FROM THK ' BOOK OF DEER.'
TIE CELTIC CHURCH IN S FLAND; ' ,
OF THE CHk! IN SCOTLAND DOWN tO
! . ??T.
JOHN DOWDEN, D.D.
. R THE DIRECTION OF THE TRA<
LONDON : SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KN
NORT: • -, CHARING CROS
« 43, QUEEN VICTORIA STK.EET, E.C.
BRIGHTON: 135, NORTH STREET. NFW YORK: E. & J. B. YOU 1894.
THE CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND; '
BEING AN INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF THE
CHRISTIAN CHURCH IN SCOTLAND DOWN TO
THE DEATH OF SAINT MARGARET.
JOHN DOWDEN, D.D.,
BISHOP OF EDINBURGH.
PUBLISHED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE TRACT COMMITTEE.
LONDON : SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN
NORTHUMBERLAND AVENUE, CHARING CR 43, QUEEN VICTORIA STREET, E.G.
BRIGHTON : 135, NORTH STREET NEW YORK: E. & J. B. YOUNG 1894.
KN
RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED, LONDON & BUNGAY.
PREFACE.
THE following pages, some of which were read in a series of Lectures delivered in the Chapter House of St. Mary's Cathedral, Edinburgh, are intended chiefly for those who, while possessing such general information in regard to the history of Scotland as may be reasonably looked for in persons of education, have not made any special acquaintance with the early history of the Church in this country. I have also, however, had in view the interests of Theological Students, and those of the Clergy and others, who may be induced to investigate the subject more minutely for them selves ; and I have accordingly treated with some fullness the original sources of our knowledge in respect to the Celtic Church in Scotland, and have attempted to estimate their value.
For the sake of both classes of readers, I have in many places thought it an advantage to allow the original records to tell their own story. A modern rehandling of the contents of the ancient documents is, no doubt, to a very large extent inevitable, but it is not unattended with loss ; and as far as it is
VI PREFACE.
feasible there is a real gain in coming, so far as may be, into direct contact with our historical sources.
The true character of the episcopate in the Celtic Church, having been long the subject of an animated controversy, not yet wholly extinct, has been dealt with at a greater length in Chapter XIV. than could otherwise be reasonably claimed for it.
It is hoped that the chapter on the archaeology of the Celtic Church may serve to interest some who may be impatient of the treatment of merely documentary evidence.
The fact that the early chapters were delivered as Lectures may be offered as some excuse for the somewhat colloquial style in which they are cast.
I have to express my thanks to Rev. H. J. Lawlor, B.D., Senior Chaplain of Edinburgh Cathedral, for the care he has bestowed upon the revision of the proofs, and for many valuable suggestions ; but it would be unfair to him to hold him in any degree responsible for the statements of fact and opinion in the following pages. My thanks are also due to the Rev. Edmund McClure for the valuable Appendix IV. on the epigraph of one of the Kirkmadrine stones.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
The Roman Possession of Scotland — The Christian Monumental Sculptures at Kirkmadrine, Wigtonshire —The Native Peoples — Their Religion — The Labours of St. Ninian ............ p. u
CHAPTER II. St. Patrick a Child of the British Church in Scotland
P. 33 CHAPTER III.
St. Palladius, and his Disciples, St. Ternan and St. Serf —The Origin of the Myth of a non-Episcopal Church in Ancient Scotland ............ p. 40
CHAPTER IV. St. Mungo (or Kentigern) ......... A 49
CHAPTER V.
The Historical Character of the Documentary Authorities for the Lives of St. Ninian and St. Mungo p. 59
CHAPTER VI. St. Columba ............... p. So
CHAPTER VII.
lona : its Physical Features — The Constitution of the Columban "Family" — Life in the Brotherhood at lona .................. p. 122
CHAPTER VIII.
The Historical Character of Adamnan's Life of St. Columba: The Miraculous Element ... p. 135
Vlll CONTENTS.
CHAPTER IX.
St. Adamnan — lona in the Eighth and Ninth Centuries
P> H4 CHAPTER X.
Influence of lona in the South : St. Cuthbert in Lo thian p. 157
CHAPTER XL
The End of the Columban Episcopate in Northumbria — The Diocese of Lindisfarne north of the Tweed — Melrose — Coldingham — Abercorn — The See of Can dida Casa as an English Foundation ... p. 177
CHAPTER XII.
The Church in Scotland in the Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh Centuries — The Culdees ... p. 193
CHAPTER XIII.
The Faith and Ritual of the Celtic Church—The Tonsure and Easter Computation ... ... ... p. 208
CHAPTER XIV. The Episcopate in the Celtic Church ... ... p. 250
CHAPTER XV.
St. Margaret of Scotland /. 267
CHAPTER XVI.
The Archaeology of the Celtic Church in Scotland in its Historical Relations p. 292
APPENDICES.
1. The Alt-its of St. Columba A321
II. The Legend of St. Regulus 329
III. St. Margaret's Gospel Book 331
IV. The Kirkmadrine Epigraph 333
Index
335
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
1. Representation of St. Luke from the Book of Deer.
The square ornament on the breast of the figure has been supposed to represent a case, containing the Gospel, suspended from the neck ... Frontispiece
2. Sculptured Stone at Kirkmadrine, Wigtonshire p. 17
3. Remains of the ancient Celtic Church on Eilean-na-
Naoimh, from a photograph in the possession of Dr. J. Anderson, Keeper of the National Museum of the Antiquaries of Scotland /-Hj
4. Double Bee-hive Cell on Eilean-na-Naoimh, from a
photograph in the possession of Dr. J. Anderson
P> 293
5. (a) The Bell of St. Ninian (hammered iron). (£) The
Bell of St. Fillan (cast bronze) p. 309
6. The " Bachul More." The metal covering has almost
disappeared, many rivets are still visible ... p. 313
THE EARLY ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY OF SCOTLAND.
Stanford^ Geoq^Estab.
THE
CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.
CHAPTER I.
THE ROMAN POSSESSION OF SCOTLAND — THE CHRIS TIAN MONUMENTAL SCULPTURES AT KIRKMADRINE, WIGTONSHIRE THE LABOURS OF ST. NINIAN.
WITH a view to our understanding aright the early history of Christianity in Scotland, it is well to recall to mind that the present boundary line between Scot land and England had no existence in the days of the Roman occupation of Britain, nor indeed for many centuries after the last of the Roman legions had quitted the country for ever. The whole island as far as the line between the Firths of Forth and Clyde was known as Britain : north of that line was the region known as Caledonia, or Alban.
The Roman conquest of the island, so fruitful in the beneficent results of civilization, was not per manently effective in the most northern part. In Edinburgh we are close by the furthest outposts of the Empire. The line of forts originally constructed
12 THE CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.
by Agricola, and strengthened in the reign of An toninus Pius, some fifty years later, by the great rampart stretching from Borrowstowness on the Forth to Kilpatrick on the Clyde, marked for a time the practical limits of the Roman occupation. Occasional military demonstrations, partial and temporary con quests, marchings, counter-marchings, the construction of roads, and encampments of troops in the regions north of the wall might overawe, but could not civi lize, the barbarian tribes. In Scotland, north of the wall, there are to be found only some few scanty indications of the existence of Roman civilization.
The rampart of Antonine was not continuously, or for any very lengthened period, maintained as a complete barrier against the barbarian warriors of the north. The northern boundary of the Roman occu pation shifted backwards and forwards. We have no reason to suppose that the part of Scotland south of the line that joins the Firths of Forth and Clyde was for any great length of time continuously subjected to Roman control and the beneficent influence of Roman civilization. For long stretches of time the northern boundary was drawn back from the wall of Antonine to the defences of the far greater work — far greater in every sense — the wall of Hadrian, extending between Tynemouth and the Solway, whose massive remains still fill the visitor with wonder, and convey to him a sense not otherwise to be gained in this country of the vast resources and vast power of the Roman Empire. It is south of this southern wall we must look for such remains of civilized life as
THE ROMAN POSSESSION OF SCOTLAND. 13
need for their growth a long-sustained feeling of security.
It was not till approaching the time of the final withdrawal of the Roman troops from Britain that by a great effort of an able commander the debatable land between the two walls — the scene of many con tests between the barbarians and the soldiers of the Empire — was again subdued, and formed (A.D. 368) into the fifth Province of Roman Britain, Valentia by name. Unhappily, at longest, only some forty years were now to pass before the urgent necessities of the Empire nearer her centre and capital de manded, for her own protection, the recall of the Roman troops from Britain. In that interval there was little time for doing anything considerable toward the civilizing or Christianizing of the half-subjugated and ever-turbulent British tribes between the walls. South of the southern wall, the wall of Hadrian,; when subsequently the Saxons and Angles ravaged the land, it was the invasion of a Christian country by a heathen foe. During the Roman occupation, : Roman Britain, speaking generally, had been Chris- ' tianized. But, in default of positive evidence, it would be hazardous to venture on any large infer ences from this fact as to the spread of Christianity, even in that part of Scotland where Roman influence was most felt. It is, however, surely not unreason able to conjecture that the Roman Christians in the northern settlements, when opportunities offered from time to time, would not have been so entirely de ficient in missionary zeal as to make no effort to win
14 THE CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.
to Christ the natives with whom they were brought in contact.
The researches of archaeologists have not dis-
r covered any Roman remains in Scotland that can with absolute confidence be assigned to the Christianity of
/ the Roman occupation ; but there exist some two or three that may possibly belong to that early period. The most ancient Christian memorials in Scotland
• (indeed perhaps we may say in Great Britain) 1 are certain monumental stones in Wigtonshire. Their characteristics are such as place it beyond question that, if they do not actually belong to the period of the Roman occupation, they can be removed from it only by a short interval, and really represent Romano- British Christianity. The forms of the incised letters of the inscriptions, and the peculiar symbol that com bines the sacred monogram with the penal cross, which is well known to students of Christian archae ology, and is supposed to have been introduced about the time of Constantine,2 are most certainly of a
1 "Nowhere in Great Britain is there a Christian record so ancient as the grey, weather-beaten column that now serves as the gatepost of the deserted churchyard of Kirk Madrine .... Long may it stand as the first authentic trace of Christian civilization in these islands." — Dean Stanley's Lectures on the History of the Church of Scotland, p. 85. Uncertainty still attaches to the ecclesiastical character of the so-called " Church " at the Roman town of Silchester. The Kirkmadrine stones have, since Dean Stanley wrote, been placed under shelter from the weather.
