; first published in the _Swords
Parish Magazine_, 1861.
Footnote 798:
657 Obitus _Ultain ic U Concubair_.—_An. Ult._
Footnote 799:
699 Quies _Aedo_ anachorite _o Sleibhtiu_.—_Ib._
Footnote 800:
Dr. Todd’s translation of this preface has been adopted.—_Life of St.
Patrick_, p. 402.
Footnote 801:
See Colgan’s _Tr. Th._, pp. 518, 527, and the Bishop of Limerick’s
paper in _Proc. R. I. A._, vol. viii. p. 269.
Footnote 802:
462 (463) Mors Laegaire fili Niell.—_An. Ult._
Footnote 803:
457 (458) Quies senis Patricii, ut alii libri dicunt.
Footnote 804:
That this is the true reading of his name Dr. Todd has shown, though
the scribes have made it ‘Amatho rex,’ and in the ablative ‘Amatho
rege.’
Footnote 805:
Colombcille Spiritu Sancto instigante ostendit sepulturam Patricii,
ubi est confirmat, id est, in Sabul Patricii, id est, in ecclesia
juxta mare pro undecima (proxima), ubi est conductio martirum, id est
ossuum Coluimbcillae de Britannia, et conductio omnium Sanctorum
Hiberniæ in die judicii.—Reeves’s _Adamnan_, ed. 1874, p. lxxx.
Footnote 806:
This suggestion is made by Dr. Graves in his account of the Book of
Armagh.—_Proc. R. I. A._, vol. iii. p. 356.
Footnote 807:
See Introduction to the Irish version of Nennius, pp. 12 and 14.
Footnote 808:
Compare the following passage:—
Certe enim erit quod Palladius
archidiaconus Papæ Celestini urbis
Romæ episcopi, qui tunc tenebat
sedem apostolicam quadragensimus
quintus a Sancto Petro apostolo, Missus est Palladius episcopus
ille Palladius ordinatus et missus primitus a Celestino episcopo et
fuerat ad hanc insolam sub brumali Papa Romæ ad Scottos in Christum
rigore positam convertendam; sed convertendos; sed prohibuit illum
prohibuit illum [Deus] quia nemo Deus per quasdam tempestates, quia
potest accipere quicquam de terra nemo potest accipere quicquam de
nisi datum ei fuerit de cœlo. Nam terra, nisi de cœlo datum fuerit
neque hii feri et inmites homines illi desuper. Et profectus est ille
facile reciperunt doctrinam ejus, Palladius de Hibernia, et pervenit
neque et ipse voluit transegere ad Britanniam, et ibi defunctus est
tempus in terra non sua, sed in terra Pictorum. —Nennius, _Hist.
reversus ad eum qui misit illum. Brit._
Revertente vero eo hinc et in primo
mari transito cœptoque terrarum
itinere Britonum finibus vita
factus. —Muirchu, _Book of Armagh_.
Footnote 809:
Compare the following:—
In IIII rebus similis fuit Quatuor modis æquantur Moyses
Moisi Patricius. et Patricius, id est,
I. Primo angelum de rubo Angelo colloquente in rubo
audivit igneo.
II. xl diebus et xl noctibus Secundo modo, in monte
jejunavit. quadraginta diebus et
quadraginta noctibus
jejunavit.
III. Quia annos cxx peregit in Tertio modo, similes fuerunt
præsenti. ætate, centum viginti annis.
IV. Ubi sunt ossa ejus nemo Quarto modo, sepulchrum
novit. illius nemo scit, sed in
Tirechan, _Book of occulto humatus est, nemine
Armagh_. sciente.
—Nennius, _Hist.
Brit._
Footnote 810:
See Dr. Todd’s unfinished preface to the poem in the _Liber Hymnorum_,
part ii. p. 287, where its true character is very clearly established.
Footnote 811:
The poem with a Latin translation and the glosses at length, is
printed by Colgan in his _Trias Thaumaturga_, p. i. Mr. Whitley Stokes
has also printed the poem, with an English translation, in his
_Gædelica_, p. 126.
Footnote 812:
The word here is _Scelaib_, from _Scel_, a relation, a tale or story.
Footnote 813:
Dr. Samuel Ferguson, in the notes to his poem of Congal, p. 196, has
suggested an ingenious theory with regard to this name of _Nemthur_,
and Mr. Gilbert, in his introduction to the _National MSS. of
Ireland_, appears to adopt it. He refers to the name of _Neutur_ or
_Nevtur_ appearing in the old Welsh poem, which, however, he reads
_Nentur_, and adds, ‘The N in both belongs to the article, as in
_N’ewry_; so that the choice lies between _Emtur_ and _Entur_; but
_Entur_ is a good Celtic local name (“unica turris”), just as _Endrum_
(“unica collis”) was the old name of Mahee island, and _Entreb_
(“unica domus”) was the old name of Antrim, whereas _Emtur_ is an
“irreconcilable.” The probability, therefore, is that “_Emtur_,”
which, in the Tripartite Life, is always spoken of a place close to,
or forming part of, Dumbarton, is simply _Entur_ disguised by the
accidental use of M instead of N.’
There appear to the author to be serious objections to this theory.
First, it requires us to suppose that _Nemthur_ has been written by
mistake for _Nenthur_ in the hymn of Fiacc and in all the lives which
contain the word, and equally it requires us to suppose that _Neutur_
has been written in place of _Nentur_ in the Book of Caermarthen (_The
Four Ancient Books of Wales_, vol. ii. p. 3). Secondly, it is true
that in Irish names of places N before a vowel sometimes represents
the article; but is this true also of Welsh names? The author is
unaware of any parallel instance, and does not see how _Entur_ in
Welsh could become _Nentur_. Thirdly, if this be so, then the Welsh
must have adopted the Irish form of the name; but the inhabitants of
the district in which Alcluaid was situated were a Welsh-speaking
people, and the name is more likely to have passed from them into
Irish. Lastly, _Nem_ in old Irish, and _Nev_, or as it would now be
written _Nef_, in Welsh, are exact equivalents. Thus in Cormac’s
_Glossary_, edited by Mr. Whitley Stokes (p. 126), we have _Nem_
(heaven), and the editor adds, ‘W. and Corn. _Nef_, Br. _env_. The old
Welsh form occurs in _uuc nem, is nem_ (above heaven, below heaven).
Juvencus, p. 1, line 9.’
Footnote 814:
Dr. Todd’s _St. Patrick_, p. 360. The Irish historians who have
investigated the history of St. Patrick, have viewed the introduction
of Armorica into the legend with much favour, and have been inclined
to transfer St. Patrick entirely to Gaul as the place of his birth as
well as where he was taken captive. The most elaborate attempt to do
this has been made by Lanigan in his _Ecclesiastical History of
Ireland_; but he is obliged to remove him from Armorica to the
sea-coast north of the Seine. It is sufficient to say that his theory
requires us to suppose Bannavem written by mistake for Bononia,
Tabernia for Tarabanna, that Nemthur means Neustria, and that the term
Britanniæ, or the Britains, applies to that part of Gaul. The author
has always considered it conclusive against any theory that it
requires conjectural emendations of the text to support it.
Footnote 815:
The word here is _Lini_, which implies a written record. The statement
seems taken from the former narratives of Tirechan and Muirchu in the
Book of Armagh.
Footnote 816:
‘He preached for threescore years the cross of Christ to the tribes of
Feni.’
Footnote 817:
_Is sed ro gell Patraic mac Calpuirn do Sen Phatraic commad immaille
ro regtais do chum nime, ocus ised inniset corobai Patraic ota. xiii.
(xvi.) kt Aprail co. ix. kt Septembris ar immaig ocus aingil imme oc
irnaigte Sen Patraic._
Footnote 818:
_Lassar greni aine,
Aspal Erenn oige,
Patraic, co met mile,
Rob ditiu diar troige._
O’Curry, _MS. Materials_, p. 611.
Footnote 819:
_Lasreith sloig srenatii
Ata sceoil ro clotha,
Sen Patraic cing catha
Coem aite ar srotha._
Petrie, _Ant. of Tara_, p. 95.
Footnote 820:
_O genair Criost, airem ait,
C.C.C.C. for caem nochait,
Teora bliadhna fair iarsein
Co bas Padraic prim Abstail._
_Tigh. ad an._ 490.
Footnote 821:
.i. _i n-Gloinestir na n-Gaedel i Saxsanaib_ .i. in Britannia.—Petrie,
_Ant. of Tara_, p. 95.
Footnote 822:
_Aite Patraic Macha_, Sancti Patricii Episcopi doctor.—Petrie, p. 96.
Footnote 823:
_Sen Patraic o Rus dela aMuig locha_, sed verius est _Comad i
nGlastingiberra na nGaedel i n-desciurt Saxan ata_; Scoti enim prius
in peregrinatione ibi abitabant. _Acht a tati a thaisi i n-Ulad. Sen
Patraic i n-Ardmacha._—_Ib._
Footnote 824:
Colgan has unquestionably assigned too early a date to these lives,
and the process by which he has done so is not very critical. He
conjecturally connects the anonymous lives with the names of those who
are said to have written biographies of the saint, and then takes the
date of the death of the supposed author as indicating the period when
the life must have been compiled. If the life contains expressions
indicating a later date he supposes interpolations. There is, however,
a very simple test by which these lives fall into the two groups above
referred to, and that is by their use of the term Scotia, which was
transferred from Ireland to Scotland in the end of the tenth or
beginning of the eleventh century. In Colgan’s second and fourth lives
Scotia is applied to Ireland, which places them before that period.
The fifth life bears in itself to be written by Probus, and his
expression ‘Scotiam atque Britanniam, Angliam et Normanniam ceteraque
gratis insulanorum baptizabis,’ indicates a later date, while his only
name for Ireland is Hibernia. He dedicates his life to a certain
Paulinus, whom he addresses with much veneration; but this name is the
Latin form of the Irish _Maelpoil_, and the Irish Annals record in the
tenth century the deaths of four ecclesiastics of this name. These
are, in 901 Maelpoil, abbot of Sruthair-Guaire; in 920 Maelpoil mac
Aillela, bishop, anchorite and scribe, of Leath-Chuinn, an abbot of
Indedhnen; in 992 Maelpoil, bishop of Mughain; and in 1000 Maelpoil,
bishop of Cluain-mic-nois, and Coärb of Feichin.—_An. F. M._ The last
is probably the Paulinus meant. Of Colgan’s third life the first
eleven chapters do not properly belong to it, but are part of his
second life, and the life really commences with chapter twelve. It was
certainly compiled after the life by Probus, from which much of it
appears to have been taken. The life termed by Colgan the Tripartite
has been given by him in a Latin translation only; but the original
Irish text was discovered by the late Professor O’Curry in the British
Museum, and another and somewhat older version in the Bodleian Library
at Oxford. It likewise belongs to this group, and a translation of the
Irish text by Mr W. M. Hennessy has been annexed to Miss Cusack’s
_Life of St. Patrick_. The latest life of all is that by Jocelyn of
Furness, which must have been compiled about the year 1185.
Footnote 825:
Printed by Usher in his _Sylloge_, No. xviii.
Footnote 826:
_Annals of the Four Masters_, vol. i. p. 396, note _e_.
Footnote 827:
_Ib._, p. 523.
Footnote 828:
See Colgan, _Tr. Th._, p. 632, for a list of some of them. See also
Dr. Reeves’s _Ant. of Down and Connor_, p. 145, note.
Footnote 829:
_An. F. M._, pp. 729, 829. Dr. Reeves has shown that what the annals
here call the bed was the _Culebadh_, or hood, of St. Columba.—_Vit.
Adamnan_, p. lxxxviii.
Footnote 830:
_Book of Deer_ (Spalding Club), p. 93.
Footnote 831:
See _antea_, p. 414.
Footnote 832:
_Reg. Priorat. St. And._, pp. 317, 318. See also Dr. Joseph
Robertson’s valuable paper on the scholastic offices in the Scottish
Church, pp. 26, 27. With regard to the functions of archdeacon and
lecturer being discharged by the same person, Dr. Robertson remarks:
‘We can trace a connection between the offices elsewhere.’ Thus
Ducange quotes a charter of the year 1213, in which Hugo, archdeacon
of Auxerre, narrates that to his office of archdeacon it belongs to
provide a lecturer for the church of Auxerre, who shall order the
whole course of reading.
Footnote 833:
For these notices of the Scolocs see Dr. Joseph Robertson in the
_Scholastic Offices_, p. 18.
Footnote 834:
Irish Charters in the Book of Kells; _Irish Arch. Misc._, vol. i. p.
141. Dr. J. Stuart, in a note to his valuable preface to the _Book of
Deer_, p. cxxxix., says—‘It may be doubted whether sufficient evidence
has been adduced for holding that all the persons called Scolocs or
Scologs in our early records were of the same character, or were in
all cases, as has been assumed, scholastics, or the lowest members of
the clerical order; but, on the contrary, were in some cases simply
the husbandmen or tenants of the land.’ The author concurs in this
opinion. The word _Scoloc_ or _Scolog_ unquestionably comes from
_Scol_ or _Sgol_, a school; but the word _Sgolog_ has come to signify
in Irish simply a husbandman or farmer, and appears at one time to
have been given to a class of cottars in the northern isles. Buchanan,
in his _Travels in the Western Hebrides from 1782 to 1790_, p. 6, says
that there is ‘an unfortunate and numerous class of men known under
the name of Scallags. The Scallag, whether male or female, is a poor
being, who, for mere subsistence, becomes a feudal slave to another,
whether a sub-tenant, a tacksman, or a laird. The Scallag builds his
own hut with sods and boughs of trees. Five days in the week he works
for his master; the sixth is allowed to himself for the cultivation of
some scrap of land on the edge of some moss or moor, on which he
raises a little kail or colworts, barley and potatoes.’
Footnote 835:
See Dr. Todd’s _St. Patrick_, p. 507, for a discussion of this
question. It certainly appears to the author that the plain inference
from the passages there quoted is that letters and the art of writing
were introduced by St. Patrick.
Footnote 836:
See the account by Dr. Graves, now bishop of Limerick, of the marginal
glosses in the Ogham character on the St. Gall MS. of Priscian.—_Proc.
R. I. A._, vol. vi. p. 209.
Footnote 837:
Mr. Burton, in his characteristic manner, rejects the Ogham character
as unreal and the mere creation of fanciful antiquaries. He says, in
his chapter on the sculptured stones (vol. i. p. 148)—‘It would be
deemed by some unpardonable not to note that some scratchings on these
stones have been set down as inscriptions in the Ogham or Ogam
character. This professes to be a method of secret writing, being,
indeed, no other than that in which the Druids concealed their
mysteries. Its avowed qualities are simplicity and flexibility. These
qualities are vouched for us on the faith of experiments made chiefly
in Ireland, and especially of one in which two antiquaries had read an
inscription to pretty nearly the same result, and afterwards found, on
comparison of notes, that the one had read from left to right and the
other from right to left. This phenomenon seems not to have created
much surprise among the learned body who received the reports of the
decipherers. That the inscription could be read either way was only a
testimony to the power and simplicity of the Ogham character, which
has also the faculty that, by shifting the places of the letters or
cyphers, a long story may be made out of a few straight lines.’ And
Mr. Burton’s sole reference is to a paper in the _Transactions of the
Royal Irish Academy_ (i. 3), read in the year 1785.
It would have been unfair to Mr. Burton not to give his reasons for
rejecting the Ogham as spurious, as the author cannot refrain from
saying that it appears almost incredible to him that any one
professing to have made himself acquainted with the literature of the
subject could give so uncandid an account of it. The Book of
Ballimote, a MS. compiled in the year 1383, contains an account of the
Ogham manner of writing, with several alphabets, one of which
corresponds with the inscriptions found in numerous stone monuments in
Ireland and in Wales, several of those in the latter country being
biliteral, and having a corresponding inscription in debased Roman
characters. That it was a secret mode of writing known to the Druids
is the opinion of only a small section among antiquaries, and is not
generally received. Its true character was very clearly brought out by
Dr. Graves, now bishop of Limerick, in two papers read in 1848 and
1849 to the same body as that referred to by Mr. Burton (see _Proc. R.
I. A._, vol. iv. pp. 174, 356); and the investigations of Dr. Graves
and Dr. Samuel Ferguson in Ireland, and Professor Westwood in Wales,
all of which Mr. Burton simply ignores, have placed the genuineness of
the Ogham inscriptions beyond the reach of challenge.
Footnote 838:
‘Not only the several provinces of Ireland,’ says Donlevy, ‘have a
different way of pronouncing, but also the very counties, and even
baronies in one and the same county, differ in the pronunciation. Nay,
some cantons pronounce so oddly that the natural sound of both vowels
and consonants, whereof (even according to themselves) the words
consist, is utterly lost in their mouths.’—Quoted in _Transactions of
the Gaelic Society of Dublin_, p. 13. Donlevy published an
Irish-English Catechism in 1742.
Footnote 839:
Bede, _Hist. Ec._, B. iii. c. 3.
Footnote 840:
Adamnan, B. i. c. 30; B. ii. c. 41.
Footnote 841:
O’Donovan’s _Grammar of the Irish Language_, p. lxxiii.