2 See Mr. R. St. John Tyrwhitt's article " Monogram" in Smith and Cheetham's Dictionary of Christian Antiquities. Mr. Tyr- whitt notices that this -P is the only form of monogram found in the Vatican and Sinaitic MSS. of the Bible.
MONUMENTAL SCULPTURES AT KIRKMADRINE. 15
totally different type from the familiar Celtic crosses and Celtic inscriptions so numerous in Ireland and the highlands of Scotland where Irish influence after wards prevailed. Indeed, the sacred monogram is said not to occur even once among the many hundred early Christian monuments in which Ireland is so rich.1 On the monuments at Kirkmadrine in Wigtonshire, to which I refer, the monogram is surrounded by a circle, which, though it may have been merely decor ative, more probably possessed a symbolical signifi cance. The circle was taken in early Christian times to suggest the idea of Eternity as being without beginning and without end ; and in this connection it is very interesting to observe that the Kirkmadrine stones bear also the familiar symbols A and ft), expressing, in a different way, a similar thought. A monumental inscription at Milan, in which a circle similarly surrounds the sacred monogram, expresses in a Latin couplet the thought suggested by this combination. I may sufficiently render the verses by the two lines —
"Endless, beginningless, this mystic ring Circles the names of the Most Highest King." 2
Such was the faith of the Christian Church in Scotland as declared in its earliest Christian monu ments : — Christ— Christ crucified — was the first and
1 Anderson's Scotland in Early Christian Times, second series, p. 253.
2 Circulus hie summi comprendit nornina regis Quern sine principio, et sine fine vides.
Cited by Anderson, ut supra.
l6 THE CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.
the last, the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and / the end.
But there is another fact borne testimony to by these, the oldest Christian monuments of Scotland. The inscription on one of them shows it to be a monument marking the graves of two priests. " Here lie," so runs the epigraph, " holy and eminent priests, namely, Viventius and Mavorius."1
HICIACENT
SCIETPRAE
CIPVISACER
DOTESIDES[T]
VIVENTIVS
ETMAVORIVS
" Sacerdotes " is the term used, a word that came early into use, and was sometimes employed with reference to both of the highest orders of the ministry — those of Bishops and Presbyters.2
These sculptured stones of Kirkmadrine carry us back, without doubt, far beyond the days of St. Columba and the Irish mission, up even to the days of the Roman, or Romano-British, Church. Perhaps we shall not be astray if we attribute these monuments to the Church of St. Ninian, and to a date before the
1 The inscription is thus given in Stuart's Sculptured Stones of Scotland.
2 It was found necessary, when it was sought to be precise, to use, when referring to Presbyters, such forms as secundi sacerdotes, or secundi ordinis sacerdotes (St. Leo), or minoris ordinis sacer- dotes (St. Gregory the Great). Hence the pracipui sacerdotes of the inscription may conceivably have been bishops. Summits sacerdos, as is well known, was used in that sense. Id est is so unusual in epigraphs of this kind that I am tempted to conjecture that IDES is the whole or part of a proper name. See App. IV.
HICIACE/^
SGIETl?iAE
^,
l8 THE CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.
departure of the Roman legions from the island. These stones, and another ancient cross at Whithorn, possessing some of the same characteristic features, belong to the region Christianized or presided over by the first Bishop whose name has a place in the authentic history of Scotland. They belong to the region where St. Ninian, himself a child of the Romano-British Church, laboured a century and a half before Columba landed on lona.
Before dealing with the history of St. Ninian, it is desirable to say something of the native population of Scotland at the time of his missionary labours. It is now very generally admitted that the whole native population of the island was made up of various nations or tribes, differing from one another, and it might be differing very widely, in dialect, but all of the one great Celtic stock. The subject of the origin, the race, and the language of the Picts presented in former days a wider battle-ground for the speculations of antiquarians than it does at present. If it be true that controversy upon the subject is not absolutely at rest, it is certain that it would be no longer possible to balance the names of eminent authorities against one another on this side and on that, as was done upon a memorable evening, vivid I am sure in the minds of many of my readers, when the tempers of Sir Arthur Wardour and worthy Mr. Jonathan Oldbuck were so severely tried over the great Pictish question at the dinner-table at Monkbarns.1 There is at the present
1 In The Antiquary of Sir Walter Scott.
NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN PICTS. iy
day a substantial consensus among the most dis tinguished specialists that the Picts were a Celtic people, and the prevailing belief seems to be that the heathen and barbarous Pictish tribes north of the wall of Antonine were of essentially the same race as the Britons, who, south of the wall, had received some tincture of the civilization and of the new faith of their Roman conquerors.1
The Picts, or tribes north of the Firths of Forth and Clyde, were divided into two great clans or kingdoms, distinguished as the Northern and Southern Picts, and separated from one another by the great mountain range that crosses Scotland from the south-west to the north-east, and terminates in the Grampians. The Northern Picts may be regarded as occupying the country corresponding to the modern counties of Caithness, Sutherland, Ross, Inverness, Nairn, Elgin, Banff, and Aberdeen ; while Kincardine, Forfar, Perth, Fife, and the other counties north of the P'orth, were in the possession of the Southern Picts. But beside these two larger sections of the Picts, at the time of St. Ninian there may have already existed a smaller settlement of this people in the out-of-the-way corner of Galloway, corresponding to the present county of Wigton and part of Kirkcudbright. They certainly occupied this region at a later date. If any of the Scots from Ireland had at this early period possessed themselves of any part of this country, their occupancy was confined for the most part to the
1 It is more open to question whether the Picts belonged to the Cymric or the Gaelic branch of the race.
20 THE CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.
islands and highlands of the western coast, where, at a later time, we find them in large numbers.
This may not be an unsuitable place for stating the fact, and emphasizing it, that the names Scots and Scotia were in very early times used exclusively of the Irish and of Ireland. Indeed, for six or seven centuries after the time of Ninian, by the word Scots was meant the Irish of Ireland, or the Irish settlers on the west coast of what is now called Scotland. " It is not safe," writes Dr. Hill Burton, "to count that the word Scot must mean a native of present Scotland, when the period dealt with is earlier than the middle of the twelfth century."1 This fact, now universally acknowledged, passed out of sight after the name Scotia or Scotland had been transferred to the country that is now so called ; and much confusion of thought was thereby caused to several of the earlier historians of Scotland, whose ignorance of this truth made their interpretation of the early documents extremely per plexing, and, indeed, involved them in many absurdi ties. We shall have occasion later on to refer again to the confusion thus caused.
It is strange that among the many lives of missionary saints in Scotland we can obtain so very little informa tion as to the character of the heathenism which prevailed among the early inhabitants of the northern parts of Britain. Caesar's account of the religion of the inhabitants of Gaul and of Britain, so constantly appealed to, seems to me to import into the beliefs of
1 Hill Burton's History of Scotland, vol. i., p. 207. For ample proof, see Skene's Celtic Scotland, vol. i,, pp. 137, 398.
MYTHOLOGICAL BEINGS. 21
the people a developed mythology which is not to be gathered from subsequent documents. Skene (Celtic Scotland, vol. ii., p. 109 jy.) investigates the question with his usual carefulness, and he comes to the conclu sion that the principal objects of popular belief were "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." The Stdhe, which in later days degenerated into " fairies," were, according to some of the ancient writers, demons, sometimes appearing in the form of men and offering to show " secrets and places of happiness."
Recent travels in Africa present us with forms of heathenism which seem to me to bear some con siderable resemblance to the heathenism of Ireland and northern Britain at the time of the conversion of the people to Christianity. For example, in Uganda we are told that the real objects of such worship as pre vails are the lubari, demons, or spirits of thunder, storm, rain, etc., and especially the great lubari of the lake, the Nyanza. In Uganda, as in many other of the surrounding districts, there does not appear to be any idolatry proper. And among the Celtic people of Britain and Ireland, though there are occasional notices that show us that idols were not wholly un known, they seem to play a comparatively unimportant part in the religious life of the people. The Druids
22 THE CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.
again figure much more as diviners, sorcerers, or medicine-men than as priests. They could do strange things by spells and incantations. " They could bring snow on the plain, . . . they could cover the land with sudden darkness, . . . they could, with the charm called the * Fluttering Wisp/ strike their un happy victim with lunacy, and would even promise to make the earth swallow him up."1 Savage and bloody rites to propitiate the evil powers were not unknown. The religion of our forefathers was indeed a religion of darkness and fear.
I have not come across any certain notice of the existence of idolatry (using the word in the sense of the religious worship of images) among the heathen of Scotland, but it would be rash to deny its exist ence, as we can scarcely doubt that, beside other glimpses, there is some foundation for the story, re lated in the Tripartite Life, that St, Patrick saw " the chief idol of Ireland, Cenn Cruaich, covered with gold and silver, and twelve other idols about it, covered with brass." *
And in the certainly genuine Confession of St. Patrick we find him speak of the existence of idols (immunda idohi) in Ireland. Nor do I feel entirely certain that the rude naked female figure in wood, nearly five feet in height, with eyes of quartz pebbles, discovered ( 1 88 1 ) in a peat-moss at Ballachulish, in Argyllshire,
1 Bishop Healy, Insula Sanctorum ft Doctorum, p. 4.
a See the discussion in Rhys' Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as illustrated by Celtic Heathendom \Hibbsrt Lectures, 1886), p. 200 sq.