Footnote 842:
O’Donovan’s _Grammar of the Irish Language_, p. 404.
Footnote 843:
Printed by Mr. Whitley Stokes in his _Irish Glossaries_, who has also
edited a translation for the Irish Archæological Society.
Footnote 844:
Copies are contained in the Books of Ballimote and Lecan.
Footnote 845:
Adamnan gives us two instances of this. He says (B. i. c. 27) that the
inhabitants of Skye ‘call to this day’ the river in which the Pictish
chief Artbranan was baptized _Dobur_ Artbranan, and in Cormac’s
_Glossary_ (Ir. Ar. Soc., 1868, p. 53) we find ‘_Dobur_ is water, unde
dicitur Dobarchu, _i.e._ water-dog, _i.e._ an otter;’ again, in
another glossary (_Gaelic Soc. Tr._, Dublin, p. 12), we have
‘_Dobhar_, a river.’ Adamnan also tells us (B. ii. c. 38) of a peasant
‘who lived in the district which borders the shores of the Stagnum
Aporicum,’ or Aporic lake, by which he means Lochaber, and placed a
stake blessed by St. Columba under the water, near the beach of the
river, ‘qui Latine dici potest Nigra Dea,’ and caught a salmon of
extraordinary size. The river Lochy, which flows from Loch Lochy, and
pours its waters into the Linnhe Loch, near Fort-William, answers best
to the description of this salmon river in Lochaber. The word Lochy,
however, has no connection with the term _loch_, translated by Adamnan
‘stagnum,’ for the vowel _o_ in the former is long, and in the latter
short; but Cormac and O’Clery’s _Glossaries_ (Ir. Ar. Soc., 1868, p.
100) have _loch_ with the _o_ long, meaning _dubh_, or black. _Dea_ is
here not the Latin word signifying goddess, but an Irish river-name.
Thus, in the Book of Armagh, St. Patrick lands at the _Ostium Deæ_, by
which the river Vartry, in Wicklow, is meant; and the same place is
termed in other lives, and also in the Annals of the Four Masters (_ad
an._ 801), _Inbher Dea_. The name therefore, the first syllable of
which Adamnan translates Nigra, was ‘Lochdea’; and in the title to B.
i. c. 28, Adamnan has the same name in his Stagnum ‘Lochdiæ,’ which he
places in the Pictish province. It is now corrupted into Lochy, in
which the obsolete word _Loch_, black, is preserved.
Footnote 846:
Adamnan, B. i. c. 27; B. ii. c. 33.
Footnote 847:
The Book of Deer has been ably edited for the Spalding Club, with a
valuable preface, by Dr. John Stuart, where an elaborate account of
its contents will be found. The Gaelic entries have also been printed
by Mr. Whitley Stokes in his _Goedelica_, and an account of the
peculiarities of the language will be found at p. 111.
Footnote 848:
Nam Ken, caput Latine; tyern Albanice, dominus Latine,
interpretatur.—Jocelyn, _Vit. S. Kentigerni_, cap. 33.
Footnote 849:
Codiculum autem alium stilo Scottico dictatum reperi, per totum
solæcismis scattentem.—_Pref._
Footnote 850:
_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 136; Chalmers, _Caled._, 480; _Regist.
Aberbroth._, p. 228.
Footnote 851:
Fordun, _Chron._, B. ii. c. 9.
Footnote 852:
This subject is more fully discussed in the introduction to the Dean
of Lismore’s book, published in 1862.
Footnote 853:
_National MSS. of Scotland_, Part iii. No. 84.
Footnote 854:
J. Major, _Historia Majoris Britanniæ_, B. i. c. 4.
Footnote 855:
See Barbour’s _Bruce_, edited for the Spalding Club, Preface, p.
xviii.
Footnote 856:
_Ais-eiridh na Sean Chanoin Albanaich: no an nuadh oranaiche
Gaidhealach._
Footnote 857:
Quoted in the dissertation prefixed to the poems of Ossian, by the
Rev. Archibald Clerk, vol. i. p. 3.
APPENDIX.
I.
THE OLD IRISH LIFE OF ST. COLUMBA,
BEING
A DISCOURSE ON HIS LIFE AND CHARACTER
DELIVERED TO THE BRETHREN ON HIS FESTIVAL.
TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL IRISH TEXT BY
W. MAUNSELL HENNESSEY, ESQ., M.R.I.A.
-------
_The following is a literal translation of the Irish Life of St. Colum
Cille, as contained in the_ Leabar Breac _(Royal Irish Acad. Library,
indicated by the letters L. B. in the foot-notes), collated with another
copy preserved in the_ Book of Lismore _in the same library
(distinguished in the notes by the letter L.), and with the text of a
Gaelic MS. in the Advocates’ Library, Edinburgh (indicated in the notes
by the letters A. L.)_.
_Of these texts, that of the_ Leabar Breac _(L. B.), transcribed about
the year 1397, is certainly the oldest, not only as regards the date of
transcription, but also as regards the language, which is remarkably
pure, and may be considered as fairly representing a text composed some
three centuries before._
_The second in point of age is the text of the_ Book of Lismore _(L.),
which was copied about the year 1460. The narrative agrees pretty
closely with the account of St. Colum Cille’s Life in the_ Leabar Breac;
_but the language in L. is much more modern than that of the latter MS.,
and seems to have been reduced by the transcriber of L. to the standard
of the time in which he wrote_.
_The date of the_ Advocates’ Library MS. _(A. L.) is apparently a little
more recent than that of the_ Book of Lismore _(L.), with the text of
which, however, A. L. agrees, as far as the contents of both MSS.
correspond_.
_The_ Leabar Breac _account may be regarded as the original from which
the narrative in the_ Book of Lismore _has been taken, notwithstanding
that the curious specimens of Latinity with which the_ Leabar Breac
_text is interlarded are wanting from the latter, as they are also
wanting from the MS. A. L. But the copy in the_ Advocates’ Library _MS.
must have been taken from some independent authority, as it contains
several paragraphs not found in the_ Leabar Breac _or_ Book of Lismore.
_This additional matter has been included in the following translation,
enclosed within brackets, as at pp. 482, 488, 504, 505-507._
_The insertion beginning with the bracket on p. 494, and ending with the
bracket on p. 502, has been translated from the copy of the_ Amra _(or
Eulogy) of St. Colum Cille, composed by Dallan Forgall, contained in A.
L., compared with copies of the same curious tract in the_ Leabar Breac
_and in the_ Yellow Book of Lecan _(Trin. Coll., Dublin)_.
_The following account of St. Colum Cille is rather a sermon than a
‘Life,’ as the author here and there speaks as if addressing a
congregation on the occasion of commemorating the Saint’s festival. (See
pp. 473-507.)_
_Such as it is, however, the reader may regard it as a very literal
translation from the original._
--------------
EXI DE TERRA TUA, ET DE COGNATIONE TUA, ET DE DOMO PATRIS TUI, ET VADE
IN TERRAM QUAM TIBI MONSTRAVERO. ‘Leave thy country and thy land, thy
kindred and natural inheritance,[858] for my sake, and go into the land
which I shall show unto thee.’
The Lord Himself it was that gave this friendly counsel to the head of
the perfect faith and perfect religion—viz., to Abraham, son of
Thare—that he should leave his own country and land, _i.e._ the land of
the Chaldees, and go in pilgrimage into the country which God had shown
to him, viz., the Land of Promise.
Moses, also, the son of Amram, the leader of God’s people, the man who
was filled with the grace and abundance of the Holy Spirit—’twas he that
wrote this holy narrative[859] beyond in the genesis of the law, in
order that the friendly counsel which the Lord Himself gave to Abraham
in imposing[860] pilgrimage upon him might abide always with the church,
when He said, EXI DE TERRA, ‘Leave thy country and thy land for my
sake.’
HAEC QUIDEM HISTORIA[861] NOTA EST, ABRAHAM A DOMINO PRECEPTUM FUISSE UT
TERRAM CALDEORUM DESERERET ET TERRAM REPROMISSIONIS[862] ADIRET. ‘It is
a famous story in the Scriptures, the Lord Himself imposing it on
Abraham to leave the land of the Chaldees, which was his rightful
patrimony, and go in pilgrimage to the Land of Promise, because of the
benefits that would arise therefrom to himself, and to his children, and
to their race after them.’
ISTE AUTEM ABRAHAM CAPUT FIDEI EST, ET PATER OMNIUM FIDELIUM, SICUT
DICIT APOSTOLUS. ‘The man, moreover, to whom God gave this counsel,
viz., Abraham, he it is that is reckoned in the Scriptures as father of
all the faithful, as the Apostle certifies when he says OMNES QUI SUNT
EX FIDE, HII SUNT FILII ABRAHÆ: “they are truly the sons of Abraham,”
says the Apostle, “all those who imitate the perfect faith.”’
QUOD AUTEM PATRI FIDELIUM PRECIPITUR,[863] HOC OMNIBUS FILIIS EJUS
IMPLENDUM RELINQUITUR, UT TERRAM SUAM DESERANT ET CARNALEM PATRIAM
DERELINQUANT. ‘The good [counsel],[864] then, that God enjoined here on
the father of the faithful, viz., on Abraham, is also required to be
observed by his sons after him, viz., by all the faithful, to wit, that
they should abandon their country and land, their wealth and worldly
delight, for the Lord of the elements, and go in perfect pilgrimage
after his example.’
TRES AUTEM SUNT MODI VOCATIONUM. ‘In three ways, moreover, the
people[865] are called to the knowledge and friendship of the Lord.’
PRIMUS EX DEO. ‘The first way is, firstly, the inciting[866] and
inflaming of the people by the divine grace, that they may come to serve
the Lord, after the example of Paul and the monk Anthony, and of the
other faithful monks who served God yonder in Egypt.’
SECUNDUS PER HOMINEM. ‘The people are called, then, in the second way
through man, viz. through the holy preceptors who preach in the divine
Scriptures to the people, after the example of the Apostle Paul, who
preached to Gentiles, until he brought them by the net of the Gospel to
the harbour of life.’
TERTIUS EX NECESSITATE. ‘The people are called, then, in the third way,
through necessity, viz., when they are forced to serve God through
tribulations and perils of death, or through parting with their temporal
goods,[867] according to the example of the people of Israel, who
frequently turned to the Lord from the worship of idols and images when
forced to do so by the troubles and hardships they suffered[868] from
the stranger tribes, as is related in the Holy Scriptures.’ HINC DAVID
DICIT. ‘And it is to illustrate this the prophet David says,
“CLAMAVERUNT AD DOMINUM CUM TRIBULAR[U]NTUR, ET DE NECESSITATIBUS EORUM
LIBERAVIT EOS.”’ ‘When the people of Israel would experience[869] great
tribulations and hardships, they used to implore and beseech the Lord
until He used to free them from those hardships.’
ABRAHAM IGITUR DIVINA GRATIA INSTINCTUS MANDATUM QUOD FUERAT EI
IMPERATUM A DOMINO IMPLEVIT,[870] ET EXIIT[871] IN HARAN,[872] IN QUA
MORTUUS EST PATER EJUS, ET INDE TRANSMIGRAVIT IN TERRAM
REPROMISSIONIS.[873] ‘Abraham, then, the head of perfect devotion, and
of the perfect faith, when prompted by the divine grace, fulfilled the
commandment imposed on him by the Lord—viz., he went into the land of
the Chaldees [to Haran,[874] where his father died; and went from
thence] to the Land of Promise.’
TRIBUS AUTEM MODIS PATRIA DESERITUR, UNO INUTILI ET DUOBUS UTILIBUS.
‘There are also three modes by which one leaves his patrimony when he
goes as a pilgrim; and there is one of them for which no reward is
obtained from God, and [there are] two for which it is obtained.’
ALIQUANDO ENIM PATRIA CORPORE TAMEN RELINQUITUR, NEC MENS A CARNALIBUS
STUDIIS ALIENATUR, NEC BONA OPERA APPETUNTUR. ‘That is because[875]
sometimes one leaves his patrimony in the body only, and his mind
abstains[876] not from sins and vices, and he yearns not to do acts of
virtue or good works.’
IN TALI IGITUR PEREGRINATIONE NIL NISI AFFLICTIO CORPORIS SIT, NULLUS
VERO ANIME PROFECTUS. ‘From the pilgrimage that is performed so,
moreover, neither fruit nor profit[877] arises to the soul, but vain
labour and motion of body; for it is little profit to one to abandon his
fatherland, unless he does good away from it.’[878]
NAM ET POSTQUAM ABRAHAM CORPORE PATRIA EXIVIT,[879] TUNC EI[880] DOMINUS
DIXIT. ‘For even Abraham himself, it was after he had left his own
country, and after separating from it according to the body, that the
Lord gave him this counsel, when He said, “EXI DE TERRA TUA,” “Withdraw
thy mind henceforth from thy country and from thy land, and let not thy
intention be towards returning to it again.”’
AC SI APERTE DICERET, CARNALIA VITIA PATRIÆ IN QUA FUERAS CORPORE, MENTE
SIMUL ET CORPORE DEVITA. ‘As if it was what God Himself would openly say
to Abraham, “Avoid in body and mind from henceforth, in thy pilgrimage,
the sins and vices of the country in which thou didst formerly abide
according to the body;” for it is the same to one as if he would
abide[881] in his fatherland, if he followed the customs of his
fatherland in his pilgrimage.’
NON ENIM IN VIA PEDUM SED IN VIA MORUM PROXIMATUR AD DOMINUM. ‘For it is
not by way of foot, nor by motion of body, that one draws nigh unto God,
but through the exercise[882] of good customs and virtues.’
ALIQUANDO MENTE TAMEN PATRIA RELINQUITUR ET NON CORPORE SICUT SUNT
QUIDAM QUI QUAMVIS IN PATRIA PERAGUNT VITAM REGIONE, PATRIAM TAMEN
VIVENDO CARNALITER NON NORUNT, SED JUSTIS CAUSIS QUIBUSDAM COGENTIBUS IN
SUIS LOCIS MANENT HABITANTES QUASI NON HABITANTES. ‘Another time,
however, one leaves his fatherland from zeal of heart and mind, although
he leaves it not in body, as happens to the dignitaries who spend their
lives in their own countries until death, because laics and clerics[883]
detain them in the lands in which they may be, on account of the extent
of their usefulness to all; and because that it is not through[884]
carnality they remain in their fatherland, their good-will[885]
comprehends pilgrimage for them with the Lord.’
ALIQUANDO MENTE ET CORPORE, UT SUNT HII QUIBUS DICITUR. ‘Sometimes,
moreover, one leaves his country altogether in body and mind, as the
Apostles and the people of the perfect pilgrimage left it, to whom the
Lord promised great benefits in the Gospel, when He said, “VOS QUI
DERELIQUISTIS OMNIA PROPTER ME, PATREM ET MATREM, UXOREM FILIOS ET
FILIAS, AGRUM ET OMNIA QUAE HABERE POTUISTIS, CENTUPLUM ACCIPIETIS IN
HOC SAECULO, ET VITAM ETERNAM IN FUTURO.” “Make sure of this,” said
Jesus, “little or much[886] as you have abandoned for my sake your
country and kindred, your possessions and worldly pleasures, that you
shall receive a hundred times the equivalent of good from me here in
this world, and in the perpetual life beyond after the judgment of
doom.”’
HII SUNT VERI PEREGRINI[887] QUI CUM PSALMISTA POSSUNT DICERE. ‘These
are truly the people of the perfect pilgrimage in whose persons the
prophet said, in proclaiming and giving thanks to God, “ADVENA SUM APUD
TE, DOMINE, ET PEREGRINUS SICUT OMNES PATRES MEI,” “I give thee thanks
for it, O God,” says the prophet, “that I am in pilgrimage and exile in
the world, after the example of the seniors[888] who have gone before.”’
Multitudes of the faithful servants of the Lord, moreover, both of the
Old and New Testament, have perfectly observed this profitable counsel,
viz., left their country and land, their patrimony and kindred, for the
sake of the Lord of the elements, and went in voluntary pilgrimage to
far distant countries, in the same way as he observed it, and abandoned
his natural inheritance for the love and fear of the Lord—the eminent
saint and eminent sage, and the elect son of God, for whom there is a
festival and commemoration at the occurrence[889] of this season and
time, _i.e._ SANCTUS PRESBYTER[890] Columba, viz., the illustrious
priest of Inis-Gaidel,[891] the battle-brand who was endowed with the
talents and various gifts of the Holy Ghost, to wit, the person[892]
Saint Colum Cille, son of Fedlimidh [son[893] of Fergus Cennfoda, son of
Conall Gulban, son of Niall Naoighiallach].
When the Christians, moreover, celebrate the festival and solemnity of
Colum Cille’s obit, is on the fifth of the ides of June, as regards the
day of the solar month[894] every year, in this day to-day, etc. The
learned of the Gaidel likewise relate, at that time every year, a few
particulars[895] in illustration of the good family and nobility of
Saint Colum Cille, and also of the innumerable prodigies and miracles
the Lord wrought for him in the world here, and of the distinguished end
and termination He ultimately granted to his victorious career, viz.,
his reaching to his own true patrimony and true inheritance, _i.e._ to
the possession of Paradise in the presence of God for ever.[896]
Noble, then, was the family of Colum Cille in respect of the world,
viz., of the race of Conall son of Niall was he.[897] He was eligible to
the kingship of Eriu according to family,[898] and it was offered[899]
to him, if he himself had not abandoned it for God.
It is manifest, moreover, that he was an elect son of God, because the
patron saints[900] of Ireland were foretelling him before his birth. In
the first place, the senior of the priests of Ireland, viz., Old Mochta
of Lugbad,[901] foretold the person Colum Cille, one hundred years
before his birth; for on one occasion Mochta’s cook, MacRith his name,
went with a cup of nuts in his hand for him, whereupon Mochta said to
him, ‘Not mine,’ said he, ‘is the land from which those nuts were
brought; preserve them until the person comes whose land it is.’ ‘When
will that time come?’ asked the cook. ‘At the end[902] of a hundred
years,’ said Mochta.
Mochta was wont, then, to turn his face towards the north when praying.
His people used to ask him why he did so; ut dixit[903] to them:—
A youth shall be born out of the north,
With[904] the rising of the nations;[905]
Ireland shall be made fruitful by the great flame,
And Alba, friendly to him.
The father of baptism and doctrine of the Gaidel, viz., [Saint][906]
Patrick, foretold him, when he was blessing Conall in Sith-Aedha, the
time he placed his two hands on Conall and his son, Fergus son of
Conall, to wit, his right hand on the head of Fergus, and his left hand
on the head[907] of Conall. Conall wondered at that, and asked him why
he had placed his hands so, when Patrick uttered this _rann_:[908]
A youth shall be born of his tribe,
Who’ll be a sage, a prophet, a poet, etc.
Beloved[909] the bright, clear luminary,
That will not utter falsehood.
He’ll be a sage, and will be devout,
Will be an abbot with[910] the king of royal graces;
He’ll be lasting, and be ever good;
The eternal kingdom be mine, by his protection.
Brigid[911] also foretold him when she said:—
The son of Eithne long-side,
Good is he and flourishing;
Mild Colum Cille without stain;
’Twere not too much to observe[912] him.
Bishop Eoghan of Ard-Stratha[913] likewise foretold him, when he said:—
The son that shall be born to Fedlimidh
Will be eminent above all clerics—
Fedlimidh, son of Fergus,
Son of Conall, son of Niall.
Buite[914] son of Bronach also, at the hour of his death, foretold the
person Colum Cille, on which occasion he said to his people,
‘A child illustrious before God and men will be born on this night
to-night, and he shall come here before thirty years from this night.
Twelve men, moreover, will be his company; and he it is that will
discover my grave, and measure[915] my cemetery; and our union shall be
in heaven and in earth.’
As the birth of Colum Cille was thus predicted by the patron saints of
Eriu, so was it manifested[916] in visions and dreams, as it was
manifested[916] in the vision that appeared to his mother, viz., it
seemed to her that a large garment was given to her which reached from
Innsi-mod[917] to Caer-nam-brocc,[918] and there was not of the colours
[of the world[919]] a colour that was not in it. She saw a young man in
splendid raiment, who bore the garment away from her into the air. And
Eithne was grieved at this. And she thought that the same young man came
towards her again, and said to her, ‘My good woman,’ said the young man,
‘thou shouldst not exhibit grief, but joy and gladness[920] were fitter
for thee; for what this garment signifies is, that thou wilt bear a son,
and Eriu and Alba will be full of his teaching.’
The attendant woman[921] also saw a vision, viz., that the fowls of the
air, and of the earth, as she thought, carried the bowels of Eithne
throughout the regions of Eriu and Alba. [Eithne[922] herself, however,
gave the interpretation of that vision; and what she then said is, ‘I
shall bear a son,’ said she, ‘and his teaching shall extend throughout
the regions of Eriu and Alba.’]
As it was[923] predicted by the patron saints[924] of Eriu, moreover,
and as it was[923] seen in visions, so was Colum Cille born.
Gortan,[925] then, is the name of the place in which he was born. On the
seventh of the ides of December, moreover, as regards the day of the
solar month, he was born; on Thursday, as regards the day of the week.
Illustrious, indeed, was the boy born there—the son of the King of
heaven and earth, viz., Colum Cille, son of Fedlimidh, son of Fergus,
son of Conall Gulban, son of Niall Naoighiallach. His mother, then, was
of the _Corprige_[926] of Leinster, viz., Eithne ‘the noble,’[927]
daughter of Dima son of Noe.
Immediately after his birth, moreover, he was taken in order that the
illustrious priest Cruithnechan, son of Cellachan, should baptize him.
And he (Cruithnechan) subsequently fostered[928] him, after the angel of
God had told him to do so.
When the time, then, arrived to him that he should learn,[929] the
cleric[930] went to a certain prophet who was in the country to ask him
when it would be right for the boy to begin. As soon as the prophet
observed the heavens,[931] what he said was,[932] ‘Write now for him his
alphabet.’ It was then written in a cake; and how Colum Cille ate the
cake was thus, viz.—the half of it at the east side of water,[933] and
the other half at the west side of water. [The prophet[934] said,
through the gift of prophecy, ‘Thus shall this boy’s land be, viz., the
half of it to the east of the sea (_i.e._ in Alba), and the other half
of it to the west of the sea, to wit, in Eriu.’]
It was not long after that until he and his guardian went to Brugach son
of Dega, the bishop, to the Raths of Magh-enaig[935] in Tir-Enna. It was
commanded to his guardian, the cleric,[936] to perform the office of
priest in that place on the festival. But great shame seized him, so
that he was unable to recite the psalm that fell[937] to him. That
psalm, then, is ‘Misericordias.’[938] But the son of grace, Colum Cille,
recited the psalm in the place[939] of his guardian, although he had not
read but his alphabet before that; so that the names[940] of God and
Colum Cille were magnified through that great miracle.
Another time he and his guardian[941] went to attend a sick man. As they
were going through a wood, the cleric’s (Cruithnechan’s) foot slipped on
the path,[942] so that he fell, and died[943] suddenly. He (Colum Cille)
placed his cloak under the cleric’s head, thinking[944] that he was
asleep, and began rehearsing[945] his lessons, so that some nuns heard
his loud reading as far as their church. What the learned relate is that
there was a mile and a half between them, and the sound of his voice
used to be often heard that distance, ut dixit:—
The sound[946] of Colum Cille’s voice—
Great its sweetness above all clerics—
To the end of fifteen hundred paces,
Though vast the distance, so far ’twas clear.
The nuns came afterwards, and found the cleric dead before them;[947]
and they told him (Colum Cille) to resuscitate[948] the cleric for them.
He went[949] forthwith to resuscitate[948] the cleric; and the cleric
arose from death, at the word of Colum Cille, as if he had been asleep.
Colum Cille made an offering, after that, to the Lord of the elements,
and solicited three requests from Him, viz., chastity, and wisdom, and
pilgrimage. The three were fully given unto him.
He subsequently bade farewell to his guardian; and the guardian
earnestly gave him permission[950] and a benison. Afterwards, he went to
the illustrious bishop, viz., to Finden of Maghbile,[951] to learn
knowledge. One time there Finden said that wine[952] was wanting from
the offering. Colum Cille blessed the water, so that it was turned into
wine, and put into the mass chalice. The name of God and Colum Cille was
magnified by that miracle.
He afterwards bade fate well to Finden, and went to Master Gemman.[953]
One time as he was learning[954] his lessons with Gemman, they saw a
girl coming towards them, escaping before a certain murderer, until she
fell in their presence, and the ruffian[955] killed her. Colum Cille
laid[956] a word of malediction upon him, so that he died immediately.
He (Colum Cille) afterwards took leave of Gemman, and went to Finden of
Cluain-Eraird.[957] He asked of Finden in what place he would make his
bothy. Finden told him to make it at[958] the door of the church. He
then made his bothy, and it was not at[958] the door of the church at
that time. He said, moreover, that it would be the door of the city
afterwards; and this thing was even fulfilled.
At supper-time[959] each man in turn of the apostles[960] used to grind
his quern. An angel of the God of heaven, however, that used to grind in
place of Colum Cille. That was the honour the Lord used to give to him,
because of his nobility above all.
A vision appeared another time to Finden, viz., two moons ascended from
Cluain-Eraird, to wit, a golden moon, and another, a silvery moon. [The
golden moon went to the north of the island,[961] so that Eriu and Alba
were illumined by it.] The silvery moon went and rested over[962] the
Shannon, so that Eriu in the centre was illumined by it. Colum[963]
Cille, moreover, with his grace, and with his good actions, and with the
gold of his nobility and wisdom, was the golden moon. Ciaran, son of the
carpenter,[964] with the splendour of his virtues and good actions, was
the silver moon.
Colum Cille afterwards bade farewell to Finden, and went to
Glaisnoiden,[965] for there were fifty persons learning in that place
with Mobii, including Cainnech, and Comgall, and Ciaran. Their bothies,
moreover, were at the west side of the water.[966]
One night there and the bell was struck for matins. Colum Cille went to
the church. There was a great flood that night in the river. Colum
Cille, nevertheless, went through it with his clothes on. ‘Bravely dost
thou come there to-night, descendant of Niall,’ said Ciaran[967] and
said Mobii. ‘God is able,’ said Colum Cille, ‘to ward off the labour
from us.’ As they were coming out of the church, they saw the bothies at
the east side of the water, in the vicinity of the church.
One time there a large church was built by Mobii, and the clerics were
considering what each of them would like to have the church full
of.[968] ‘I should like,’ said Ciaran, ‘its full of “sons of the
church,” who frequent the canonical hours.’[969] ‘I should like,’ said
Cainnech, ‘its full of books, to be used by “sons of life.”’ ‘I should
like,’ said Comgall, ‘its full of sickness and diseases to be in my own
body, to my subjugation and chastisement.’
Colum Cille, however, chose[970] its full of gold and silver, to make
reliquaries and monasteries therewith. Mobii said that it should not be
so; but that Colum Cille’s community would be richer than every
community, both in[971] Eriu and Alba.
Mobii told his _protégés_ to leave the place in which they were, for
that an unknown[972] plague would come there, viz., the _Buid
Chonaill_;[973] and he further said to Colum Cille that he should not
receive land until permitted by him (Mobii).
Each of them went his way afterwards.
Colum Cille proceeded to Cenel-Conaill. The way he went was across the
river, the name of which is Biur.[974] There he said, ‘_Bir_ against
_fochainne_,’[975] and the plague did not therefore reach beyond that.
And this is still a lasting miracle, for every plague that is carried
over it does not go beyond that, according to the ‘word’ of Colum Cille.
Colum Cille went afterwards to Daire,[976] viz., the royal _dun_ of
Aedh, son of Ainmire. He was king of Eriu at that time.
The king offered that _dun_ to Colum Cille; and he refused it, because
of Mobii’s command. As he was coming out of the _dun_, however, he met
with two of Mobii’s people; and they had Mobii’s girdle for him, and
permission for him to possess land, after the death of Mobii; ut dixit
Colum Cille:—
Mobii’s girdle[977]
Was not as rushes round hair;[978]
It was not opened before satiety,
Nor closed about a lie.
Colum Cille settled[979] after that in the fort of Aedh, and founded a
church there, besides working many miracles in it.
[Colum[980] Cille burned the place, after receiving it from the king,
with everything that was in it. ‘That is foolish,’ said the king, ‘for
if you had not burned it, there would be no want of drink or food in
it.’ ‘No one shall be a night fasting there against his will,’ said
Colum Cille. But the fire spread to the extent that it was like to burn
the whole wood,[981] until Colum Cille uttered[982] the _rann_, to
protect the wood,[981] viz.—
_Dant[983] in duile geir._
And this is sung against every fire, and against every thunder, from
that time to this. And if any one recites it at lying down and at
getting up, it will protect him from lightning, and it will protect the
nine he wishes _simul_.]
One time he sent his monks into the wood, to cut wattles,[984] to make a
church for himself in Derry. Where the wattles were cut was in the land
of a certain young man who lived contiguous to the _recles_.[985] It was
annoying to him that the timber should be cut in his land without his
own permission.
When Colum Cille, therefore, heard this thing, he said to his people:
‘Take him,’ said he, ‘the value of his timber of barley grain, and let
him put it in the ground.’[986] It had then passed beyond the middle of
summer. The grain was subsequently taken to the young man, and he put it
in the ground; and it grew so that it was ripe about Lammas afterwards.
One time as he was in Derry a little child was brought to him to be
baptized. There was no water then near him. But he made the sign of the
cross over the rock that was before him, so that a fountain of water
burst out of it, and the child was baptized from it afterwards.
Another time, also, he was in Derry, and he meditated going to Rome and
to Jerusalem. He went another time from Derry to Tor-inis[987] of
Martin, and brought away the gospel that had been on Martin’s bosom 100
years in the earth; and he left it in Derry.
Great were the prodigies and miracles, truly, God wrought for[988] Colum
Cille in Derry. He (Colum Cille) loved that city very much, moreover; as
he said,
The reason why I love Derry is,
For its quietness, for its purity;
For ’tis full of angels white,
From one end to the other.
Colum Cille afterwards founded Rath-Both.[989] There he resuscitated the
carpenter from death, after he had been drowned in the mill pool. In
Rath-Both, also, a ploughshare was wanting to his people; but he blessed
the hands of the little boy who was in his company, whose name was
Fergna, so that he made the ploughshare; and he was skilful in
smith-craft from that time forth, through his (Colum Cille’s) blessing.
He went afterwards on a visit of instruction[990] to the king of
Tethba,[991] whose name was Aedh, son of Brenand, who gave him the place
in which Dermach[992] is to-day, so that a _recles_ was built by him
there.
In Dermach,[992] moreover, sour apples were given to him; but he blessed
them, so that they were sweet. And it was from Dermach that a sword that
had been blessed was sent by him to Colman Mòr,[993] son of Diarmait.
The virtue[994] that attached to the sword was, that no one could die in
its presence.
A certain man who was in sickness, therefore, requested it, and the
sword was given to him, so that he had it. A year, moreover, the sword
was in his possession, and he was neither dead nor alive during that
time; but when the sword was afterwards taken away from him, he died
immediately.
After that, therefore, he blessed Dermach, and left a custodian of his
people there, viz., Cormac Ua Liathain.[995]
He went subsequently to Aedh Slane,[996] son of Diarmait. He arrived at
the place in which to-day is Cenandas,[997] viz., it was the _dun_ of
the king of Eriu then, the _dun_ of Diarmait mac Cerbaill. When Colum
Cille tarried[998] at the door of the _dun_, he began predicting what
would be the fate of the place[999] afterwards; and he said to Becc mac
Dead,[1000] _i.e._ the royal prophet of Diarmait mac Cerbaill:—
Tell me, O Becc—
Broad, bright-grassed Cenandas—
What clerics shall possess it,
What young men[1001] shall abandon it?
Ut dixit Becc:—
The clerics who are on its floor
Sing the praises of a king’s son;
Its young men[1001] depart from its threshold;
A time shall be when ’twill be sure.[1002]
He afterwards marked out that city in the form in which it is, and
blessed it all; and said that it should be the highest[1003]
establishment[1004] he would have in the lands, although it was not in
it his resurrection would be. And as he was uttering[1005] this prophecy
he turned his face to the south-west, and laughed very much. Boithin
asked him the cause of the joy. ‘A son[1006] of life,’ said Colum Cille,
‘that shall be born in one night[1006] to the Lord, in this
solitude[1007] to the west;’ to wit, Grafann[1008] of Cill-Scire he
predicted then, as it was fulfilled afterwards.
A great oak, moreover, under which Colum Cille was whilst he was in that
place—that oak lived for long ages, until it was thrown down by a great
storm of wind; when a certain man took some of its bark to tan his
shoes. As soon, however, as he put on his shoes after tanning them,
leprosy seized[1009] him from the sole of his foot to the top of his
head.
Colum Cille went afterwards to Aedh Slane; and he uttered[1010] a
prophecy unto him, and said to him that he would be long-lived if he
were not fratricidal. If he committed fratricide, however, there would
not be but four years of his age.[1011]
He (Colum Cille) then blessed a cloak[1012] for him (Aedh Slane), and
said that he could not be wounded while that cloak would be about him.
Aedh Slane, however, committed fratricide, against Colum Cille’s
injunction, on Suibhne,[1013] son of Colman. At the end of four years
afterwards he went on an expedition. He forgot his cloak. He was slain
on that day.
Colum Cille founded many churches after that in Brega.[1014] He also
left many patrons[1015] and reliquaries in them. He left Ossine, son of
Cellach, in Cluain-mor of Fir-arda.[1016]
He went after that to Manister.[1017] It was there his crozier[1018]
struck against the glass ladder by which Buite ascended to heaven, so
that its sound was heard throughout the whole church; and he discovered
the grave of Buite, and measured his church,[1019] as Buite himself
predicted on the day of his death. For great was the number of churches
he marked out, and of books he wrote, as the poet said:—
Three hundred he measured, without fault,[1020]
Of churches fair,’tis true;
And three hundred splendid,[1021] lasting books,
Noble-bright he wrote.