LIFE OF NINIAN. 23
may not be really an idol deity of the early Celtic inhabitants.1
We may now return to relate what is known of the history of St. Ninian.
The earliest and most trustworthy authority for any facts relating to the life of Ninian is Venerable Bede,2 whose incidental notice, though limited to a few lines, will be reasonably reckoned far more valuable than the more elaborate work of Ninian's professed bio grapher, Aelred, a monk of Rievaulx, in Yorkshire, writing some seven hundred years after the events he professes to relate. Aelred, it is true, claims to have made use of an earlier life of his hero ; but, though this were so, the character of his narrative is such as to make it impossible to accept much of it as his torical. If Aelred is not primarily responsible for all the absurdities it contains, the earlier biographer must bear his share of the discredit that now attaches to such a work. It was doubtless regarded as a precious record in its day. We, of this age, would much prefer even a very few commonplace particulars, such, for instance, as would tell us something about the books St. Ninian read or the journeys he made, or, indeed, about the food he ate and the clothes he wore,
1 This figure is now placed in the National Museum of Anti quities of Scotland, Edinburgh. (KL. 53, in the Catalogue.) Sir Robert Christison discusses the nature of this figure in the Proceedings of the Society of Scottish A ntiquaries (i 880-81), and shows reasons for thinking that the image may rather be a Scandinavian idol. The Norsemen were known in the neigh bourhood of Ballachulish, and figures not unlike it, and believed to be idols, have been found in Scandinavia.
- Eccl. Hist., lib. iii. 4.
24 THE CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.
to the most brilliant firework display of his miracles. Ael red's Life of St. Ninian was a deliberately con structed eloge, written at the desire of the ecclesiastics of Candida Casa in honour of its founder. Now at any period an eloge must be taken with caution ; but an eloge written in a credulous age upon a saint who died many centuries before, and whose fame it was of much practical importance and pecuniary value to maintain and extend, deserves a special scrutiny.
If Aelred did not invent, it is only too likely that he accepted with open mouth and in perfect good faith the stories told by the earlier writer. Some of the legends related possess a certain poetic prettiness, and some of them may be construed as having a moral attached to them, and thus prove attractive to people who are not over-scrupulous as to whether a tale is true, provided it be what they call "edifying." But for myself I shall confess at once that I am im patient of the prodigious and fabulous, and demand a large accumulation of evidence before I can give it another designation, or feel myself spiritually benefited by it.
The main facts of the life of St. Ninian, as they have been derived from these two sources — Bede and Aelred — and have been commonly accepted after the sifting processes of modern historical criticism, are the following. Ninian was a Briton, born, as is conjectured, about the year 350. He belonged to a district on the shores of the Solway ; whether on the northern or southern side is uncertain. His father, who appears to have been a man of rank and author-
NTNIAN'S EARLY TRAINING. 25
ity — perhaps a regulus or tribal chieftain — was a ' Christian ; and Ninian early received Christian bap- i tism. He was from his youth a diligent student of Holy Scriptures, and as he grew up he expressed the strongest desire to visit Rome with a view to gaining a fuller knowledge of Divine truth. We may remark in passing that at that time, while the Empire was as yet unbroken by the invasions of the barbarians, a journey from the home of Ninian by the Sol way, along the great military and postal roads, through Britain and Gaul to Rome, could have been per formed with perfect orderliness, ease, and safety. He seems to have reached the capital during the epis copate of Damasus, who held the see of Rome from the year 366 to the year 384. We possess copious • materials derived from the writings of his contem porary, Jerome, and other sources that would enable us to reconstruct for ourselves the surroundings, ecclesiastical and secular, of the young Briton during his stay in the great capital of the West. But con fining ourselves to the outline of the facts of his history, we learn from Bede that at Rome he was regularly instructed in the faith and the mysteries of religion. The wish felt by Ninian to receive his training at Rome was as natural as would be the desire of some intelligent and eager Kaffir youth from our South African mission field, to gain the advan tages of the theological training that might be had at Oxford or Cambridge, or some other of the centres of Anglican church-life at home. And we can also readily credit the statements of his biographer that he
26' THE CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.
spent in Rome many years, and was, in the end, 1 consecrated to the episcopal office by the Bishop of Rome himself, and sent back to carry on the work of missionary and pastor in his native land. On his return journey through Gaul, it is related that he was attracted by the fame of St. Martin of Tours — that from him, or; leaving, he procured masons whom he might take with him to build a church, after the approved ecclesiastical style, in the district where he was about to labour. On his return home he fixed his place of abode, or, rather, his centre of missionary work, at Leukophibia, a place at or near what is now the little town and royal burgh of Whithorn in Wigton- shire. Here he built his church of stone ; and in a style to which the Britons were unaccustomed. This building subsequently gave its name of Candida Casa, or White House, to the bishopric.1
Where chronological guides are so very few, we eagerly seize on the statement that while building this church Ninian heard of the death of his friend Martin, bishop of Tours, and that under his name he dedicated the structure to the glory of God. The death of the great bishop of Tours is now generally assigned to the end of the year 397. 2 Beside labour ing in the district of Galloway and, not improbably, in
1 Bede says nothing about procuring masons from St. Martin, but only that the church was built of stone, in a manner unusual with the Britons.
" Nov. nth. Well known in Scotland as the term-day "Martinmas." As a help to memory, it may be recalled that 200 years later, in 597, another Roman missionary, Augustine • of Canterbury, landed in the south of England.
NINIAN S MISSIONARY WORK. 27
the district that includes what is now Cumberland and Westmoreland, Ninian carried on his missionary work among the great body of the southern Picts inhabiting the middle parts of Scotland south' of the Grampians. His labours were attended with success ; the heathen renounced their superstition, and ac cepted the religion of Christ. It is further told us that he ordained presbyters, consecrated bishops, organized the Church, and divided the country into ecclesiastical districts.1 There is, to my mind, no thing in itself improbable in this statement of Aelred's. Ninian's training was in Roman ways of thought, and the ecclesiastical organization of settled churches, like those of Italy, with which he was familiar, may well have suggested the attempt to effect something similar at home. And that the diocesan system, if estab lished, did not long maintain itself if it were, instead of being gradually extended as success might warrant, given rather a nominal than a real existence, is no more than might be expected, when we consider the wild turbulence of the age and people, and the too speedy relapsing into heathenism of their main body.
While Ninian was absent from Britain, the with drawal of the Roman troops by the usurper Maximus left the country exposed to one of the most formid able of the incursions of the Picts, who were now joined by the Scots from Ireland. It was not till the year after Ninian's return that the northern wall was
1 Vita Niniani, cap. vi. Whether the word parochia is here used in the sense of bishopric, or in its more modern sense, is uncertain.
28 THE CELTIC CHURCH TN SCOTLAND.
recovered, and a legion sent to Britain to protect it. It would need a greater knowledge of the circum stances than we possess to enable us to feel entirely confident that Ninian's difficulties were enhanced by this state of things when he entered on his missionary labours among the Picts. But one can hardly imagine that the Picts would not, more especially at that moment, have looked with keen suspicion on one who was so thoroughly associated with the religion of the hostile power of Rome.
In the central and south-western parts of what is modern Scotland, and in the west of northern England, Ninian laboured for many years. He died and was buried at Whithorn ; but the exact date (i6th Sept., 432) commonly assigned for his death has no certain basis of authority.
It is in a very high degree probable that the mon astic system was introduced into northern Britain by St. Ninian, and that to him the great monastery which afterwards flourished at Whithorn owed its foundation. To this monastery, till destroyed by Saxon invaders, both Welsh and Irish students resorted in great numbers.
There has been among some historians in this country a foolish exhibition of rooted prejudice in the dislike shown by them to acknowledge the in debtedness of the British Church to Rome. A wider knowledge of ecclesiastical history and ecclesiastical literature would have shown that there was perhaps no Church in Christendom more free from doctrinal corruptions than the Church of Rome at the period of
BRITAIN AND THE CHURCH OF ROME. 29
which we are speaking. As a friend of mine has sometimes put it, paradoxically, to audiences who were not likely to misunderstand him, the Pope was then a Protestant ; or, to express oneself with more accuracy, though more diffusely, the Bishops of Rome had not then put forward the monstrous pre tensions to universal jurisdiction that appear in later days, nor had the doctrines which they inculcated yet taken the unscriptural and uncatholic shapes that some of them assumed in mediaeval times. There is certainly everything to be grateful for, and nothing to resent, in the interest shown by the Bishop of Rome in the Church of the Roman settlements in Britain, and in missionary effort among the heathen on the borders of what were, or had recently been, Roman possessions.
The varying fortunes of Ninian's foundation may here be briefly sketched. After the death of the founder (though of the Monastery we get occasional glimpses), the history of the See is enveloped in mist and darkness for the long space of three hundred years. On the conquest of the British kingdom of Strathclyde by the Angles, Candida Casa again emerges into light ; and what is apparently an entirely new succession of bishops takes its origin in A.D. 731. But after some seven or eight occupants of the bishopric, whose names have come down to us, we again lose hold of the record amid the violence and bloodshed of that turbulent and unhappy period. At the instance of King David I., aided by the Lord of Galloway, the bishopric was (1126) once more
30 THE CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.
erected, and with the king's sanction made one of the suffragan sees of York. The ecclesiastical dis tribution of the country, though, for the sake of convenience, tending to follow the lines of change in civil government, in this as in other instances afforded by Scottish history, exhibited an adhesion to ancient boundaries that only slowly gave way.1 When St. Andrews was erected (1472) into a metropolitical see by Pope Sixtus IV., the bishopric of Candida Casa was, in spite of the protests of the Archbishop of York, finally removed from English authority, and remained a suffragan see of St. Andrews until it was, in 1491, subjected to the see of Glasgow, on the latter being raised to the archiepiscopal dignity.
We know, on the authority of Bede, that the body of St. Ninian was interred in his own church at Candida Casa. The possession of such venerable and highly-valued relics in the course of years brought crowds of pilgrims, of different countries, and of all ranks, to the remote corner where was situated the shrine of the saint. Even in days of war, the English or Irish pilgrim was sometimes officially secured protection during a visit prompted by so excellent a motive as devotion to St. Ninian. If Whithorn were not earlier visited by royal personages (as the Scottish historian, Boece, would have us believe), certainly the good Queen Margaret, wife of
1 "In 1214 the Bishop of Candida Casa received pay from the cmtoiles of the see of York for taking charge of the spiritu alities during the vacancy of the see. " — Bp. Forbes, Historians of Scotland, vol. v., p. xlix.
NINIAN'S POWER IN SCOTLAND. 31
James III., made a solemn pilgrimage to the place in 1473 ; while the gallant James IV., who fell at Flodden, moved perhaps by a just remorse for the deeds of earlier years, made repeated journeys to the holy shrine.
The memory of Ninian was a power in Scotland ; and dedications under his name of churches and altarages were common ; nor were they confined to the principal scenes of his labours, but were to be found in every quarter of the kingdom. Holy wells bearing his name probably mark the Christianity of a date l earlier than the dedications.
The name " Ninian," undergoing in the language of the people a phonetic change, sometimes appears as "Ringan." Thus in the poem of Sir David Lindsay (? 1490 — ? 1567) entitled " Ane dialog betwixt Experi ence and ane Courtier," we find among " the imageis usit amang Christian men " —
" Sanct Roche, weill seisit, men may see, Ane byill new broken on his thye, Sanct Eloye he doth staitly stand Ane new horse-shoe intyll his hand, Sanct Ringan of a rottin stoke, Sanct Duthow 2 boird out of ane bloke. "'^
While an ancient bell of the early Celtic type, made of iron coated witli bronze, known as "Clog-Rinny,"
1 See Bishop Forbes, Historians of Scotland, vol. v., pp. xiii — xvii. In the present century many churches have been dedicated under the name of St. Ninian, among which we may particu larize the cathedral at Perth, built after a fine design of Mr Butterfield.
- /. e. Duthac of Tain in Ross-shire.
;J See Bishop Forbes' Introduction to the Historians of Scot land, vol. v., p. xxvi.
32 THE CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.
or Ringan's Bell, has come down to us, and may now be seen in the National Museum of Antiquities in Edinburgh (see p. 309). I fancy it may be through an adhesion of the final "t" of "Saint" or "Sanct" to the first letter of " Ringan," that we approach the form " St. Trinian " in the old English ballad of Flod- den Field. Similarly I conjecture that by a reverse process St. Thenew became St. Enoch (see p. 54).
It has already been stated that there is no reason to doubt that Ninian founded a monastery at Can dida Casa. This monastery afterwards attained much distinction as a school "of learning. And it has of late been accepted by careful inquirers that this monastery, easily reached from the north of Ireland and frequented by Irish students, was one of the channels through which the monastic system reached the sister island.1
1 Skene, Celtic Scotland, vol. ii., pp. 46-9. This view is also accepted by Bishop Healy (Insula Sanctorum et Doctontin, p. 166). These writers identify the "House of Martin" and the monastery of " Rosnat " (which word has been conjecturally interpreted as the " Promontory of Learning ") occurring in Irish records with the monastery of Whithorn. If it is true that St. Finnian of Moville had been a student at Candida Casa, it is interesting to trace through him the influence of the school of St. Ninian upon his more famous pupil, St. Columba.
33
CHAPTER II.
ST. PATRICK, A CHILD OF THE BRITISH CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.
THE next historic name of note that meets us as we trace the story of the Christian Church in Scotland is that of Patrick, the Apostle of Ireland.
The narrative of St. Patrick's missionary labours belongs properly to the ecclesiastical history of the sister island, and I do not purpose to relate it here. But as St. Patrick may be claimed, and claimed with good reason, as a native of North Britain, and a spiritual child of the British Church in this part of the country, it will not be unsuitable to say a few words with reference to his early history; and this we are the more encouraged to do because there are two or three particulars connected with his life that happily throw some few rays of light into the mist of obscurity that envelops the condition of the Christian Church in Scotland at that remote period.
It is not now doubted by the best critical authori ties that we have in our possession at least two genuine writings of St. Patrick. One of these is what is known as his Confession, written towards the close of his life, and giving some account of its chief
c
34 THE CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.
incidents. The other is an epistle commonly known as the Epistle to Coroticus^ whom some would identify with the Welsh prince Caredig ; while others — more recent scholars, among whom are Mr. Skene and Mr. VVhitley Stokes — contend that this Coroticus was a prince of Strathclyde, Ceretic by name, who had his capital at Alclwyd (/. e. Dumbarton), from the neigh bourhood of which St. Patrick had been carried cap tive. The epistle to the subjects of Coroticus (who ever he was) was suggested by the cruelties perpetrated by that chieftain in his ravaging the Irish coast, and carrying captive great numbers of St. Patrick's Chris tian converts. Both these writings seem to me to possess very many of the characteristic marks of genuineness, and, as I have just said, they have been accepted by those who are best versed in the science of historical criticism. Both these writings contain notices (though of the briefest kind) of Patrick's early life.
It has been generally believed that the birthplace of St. Patrick was at, or close by, Dumbarton on the Clyde; and though claims to this distinction have been made on behalf of other places,1 no sufficient reason has as yet been shown for departing from the commonly received account. He tells us himself that he was of gentle blood (ingenuus secundum car- nem\ that his paternal grandfather had been a priest, and that his father was a deacon in the Church. His father possessed a little country house attached to a
1 E. g. Glastonbury, Bristol, Carlisle, Boulogne, Tours, Car- leon, and Ireland itself.
ST. PATRICK'S PARENTAGE. 35
farm, close by the town of Bannavem of Tabernia. The identification of this name has given rise to animated dispute, but I have followed the general belief in supposing the place to be what is now called Dumbarton. In this town the father of Patrick, as well as being a deacon of the Church, held the responsible post of a " decurion," an office which originated in the municipal system of the Roman Empire, and to which the office of town-councillor, or bailie, in our modern Scottish municipalities bears some considerable resemblance.1
You will note then, in the first place, that the celibacy of the clergy was not at this time insisted on in the Church in Northern Britain. In some later ages it would have been considered a disgrace to be the child of an ecclesiastic, but I think we can detect that, as St. Patrick states the fact, he puts it forward rather as a mark of his respectability. " I had," he writes in the opening of the account of his life, "for my father, Calpornius, a Deacon, who had been son of Potitus, a Presbyter." And if, as has been suggested by Roman Catholic controversialists, in both cases the children may have been bom before the assumption of holy orders by the fathers, St. Patrick certainly
1 Decurions " werejfound all over the Roman Empire to its extremest bounds by the end of the fourth century. Some dis coveries in Spain about ten years ago (i.e. about 1877) showed that Decurions were established by the Romans in every little mining village, and were charged with the care of the games, the water-supply, sanitary arrangements, education, and the local fortifications." — Professor George T. Stokes, in Smith and Wace's Dictionary of Christian Biography.
36 THE CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.
never thought it necessary for the credit of his father and grandfather to mention the fact. The truth is that at this period both the practice and sentiment of the Church varied in different places. A belief in the superior sanctity of celibacy had manifested itself long before the time of St. Patrick in many parts of Chris tendom. The monastic system was an outcome of it; but the attempt, when made, to compel the clergy ministering to the general body of the faithful to live unmarried was as yet but very partially successful in the West ; while in the East, where the monastic system originated and flourished in full vigour, the celibacy of the secular clergy has never even to this day been enforced, and is, as a matter of fact, 1 quite the exception.
From St. Patrick's mention of his father as a deacon, who was also a decurion, and possibly engaged in farming operations, it may be plausibly inferred that there may have been in that age in North Britain something like what is found in the Greek Church, and what some of our bishops are disposed now to revive among ourselves, a permanent diaconate — not so rigorously debarred from secular employments as were the higher grades of the clergy. If this were so, it must be acknowledged to be an exception to the general spirit of ecclesiastical legislation elsewhere, which tended wholly in the direction of severing those in holy orders from worldly business.
While Patrick was not yet sixteen, a body of marauding freebooters from Ireland, sailing, as we may suppose, up the Firth of Clyde, seized upon him
ST. PATRICK IN SLAVERY. 37
at his father's farm, and he was swept with a crowd of other captives — "many thousands" in number, he says himself (though this may be an unintentional exaggeration) — into the ships of the Irish barbarians, and carried across the sea to serve in slavery. In Antrim he was occupied for six years as a herd, and it was during this unhappy period of his life that he gained that knowledge of the Irish tongue which he afterwards used so effectively as a missionary, preacher, and bishop. But better than gaining a knowledge of Irish was his gaining during those tedious years a knowledge of himself, and of the in finite love of his Heavenly Father. The lessons of his childhood, which, if we may believe his own depre ciatory remarks upon his history, had not secured in his boyhood submission to the law of God, nor, as he says in his own words, " obedience to our priests who used to warn us to the end that we might be saved " — these lessons now came back to his memory, and the truth was made known to his heart. He tells us how the fear and love of God increased within him, and how earnestly and constantly he devoted himself to prayer. There is a genuine touch of the age in which he lived when he recounts that often in a single day he would say a hundred prayers,1 and in the night-time almost as many, and that he often rose before daybreak and offered his prayers in the woods or upon the mountain side, and this — in snow, or frost, or rain. And not only did he pray, he also fasted, anc? he declares of himself there was " no 1 Or short devotions after the manner of collects (omtiones].
38 THE CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.
laziness " in him, because, as he came afterwards to see, " the spirit burned within him."
After six years' captivity Patrick made his escape, and after some years, during which his history is obscure, we find him in Britain with his parents. But in his dreams he is moved to return to the land of his captivity. A messenger appears to bring him a letter from Ireland, entreating his return. He hears a cry — " the voice of the Irish " — asking him to come back and stay with them, and he cannot but respond to • the call. Here his connection with Scotland ceases, and his after-career as a missionary and bishop, full of interest as it is, falls outside our province.