Whatever book, moreover, his hand would write, how long soever it would
be under water, not even one letter in it would be obliterated.[1022]
He founded a church in Rechra[1023] of the east of Brega, and left
Deacon Colman in it.
One time they were in that church, viz., Colum Cille, and Comgall, and
Cainnech. Comgall said that Colum Cille should make the offering of the
body and blood of Christ in their presence. Colum Cille obeyed
them[1024] regarding that. And it was then that Cainnech saw a fiery
column over Colum Cille’s head, while he was engaged in the offering.
Cainnech told this to Comgall, and both of them afterwards saw the
column.
He founded a church in the place where Sord[1025] is to-day: and left an
eminent man of his people there, to wit, Finan Lobur. And he left there
the Gospel his own hand had written. He also marked out a well there,
the name of which is _Sord_,[1026] _i.e._ pure, and blessed a cross; for
it was a custom of his to make crosses and _polaires_,[1027] and
book-satchels, and ecclesiastical implements, as the poet said[1028]:—
He blessed three hundred excellent[1029] crosses,
Three hundred wells that abundant were;
A hundred fine artistic _polaires_;[1027]
With a hundred croziers, with a hundred satchels.
One day Colum Cille and Cainnech were on the sea-shore. There was a
great storm on the sea. Cainnech said, ‘What sings the wave?’[1030] ‘Thy
people,’ said Colum Cille, ‘that were in danger a while ago, on the sea,
so that one of them died; and the Lord will bring him to us in the
morning[1031] to-morrow, to this shore on which we are.’
[Colum[1032] Cille left a cleric of his people in Derry, to wit,
Dacuilen, in his comarbship;[1033] viz., a cleric of his (Colum Cille’s)
own tribe was he. And he left to the Cenel-Conaill[1034] the
vice-abbotship of the same place, and the headship of its divines.
He[1035] went afterwards to Drumcliff,[1036] and blessed that place, and
left a man of his people there, viz., Mothairen[1037] of Drumcliff; and
he left the headship, and the patronage, and the comarbship, of that
place with the Cenel-Conaill[1034] for ever.]
One time Brigid was going over the Curragh of the Liffey.[1038] And when
the virgin saw the beautiful shamrock-flowery[1039] plain before her,
what she said in her mind was, that if she had the ownership[1040] of
the plain, she would present it to the Lord of the elements.
This thing, moreover, was manifested to Colum Cille, and he in his
_recles_[1041] in Sord;[1042] and he said, with a loud voice, ‘What has
occurred to the virgin saint is strange; for it is the same to her if
the land she offered to Him belonged to the Lord,[1043] as if it
rightfully belonged to herself.’
He went afterwards to the Leinstermen, with whom he left numerous
churches which he had founded, including Druimmonach[1044] and
Moen,[1045] and several other churches.
Colum Cille proceeded afterwards to Clonmacnois, with the hymn which he
had composed for Ciaran; because he composed many eulogies of God’s
people, as the poet said[1046]:—
Thrice fifty noble lays the apostle made,
Whose miracles are more numerous than grass;
Some in Latin, which were beguiling;[1047]
Some in Gaelic, fair the tale.
It was in Cluain,[1048] also, the little boy went to him, and pulled a
small hair[1049] out of his garment without being observed by him. God
manifested this thing to him, however; and he predicted for the boy,
that he would be a sage, and would be devout. He is Ernan[1050] of
Cluain-Deochra[1051] to-day.
Colum Cille went after that into the territories of Connacht, on his
visit of instruction, when he founded many churches and establishments
in that province, including Es-mic-Eirc[1052] and Druim-cliabh.[1053] He
left Mothoria[1054] in Druim-cliabh,[1053] and left with him a
_bachall_[1055] which he himself had made.
Colum Cille went after that across Es-Ruaidh,[1056] and founded many
churches amongst Conall[1057] and Eoghan.[1058]
He founded Torach,[1059] and left an eminent man of his people in it, to
wit, Ernaine.
When Colum Cille, however, had made the circuit of all Eriu; and when he
had sown faith and religion; when numerous multitudes had been baptized
by him; when he had founded churches and establishments, and had left in
them seniors,[1060] and reliquaries, and relics of martyrs, the
determination that he had determined from the beginning of his life came
into[1061] his mind—viz., to go in pilgrimage. He then meditated
going,[1062] across the sea, to preach the word of God to the men of
Alba, and to the Britons, and to the Saxons. He went, therefore, on a
voyage.
His age was 42 when he went. He was 34 [years] in Alba. His entire age
was 77. And the number that went with him,[1063] moreover, was 20
bishops, 40 priests, 30 deacons, and 50 students, ut dixit:—
His company was forty priests,
Twenty bishops of noble worth;
For the psalm-singing, without dispute,
Thirty deacons, fifty youths.[1064]
He went afterwards, in good spirits,[1065] until he reached the place
the name of which to-day is Hii-Coluim-Cille. On Quinguagesima night,
moreover, he arrived.
Two bishops that were in the place[1066] came to receive his
submission[1067] from him. But God manifested to Colum Cille that they
were not in truth bishops; wherefore it was that they left the island to
him,[1068] when he exposed[1069] their real history and career.
Colum Cille then said to his people, ‘It is good for us that our roots
should go under the ground here.’ And he said to them, ‘It is permitted
to you, that some one of you may go under the clay of this island, to
consecrate it.’
Odran rose up obediently,[1070] and what he said was, ‘If you would
accept me,’ said he, ‘I am ready for that.’
‘O Odran,’ said Colum Cille, ‘thou shalt have the reward therefore,
viz., his prayer shall not be granted to any one at my grave,[1071]
unless it is from thee[1072] he asks it first.’ Odran went then to
heaven.
He (Colum Cille) afterward founded the church of Hii. He had thrice
fifty persons in it[1073] for meditation,[1074] under monastic
rule,[1075] and sixty for manual labour, as the poet said[1076]:—
Illustrious the soldiery[1077] that was in Hii,
Thrice fifty in monastic rule;
With their _Curachs_, along the sea,
For rowing were threescore men.
When Colum Cille founded Hii, he went on his circuit of instruction
among the men of Alba, and the Britons and Saxons, until he brought them
to faith and religion, after he had wrought many miracles, and had
awakened the dead from death.
There was a certain man in the country, moreover, to whom Colum Cille
preached until he believed, with all his people, in the Lord. This thing
filled the demon with envy;[1078] and he afflicted[1079] the son of that
man with a heavy illness, so that he died thereof. The Gentiles were
afterwards reproving Christ and Colum Cille, until he (C. C.) made
earnest prayer to God, and awakened the dead boy from death.
As Colum Cille was on a certain day preaching to the multitudes, a
certain man went from them across the river that was near them, in order
that he might not be listening to the Word of God. The serpent seized
him in the water, and killed him immediately. His body was brought into
the presence of Colum Cille, who made a cross with his _bachall_ over
his (the dead man’s) breast; and he arose forthwith.
A severe illness attacked[1080] his attendant, whose name was Diarmait,
so that he died; but he (C. C.) prayed for him,[1081] and he was
awakened from death. And not only this, but he (C. C.) entreated for him
(Diarmait) an existence of seven years after himself.
One time when Cainnech came away from him, from Hii, he forgot his
_bachall_ in the east.[1082] When he arrived hither,[1083] he found his
_bachall_ before him here, and Colum Cille’s shirt along with it, viz.,
this was Cainnech’s share of his (C. C.’s) _rechull_;[1084] and the
reason why he (C. C.) did this was because he knew that he was nigh unto
his death.
A great blushing affected him[1085] one time in Hii. The cause of the
blushing was demanded of him. ‘God’s fire from heaven,’ said he, ‘that
has now come upon three cities in Italy, and has killed three thousand
men, besides women, and boys, and girls.’
Another time he heard a shout in the port[1086] of Hii, whereupon he
said:—
A rustic[1087] is in the port,
With his _bachall_ in his hand,
Who’ll visit my hornlet,
And spill my ink.
He will then bend down,[1088]
To visit my pax,
And he’ll touch my hornlet,
And will leave it empty.
Another time Baithin left Colum Cille cooking a beef for the labourers.
There was an ex-warrior[1089] of the men of Eriu with them, viz.,
Maeluma, son of Baetan. Colum Cille asked him what was the extent of his
appetite[1090] when he was a young warrior. Maeluma said, ‘I would
consume a fat beef for my fill[1091] when I was a young warrior.’ Colum
Cille commanded him that he should eat his fill. Maeluma did so for him,
and ate the whole beef. Baithin came afterwards and asked if the food
was ready. Colum Cille commanded Maeluma to collect all the bones of the
beef in one place, and it was done so. Colum Cille then blessed the
bones; and their own flesh was round them after that, and was taken to
the workmen.
[When[1092] Colum Cille had been thirty years in Alba, great anxiety
seized the men of Eriu to see him, and speak with him, before he
died;[1093] and messengers went[1094] from them to meet him, that he
might come to speak with them to the great convention of Druim-Ceta,
that he might bless them in that place, men, boys, women, and that he
might heal their diseases and pestilences. Or it is for three reasons
Colum Cille came from the east[1095]—viz., to retain the poets in Eriu
(for their exactions were great, to wit, thirty was the full company
with an _ollamh_,[1096] and fifteen with an _anradh_[1097]); and to make
peace between the men of Eriu and the men of Alba regarding the
Dal-Riada (for there was[1098] a battle-meeting between the men of Eriu
and Alba concerning them,[1099] if Colum Cille had not come from the
east to pacify them[1100]); and to release Scannlan, son of
Cennfaeladh[1101]—the son of the king of Ossory—whose father, moreover,
had given him in hostageship into the hands of Aedh,[1102] son of
Ainmire. And Colum Cille was surety to him that he would be released at
the end of a year; and he was not released, and no hostage was accepted
in his stead. And a wicker building[1103] was constructed round him,
without any passage out of it save a way through which a modicum of salt
food, and a small allowance[1104] of ale, used to be given to him. And
fifty warriors were wont to be around the building[1103] outside,
guarding him. And there were nine chains upon him in the building.[1103]
And when he would see any one going past what he would say is, ‘A
drink,’ says he.
And this thing was reported to Colum Cille, to Hii, and he wept greatly
at what he had heard; and this it was that brought him quickly from the
east.
It is how Colum Cille, moreover, came from the east, and a blackened
cloth over his eyes, and his collar[1105] down over that, and the
hood[1106] of the cape down over that again, in order that he might not
see the men of Eriu, nor its women; because he prophesied it before,
when he went to Alba at first, and he uttered the _rann_—
There is a grey eye
That views Eriu backwards.
It will not see henceforth[1107]
The men of Eriu, or its women.
And it was to certify this the poet[1108] said—
Though mild Colum did come
From the east in a boat,[1109] across the sea,
He saw naught in noble Eriu,
After coming into the great convention.
It was reported to Aedh, son of Ainmire, moreover, that Colum Cille had
come to the convention, and he was greatly vexed at what he heard, and
he said that whoever he might be from whom he (C. C.) would obtain
respect in the assembly, it would be avenged[1110] on him.
They afterwards saw Colum Cille going towards the convention; and the
assembly[1111] that was nearest to him was the assembly[1111] of Conall,
son of Aedh, son of Ainmire; and he was a worthy son of Aedh.
As Conall saw them,[1112] therefore, he incited the rabble of the
assembly[1111] against them, so that three score men[1113] of them were
captured and wounded.[1114] Colum Cille inquired, ‘Who is he by whom
this band has been launched at us?’ And it was told to him that it was
by Conall. And Colum Cille cursed Conall, until thrice nine bells[1115]
were rung against him,[1116] when some man said, ‘Conall gets bells
(_cloga_),’ and it is from this that he is called ‘Conall
Clogach.’[1117] And the cleric deprived him of king-ship,[1118] and of
his reason and intellect in the space of time that he would be
prostrating his body.
Colum Cille went afterwards to the assembly[1111] of Domhnall, son of
Aedh, son of Ainmire. And Domhnall immediately rose up before him, and
bade him welcome,[1119] and kissed his cheek, and put him in his own
place. And the cleric left him many blessings,[1120] viz., that he
should be fifty[1121] years in the sovereignty of Eria, and be
battle-victorious during that time; and that every word he would say
would be fulfilled by him; that he would be one year and a half in the
illness of which he would die, and would receive the body of Christ
every Sunday during that time.
It was told to the queen[1122] that her son[1123] was cursed, and the
kingship [promised] to Domhnall. The queen said to her handmaid, ‘Go to
Aedh, and say to him that if that crane-cleric[1124] finds respect with
him, I shall not be peaceable towards him.’
This thing was reported to Colum Cille, and he granted[1125] to the
queen and to her handmaid that they should be two cranes[1126] in
Druim-Ceta,[1127] from that day to the day of judgment, ut poeta dixit:—
The queen’s anger grew therefrom—
From Domhnall being in the kingship—
The promise of kingship given to Domhnall,
And her own son without land.
‘What crane-work[1128] is that thou dost?’
Said the queen, most wickedly.
‘I’ll not be in peace with Aedh, plainly,
For showing thee respect, O Cleric.’
‘Thou hast leave to be a crane,’
Said the cleric furiously;
‘As just punishment to thy handmaid,
She’ll be a crane along with thee.’
Aedh’s wife and her waiting-maid,
Were turned into herons.[1129]
They live still,[1130] and make complaint,
The two old herons of Druim-Ceta.
And Colum Cille then said to Domhnall that they should both go to
converse with Aedh, son of Ainmire. And Domhnall was much afraid to
converse with the king. But Colum Cille said, ‘Be not much afraid, for
the Holy Spirit shall be protecting thee against him.’ They went
together to speak to the king.
Grievous fear seized the king afterwards [on seeing the cleric[1131]],
because of the great miracle he had previously wrought.
The clerics came subsequently into the assembly. The king rose and bade
them welcome.
‘Our demand must be granted,’ [said Colum Cille[1132]].
‘You shall get it truly,’ said the king.
‘The poets must be retained,’ said Colum Cille.
‘It shall not be done,’ said the king, ‘for their evils against us are
great.’
‘Say not so,’ observed the cleric, ‘for the praises they will sing[1133]
for thee shall be enduring, as the praises the poets sung for him are
enduring for Cormac,[1134] grandson of Conn. And the treasures that were
given for them were transitory, while the praises live after them.’
And the cleric composed this little ‘rhetoric,’[1135] viz.—
‘Cormac well broke battles,’ etc.
‘It is not I who will expel them,’ said Aedh. The poets were retained
through this.
‘Release Scannlan,’[1136] said Colum Cille.
‘I shall not do so,’ answered the king, ‘until he dies in the hut in
which he is.’
‘We will not pursue the subject further,’ said Colum Cille; ‘but if it
be pleasing to God, may it be he that shall take off my shoes[1137]
to-night, at matins, in whatsoever place I may be.’
Colum Cille went afterwards from the assembly, until he came to the
Dubh-regles[1138] at Derry. It was not long after Colum Cille’s
departure until a thunderbolt came into the convention, and they all
turned their faces to the ground. Afterwards there came a bright cloud
to Scannlan, to the place in which he was, and a voice in the cloud said
to him, ‘Rise, O Scannlan, and leave thy chains and thy prison, and come
forth, and put thy hand in mine.’
Scannlan came out, and the angel in front of him. The guards heard the
noise of something passing by them; and what the guards said was, ‘Who
is this going past us?’ ‘Scannlan,’ said the angel. ‘If it was he, you
would not say so,’ answered they. They (Scannlan and his deliverer)
went[1139] afterwards to Derry.
The time the Cleric (C. C.) about matins, was going westwards[1140]
through the chancel-screen, it was Scannlan that assisted to take off
his shoes. And what Colum Cille said is, ‘Who is this?’
‘Scannlan,’ answered he.
‘Hast any news?’ asked Colum Cille.
‘A drink,’ said Scannlan.
‘Hast brought us a blessing?’ asked Colum Cille.
‘A drink,’ said Scannlan.
‘Say how camest thou?’ said Colum Cille.
‘A drink,’ said Scannlan.
‘Delay in answering attend thy successors.’[1141] said Colum Cille.
‘Speak not so,’ said Scannlan. ‘Thou shalt always have their rents, and
their tributes and customs.’
‘May bishops and kings be of thy race for ever,’ said Colum Cille. ‘Here
is one drink for thee,’ said he, ‘to wit, a vessel of ale, containing
enough for three.’[1142]
Scannlan then lifted the vessel between his two hands, and drank the
contents in one drink. And he afterwards ate his meal, to wit, seven
joints of old bacon, and ten wheaten cakes; after which he lay down, and
was three days and three nights in one sleep. He then arose, and was
conducted to Ossory, and the great _bachall_[1143] was sent with him.
The day he arrived was the day his father, the king of Ossory,
died[1144] through grief for him. And he subsequently assumed the
kingship of Ossory, and granted a tribute from the Ossorians, every
seventh year from that day, to Colum Cille.
And it is in this wise Scannlan was released.
The third cause[1145] was regarding the Dalriada. Colman, son of
Comgellan, it was that delivered the decision, in place of[1146] Colum
Cille, as Colum Cille himself prophesied when he came to the house of
Comgellan, and found within only two young boys[1147] who were on the
border of the fireplace. And the second boy looked over Colum Cille’s
right shoulder; and it appeared to Colum Cille that the grace of the
Holy Spirit was upon him. And Colum Cille afterwards called him, and
took him in his arms,[1148] and composed a _rann_ for him:—
O honesty of the hound! O pure soul!
Here’s a kiss for thee; deal thou a kiss to me.
Colum Cille blessed him after that, and left him the gift of wisdom, and
told him that it was he who would give judgment between the men of Eriu
and the men of Alba concerning the Dalriada. And this was verified. The
judgment, moreover, is this, viz., their expedition, and their hosting,
with the men of Eriu (for it is ‘hosting with territories’ always), and
their rent[1149] and their tribute with the men of Alba.
Dallan afterwards came to converse with Colum Cille, when it was that he
recited the preface.[1150] And Colum Cille said that he (Dallan) should
not make it[1151] but at the time of his (Colum Cille’s) death; and that
it was for one dead it was fitting. Colum Cille promised to Dallan the
richness and products of the earth for this eulogy; and Dallan would not
accept them, but Heaven for himself and for every one who would recite
it, and would understand it between sense and sound.
‘How shall thy death be known, and thou in pilgrimage, and I in Eriu?’
asked Dallan. Colum Cille therefore gave him three signs as to the time
he should make the eulogy. The first sign was, that it was the rider of
a speckled steed who would announce the death of Colum Cille; and that
the first word he would utter should be the beginning of the eulogy. And
it was verified in ripe time, and was the wonderment of the
island.[1152]]
One day in the month of May Colum Cille went to inquire after the
ploughmen in the north of the island. He was consoling[1153] them and
instructing them.
‘Good, then,’ said he; ‘about the Easter that went past in the month of
April—it was then I should have liked to go to Heaven; but I would not
wish grief or sadness to you after your labour; and therefore it is that
I remained with you, protecting you, from Easter to Whitsuntide.’
When the monks heard these words they were very sad.
He turned his face westwards after that, and blessed the island, with
its inhabitants, and he banished toads[1154] and snakes out of it.
When he had blessed the island, then he came subsequently to his
_recles_; and it was not long after that until the end of the Sabbath
and the beginning of Sunday arrived. And when he then raised up his
eyes, a great blushing came upon his countenance and face; and those
brethren[1155] saw indeed the angel of God, who remained over his head
there.
He went afterwards to bless the _Sabhall_,[1156] and said to its
attendant,[1157] viz., Diarmait, that he would go to Heaven on Sunday
night.
The venerable senior, viz., Colum Cille, sat down afterwards on the
margin of the road, for fatigue came upon him, though his journey was
short. (His age at that time was 77 years.) Then came to him the
_garran_[1158] that was wont to be with the monks in the island, and
wept in the cleric’s bosom until he wet his clothes. The
attendant,[1157] _i.e._ Diarmait, essayed to drive the garran away from
him. ‘Let him alone, O’Diarmait,’ said Colum Cille, ‘until he has done
enough of tears and sadness lamenting me.’
[Colum[1159] Cille, moreover, used to go to Heaven every Thursday whilst
he was alive, when he wished.]
But it is excessive to reckon and relate the number of prodigies and
miracles which God wrought in the lands for Colum Cille; because there
is no one that could reckon them entirely unless his own angel, or the
angel of Heaven’s God, should come to relate them. So that it is
sufficient for us to give this much of them, by way of example.
[A certain[1160] bad, furious man wounded a monk of Colum Cille’s
people; but he only cut the monk’s girdle, although the spear was sharp.
Colum Cille cursed the Saxon, and he died immediately. Bishop [Aedan?]
and Colman of Inish-bofinne[1161] were they whom Colum Cille left with
the Saxons, preaching the word of God to them.
Colum Cille went afterwards upon a time to the king of the Picts, to
Brudi, son of Maelchu, and the door of the fort was closed against him.
But the iron locks of the place opened instantly through the prayers of
Colum Cille. The son of the king, to wit, Maelchu, and his druid came
after that, to contend with Colum Cille through paganism;[1162] and the
king’s son and the druid along with him died forthwith through Colum
Cille’s word. The names[1163] of God and Colum Cille were magnified
thereby.]
There was not born of the Gaidhel, however, a being more illustrious, or
more wise, or of better family, than Colum Cille. There came not of them
any person who was more modest, more humble, or more lowly.
Great indeed was the humility of Colum Cille, for it was he himself that
used to take their shoes off his monks, and that used to wash their feet
for them. ’Tis he that used often to take his share of corn on his back
to the mill, and that used to grind it and bring it home with him. ’Tis
he that would not have[1164] linen or wool to his skin, that would not
sleep until his side came in contact with the bare earth. Under his head
there used not to be but a pillar-stone for a pillow, and he would even
sleep only whilst his _protégé_[1165] Diarmait would be reciting three
chapters of the ‘Beati.’ He would get up [immediately[1166]] after that,
and would utter[1167] cries and lamentations, like unto a fond mother
lamenting her only son. He would afterwards recite the ‘three
fifties,’[1168] until morning, in the sand of the sea-shore, ut dixit:—
The three fifties, great the vigil;
In the night great was the pain;
In the sea,[1169] by the side of Alba,
Before the sun would arise.
[When[1170] he would lie in the sand, moreover, and his garments round
him, the impression of his ribs through them was plain, ut poeta
dixit]:—
’Tis plain he’d lie down, greatest of sufferings,
In the sand; the distress was great.
The impression of his ribs, through his clothing,
Was plain ’till the wind would blow it away.[1171]
This was his night-work. In the day following, however, he would
frequent the canonical hours, and would offer the Body of Christ and His
Blood; would preach the Gospel; would baptize, bless, and anoint; would
cure lepers, and the blind and lame, and people suffering from every
disease. He used to resuscitate the dead.
[And[1172] he used not drink ale, and used not eat meat, and used not
eat savoury things,[1173] as Dallan Forguill said in the _Amra_:—
He drank not ale; he loved not satiety;
He avoided flesh.
And he used to make two hundred genuflexions every day, ut Dallan
dixit:—
He (kept) vigil[1174] whilst he was (in life).
And he had not a love of riches, as Dallan said:—
His sufficiency was little.
For _saith_ (sufficiency) is the name for _innmus_ (riches), ut poeta
dixit:—
On Wednesday he went off, against orders,
In the track of the fierce-avenging demon;
On Wednesday greed for _sufficiency_ seized him,[1175]
The Wednesday noble Christ was betrayed.
The three places, moreover, in which is the full habitation of Colum
Cille are Hi, and Down, and Derry, ut Berchan dixit:—
His grace in Hii, without stain,
And his soul in Derry;
And his body under the flag-stone,
Under which are Brigid and Patrick.
And it was to illustrate this the poet said:—
Hii, with the multitude of its relics,
Of which Colum was a fair disciple.[1176]
He went away from it at last,
So that Down is his blessed church.[1177]
A hundred churches, ‘which the wave frequents,’[1178] is the number of
churches he has on the margin of the sea. Or, perhaps, ‘one hundred
churches, with the fulness[1179] of a wave.’ There was a mass chalice in
every church, as the poet explains[1180]:—
The chess-board of Crimthann Nia-nair—
A little boy could take it[1181] in his hand;
The half of its party[1182] was of yellow gold,
And its other half of findruine.[1183]
One man alone of its party[1182]
Would purchase six _cumhals_.[1184]]
When it came then to the last hours for Colum Cille, and when the bell
was rung for matins on the night of Whitsunday, he went before the
others to the church, and made genuflexions and earnest prayers at the
altar. At that time an angelic brightness filled the church about him on
every side, and the venerable patron then resigned his spirit to heaven,
to the joy and gladness of the people of heaven in general. His body,
moreover, is in the earth here, with honour and veneration from God and
men, attended with virtues and miracles every day of them.[1185] And
though great his honour hitherto, it will be greater in the assembly of
judgment, when he will shine like the sun, through the incorruptibility
of his body and soul. ’Tis then, moreover, this great glory and respect
shall be given to him, in the union of the nine orders of heaven which
cannot be surpassed; in the union of the apostles and disciples of Jesus
Christ; in the union of the divinity and humanity of the Son of God; in
the union that is higher than every union; in the union of the noble,
illustrious, holy, almighty Trinity, the Father and the Son and the Holy
Ghost.
I implore the mercy of Almighty God, through the intercession of St.
Colum Cille. May we all reach that union. May we deserve it. May we
possess it in sæcula sæculorum. Amen.
-----
Footnote 858:
Inheritance. _Athardu_; lit. ‘patrimony;’ from _athair_, ‘father.’
Footnote 859:
Narrative. _Coibige_ (here translated ‘narrative’) seems = _coimfige_,
‘weaving together,’ from _figim_, ‘I weave.’
Footnote 860:
In imposing. The MSS. have _do erail_, ‘to persuade.’
Footnote 861:
HISTORIA. Istoria, A. L. and L. B.
Footnote 862:
REPROMISSIONIS. Repromisionis, A. L. and L. B.
Footnote 863:
PRECIPITUR. Precipitum, L. B.; preceptum, A. L.
Footnote 864:
Counsel. _Comairle_, omitted from MSS., but the context seems to
require it, and it has therefore been supplied in brackets.
Footnote 865:
The people. _Na dóine._ Om. A. L.
Footnote 866:
The inciting and inflaming. _Gresacht ⁊ adannad_, B. Lismore. A. L.
and L. B. have _angresacht ⁊ anadannad nandoine_ (which literally
means ‘their inciting and inflaming of the people’), an idiom of
frequent occurrence in old Irish.
Footnote 867:
Their temporal goods. The Irish text is _fris na maithib aimserda
imbit_; lit. ‘from the temporal goods in which they are wont to be.’
Footnote 868:
Suffered. The original is _fuaratar_, ‘received.’
Footnote 869:
Would experience. _Fogebed_; lit. ‘would receive.’
Footnote 870:
IMPLEVIT. Impleverit, L. B.
Footnote 871:
EXIIT. Exit, L. B.
Footnote 872:
Haran. Carran, L. B.
Footnote 873:
REPROMISSIONIS. Repromisionis, L. B.
Footnote 874:
Haran. Carran, L. B. The orig. of the clause within brackets is not in
A. L. For _co Carran_ (to Haran), L. has _co rainic_, ‘until he
reached.’
Footnote 875:
Because. _Uair_, A. L. Not in B. L. or L.
Footnote 876:
Abstains. _Etirscarann_, lit. ‘separates.’
Footnote 877:
Nor profit. _No tarbai._ Omitted in A. L.
Footnote 878:
Away from it. _Na h-ecmais_; lit. ‘in its absence.’
Footnote 879:
EXIVIT. Exisit, L. B.
Footnote 880:
EI. Ex, L. B.
Footnote 881:
As if he would abide. The orig. ⁊ _no aithebad_ means literally ‘_and
that_ he would abide.’
Footnote 882:
Exercise. The orig. is _denam_, ‘doing.’
Footnote 883:
Laics and clerics. _Tuatha ⁊ eclaisi_; lit. ‘territories and
churches;’ but in a secondary sense ‘church and state,’ or ‘laics and
clerics.’
Footnote 884:
Through. _Ar_; lit. ‘for.’
Footnote 885:
Good-will. _Cainduthracht_; ‘bona voluntas.’ Compare _ar
cainduthracht_ (gl. propter bonam voluntatem).—Zeuss’ _Gram. Celt._
578.
Footnote 886:
Little or much. _Uathad sochaide._ These words also signify ‘few [or
many];’ but it would seem from the context that they were intended to
refer to the worldly substance abandoned, and are therefore translated
in that sense.
Footnote 887:
PEREGRINI. Perigrini, L. B.
Footnote 888:
Seniors. _Na sruthi._ Comp. _inna sruthe_ (‘veterum’).—Goidilica, 1st
ed. 25; _sruith athair_ (gl. patronus).—Nigra, _Reliq. Celt._, 33.
Footnote 889:
At the occurrence. _In ecmoing_, lit. ‘in the occurrence.’ Comp.
_ecmaing_, ‘it chanced.’—_Leb na hUidre_, 98 b.; _ind aecmaingthech_
(gl. fortuitu).—Zeuss, ed. Ebel, 608.
Footnote 890:
PRESBYTER. Prespiter, L. B.
Footnote 891:
Inis-Gaidel. The Island of the Gaidel; by which the writer evidently
meant Ireland.
Footnote 892:
The person. _In tii_; an emphatic form, very usual in Irish.
Footnote 893:
Son. The original of the clause within brackets is not in L. B. or B.
Lismore.
Footnote 894:
Of the solar month. _Mis greine_; lit. ‘month of the sun.’
Footnote 895:
A few particulars. _Becan cumair_; lit. ‘a brief little.’
Footnote 896:
For ever. _Co sir_, L. B. _Tre biuthu sir_, ‘through life
everlasting,’ A. L. and L.
Footnote 897:
Was he. The orig. is _atacomnaic_, which is explained by _comainm_,
‘appellation,’ in old Irish glossaries, and used in this sense in the
Book of Leinster, fol. 200, a 1.
Footnote 898:
Family. The orig. of this clause is not in A. L.
Footnote 899:
Was offered. _Tarcus._ The text should probably be _taircfid_, ‘would
be offered.’
Footnote 900:
Patron saints. _Sruthi._ See p. 473, note 888.
Footnote 901:
Lugbad. Louth, Co. Louth.
Footnote 902:
At the end. _I cind_; lit. ‘at the head,’ or immediately before.
Footnote 903:
Ut dixit. A. L. has _conad annsin do raid Mochta_, ‘when it was that
Mochta said.’
Footnote 904:
With. _La_ (apud), A. L. and L. B.; _ic._ ‘at,’ _Lismore_.
Footnote 905:
Of the nations. _Nambitho_, A. L., L. B.; _nambidho_, _Lismore_.
Footnote 906:
Saint. _Naem._ Omitted in L. B. and L.
Footnote 907:
The head. _Cenn._ Omitted in A. L. and L. B.
Footnote 908:
_Rann._ _Rann_ properly means a stanza. The text should be _na ranna
sa_ (these verses).
Footnote 909:
Beloved. The orig. of this line and the next are not in L. B.
Footnote 910:
With. _La_; lit. ‘apud,’ but in a secondary sense, ‘in the sight of.’
Footnote 911:
Brigid. The first letter of the name only is given in A. L. and L. B.
The _Book of Lismore_ text has ‘Bec mac De;’ but according to the
Irish Annals generally, Bec mac De did not ‘begin to prophesy’ before
A.D. 545, more than 20 years after Colum Cille’s birth.
Footnote 912:
To observe him. _Rathugad._ In other words, to perceive his coming.
Footnote 913:
Ard-Sratha. Ardstraw, Co. Tyrone; anciently an episcopal see.
Footnote 914:
Buite. Founder of Monasterboice; who died on the night of Colum
Cille’s birth.
Footnote 915:
Measure. _Tórindfess_; _i.e._ ‘that shall mark the limits of.’
Footnote 916:
Manifested. _Ro fiugrad_; lit. ‘was figured.’
Footnote 917:
Innsi-mod. The group of islands in Clew Bay, on the west coast of
Mayo.
Footnote 918:
Caer-nam-brocc. Supposed to be Burghead, on the north-east coast of
Scotland. _Adamnan_, 191, note e.
Footnote 919:
Of the world. _An domain._ Not in L. B. or _Lismore_.
Footnote 920:
Gladness. _⁊ forbailti_, for _⁊ forfailti_. Omitted in A. L.
Footnote 921:
Attendant woman, _ben imtha_. In the account of this vision in the
Mart. Donegal, at June 9, the expression is _ben formaid ⁊ iom
thnuith_, ‘a woman of jealousy and envy.’
Footnote 922:
Eithne. The original of this sentence is not in A. L.
Footnote 923:
It was. The original would also bear to be translated ‘he was.’
Footnote 924:
Patron Saints. _Sruthi._ See p. 473, note 888.
Footnote 925:
Gortan. This name signifies ‘a little field.’ It is now written
‘Gartan,’ and is the name of a townland and parish in the barony of
Kilmacrenan, Co. Donegal.
Footnote 926:
_Corprige._ In Aengus’s Tract on the Mothers of Irish Saints, Eithne
is said to have been of the _Corpraide_ of _Fanad_ (Co. Donegal). See
Reeves’s _Adamnan_, p. 164, note.
Footnote 927:
Noble. _Olmar_; lit. ‘very great.’
Footnote 928:
Fostered. _Rosail_; lit. ‘nursed him.’
Footnote 929:
Should learn. The literal translation of the Irish is, ‘when the time
of learning came to him’ (Colum Cille).
Footnote 930:
Cleric. Cruithnechan.
Footnote 931:
Observed the heavens. _Ro fég nem_; lit. ‘looked (at) heaven.’
Footnote 932:
What he said was. _Ised atbert._ Not in A. L.
Footnote 933:
Water. The words _fri usci anair_, literally translated, would be
‘against (the) water, from the east;’ water being put for ‘river.’
Footnote 934:
The original of this sentence is not in A. L.