A few words, however, may be said on the personal character of St. Patrick. The acknowledged writings of the saint supply materials out of which a picture may be constructed, which, though slight, is no mere fancy sketch, but possesses qualities of a true moral portraiture. He is seen in these writings as a man of great determination and force of character, of earnest devotion, of deep humility. He is sensitive to the accusations of conscience; sins of his youth come back with sorrow to his memory. He is sensi tive, too, like many good men, to charges made against him by others, though he knows those charges to be ill-founded. His warmth of sympathy and affection for the Irish, among whom he had served as a slave, is portrayed by some very natural touches in the Confession. His well-known hymn in the Irish tongue has been often translated into English, and for its glow of imagination and fervour of devotion to
CHRONOLOGY OF ST. PATRICK. 39
God it will always challenge a high place in the history of Christian hymnology.
The chronology of the life of St. Patrick is involved in much obscurity. His capture as a youth by the Irish must be placed towards the close of the fourth or the beginning of the fifth century. It seems impossible to be more precise with any reasonable confidence. The year 432 is the date commonly accepted for St. Patrick's landing as a missionary in Ireland ; but even this important and well-marked event has been placed somewhat later by some able scholars. On the other hand, one of the most dis tinguished of the Celtic scholars of our time, Mr. Whitley Stokes, places this event as early as 397. 2 His death at the age of 120 (A.D. 493) is still more questionable, more especially when we find the fond ness of the ancient hagiologists for assigning extra ordinary longevity to their heroes. Instances of this will be noticed later on.3
1 I have accepted the prevailing opinion as to this hymn, known as the " Lorica," or '•" Breastplate." Tradition is strongly in favour of its being the work of St. Patrick ; and its contents are not only consistent with, but confirmatory of this belief.
'2 The Tripartite Life of St. Patrick, vol. ii. p. 273.
'•' See p. 69.
4o
CHAPTER III.
ST. PALLADIUS, AND HIS DISCIPLES, ST. TERNAN AND ST. SERF — THE ORIGIN OF THE MYTH OF A NON- EPISCOPAL CHURCH IN ANCIENT SCOTLAND.
THE name of a contemporary of St. Patrick, of whom we know something from a distinctly authentic source, has been long associated by tradition, and in the writings of the mediaeval historians, with Christian missionary effort in the north-eastern part of Scotland. At Fordun, in Kincardineshire, a church was dedicated to St. Palladius, and was believed to contain his relics. The place was visited by pilgrims ; a well situated there is known as " Paldy's Well " ; and in recent times, if it be not still continued, a fair held on the festival of the saint (July 6) was known as "Paldy" or "Pady's fair."1 John of Fordun, a " chaplain," as it would seem, or chantry-priest " of the church of Aberdeen," and the earliest systematic historian of Scotland, writing in the latter half of the fourteenth century (circ. 1385), would have us believe that St. Palladius was sent to Scotland by Pope
" Paldy" is locally pronounced " Pauldy " or " Paudy."
ST. PALLADIUS. 4!
Celestinus in 429 or 430, and with him he associates as disciples and fellow-labourers St. Ternan and St. Serf (Servanus), who were ordained bishops by him.
The same story is repeated by subsequent historians with more or less of modification. Nor should we have reason to question it, but for the fact that we now know the exact source of Fordun's information so far as the mission from Celestine is concerned, and we know too that he has certainly misinterpreted the authority on which he founds. The value of Fordun's authority for the labours of Palladius in Scotland, and for his converting Ternan and Serf, we are less able to estimate ; and the latest critical in vestigator of the question, Dr. W. F. Skene, has with much learning and ingenuity maintained that Palla- ' dius was martyred in Ireland, and never laboured in the north of Scotland — attributing the Scottish tra dition and the Scottish cultus of St. Palladius to Ternan having brought the relics of Palladius from Ireland and deposited them at some place in the north-east of Scotland.1 A thorough investigation of the evidence would occupy more space than can be afforded to it in these pages ; but I may venture to say that, after weighing what has been said on both sides, I am disposed to think that we are not entitled ' to reject with entire confidence the hitherto prevailing / belief that a missionary named Palladius laboured ' for the spread of Christianity in Scotland. But, as I ' have said, that Fordun misinterpreted his authority for the statement that Pope Celestine sent Palladius 1 Celtic Scotland, vol. ii., pp. 26 — 31.
42 THE CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.
to Scotland in A.D. 429 or 430, there can be no doubt whatever. His words are substantially a quotation from the Chronica of Prosper of Aquitaine (a con temporary of Palladius), who has, under the year 431, « the words, "Palladius is ordained by Pope Celestine, » and sent as first bishop to the Scots believing in Christ." It is now, I suppose, universally admitted that at the date of Prospers writing, and indeed for several centuries after, the word Scotia meant " Ire land," and Scott " Irishmen." But by the time of Fordun the words had changed their meaning, and hence his error, which has since been again and again repeated.1
The question as to the labours of Palladius in the country we know as Scotland is for us of really but little importance, for even in the fullest accounts he is little more than a name.2
If the Palladius of Scottish story is to be identified
1 In another work of Prosper, entitled Contra Collaton'in, a controversial ti'eatise against John Cassian, who had written a work entitled Conferences (Collationes) of the Fathers dwelling in the Sdthic Desert, we find a passage referring to Palladius — "Whilst the Pope laboured to keep the Roman island Catholic, he made the barbarous island Christian by ordaining a bishop for the Scots" (cap. xxi.).
2 To Roman Catholics in Scotland the subject is of more interest. The Roman Catholic historian, Dr. Bellesheim (His tory of the Catholic Church of Scotland, in Hunter Blair's edition, vol. i. , pp. 18 — 24), is evidently inclined to accept Dr. Skene's solution, but thinks it dutiful to say, "It is not in fact possible to arrive at the truth of the matter with perfect certainty; and since an ancient and venerable tradition points to St. Palladius as an Apostle ot Scotland, Leo XIII. was fully justified, in his Bull restoring the Scottish hierarchy in 1878, in accepting the tradition in question." This is an instructive passage.
PRESBYTERIAN MYTH. 43
with the Palladius sent to Ireland by Pope Celestine, we know that it was through his instrumentality that St. Germanus, Bishop of Auxerre, was commissioned by Celestine to proceed to Britain to combat Pelagi- anism, which had spread widely in that country. This happened in 429, two years before the mission of Palladius to Ireland. Palladius was a " deacon of the Roman Church " — that is, as I take it, he occu pied a place of prominence and dignity as one of the seven deacons of the city of Rome. It has been conjectured that he was a Gaul by birth, as the Palladian family occupied an important place in that country.
The chapter of Fordun's Chronicle in which he gives us his account of Palladius, came curiously enough to play a very important part in the creation of the myth — which was so long generally accepted in Scot land, and is perhaps not yet quite defunct — that there existed in Scotland in early times a church constructed, as regards ecclesiastical government, on the Presby terian model. It is only fair to Presbyterian writers of former days to acknowledge that it was most natural for them to seize and make much of a testimony coming from a source so little likely to be prejudiced in favour of their views as an ecclesiastic of the Roman obedience in mediaeval times. Now that we know that Fordun's error originated in a misunder standing of the word " Scots," as used by Prosper, it is worth our while to quote the passage of Fordun, and observe the growth of the myth. After first recounting how Pope Celestine had introduced into
44 THE CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.
the celebration of the Mass the Psalm, " Judge me, O Lord," before the Introit, and enjoined that the introit, gradalia, and allelulia should be taken from the Psalms, and that the offertoria and collects during the Communion should be sung with musical inflexions (modulation*) — the importance of noting these ritual ordinances will be seen by and by — he goes on to say that in the year 429 or 430 St. Palladius was ordained by the same pope and " sent as first bishop to the Scots believing in Christ." A few lines lower down, after repeating that Pope Celestine sent Palla- dius as first bishop in Scotia, it is added, " Whence it is fitting for the Scots diligently to celebrate the feasts and ecclesiastical commemorations (festa simul et memorias ecclesiastical], since he carefully and thoroughly instructed their nation, namely the Scots, both by word and example in the orthodox faith, before whose coming the Scots used to have as teachers of the faith and ministers of the sacraments only Presbyters or monks, following the rite of the early Church." Dr. Skene's comment on this passage is so admirably lucid and cogent, that I cannot do better than give it in his own words. " 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 colonized 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
EARLY SCOTTISH CHURCH. 45
dates ? He is therefore driven to the conclusion that it must have been a Church governed by presbyters or monks only. Hector Boece 1 gave the name of Culdees to the clergy of this supposed early Church ; and thus arose the belief that there had been an early Church of Presbyterian Culdees." 2
In connection with this passage of Fordun, I can not but think that it has been too hastily assumed that Fordun regarded the want of bishops as charac teristic of the "primitive Church." There seems to me good reason for believing that the phrase, " follow ing the rite of the primitive Church," has reference, not to the absence of bishops, but to the simplicity of ceremonial and ecclesiastical observance, which was supposed, with good reason, to mark the earlier Scot tish Church. This view of Fordun's meaning is supported by the Lessons for the Feast of St. Pal- ladius in the Aberdeen Breviary. There we read that Palladius appointed "festivals and their solemn observance," and the becoming mode of celebrat ing and receiving the Sacraments. He consecrates churches ; he gives ordinances with respect to ecclesi astical vestments; he orders the "canonical hours" to be said after the Roman manner.3 We saw that Fordun thought it worth while recording that Celes-
1 In Latinized form, Boethius : born at Dundee about 1465 ; Professor of Philosophy in Paris, 1497 ; published his Scotorum Histories (folio, Paris), 1526 ; died, 1536.
- Celtic Scotland, vol. ii., p. 30. See also Historians of Scot land, vol. iv. , p. 395. Some account of the Culdees will be found in chapter xii. of this book.
3 Brev. Aberdon. Julii V.
46 THE CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.
tine, who sent Palladius " as first bishop to the Scots believing in Christ," had made several ritual and liturgical changes in the celebration of the Mass. With this in his mind he thinks of the probable want of elaboration in the liturgical ordinances of the earlier Scottish Church ; and the emphasis he places, in connection with Palladius, on the duty of the Scots observing "ecclesiastical festivals and commemora tions," confirms the view I have here suggested as the true interpretation of the words "following the rite of the primitive Church." If the view I have put for ward is correct, we find Fordun making two quite distinct statements about the Christian Scots before the coming of Palladius. He states, what he believed to be a fact, that they were without bishops, and he adds that their " rite " — /. e. their liturgical observances — were different from those introduced by Palladius. The whole context must be studied that we may obtain the true sense of the passage.
The names of St. Ternan and St. Serf are con stantly associated in legendary history with that of St. Palladius. Ternan is said to have been instructed and baptized by Palladius, and consecrated a bishop among the Picts. In the mediaeval times, Ternan occupied, beyond question, a place of considerable importance in the local religious conceptions of the north-east of Scotland. A bell—" the Ronecht "—said to have been given to him by the Pope (who, through a formidable anachronism of some 200 years, is made Gregory the Great), and to have followed him miracu lously all the way to Scotland, was preserved till the
RELICS OF ST. TERNAN. 47
Reformation at Banchory-Ternan, and was dignified by being placed in the custody of an hereditary keeper, as was not uncommon in the case of other sacred relics (see p. 310). At Banchory, too, were preserved his head and the St. Matthew volume of his four Books of the Gospels, which were enclosed in metal cases adorned with gold and silver. In the treasury of the Church of Aberdeen was a mon strance containing his relics. The Aberdeen Breviary honours him with six lections, chiefly devoted to his miracles. Three or four churches bore his name in their dedications.1 In default of any secure footing for reasonable conjecture as to his labours, we must content ourselves with these indications that he had, in the region where he laboured, made a deep impression upon the popular mind.
St. Serf presents a yet more embarrassing problem to the critical inquirer. Chronological statements in the various legends are so diverse, that some will have it that there were two saints bearing this name — one in the fifth and the other in the seventh century. For our purpose it must suffice to say that, while the name of Ternan is chiefly associated with the north east of Scotland, that of Serf or, in the popular language, Sair, is connected with Fife and the valley of the Forth. His body was believed to be deposited at Culross,2 a village on the northern shore of the Firth of Forth, some eight or ten miles higher up than Queensferry, where the stupendous railway-
1 See Bishop Forbes, Kalendars of Scottish Saints, p. 450. '* The name is commonly pronounced Coo-ross.
48 THE CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.
bridge now spans the channel. At Culross, the Festival of the Saint was kept yearly on the ist July, " when the inhabitants marched in procession, carry ing green boughs " ; and, at least as late as 1839, the custom had not altogether disappeared, though by common consent the ceremonial was transferred, we are told, by a strange transmutation of sentiment, to the 4th of June, in honour of the birthday of King George III.1 The fame of the saint certainly ex tended to Aberdeenshire, for a yearly fair, called " St. Sair's Fair," was formerly held at Monkege (Keith- hall), and more lately at Culsamond. He was patron- saint of Creich and Dysart in Fife, at which latter place there is a cave, to which he is said to have occasionally retired.2
1 Neiv Statistical Account, Perth, p. 600. For a Papal parallel, see p. 291.
2 Kahndars of Scottish Saints, p. 447. See also below, p. 303. Skene (Celtic Scotland, vol. ii., p. 32) refuses to acknow ledge any claim of St. Serf's belonging to the period of St. Palladius.
49
CHAPTER IV.
ST. MUNGO (OR KENTIGERN).
IN the early legendary records, three great figures stand out from the crowd of lesser men, all engaged in the great work of Christianizing Scotland — St. Ninian, St. Mungo, and St. Columba. Of the second of these we now come to speak. Roughly calculated, something like a century — a century enveloped for us in darkness — intervenes between the labours of Palladius and the labours of Mungo.
There is sufficient evidence to show that the Southern Picts, who had been converted to the Chris tian faith by Ninian about the beginning of the fifth century, relapsed in large numbers into heathenism between the date of the death of their great teacher, and the middle of the sixth century. There is also reason to believe that the Britons of the Roman province of Valentia — that is, of the country between the two great military walls — had fallen into de generate ways and into grave errors in faith, if they did not, as a body, actually apostatize from the religion of Christ. The withdrawal of the Romans from Britain was the withdrawal of an influence that
D
50 THE CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.
was protective of the faith. We may be helped to realize the danger to which the British Church was then exposed if we will try to conceive how it would fare at the present time with the native churches in Kaffraria, or Zululand, had the English to retire from South Africa.
It was the work of St. Mungo to restore the lapsed and to strengthen the weak in regions that included the field of St. Ninian's labours. The scene of the chief labours of St. Mungo was the British kingdom of Strathclyde, or Cumbria, which reached from a little to the north of its capital and seat of govern ment, Dumbarton (then known as Alclwyd), down to the river Derwent in Cumberland, and extended across the island till it was met by the boundary, shifting and ill-defined, of Bernicia, the kingdom of the Angles. Of the origin of this kingdom of Cum bria we really know nothing for certain. When thrown wholly on their own resources by the entire withdrawal of the Romans, the Britons of the west learned a lesson from their eastern brethren, who found, too late, that the help afforded by their Saxon allies was a highly doubtful gain. I may mention that it has been supposed that the name of the islands of Cumbrae, in the Clyde, is the linguistic relic of the name of the ancient kingdom. The island of Bute was in the hands of the Scots from Ireland. The two islands I have named were in the hands of the Britons of Cumbria. A few miles of sea divided them. But Mungo is represented as also labouring, for at least a short time, among the Southern Picts,
BIOGRAPHY OF ST. MUNGO. 51
who inhabited the region between the Forth and the Grampians, as well as in the district of Galloway, the special scenes of the services of St. Ninian on behalf of Christ.
When we attempt to gain a knowledge of the true history of St. Mungo, we are met by many difficulties. If we are unfortunate in Ninian's biographer, Aelred of Rievaulx, we are, it must be acknowledged, even yet more unfortunate in the romancer who has given us the principal life of St. Kentigern.1 Here, again, in the Life by Jocelyn, we have a life written " to order " many hundred years after the death of its subject. The facts are, that Jocelyn, who was Bishop of Glasgow between the years 1174 and 1199, com missioned a monk of the great Cistercian Abbey of Furness, in Lancashire, who was also Jocelyn by name, to write a life of the famous Scottish saint. Bishop Jocelyn commenced the building of the noble cathedral of Glasgow, and it was natural that he should desire to possess a history of his famous pre decessor, whose relics were to form the chief glory and treasure of the splendid structure he designed to raise, and under whose name it was to be dedicated.
1 There is a fragment of a somewhat earlier Life in the British Museum. But it, like that of Jocelyn, belongs to the twelfth century. It professes to be the work of an ecclesiastic, who styles himself "a clerk of St. Kentigern, "and was written on the suggestion of Bishop Herbert of Glasgow, who died in 1164. It contains only what Bishop Forbes styles "the weird legend" (though I would prefer to speak of it as the gross story grossly told) of the saint's parentage and birth. It is printed in the Historians of Scotland, vol. v., p. 243, and in the Registrnm Episcopatus Glasguensis, vol. i., Ixxviii, sy.
52 THE CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.
Some materials, it is true, existed for this biography, but they were scanty ; and if deficiencies had to be supplied, the monk of Furness, as the issue proved, possessed an imaginative inventiveness that was lux uriant in its fertility and quite adapted to the ecclesiastical taste of the day. From the tissue of monstrous absurdities, some of them being, we may say with scarcely a doubt, deliberate falsifications with an interested purpose, whether invented by Jocelyn or by an earlier writer, it is very far from easy to disentangle the threads of truth.
There has been too ready a disposition on the part of even sober investigators to follow the very easy course of merely rejecting the miraculous and accept ing the residuum as truth. But a narrative is not necessarily true because it is not palpably absurd. There is needed by the critical historian in such cases an extensive general knowledge of the con ditions of society at the period with which he is concerned. It is also highly important that he should possess a familiarity with other examples of a like kind of literature; for there is a remarkable proneness towards the recurrence of legendary types. A story that has proved entertaining about one saint is pretty sure to be engrafted upon the life of some other. In this way only can the inquirer secure in any degree a discriminating tact for separating, with some measure of confidence, the true from the ficti tious, and gain a due perception of that which is so often, in these narrations, written between the lines. I do not myself pretend to the possession of this
BIRTH OF ST. MUNGO. 53
subtle sensibility and painfully acquired skill ; but I will relate in outline what the most competent his torians of our day are disposed, perhaps with too much readiness, to accept as the true account of St. Mungo.
The mother of the saint is represented as the daughter of a king in a Pictish district of the Lothians, for the Picts, after the withdrawal of the Romans, had settled themselves in several parts of southern Scotland. This king is represented as a Pagan, or, as the earlier fragmentary life has it, a " semi-Pagan." When the time drew near for the birth of the child, the princess, Thenew, or Thenog, by name, and a Christian by profession, on account of charges made, rightly or wrongly, against her chastity, was, after previous dangers and sufferings, put alone into a frail coracle on the shore at Aber- lady,1 and pushed out to sea, that thus she might perish. The winds and tides bore her boat first outside the Isle of May, and then up the Firth of Forth, past Inchkeith and the island which has since come to be known as Inchcolm, through the narrowing channel of what was afterwards called Queensferry, where now the vast structure of the Forth Bridge spans the estuary, until it was finally stranded on the shore of Culross. Here, on landing, she gave birth to a son ; and, according to the • legend (which would seem to be here guilty of an anachronism), St. Serf, whose residence and monastic school were situated at this place, came to the help 1 On the coast of Haddingtonshire.