Footnote 935:
Raths of Magh-enaig. Now Raymoghy, barony of Raphoe, Co. Donegal.
Footnote 936:
Cleric. Cruithnechan.
Footnote 937:
Fell. _Tanic_; lit. ‘came.’
Footnote 938:
‘Misericordias.’ The 100th Psalm.
Footnote 939:
In the place. _Do raith_; lit. ‘for the good,’ but idiomatically
signifying ‘in place of,’ or ‘for the sake of.’
Footnote 940:
Names. _Ainm_, ‘name,’ in the original text.
Footnote 941:
And his guardian. _⁊ a aiti_; om. in L. B.
Footnote 942:
On the path. _Forsin conair._ L. reads _don carraic_, ‘from off the
rock.’
Footnote 943:
Fell, and died. L. B. has merely _conepil de_, ‘died thereof.’
Footnote 944:
Thinking. _Andar leis_, ‘it seemed to him,’ L. B., A. L., and L. have
_ar ni fhitir nach ina chotlud bói_; ‘for he knew not that he was not
asleep.’
Footnote 945:
Rehearsing. _Mebrugud_; lit. ‘remembering.’
Footnote 946:
Sound. This stanza, apparently quoted from the _Amra Choluim Cille_, a
very ancient composition, is not in L.
Footnote 947:
Before them. _Ar a cind_; lit. ‘on their head,’ or ‘ahead of them;’
_i.e._ when they arrived at the place.
Footnote 948:
Resuscitate. _Duscad_; lit. ‘to awaken.’
Footnote 949:
Went. The phraseology of this clause in A. L. and L. is (translated),
‘he went to the cleric, to resuscitate him.’
Footnote 950:
Permission. _Cet_, L. B. A. L. and L. have _deonughad_, which means
the same thing.
Footnote 951:
Magh-bile. Movilla, in the Co. Down.
Footnote 952:
Wine. _Finbairgen_; lit. ‘wine-bread,’ A. L. and L. B. L. has _fin ⁊
bairgen_, ‘wine and bread,’ which seems more correct.
Footnote 953:
Master Gemman. Of this man little or nothing is known. The name is
written ‘German’ in many places in the Book of Lismore. But see
Reeves’s _Adamnan_, p. 274, Notes.
Footnote 954:
Learning. _Ic denam_; lit. ‘doing.’
Footnote 955:
Ruffian. _In duidli._ The word _duidli_ is not found in any Irish
Dictionary or Glossary; and the meaning here assigned to it is only
conjectural. It seems to be the word rendered by ‘persecutor,’ in
Colgan’s Third Life of St. Colum Cille (_Tr. Thaum._, p. 333).
Footnote 956:
Laid. _Ro fuirim_; lit. placed; apparently related to Lat. formo,
formare.
Footnote 957:
Cluain-Eraird. Clonard, Co. Meath.
Footnote 958:
At. In the orig. the word is _in_, which in form and meaning is the
same as the Eng. prepos. ‘in.’ But the sense in which it is used above
is correctly represented by ‘at.’
Footnote 959:
Supper-time. _Feis aidche_; lit. ‘night-feast.’
Footnote 960:
Apostles. Finden’s disciples are meant.
Footnote 961:
Island; _i.e._ Ireland. The orig. of this sentence is not in A. L.
Footnote 962:
Rested over. The orig. has _rogab imon Sinaind_, which would actually
mean ‘took up about the Shannon.’
Footnote 963:
Colum. This sentence is fuller in A. L. than in L. and L. B., which
have merely the clause, ‘with the gold of his nobility and wisdom.’
Footnote 964:
Son of the carpenter. _Mac in t-sair_; om. in A. L. and L. St. Ciaran
of Clonmacnois, on the Shannon, is the person meant.
Footnote 965:
_Glaisnoiden._ Glasnevin, near Dublin.
Footnote 966:
Water. The river at Glasnevin. _Fri usci aniar_, translated above ‘at
the west side of the water,’ literally means ‘towards the water from
the west.’
Footnote 967:
Said Ciaran. _Ar Ciaran._ Not in L. B. or L.
Footnote 968:
Full of. The expression in the orig., literally translated, is ‘what
full each of them would like to have in the church.’
Footnote 969:
Canonical hours. _Na trath._ _Trath_ properly signifies ‘time,’ or
‘season;’ but in ecclesiastical tracts it is used to express the
canonical hours.
Footnote 970:
Chose. _Do rega._ The text in A. L. is _robad maith leam fain ar C.
C._, ‘I should like myself,’ said C. C., etc.
Footnote 971:
Both in. _Etir_; lit. ‘between’ (= Lat. inter).
Footnote 972:
Unknown. _Anaichnid_; _i.e._ ‘unprecedented,’ in a secondary sense.
Footnote 973:
_Buidhe Chonaill._ See Reeves’s _Adamnan_, p. 182, note a, for an
account of this plague, which was also called _Crom Chonaill_. The
first appearance of the plague occurred in a.d. 550, according to
Tighernach’s Annals and the _Chronicon Scotorum_. Dr. Todd supposed
that it was called _Buidhe Chonaill_, from some eminent person named
Conall, who died of it, but of whose memory no other record now
remains.—(_Obits and Martyrology of Christ Church_, pref. p. lxxv.)
But the old form of the name being _Buidhe Chonnaill_, it is more
likely that it was derived from _Connall_ (glossed ‘stipula’ in the
MS. quoted in Nigra’s _Reliq. Celt._, p. 38); and that the plague was
so called from the hue (_Buide Chonnaill_, ‘straw-yellow’) which its
victims exhibited.
Footnote 974:
Biur. Dr. Reeves states (_Adamnan_, p. 52, note d) that is, the river
in Tyrone, now called the Moyola, which flows into the N.-W. arm of
Lough Neagh.
Footnote 975:
‘_Bir_ against _fochainne_.’ There is apparently a play on words here.
_Fochainne_ is the Irish name of the river now called the Faughan,
which rises somewhat to the N.-W. of the Moyola, and flows into Lough
Foyle. The expression might also signify ‘_Bir_ against “diseases”’
(_fochainne_; lit. ‘_causes_’).
Footnote 976:
Daire. Derry. Anciently _Daire-Calgaig_, ‘Calgach’s oak-wood.’
Footnote 977:
Girdle. These words should be repeated, to complete the line.
Footnote 978:
Hair. _Loa._ The orig. is _niptar simne imm loa_; lit. ‘they were not
rushes round hair;’ _i.e._ the girdle was not soft as rushes round
Mobii’s hair cloak.
Footnote 979:
Settled. _Gais_, A. L. and L. B.; _gabais_, Lismore. _Gabais_ properly
means took, received, occupied.
Footnote 980:
Colum. This paragraph is translated from A. L., the corresponding
original being omitted in L. B. and L.
Footnote 981:
Wood. _Daire._ The orig. name of Derry (or Londonderry) was _daire
Calgaig_, the ‘wood of Calgach,’ or the ‘oak-wood of Calgach.’ Adamnan
Latinises _daire_ by ‘roboretum’ (Reeves’s ed., pp. 19, 160), and the
contemporary glosses quoted by Zeuss (_Gram. Celt. 8_) gives it the
same meaning; in later times the word was used to express any kind of
wood. In the _Book of Fermoy_, for instance, we find _itir daire ocus
maigi ocus atha ocus line_, ‘between _woods_ and plains, and fords and
pools’ (fol. 24, a 1).
Footnote 982:
Uttered. _Conderna_, ‘until he made.’
Footnote 983:
_Dant._ This line is very obscure in A. L.; and the reading here is
unreliable. A translation has not therefore been attempted.
Footnote 984:
Wattles. _Coelach._ Wattles, twigs, or osiers; from _coel_, ‘slender.’
This is curious, as showing the material used in building churches at
the time.
Footnote 985:
_Recles._ Thus in L. B. But A. L. and L. read _eclais_, the church.
Footnote 986:
In the ground. _Isin talam_, L. B. A. L. has _isin inad ar boinged an
fidh_, ‘in the place where the wood was cut.’
Footnote 987:
Tor-inis. Tours, in France. The form of the name in the text,
Tor-inis, would in Irish signify ‘tower-island’ (from _tor_, a tower,
and _inis_, an island); but this form is probably an attempt of the
scribe or translator to represent Turonensis, the Latin for Tours.
Footnote 988:
For. The orig. has _for_ (‘upon’).
Footnote 989:
Rath-Both. Raphoe, Co. Donegal.
Footnote 990:
Visit of instruction. _Cuairt procepta_ (‘circuitus præcepti’). This
corrupt Irish form of the Lat. præceptum (sometimes written
_procecht_) is also used to express ‘preaching.’
Footnote 991:
Tethba. Teffia; the ancient name of a large territory, including part
of the present counties of King’s, Westmeath, and Longford.
Footnote 992:
_Dermach._ Durrow, barony of Ballycowan, King’s County.
Footnote 993:
Colman Mòr. The death of this man is entered in the _Chron. Scotorum_
at A.D. 553.
Footnote 994:
Virtue. The literal translation of the orig. is ‘the luck that was on
the sword.’
Footnote 995:
Cormac Ua Liathain. See Reeves’s _Adamnan_, p. 166, note a.
Footnote 996:
Aedh Slane (pron. Slaw-ney). King of Ireland, 592-604.
Footnote 997:
Cenandas. Kells, Co. Meath. The oldest written form of the name is
Cennannas (_Leb. na hUidhre_, 58^{_a_}). In the _Book of Leinster_ it
is written _cenn-arus_, ‘head abode;’ from which the succeeding
changes seem to have been to _cenn-lis_ (‘head fort’) and then to
Ken-lis, and finally to Kells.
Footnote 998:
Tarried. _Ro fuirged._ This seems the 3 sg. pass. form of the verb
_fuirech_, to delay (_cid arid fuirig_, gl. quid detineat, Zeuss,^2
458), and should therefore probably be translated ‘was delayed.’
Footnote 999:
The fate of the place. The orig. is _don baile_; lit. ‘to (or for) the
place.’
Footnote 1000:
Becc mac Dead, A. L. and L. B. Properly Becc mac De, as in L.
Footnote 1001:
Young men. _Oicc_, pl. of _óc_, ‘young,’ is also used to express young
warriors.
Footnote 1002:
Sure. _Inill_, gl. ‘fidus’(Cormac’s Glossary, Stokes’ ed., p. 77). The
prophet meant that a time would come when the statements contained in
the three first lines could be spoken in the present tense.
Footnote 1003:
Highest. _Ardi_, superl. of _ard_, ‘high;’ but in a secondary sense
‘important.’
Footnote 1004:
Establishment. _Congbail_, a residence or habitation, and figuratively
a church or monastic establishment.
Footnote 1005:
Uttering. _Oc denam_; lit. ‘doing’ or ‘making.’
Footnote 1006:
A son ... in one night. The transcriber seems to have blundered here,
for there would be no great wonder in a boy being born ‘in one night’
(_in oen oidche_). He was probably misled by the shape of the siglum
for _id est_ (.1.) before the words _mac bethad_ (which looks, in the
codices A. L. and L. B., very like the siglum for fifty [.l.]); and
therefore, thinking that ‘fifty sons’ were meant, added _in oen
oidche_, ‘in one night,’ to magnify the prodigy.
Footnote 1007:
Solitude. _Dimorach_, apparently for _diamarach_, or _diomarach_ (as
it is sometimes written), a n. subst. derived from _diamair_,
‘secret,’ ‘lonely.’ The name is still preserved in the form ‘Diamor,’
the name of a place about ten miles to the west of Kells, and very
near Kilskeery (Cill-Scire).—See Joyce’s _Irish Names of Places_, 2d
series, p. 454.
Footnote 1008:
_Grafann._ There is no saint of this name in the Calendar. But the
Four Masters, at A.D. 745, record the death of _Dubhdaleithe na
graiffne_ (‘D. of the writing’) abbot of Cill-Scire (Kilskeery, Co.
Meath), evidently the person referred to, as _na graifne_ is the gen.
sing. of _grafann_, which means ‘writing’ (from _graib_, or _graif_ =
graphium; Reeves’s _Adamnan_, 205, note a). And Dubhdaleithe might
well have been called _Grafann_, as he is supposed to have been the
author of a chronicle called the Book of Dubhdaleithe, quoted in the
Annals of Ulster.
Footnote 1009:
Seized. _Ro len_; lit. ‘followed.’
Footnote 1010:
Uttered. _Conderna_; lit. ‘made.’
Footnote 1011:
Of his age. In other words, he would only live four years longer.
Footnote 1012:
Cloak. _Cochall_ = Lat. Cucullus. In ecclesiastical phraseology, a
cowl; but in a general sense, a cloak, or outer garment.
Footnote 1013:
Suibhne. The son of Aedh Slane’s brother Colman Bec. The murder of a
tribesman was regarded as fratricide under the old Irish legal system.
Footnote 1014:
Brega. The plain of East Meath.
Footnote 1015:
Patrons. _Suithi._ See p. 473, n. 888.
Footnote 1016:
Fir-arda. Now the barony of Ferard, Co. Louth, in which is the parish
of Clonmore.
Footnote 1017:
Manister. ‘The Monastery;’ now Monasterboice, Co. Louth.
Footnote 1018:
Crozier. _Bachall_ = baculus.
Footnote 1019:
Church. _Cill_ = cella. In the orig. of the translation above given
(p. 476) of St. Buite’s prophecy regarding Colum Cille, the
corresponding word is _relicc_, there translated ‘cemetery.’ This
clause is imperfectly given in A. L.
Footnote 1020:
Without fault. _Cen mannair._ ‘Without injury’ would probably be more
correct. Compare _na mandair in lin_; ‘don’t injure the net,’ _Leb. na
hUidre_, 26 b.
Footnote 1021:
Splendid. _Buadach_; lit. ‘victorious;’ an adj. from _buaid_, gl.
Victoria.—Zeuss, 27.
Footnote 1022:
Obliterated. _Nis baithed_; lit. ‘it would not be drowned.’
Footnote 1023:
Rechra. Lambay Island. Traces of the ancient name _Rechra_ (gen.
_Rechrainn_) are preserved in that of _Portrane_ (_Port-Rechrainn_) or
the ‘landing place of Rechra,’ on the coast of Dublin, opposite
Lambay.
Footnote 1024:
Obeyed them. _Doroine C. C. umaloit doib_; lit. ‘C. C. did humility to
them.’
Footnote 1025:
Sord. Swords, Co. Dublin.
Footnote 1026:
Sord. Soid, L. B.
Footnote 1027:
_Polaires._ The actual signification of the Irish word _polaire_ is
not quite clear. In some old Glossaries it is explained as a _tiag
lebar_ (‘book-satchel;’ _tiag_ = _theca_). But in _Lebor na hUidre_ it
seems used in a different sense, as in the sentence _sood a polaire
ina etun isse comartha bias fair_; ‘the change of his _polaire_ in his
forehead is the sign he (Antichrist) shall have’ (p. 18). Here the
writer would seem to have in mind the _signa_ mentioned in Apocal.
chap. vii. In O’Clery’s Glossary, moreover, it is explained as
_comardha_, ‘a sign.’ The word _polaire_ is translated ‘cases’ in
Reeves’s Adamnan, p. 115, note c. Colgan has rendered it in his
edition of the Tripartite Life of St. Patrick, under the form
_pallaire_, by tabulæ: ‘tabulis in quibus scribere solebat, vulgo
_pallaire_ appellatis.’—_Tr. Thaum._, pp. 123, 249. But the Irish
_Tripartite_ has no mention of this. _Pollaire_ was apparently some
kind of receptacle for books, perhaps a case for a copy of the
Epistles of St. Paul, whose name is always written _Pol_ in Irish.
Footnote 1028:
Said. Ut dixit, L. B. and _Lismore_. Ut _dubairt an file_, A. L.
Footnote 1029:
Excellent. _Buadach_, an adj. derived from _buaid_, ‘victoria,’
‘palma.’ (Cf. _ani atreba buaid_, gl. palmarium.—Zeuss, 262.)
Footnote 1030:
Wave. This would remind one of little Dombey’s inquiry of his sister,
‘What are the wild waves saying?’
Footnote 1031:
The morning. The orig. is _isin matainse_, ‘in this morning.’
Footnote 1032:
Colum. This parag. is only found in A. L.
Footnote 1033:
Comarbship. _Comarbus_, _i.e._ cohæreditas, succession. See Zeuss, 7,
8.
Footnote 1034:
Cenel-Conaill. The descendants of Conall Gulban (son of Nial
Naoighiallach) from whom Colum Cille was descended in the third
generation.
Footnote 1035:
He. This parag. is also found only in A. L.
Footnote 1036:
Drumcliff. In the barony of Carbury, Co. Sligo.
Footnote 1037:
Mothairen. This saint is mentioned in the Martyrologies of Tallaght
and Donegal at the 9th of June; but in the notes to the Festology of
Aengus he is identified with a St. Torannan, whose festival is entered
under June 12th.
Footnote 1038:
Curragh of the Liffey. Now the Curragh of Kildare. It is worthy of
note, that whilst the name of the plain (Lifè, or Magh-Lifè), of which
the Curragh formed a part, has been lost as regards the plain, it
should still be preserved in that of the river that flowed through it,
the _abhain-Lifè_, or river of the Liffey.