54 THE CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.
of both mother and child.1 By Serf the child was given at his baptism the name " Kentigern " (which has been interpreted as " Chief Lord "), and after wards the pet-name of " Munghu," or " Mungo," which is variously explained as " Dearest Friend," or " Dear and lovable." 2 By Serf the boy is brought up and educated. When he reaches man's estate, he leaves his master, and, after some wildly fabulous adventures, he reaches Cathures, now called Glasgow, where in a former age St. Ninian had, according to the story, consecrated a burial-ground. Here he took up his abode. The fame of his piety and virtues spreads, and at the early age of twenty-five years he is chosen as bishop by the Prince of Strathclyde, with his clergy and people. For his consecration, it was found easiest to bring a bishop from Ireland, and by a single bishop he was ad vanced to the episcopate. Consecration by a single bishop is said to have been at this time the custom of the Britons and Irish. In passing, I may say that consecration by a single bishop, though irregular, has not been accounted by the Church as invalid ; and examples of such exceptional acts are to be found
1 A church in Glasgow was dedicated to the mother of Mungo. It is not difficult to perceive how "Saint Thenog " became as pronounced, "Saint Henog " or "Saint Enoch," and the name is still perpetuated amid the bustle and busy life of the nineteenth century in " St. Enoch's Railway Station," and "St. Enoch's Hotel."
- Skene (Celtic Scotland., vol. ii., p. 183) says, "Cyndeyrn and Munghu are pure Welsh — Cyndeyrn from Cyit, chief ; feynt, lord. Mwyngu, from Mwy-n, amiable ; «/, dear,"
CHURCHES DEDICATED TO ST. MUNGO. 55
elsewhere. A further consideration of this question will be found at a subsequent page.1
We may notice that the name " Mungo," suggested by affection, holds its ground through Scotland at this day in preference to the more dignified " Kentigern." If the tourist in Glasgow in search of the noble cathedral were to ask in the streets to be directed to " St. Kentigern's Cathedral," the chances are twenty to one he would get no satisfactory reply, but " Where is St. Mungo's ? " would be at once understood. Indeed, it is worthy of observation that not a single church in Scotland is dedicated to the saint under the name of Kentigern, while we have St. Mungo's parish in Dumfries, St. Mungo's Chapel in Perthshire, and churches of St. Mungo at Polwarth, Penicuik, Lanark, and other places.
At Glasgow Mungo established a monastery, and there he continued to reside until he somehow in curred the animosity of a new king of Strathclyde, Morken by name, by whom he was driven from his home. He resolved to seek refuge among the Christian Britons of Wales ; and, on his journey southwards, he is represented as preaching in the district around Carlisle, where it is interesting to find at this day no less than nine churches dedicated under his name. Among them is one often visited by the tourist to the English Lakes, the Church of Cross- thwaite2 at Keswick.
1 See p. 89.
2 Where the fine recumbent monumental effigy of the poet Soxithey is to be seen.
56 THE CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.
Having passed into Wales, Mungo resided for a time at Menevia, as the guest of the Bishop David (Dewi), afterwards known as the patron-saint of Wales, and founder of the see that bears his name. Leaving St. David, he founded a monastery at Llanelwy, in Wales, on the banks of another Clyde. This monastery became rapidly the resort of great numbers of men of all classes, rich and poor, high and low, educated and ignorant.
Another change in the "occupancy of the throne of Strathclyde brought Mungo back to Scotland. Roderick (Rydderch), surnamed " the Bountiful," suc ceeded Morken. The new king had been baptized and instructed in Ireland, and his sympathies were thoroughly with the Church. He sent a message to Mungo requesting his return, and the saint set forth for the north with many of the brethren from the convent at Llanelwy.1 Before leaving Llanelwy Mungo placed in charge his friend and disciple, Asaph, whose name has been given to the place, and to the bishopric of St. Asaph.
Mungo was met on his journey north at Hoddam, in Dumfriesshire, by Roderick, amid a scene of wonder ful rejoicing, and at Hoddam he remained for some years before finally settling in his former residence at Glasgow. If one can give credence to the speech which Jocelyn puts into the mouth of St. Mungo on the occasion of his meeting King Roderick, it would
1 The return of Mungo is placed by Skene in pr near the year 573.
VISIT OF ST. COLUMBA. 57
seem that the mythology of the neighbouring Angles was beginning to mingle with the native superstitions of the Britons of these parts, and thus contributed to further impede the labours of the Christian ministry. Without accepting literally Jocelyn's account of Roderick's voluntary subjection of himself and his authority to the Church (which seems to bear the colour of twelfth century controversies), we can well believe that Mungo's influence with the king might be practically boundless.
After Mungo's return to Glasgow, and in the far advanced years of his life, must be placed his famous meeting with Columba.
The fame of the missionary labours of each of these good men must have been well known to the other ; and nothing could be more natural than the desire of Columba to visit the bishop, and see, face to face, so eminent and successful a servant of his Lord. Columba is represented as" approaching Glasgow with a great company of monks in three ordered bands. He sends to inform Mungo of his coming. The bishop, also accompanied by a crowd of ecclesiastics and others similarly disposed in three bands, comes out to meet him. They draw near, both parties chanting aloud as they come psalms and spiritual songs. When they meet on the bank of the Molindinar burn, the two servants of the Lord embrace and kiss one another. The bishop receives his visitors with hospitality, and when they are about to depart, Mungo and Columba exchange staves in token of their mutual love in Christ.
58 THE CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.
It was commonly believed in after time (and there is no reason to question the fact) that the staff given by Columba to the bishop found its way to the Church of St. Wilfrid (now the Cathedral) at Ripon, where it was an object of veneration down to the time of the Reformation.
59
CHAPTER V.
THE HISTORICAL CHARACTER OF THE DOCUMENTARY AUTHORITIES FOR THE LIVES OF ST. NINIAN AND ST. MUNGO.
THE histories of St. Ninian and St. Mungo, as they are commonly accepted by our modern historians, have now been related. But I have already hinted that perhaps more has been told than is really warranted by historical evidence. I am dissatisfied with that method of dealing with the old lives of the saints, which consists of little more than omitting the miraculous element of the stories. And of this dis satisfaction I am more particularly sensible when the stories, as in the case of Aelred's Life of St. Ninian and Jocelyn's Life of St. Kentigern^ come to us in their present form from writers who lived many hundred years after the events recorded, and who were plainly little dis posed to, and little qualified for, a critical investigation of the material upon which they worked. Indeed, I must confess J;hat I am not at all satisfied that a good part of the stories told were not deliberate inventions of these two writers.
Some forty or fifty years_ago it was the prevailing
60 THE CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.
vogue with religious writers of a certain school to ex press, and, I doubt not, to cultivate a deeply reverential feeling for everything mediaeval. These writers seem to me to have foolishly shrunk from a free and rational criticism of anything that bore the stamp of what was euphemistically called " the ages of faith." The late Mr. J. H. (since Cardinal) Newman's writings on " ecclesiastical miracles " exercised an influence upon many who did not follow the author in his change of creed ; and, in my opinion, that influence was dis tinctly injurious to the scientific treatment of the early religious history of Britain. It may indeed be admitted that it is not a sufficient reason to refuse credence to an alleged miracle only because it seems to us trivial, grotesque, or disproportionate to the occasion. But, lacking positive testimony of real and substantial weight on their behalf, I do not think it is any indica tion of an irreverent spirit to smile at what is ludicrous in these stories, and to be sceptical of what is, at least prima facie, absurd.
It is well, perhaps, that at this point we should make acquaintance with some specimens of the histories from which we have derived the particulars that have been recorded. And it is right to add that the prodigious is not a mere occasional and passing feature, but gives a general colour to the whole.
And first, to consider Aelred's Life of St. Ninian. The three opening chapters are little more than an enlargement of the passage from Bede which is cited by cur author in his preface, and which, though con sisting of only a few lines, may be regarded as of more
MISSION TO SOUTHERN PICTS. 6 1
value than all the subsequent marvels.1 It is intro duced after a mention of Colurnba's mission to the Northern Picts, and as cited by Aelred, runs as follows : " The Southern Picts who dwell among the same mountains had long before abandoned the error of idolatry, and received the true faith on the preaching of the word to them by Bishop Nynia, a most reverend and most holy man, a Briton by race, who at Rome had been regularly instructed in the faith and mysteries of the truth ; the seat of whose episcopate, dedicated under the name of St. Martin, Bishop, and a famous church (where he rests in the body with many saints), the nation of the Angles at the present time possesseth. This place is commonly called Candida Casa, because there he built a church of stone in a manner unusual among the Britons (insolito Bretonibus more}" In Chapter IV. we read how King Tuduvallus was cured of an intolerable disease in the head and of blindness by the touch of the saint and the sign of the cross. The next chapter relates how a priest, falsely accused of unchastity, was triumphantly vindicated in church before a great gathering of clergy and people by an infant of one day old. The new-born babe, when adjured by the saint, stretched forth his hand, and pointing to his real father, exclaimed in a manly voice (i'ox virilis\ " That is my father ; your priest, O bishop, is innocent, and there is naught between him and me but participation in that human nature which is common to us both." I think there is something more portentous in the acquaintance of the infant with 1 The passage occurs in the Ecclesiastical History (lib. iii. c. 4).