Footnote 1039:
Shamrock-flowery. _Scoth-semrach._ _Scoth_ signifies a flower; and
_semrach_ is an adj. derived from _semar_, trefoil. The word
‘shamrock’ seems a dimin. of _semar_ or _semmor_, as it is written in
the _Book of Leinster_, 112 b. i. (old pagination).
Footnote 1040:
Ownership. _Comus_; lit. ‘power.’
Footnote 1041:
_Recles._ Put here for ‘church.’
Footnote 1042:
Sord. Swords, Co. Dublin.
Footnote 1043:
To the Lord. The construction of this clause in the orig. texts is
rather rude; but it is better in _Lismore_ than in A. L. and L. B.
Footnote 1044:
Druim-monach. This church is not in the list of Columban foundations
given in Reeves’s _Adamnan_, p. 276 sq.
Footnote 1045:
Moen. Now Moone, in the parish of the same name, Co. Kildare.
Footnote 1046:
As the poet said. _Amaildoraidh an fili_, A. L. and _Lismore_. L. B.
has merely ‘ut dixit.’
Footnote 1047:
Beguiling. _Saebhail._ The word _saeb_, from which is derived
_saebhail_, properly means ‘false;’ but the verb _saebaim_ is used to
signify, ‘I coax, beguile, or seduce.’ See O’Donovan’s Supplement to
O’Reilly, v. _saebhaim_. This quatrain is rudely written in the three
texts.
Footnote 1048:
Cluain; _i.e._ Clonmacnois.
Footnote 1049:
Hair. _Brodirne._ It seems to be the word Latinised ‘fimbria’ by
Adamnan (Reeves’s ed. p. 25). But it is certainly used in the sense of
a ‘hair,’ or ‘thread,’ in the Irish Trip. Life of St. Patrick. _Fer
cech broithirne fil fort chasail_, ‘a man for every hair that is in
thy _casula_’ (p. 67, O’Curry’s copy, R. I. Acad.).
Footnote 1050:
Ernan. Otherwise called Moernoc, and Mernoc. See Reeves’s _Adamnan_,
p. 25, note i.
Footnote 1051:
Cluain-Deochra. In O’Clery’s Irish Calendar, at 11th January, this
place is stated to be in the Co. Longford.
Footnote 1052:
Es-mic-Eirc. The ‘cataract of Erc’s son.’ Afterwards called
_Es-ui-Floinn_, and now written Assylin. It is situated on the river
Boyle, near the town of Boyle, Co. Roscommon.
Footnote 1053:
Druim-cliabh. Drumcliff, Co. Sligo.
Footnote 1054:
Mothoria. This name is written Mothairen, _supra_, p. 489.
Footnote 1055:
_Bachall_ = Lat. baculus, a crozier or pastoral staff.
Footnote 1056:
Es-Ruaidh. Properly Es-Aedha-Ruaidh, or the ‘cataract of Aedh Ruadh’
(Aedus Rufus), a king of Ireland said to have been drowned therein,
A.M. 4518. Now Assaroe, or the Salmon Leap, on the river Erne, at
Ballyshannon, Co. Donegal.
Footnote 1057:
Conall. Put for Cinel-Conaill, or the descendants of Conall, who
inhabited Tirconnell (or Donegal County, as it is now called).
Footnote 1058:
Eoghan. In this case also, the name of the ancestor is put for the
tribe-name of his descendants, the Cinel-Eoghain, whose territory was
subsequently called Tir-Eoghain (Tyrone).
Footnote 1059:
Torach. Tory (or Torry) Island, off the N. coast of Donegal.
Footnote 1060:
Seniors. _Sruthi._ See p. 473, note 888.
Footnote 1061:
Into. _For_; lit. ‘upon,’ MSS.
Footnote 1062:
He then meditated going. The orig. of this clause is not in A. L.
Footnote 1063:
That went with him. The orig. is _do cuaid_; lit. ‘he went.’
Footnote 1064:
Youths. _Macc_; lit. ‘sons.’ This quatrain is undoubtedly ancient, for
it appears as a marginal note in the hand of the scribe of _Lebor na
hUidre_ (copied circa 1104), in the top marg. of that MS., p. 5.
Footnote 1065:
In good spirits. _Fo somenmain_ (lit. ‘under good spirits’), A. L. and
L. B. _Fo seol soinmech_, ‘under prosperous sail,’ _Lismore_.
Footnote 1066:
Place. _Tir_ = terra, MSS.
Footnote 1067:
Submission. _Do gabail aláma_; lit. ‘to take his hand.’
Footnote 1068:
To him. _Lais_; lit. ‘with him.’
Footnote 1069:
Exposed. _Roindis forru_; lit. ‘told on them.’
Footnote 1070:
Obediently. The texts have _erlattad_, which is a substantive,
signifying obedience, or readiness to obey.
Footnote 1071:
Grave. _Lige_ (glossed ‘torus,’ Zeuss, 45); but frequently used in old
Irish to signify ‘a grave,’ or ‘tomb;’. _i.e._ the last ‘bed’
(_lectus_) or resting-place.
Footnote 1072:
From thee. _Fortsa_; lit. ‘on thee.’
Footnote 1073:
In it. _Inti_, A. L. and L. B.; _in hi_ (in Hi), _Lismore_.
Footnote 1074:
For meditation. _Ri teoir._ The word _teoir_ is explained in an old
MS. thus:—_ón ni is_ teorica vita .i. _beta theoir imcisnech_ .i. nech
_is in eclais og urnaithi no a menma an Dia do grés_; ‘from the thing
that is _theorica vita_, viz., a life of watchful contemplation;
_i.e._ a person who is wont to be in a church praying, or his mind
always intent on God.’ MS. Egerton, 88, Brit. Mus.
Footnote 1075:
Under monastic rule. _Im manchaine_; lit. ‘in monkship.’ _Manchaine_
(deriv. from _manach_ = monachus) also means the duties or services
rendered by monks.
Footnote 1076:
As the poet said. _Amal adubairt in file_, _Lismore_. A. L. and L. B.
have merely ut dixit.
Footnote 1077:
Soldiery. _Ocbad_, properly youths.
Footnote 1078:
Filled the Demon with envy. The orig., literally translated, would be
‘this thing was envy with the Demon.’ (_Ba format la demun inni sin._)
Footnote 1079:
Afflicted. _Cor ben_; lit. ‘and he struck.’
Footnote 1080:
Attacked. _Tanic da_; lit. ‘came to.’
Footnote 1081:
Prayed for him. _Condernasom ernaigti leis_; lit. ‘and he made prayers
with him.’
Footnote 1082:
In the east. _Tair._ As this is the reading in A. L., it would seem
that the narrative in that MS. was compiled in Ireland.
Footnote 1083:
Hither. _Ille_, L. B. and L. _Anair_, ‘from the east,’ A. L.
Footnote 1084:
_Rechull._ Thus in A. L. and L. B. _Lismore_ has _rachall_, which is
explained ‘winding-sheet’ in O’Reilly’s _Irish Dictionary_. The word
_rechull_ is of rare occurrence, and seems here used to express
‘bequest.’ In an old Irish Glossary compiled in the year 1653, the
nom. form _recholl_ occurs, and is explained _dligeadh easbuic_, or
‘bishop’s dues.’
Footnote 1085:
Affected him. _Tanic dosum_; lit. ‘came (or happened) to him.’ ‘Miro
superfusam rubore’ are Adamnan’s words. (Lib. i. cap. 28.)
Footnote 1086:
Port. The Irish word _port_ has many meanings. It signifies not only a
port or harbour, but also a bank, shore, house, place of safety, or
fortified place. The reason it has been translated ‘port’ above, is
because of its occurrence in connection with the preposition _i_ (in).
Footnote 1087:
Rustic. The actual meaning of the word _bachlach_ is shown in a marg.
entry in the _Book of Fenagh_ (ed. Kelly, Dublin, p. 102), where _meic
na m-bachlach_ is translated ‘rusticorum proles.’
Footnote 1088:
Bend down. _Toirnfid_, first fut. sg. indic. of _toirned_, ‘to lower.’
Cf. _intan no toirned a laimh_, ‘when she would lower her hand,’ used
in contrast to _in tan no tógbad a laimh_, ‘when she would raise her
hand.’—_Bruidhen Da Choga_, MS. H. 3, 18, Trin. Coll. Dublin.
Footnote 1089:
Ex-warrior. _Athlaech_, or _athlaech_; _ath_ being here used as a
particle to express privation, and _laech_ signifying warrior. In the
word _athgabail_, ‘re-taking,’ _ath_ has a different sense.
Footnote 1090:
Of his appetite. _Loingthe_, gen. sg. of _longad_, ‘eating.’
Footnote 1091:
Fill. _Sáith_, lit. ‘satiety.’
Footnote 1092:
When. The narrative from this down to the bracket on p. 502 is taken
from the copy of the _Amra Choluim Chille_, or Elegy of Colum Cille,
contained in the MS. so often quoted as A. L. in the notes to this
translation. The text of this MS. is not as full as that of the
preface to the copy of the _Amra_, in the _Leabar Breac_, or of that
in the _Yellow Book of Lecan_, in both of which an account of the
Convention of Druim-ceta is contained. But as far as it goes, A. L.
agrees pretty closely with the other texts. The preface to the copy of
the _Amra_, contained in _Lebor na hUidre_, the oldest text of the
composition we possess, differs in arrangement from the three
mentioned; but the facts related in it are substantially the same as
those given in the others.
Footnote 1093:
Before he died. _Re n-dola ar cel_; lit. ‘before going to heaven.’
Footnote 1094:
Messengers went. The orig. is _do cuas_; lit. ‘there went.’
Footnote 1095:
From the east. See notes, p. 493, _supra_.
Footnote 1096:
_Ollamh_ (pron. _ollave_) was the title of a chief poet.
Footnote 1097:
_Anradh_, or _anrúth_, is explained in Cormac’s Glossary as ‘nomen
secundi gradus poetarum.’
Footnote 1098:
There was. _Ro bai._ The translation is literal; but the real meaning
is, ‘there would have been.’
Footnote 1099:
Them; _i.e._ the Dal-Riada of Scotland.
Footnote 1100:
To pacify them; _i.e._ to make peace between the men of Eriu and the
men of Alba.
Footnote 1101:
Cennfaeladh. Adamnan calls the father ‘Colman’ (lib. i. cap. 11). But
the Irish Annals, with which agree the Irish Pedigrees, say
‘Cennfaeladh.’ The death of a Scannlan Mór, son of Cennfaeladh, chief
of Ossory, is recorded by the annalist Tighernach under A.D. 643. But
the learned editor of _Adamnan_ thinks the interval between the
Convention of Druim-ceta (_circa_ 580) and that date too long to
harmonise with the statements regarding Scannlan, ‘son of Colman,’ in
Adamnan’s account. (Reeves’s _Adamnan_, p. 39, note.) Scannlan was a
young man, however, when detained in prison by King Aedh (580), and
might have really lived down to 640.
Footnote 1102:
Aedh. This Aedh is stated to have reigned as monarch of Ireland from
A.D. 568 to 594.
Footnote 1103:
Building. _Cro_; lit. a ‘sty,’ ‘pen,’ or ‘hut.’
Footnote 1104:
Small allowance. _Teirci_; lit. ‘scarcity.’
Footnote 1105:
Collar. _Culpait._ The etymology of this word is given in Cormac’s
Glossary, as _cail-fuit_; _cail_, ‘a defence;’ and _fuit_, ‘cold.’
Duald mac Firbis explains it by _coiléir_, ‘collar.’ See Stokes’s
_Cormac_, p. 33.
Footnote 1106:
Hood. _Att_; properly _at_, from Engl. ‘hat,’ as hood is from
Anglo-Sax. _hod_, Germ. _hut_. Comp. _atcluig_ (glossed ‘galea’); lit.
‘skull-hat,’ or helmet, and _at anach_, (gl. ‘caputiatus’) Stokes’s
_Irish Glosses_, p. 40.
Footnote 1107:
Henceforth. _Iarmotha_; lit. afterwards. In the preface to the _Amra_
in _Leabar Breac_ (p. 238 c), the corresponding expression is _re la_,
‘during its day.’
Footnote 1108:
The poet. Keating says that the poet was St. Molaisse, the person by
whose award Colum Cille was sent into exile. _History of Ireland_;
_reign of Domhnall, son of Aedh_.
Footnote 1109:
In a boat. _In ethar._ _In eirinn_, ‘to Eriu,’ _Leabar Breac_ and
_Yellow Book of Lecan_.
Footnote 1110:
Avenged. _Gu n-aithfed fair_; lit. ‘that he would avenge it on him.’
In the _Leabar Breac_ and _Yellow Book of Lecan_, the corresponding
expression is, _go mairfed é_, ‘that he (Aedh) would kill him.’
Footnote 1111:
Assembly. _Airecht._ The general meaning of the word _airecht_ (deriv.
from _aire_, a ‘chief,’ or ‘leader’) is an assembly, or conference;
but as used here, it might, perhaps, be more properly translated in
the narrower sense of a ‘party.’
Footnote 1112:
Them; _i.e._ Colum Cille and his company. In the preface to the _Amra_
in _Leabar Breac_ and the _Yellow Book of Lecan_, the words used are
_na clerig_, ‘the clerics.’
Footnote 1113:
Men. m̄ (for _mac_), lit. ‘sons,’ or ‘youths.’
Footnote 1114:
Wounded. _Briste_; lit. ‘broken.’
Footnote 1115:
Bells. _Ceolán._ _Ceolán_, the dim. of _ceol_, ‘music,’ is a very
general name for a bell of any size, although glossographers usually
describe it as ‘a small bell.’ But the word _ceolán_ is often met in
connection with the adj. _bec_, ‘little,’ as _ceolán bec_, ‘a little
bell.’—_Book of Lismore_, 117.
Footnote 1116:
Against him. _Fair_; lit. ‘upon him.’
Footnote 1117:
Conall Clogach. ‘Conall of the bells.’ In Irish history he is
generally called the _righ-oinmhid_, or ‘royal simpleton.’
Footnote 1118:
Kingship. This means that Colum Cille declared him disqualified from
succeeding to the kingship.
Footnote 1119:
Bade him welcome. _Do fer failti fris_; lit. ‘gave welcome to him.’
Footnote 1120:
Blessings. _Briathra_; lit. ‘words,’ or ‘promises.’
Footnote 1121:
Fifty. Domhnall only reigned from 628 to 642.
Footnote 1122:
The queen. A. L. has _do Aed_, ‘to Aedh’ (the king). But the copies of
the preface to the _Amra_ in the _Leabar Breac_, and _Yellow Book of
Lecan_, have _don rigain_, ‘to the queen.’
Footnote 1123:
Her son. Conall was the queen’s son, and Domhnall her step-son.
Footnote 1124:
Crane-cleric. _Corr-chlerech._ This contemptuous expression was
probably used in allusion to St. Colum Cille’s tall stature, _alta
proceritas_, as Oswald describes his shade (_Adamnan_, lib. i. cap.
1).
Footnote 1125:
Granted. _Do cedaig_; lit. ‘he allowed,’ ‘consented.’
Footnote 1126:
Cranes, or rather herons. _Cuirr_, pl. of _corr_, a heron.
Footnote 1127:
_Druim-ceta_ (pron. ‘Drum-Ketta’). Dr. Reeves identifies this place
with the mound called the _Mullagh_ (lit. summit) in Roe Park, near
Newtownlimavady, Co. Londonderry.
Footnote 1128:
Crane-work. _Corrsuidhe_, A. L. But the preface in _Lebor na hUidre_
has (better) _Corraigecht_. This word has two meanings. It means,
firstly, the action of a crane (_corr_), and might be rendered
‘crane-ing,’ or screaming like a crane; and in the next place, it
signifies incessant movement, from _corra_, to move. The author
evidently intended to be facetious.
Footnote 1129:
Herons. _Cuirr-lena_; lit. ‘marsh-herons.’
Footnote 1130:
Live still. For many centuries after the date to which the convention
of Druim-Ceta is referred, as tradition states, these two herons
frequented the part of the river Roe, near the place supposed to be
the site of Druim-ceta, or _Dorsum-cete_.
Footnote 1131:
On seeing the cleric. _Oc facsin in clerig_, L. B. Omitted in A. L.
Footnote 1132:
The corresponding Irish words are wanting in A. L.
Footnote 1133:
Will sing. _Do genat_; lit. ‘they will make.’
Footnote 1134:
Cormac. Cormac, son of Art, son of Conn, king of Ireland in the third
century.
Footnote 1135:
Rhetoric. _Rithorig._ In the _Yellow Book of Lecan_, preface, the word
is _rithlerg_, _i.e._ an extemporaneous rhapsody.
Footnote 1136:
Scannlan. See p. 495.
Footnote 1137:
Take off my shoes. _Frithailas m’assa_; lit. ‘will attend my shoes.’
Footnote 1138:
Dubh-regles. Black church, or Black abbey-church. See Colton’s
_Visitation_ (ed. Reeves), pp. 20, 56.
Footnote 1139:
They ... went. _Do imigh siat_, A. L.; _ro imdigset_, L. B. The
_Yellow Book of Lecan_ has _ro imthig_, ‘he went,’ which seems the
more correct, as the subsequent part of the narrative makes no
reference to the angel’s journey to Derry.
Footnote 1140:
Westwards. _Siar._ This is probably an error for _sair_, ‘eastwards,’
as the chancel was doubtless in the eastern part of the church.
Footnote 1141:
Successors. _Fer thinaid_; lit. ‘thy locum-tenens.’ The tradition of
this imprecation is not yet extinct in Scannlan’s country of Ossory;
and some Ossorians even go so far as to say that stuttering is a
characteristic of Scannlan’s descendants.
Footnote 1142:
Enough for three. _Dabach trir_; lit. ‘a vat of three.’
Footnote 1143:
Great bachall. _Mor bachall._ This celebrated crozier, sent with
Scannlan for his protection, is stated to have been subsequently
preserved in the monastery of Durrow, in the King’s County. (Reeves’s
_Adamnan_, p. 324.)
Footnote 1144:
Died. _Ba marb_; lit. ‘was dead.’
Footnote 1145:
Cause; _i.e._ of Colum Cille’s coming to Ireland.
Footnote 1146:
In place of. _Fri laim_; lit. ‘to the hand;’ but idiomatically
signifying ‘instead of,’ or ‘with the approval of.’
Footnote 1147:
Two young boys. In the _Leabar Breac_ and other copies of the _Amra_
Preface the words are _teora mná ocus maccoem óc_; ‘three women and a
young boy.’
Footnote 1148:
Arms. _Na uchd_; lit. ‘into his bosom.’
Footnote 1149:
Rent. _Cain._ This word anciently meant a penal tax, or fine. But in
later times it was used in the sense of ‘tribute.’
Footnote 1150:
Preface. The Preface to the _Amra_ (or Eulogy) he had composed for
Colum Cille.
Footnote 1151:
It; the _Amra_ itself.
Footnote 1152:
Island; _i.e._ Ireland. Here ends the quotation from A. L. which
begins _supra_, p. 494.
Footnote 1153:
Consoling. _Ca comdidnd_; lit. ‘protecting’ or ‘sheltering.’
Footnote 1154:
Toads. _Loscaind._ This word is used to signify toads, frogs, and
other such reptiles. In a tract on the History of the Children of
Israel, in the _Leabar Breac_, the ‘ranæ’ of Exodus, cap. viii., is
rendered by _loscind_, so that we should probably translate ‘frogs’
instead of ‘toads.’
Footnote 1155:
Those brethren; viz. the brethren who were beside Colum Cille in the
_recles_, or church.
Footnote 1156:
_Sabhall._ The word _Sabhall_ is in Irish employed to denote a ‘barn.’
The church of Saul, in the Co. Down, Ireland, has taken its name from
it.
Footnote 1157:
Attendant. _Foss_; which, though used here as a noun, is more usually
employed as an adj., with the meaning ‘resident.’ See O’Donovan’s
_Supplt. to O’Reilly’s Irish Dict._, v. _fos_.
Footnote 1158:
_Garran_, a work-horse or hack. The corresponding word used by Adamnan
is ‘caballus,’ from which comes the mod. Irish _capall_. The old Irish
for ‘garran’ is _gerrán_, which seems derived from _gerrad_, ‘to cut,’
the ‘garran’ being always a ‘cut’ horse.
Footnote 1159:
Colum. This statement, taken from A. L., is not in L. B. or L. It is
found, however, in the _Book of Fenagh_. See Kelly’s edit. (Dublin,
1875), p. 209.
Footnote 1160:
Certain. The orig. of this paragraph and the following one occurs only
in A. L.
Footnote 1161:
Inish-bo-finne: ‘the island of the white cow.’ Now Bophin Island, off
the coast of Mayo. The _Annals of Ulster_ give Bishop Colman’s
‘pausat’ under A.D. 676.
Footnote 1162:
Paganism. _Geinntlighecht_; lit. ‘gentilism.’
Footnote 1163:
Names. _Ainm_; lit. ‘name.’
Footnote 1164:
Would not have. _Nis gebed_; lit. ‘would not take.’
Footnote 1165:
_Protégé._ The word _dalta_, ordinarily used to signify
‘foster-child,’ is also employed as a term of endearment. Adamnan
calls Diarmait ‘minister’ and ‘ministrator.’
Footnote 1166:
[Immediately.] _Fo cedoir._ Om. in L. B. and L.
Footnote 1167:
Utter. _Do gnid_; lit. ‘would make.’
Footnote 1168:
‘Three fifties.’ The Psalms.
Footnote 1169:
In the sea. _Isin liur._ _Liur_ is the abl. of _ler_, ‘the sea.’ But
we should probably understand ‘seashore.’
Footnote 1170:
When. The orig. of this sentence is only found in A. L.
Footnote 1171:
Blow it away. _Conidsetad gaeth_; _i.e._ the mark of his ribs was
imprinted, through his clothing, in the sand, until defaced by the
action of the wind blowing the loose sand over the mark. This stanza
is somewhat different in the Preface to the _Amra_ in _Lebor na
hUidre_.
Footnote 1172:
And. From this down to the bracket on p. 507 is translated from A. L.,
the corresponding Irish being omitted in L. B. and L.
Footnote 1173:
Savoury things. _Ionmar_; the Irish for ‘dripping,’ or ‘seasoning.’
Colgan translates it ‘obsonium’ (_Acta SS._, p. 734).
Footnote 1174:
Kept vigil. _Figlis_; a verb from _figil_, ‘vigil.’ It is the third
sg. pres. indic., but is here used in the pret. sense.
Footnote 1175:
Him. The person here alluded to was probably Judas Iscariot.
Footnote 1176:
Disciple. _Dalta._ A foster-child. See note 1165, p. 505.
Footnote 1177:
Church. Neimedh = nemed (gl. Sacellum.—Zeuss, _Gram. Celt._ 11).
Footnote 1178:
Which the wave frequents. _Gus ataithig tonn_; ‘to which a wave
frequents.’ The allusion in this expression is rather obscure.
Footnote 1179:
Fulness. _Comlantas_; lit. ‘completeness,’ from _comlan_, ‘complete,’
‘perfect.’
Footnote 1180:
Explains. The explanation is not very explanatory, and seems to have
no reference to Colum Cille, unless we may assume that it was intended
to describe the chalices as made of the same materials as the party
(foirend) of Crimthann’s chessmen.
Footnote 1181:
Could take it. _Nosberaidh_, A. L. The reading in the _Amra Lebor na
hUidre_ is _nisbeir_, ‘carries it not.’
Footnote 1182:
Party. _Foirend_; lit. ‘a crew,’ or ‘company.’
Footnote 1183:
_Findruine._ A metal, the constituents of which are not well known.
O’Clery describes it as _prás go n-air-gead buailte_, ‘brass, with
silver hammered on it.’—_Mart. Donegal._ App. to Introduction, xli.
Footnote 1184:
_Cumhals._ A standard of value frequently mentioned in the Brehon Laws
as worth three cows. Here ends the addition from A. L., which begins
with the bracket, p. 505, _supra_.
Footnote 1185:
Of them; _i.e._ of the days that elapsed since St. Colum Cille’s
death.
II.
THE RULE OF SAINT COLUMBA.
_This rule was first printed by Dr. Reeves from a MS. in the Burgundian
Library at Brussels, with a translation by the late Professor O’Curry,
in the Appendix to Primate Colton’s Visitation of Derry, printed for the
Irish Archæological Society. It was again printed in Haddan and Stubbs’
Councils, vol. ii. p. 119. The translation alone is here given._
THE RULE OF COLUM CILLE BEGINNETH.
Be alone in a separate place near a chief city, if thy conscience is not
prepared to be in common with the crowd.
Be always naked in imitation of Christ and the Evangelists.
Whatsoever little or much thou possessest of anything, whether clothing,
or food, or drink, let it be at the command of the senior and at his
disposal, for it is not befitting a religious to have any distinction of
property with his own free brother.
Let a fast place, with one door, enclose thee.
A few religious men to converse with thee of God and His Testament; to
visit thee on days of solemnity; to strengthen thee in the Testaments of
God and the narratives of the Scriptures.
A person too who would talk with thee in idle words, or of the world; or
who murmurs at what he cannot remedy or prevent, but who would distress
thee more should he be a tattler between friends and foes, thou shalt
not admit him to thee, but at once give him thy benediction should he
deserve it.
Let thy servant be a discreet, religious, not tale-telling man, who is
to attend continually on thee, with moderate labour of course, but
always ready.
Yield submission to every rule that is of devotion.
A mind prepared for red martyrdom.
A mind fortified and steadfast for white martyrdom.
Forgiveness from the heart to every one.
Constant prayers for those who trouble thee.
Fervour in singing the office for the dead, as if every faithful dead
was a particular friend of thine.
Hymns for souls _to be sung_ standing.
Let thy vigils be constant from eve to eve, under the direction of
another person.
Three labours in the day, viz., prayer, work, and reading.
The work to be divided into three parts, viz., thine own work, and the
work of thy place, as regards its real wants; secondly, thy share of the
brethren’s _work_; lastly, to help the neighbours, viz., by instruction,
or writing, or sewing garments, or whatever labour they may be in want
of, ut Dominus ait, ‘Non apparebis ante me vacuus.’
Everything in its proper order; Nemo enim coronabitur nisi qui legitime
certaverit.
Follow almsgiving before all things.
Take not of food till thou art hungry.
Sleep not till thou feelest desire.
Speak not except on business.
Every increase which comes to thee in lawful meals, or in wearing
apparel, give it for pity to the brethren that want it, or to the poor
in like manner.
The love of God with all thy heart and all thy strength.
The love of thy neighbour as thyself.
Abide in the Testaments of God throughout all times.
Thy measure of prayer shall be until thy tears come;
Or thy measure of work of labour till thy tears come;
Or thy measure of thy work of labour, or of thy genuflexions, until thy
perspiration often comes, if thy tears are not free.
FINIT.
III.
CATALOGUE OF RELIGIOUS HOUSES, at the end of the Chronicle of HENRY OF
SILGRAVE, _c._ A.D. 1272, so far as it relates to Scotland.
_This Catalogue was printed by Mr. J. Stevenson from Cott. MS. Cleopat.
A. xii. fol. 56, in his notes to the Scalachronica, edited for the
Bannatyne and Maitland Clubs, pp. 241, 242; and again in Haddan and
Stubbs’ Councils, vol. ii. pp. 181, 182. The monasteries in ‘Laudian’
are omitted._
IN SCOTIA.
Episcopatus Sancti Andree { Canonici Nigri.
{ Keledei.
Abbatia Dunfermelin S. Trinitatis Monachi Nigri.
Abbatia Streuelin S * * * Canonici Nigri.
Prioratus de May; de Readinge Monachi Nigri.
Prioratus in Insula S. Columbe Canonici Nigri.
Abbatia de Lundres S * * * { Monachi Nigri de
{ Tyron.
Prioratus de Pert S * * * Moniales Nigræ.
Abbatia de Scone S * * * Canonici Nigri.
Prioratus de Nostinot S * * * Canonici Nigri.
Abbatia de Cupre Monachi Albi.
Abbatia Aberbrothoc Monachi de Tyron.
Episcopatus Dunkeldre S. Columkille { Canonici Nigri.
{ Keledei.
Episcopatus de Brechin Keledei.
Episcopatus de Aberde[n]
Episcopatus de Mureue Canonici Seculares.
Prioratus de Hurtard { Monachi Nigri de
{ Dunferml.
Abbatia de Kinlos Monachi Albi.
Episcopatus de Ros Keledei.
Episcopatus de Glascu Canonici Seculares.
Abbatia Sancti Kinewini Monachi de Tyron.
Episcopatus de Galeweye
Abbatia de Candida Casa Monachi Albi.
Abbatia M Monachi Nigri.
Episcopatus de Du[m]blin Keledei.
Episcopatus de Katenesio Keledei.
Episcopatus de Argiul Keledei.
Abbatia in Insula (Iona) Keledei.
END OF VOL. II.
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Transcriber’s Note
A nunber of footnotes are referred to in multiple places in the text
using the same number. On p. 485, two phrases in a single note (now note
1006) were referred to by two separate references, and both are now
given as 1006.
The ecclesiastical leader Conn na-mbocht (d. 1061) appears with and
without hyphens, as Conn _na-bocht_ (p. 342) and Conn _nabocht_ (p.
252). Modern references refer to him as Conn-na-bocht, or Conn na
mBocht. Both spellings are retained.
On p. 68, a quote from Rev. William Reeves was mispunctuated, and has
been corrected. See the table below for details.
Names frequently appear with some variation of spelling, and given the
fluidity of vowels in Gaelic, Anglic, and Latin, these have usually been
retained. That said, the place-name ‘Lanfortin’ appears only once as
‘Lonfortin’ and while it seems to have been in use at the time, is
assumed to be an error here.
The text mentions ‘Brude, son of _Dargart_’ repeatedly, save for three
times on p. 259. The first has ‘Dergart’ in the author’s voice,
‘Dergard’ in a quoted passage, and ‘Dergert’ in a footnote on that page.
The first has been corrected, but the quoted instances were left as
printed.
Errors deemed most likely to be the printer’s have been corrected, and
are noted here. The references in the table below are to the page and
line in the original.
There are a number of instances of quotations being unclosed or
otherwise mispunctuated. Closure is sometimes not obvious, and where
possible the original sources were consulted. Skene often begins with
quotation and continues in paraphrase without clearly marking such.
Where it is not clear, these have been corrected and noted as
‘Probable.’
An extended quote from Bede’s Life of St. Cuthbert (pp. 216-27)
mishandled embedded quotation marks, which have been corrected.
3.36 in north Hy-Faelan,[’] Added.
5.27 ad Catholicam fidem dirigit.[’] Added.
6.34 till the empire was broken up[,/.] Replaced.
20.26 gives of himself[ ]in these documents Inserted.
27.25 in the territory of the Britons.[’] Added.
29.6 not satisfied with[t / t]his Replaced.
30.26 [‘/“]What would be given Replaced.
31.1 faith in Ireland after Patrick.[”]’ Inserted.
33.30 extended their pos[s]essions Inserted.
37.24 and one at L[o/a]nfortin Replaced.
57.7 The prim[i]tive Irish monastery Restored.
61.36 procurante perducti sunt.[’] Added.
68.5 [‘]in whom the tenancy of the lands Added.
68.8 [‘]_Ecclesiastica progenies_,[’] Removed.
68.26 the abbacy taken (in their order).[’] Added.
70.24 Co[cn/nc]had went to Armagh Transposed.
80.20 which professes[s] to be a chronological Removed.
digest
120.29 over his grave.[’] Added.
151.12 [‘/“]To our lords and most dear brethren Replaced.
151.29 we were eating.[”]’ Added.
145.4 clean linen cloths[’] Added.
149.20 [‘/“]As thy devout wish Replaced.
157.36 protestatus est.[’] Added.
165.28 nor question their sanctity.[’] Added.
167.29 _Inisboufinde_,[’] Added.
176.18 [‘]Naiton, king of the Picts Added.
181.18 ‘O utinam si sic esset,[’] Added.
181.26 being solemnly sung.[’] Removed.
184.3 [‘]next morning Kentigern Added.
188.22 [‘]some cleared and levelled Added.
194.28 is too graphic to be om[m]itted Omitted.
196.4 It[,] must, however, have reached Removed.
206.20 and became a solitary.[’] Added.
202.30 with the rest of the brethren;[’] Added.
213.9 from a college of monks.[’] Added.
216.14 the whole kingdom of the Picts.[’] Added.
216.25 [‘/“]Keep peace,[’/,” he said, [‘/“]one with Replaced.
another,
216.34 conversation.[’/”] Replaced.
217.1 [‘/“]But with those that err Replaced.
217.4 have no communion.[’/”] Replaced.
237.1 from the world;[’] Added.
254.2 it is called [‘/“]insula viventium,[’/”] Replaced
254.3 the island of the living.[’] Added.
259.2 Brude, son of D[e/a]rgart Replaced.
261.12 of the twel[f]th century Inserted.
283.25 was this Cilline Droichteach;[’] Added.
283.33 princeps Ego, mortu[n/u]s est. Inverted.
291.36 the term ‘templum,[’] Added.
335.4 So that Dun is his blessed church.[’] Added.
379.27 Two part[ies] with rival abbots. Restored.
383.12 was held on the [the ]25th of September Removed.
398.34 Suppression of _Keled[e]i_ of Abernethy. Inserted.
409.8 we find [‘]in 1544 Archibald Campbell Probable.
446.1 to the church of Deer;[’] Added.
469.29 after his example.[’] Added.
472.36 ‘few [or many[]];’ Added.
474.30 ‘through life everlast[t]ing,’ Removed.
485.38 gl. ‘fidus[’] Added.
486.39 siglum for fifty [.l.][)]; Added.
501.7 Scann[al/lan] then lifted the vessel Replaced.
509.32 Mr. J. Stevenson from Co[ll/tt]. MS. Replaced.
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