62 THE CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.
the metaphysics involved in the conception of our common human nature than in the "manly voice," which has suggested to the sceptical a suspicion of saintly ventriloquism. This is a story, we may observe in passing, which is told, with modifications, of various saints in different countries. A study of comparative Christian mythology shows us that it was a favourite. Chapter VI. is an amplification of the fact that Ninian laboured among the Southern Picts as missionary and bishop. In Chapter VII. we are told how leeks, which the gardener had just planted, were found full-grown and in seed when the saint required them for the re fectory table. It is added, "the guests looked at one another"; and well they might. In Chapter VIII. it is related how the saint would protect his cattle by drawing a circle round them on the ground with his staff, how robbers dared to penetrate inside the enclosure thus formed, how one of them was gored to death by the saint's bull, and afterwards raised to life, admonished, and forgiven. Meanwhile, the other thieves do not seem to have been able to escape out side the magic circle. Chapter IX. tells a story that has obtained currency, I fancy, because of its pictur- esqueness, and what is supposed to be its " edifying " character ; how the saint, saying his Psalter in the open air, was surrounded by an invisible canopy im penetrable by the rain which fell around, save once, apparently, when a wandering and idle thought for one moment crossed his mind, whereupon the shower wet both him and his book, and recalled him to his duty. But in Chapter X. we have, as our author says, " miracle
ST. NINIAN'S MIRACULOUS POWERS. 63
added to miracle." A youth belonging to the saint's school, desiring to escape a punishment about to be inflicted on him, ran away, carrying off St. Ninian's ' staff. In his terror he incautiously put out to sea in a wicker-framed coracle, over which the hide had not been drawn. After a little the water came pouring in, and with pale countenance he beheld the waves ready to avenge the injury done to his master. When at length coming to himself, and believing that St. Ninian " was present in his staff," he besought him by his most holy merits that aid might come to him from God. He then stuck the staff into one of the holes, and this took place that posterity might understand what St. Ninian could do even on the sea. " On the touch of the staff the element trembled, and did not presume to enter further through the open holes." To be brief, the youth landed safely and planted the staff on the shore, where the dry wood took root and bore branches and leaves ; and at the root of the tree a most limpid fountain springing up, sent forth a crystal stream delightful to the eye, sweet to the taste, etc. Chapter XI. consists in an eulogy on the saint, and relates his burial in a stone coffin near the altar ; while Chapter XII. concludes the book with relation of certain miracles wrought by his relics.
After the perusal of this record of marvels, those who have acquired experience in such studies will, I believe, not hesitate to declare that these are for the most part not the mere outcome of the misunder standings of a credulous age, but in great part, at all events, the deliberate concoctions of a dull romancer.
64 THE CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.
Of course we are well aware that even our most trusted sources of information on the history of the Church at certain periods contain narratives of supernatural occurrences that are scarcely likely to commend them selves as strictly representing actual facts, when weighed by the modern historian, who comes un trammelled to the investigation. But from among the general body of ecclesiastical documents of the middle ages, an acquired tact will enable us to make a dis tinction between miracles and miracles, and to dis criminate, often with a high measure of probability, between, on the one hand, the narration of the careful writer who recorded what, on some fair show of evidence, he rightly or wrongly believed to be true, and, on the other, the wild romancing of a professional miracle-monger. In the former class we are very frequently rewarded by a sense of contact, at many points, with reality ; in the latter, we find abounding the unmistakable flavour of the unscrupulous story teller. We are in a different world when we pass from Bede's narratives of the supernatural to the succes sion of astounding prodigies related by Jocelyn of Furness.1
It would be wearisome were I to deal with the Life of St. Kentigern chapter by chapter. One's appetite for the marvellous is quickly satiated. And while an occasional prodigy may enliven a story, my experience is that reading a rapid succession of them is as dull
1 Problems of a special kind are presented by Adamnan's Life of St. Columba, and they will be considered separately when the history of the Irish mission is dealt with.
STORIES OF ST. MUNGO. 65
work as the systematic perusal of a jest-book. Never theless, I would fain convey some taste of the flavour of Jocelyn's confections. Well, then, when Kentigern as a boy was under the instruction of St. Serf at Culross, some of his youthful school-fellows in their rough play pulled the head off a pet redbreast of the master, and then sought to lay the blame on Kenti gern ; but he placed the bird's head upon its body, and signed it with the sign of the cross, when away it flew. On another occasion, while still under the tuition of St. Serf, it was Kentigern's duty to light the lamps of the church, but no fire could be found. Whereupon Kentigern took a bough of a growing hazel-tree, and when he had signed it and blessed it in the name of the Trinity, fire fell from heaven and kindled the bough, which, like Moses' bush, burned but was not consumed. The bird and the tree that figure heraldically in the arms of the city of Glasgow were suggested by these legends; while the salmon with the ring in its mouth that is represented on the dexter side of the shield is supposed to be a memorial of a less edifying story of Jocelyn's, in which we are told how a certain queen, Languoreth by name, who had been an unfaithful wife, is able, through the miracu lous aid afforded by the saint, to pose successfully before her husband as a slandered and innocent woman. But I do not know that any of the stories takes my fancy more than that of the saint's ram, which ran faster after its head was cut off than it did before it was slaughtered ; while the head, turned into stone, remains at Glasgow " even unto this day," writes
66 THE CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.
Jocelyn, " as a proof of the miracle, and, though silent, declares the merit of St. Kentigern." l The titles of chapters were doubtless intended not only to sum marize the contents, but also to whet the curiosity of the reader. Some of these are as follows : " How Saint Kentigern placed in the plough under one yoke a stag and a wolf, and how, sowing sand, he reaped wheat "; 2 " Concerning a cook raised from the dead by the prayers of St. Kentigern " ; " How a jester, despising the gifts of the king, demanded a dish of fresh mulberries after Christmas, and how, through St. Kentigern, he received them " ; " Concerning two vessels full of milk sent by St. Kentigern to a certain craftsman, and how the milk was spilled into the river and became cheese " ; " How the Lord protected the saint's garments from being wet by the smallest drop of rain, snow, or hail." All these, and many more, are entertaining stories, if one does not indulge in too many of them at a time; and, to do him justice, Jocelyn does his best to draw a moral from each.
From a biography such as Jocelyn's it is a task of the greatest difficulty, if indeed it be not an absolute impossibility, to extract historical material as to which we can feel complete confidence. We may be able to
1 The story of the ring and the salmon may be briefly told. The king finds on the finger of one of his knights, who was asleep, a ring given by the king to his queen ; he throws it into the Clyde, and then asks the queen to show him the ring ; the queen, in her distress, asks the aid of the saint, at whose command a salmon is caught in the river, and the ring is found in the body of the fish and given to the queen.
2 The same marvel is told of St. Ternan in the Aberdeen Breviary, pars hyem., fol. Iv.
GREAT AGE OF ST. MUNGO. 67
say of one incident perhaps, " This may well have been ; it falls in with what we learn elsewhere " ; or of another, " It possesses more of local colour than we can readily attribute to an inventor"; but beyond this we feel that our footsteps are on very uncertain ground.
Jocelyn tells us that Kentigern, ft matured in merit," died at the age of 185. After what we have seen of the character of Jocelyn's romancing, is it really worth while to adduce in relation to this statement (as is done by the acute and learned Dr. A. P. Forbes, late Bishop of Brechin) examples of great longevity, such as that of the famous Countess of Desmond, " Old Parr," and some instances referred to by the physiologist Haller, all of which come to us on evidence that at least deserves consideration ? It seems to me a remarkable example of how the judg ment of an able, learned, and cultivated man may be warped by a "tendency," in this instance (as I take it), a misplaced reverence for what is certainly ancient and had a show of piety. "Temperance," writes Bishop Forbes, " sweet temper, and faith tend to length of days ; " and, as Bishop Forbes is plainly not indis posed to believe many of the alleged miracles, he might well have added that in the moist climate of the west of Scotland, and before another Scotchman had invented the " mackintosh," it must have been of immense hygienic value never to have worn wet clothes. For here Jocelyn is very express : " All bear witness who knew the man, as well as those that con versed with him, that never in his life were his clothes
68 THE CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.
wetted with the drops of pouring rain, snow, or hail, dropping upon the earth. For many a time placed in the open air while the inclemency of the weather increased, while the pouring rain flowed along like a sewer, and the spirit of the storm raged around him, he stood immovable, or went where he wished, and always continued untouched and uninjured by a drop of any kind." l In the region of ecclesiastical no less than of civil history, our first thoughts should ever be not of what is " edifying " or what is " pious," but of what is true. To the kind of criticism indicated above, there can be no question of the superiority of the critical spirit shown by the Bollandists, who in many instances apply what I shall venture to call the " canon of common-sense " as trenchantly as the most scep tical of modern inquirers. Again, in our own day, an Irish scholar of distinction,2 who certainly cannot be justly accused of a tendency to unreasonable in credulity, does not scruple to test some of the legendary histories of Irish saints (though perhaps with some inconsistency of application) by ordinary common-sense considerations applicable to the events of every-day life. Thus the St. Ninian of Scotland
1 Bishop Forbes, in the end of his discussion (Historians of Scotland, vol. vi., p. 369), asserts that " the difficulty in the case of St. Kentigern arises from chronological considerations," and cites an admirable passage from Mr. Skene, who shows that "if you deduct the 100 (i. e. from 185), you will bring out a chronology very consistent with other events." Exactly so ; if you deduct 100, which would bring the age of St. Kentigern to the not very unusual 85 years.
>J Dr. John Healy (Roman Catholic), Coadjutor Bishop of Clonfert."
EXTRAORDINARY LONGEVITY. 69
appears in Ireland (with the common honorific prefix mo l) as St. Mo-nenn. In former times there was a disposition to identify St. Moinenn of Clonfert with St. Ninian or Mo-nenn of Candida Casa, but the critic to whom I refer declares such an identification to be "manifestly out of the question," as it would have made St. Ninian of Candida Casa " at least 200 years of age." 2 The disposition to dignify the Celtic saints with extraordinary longevity is common among the Irish hagiographers. Thus St. Ultan of Ard- braccan dies, according to the Marty rology of Donegal, at the age of 189. The authors of the lives of St. Ciaran, St. Declan, and St. Ailbe give to these saints lives extending from 200 to 300 and even 400 years ; while, according to a writer who scorns round numbers and will be accurately precise, St. Ibar died at the age of 353.^ We have already hinted that for dealing with the legendary lives of the saints a valuable qualification would be extensive reading in hagiological literature generally. If the student confines himself to only one or two documents, he will, I think, spend more time and take more trouble in sifting some marvellous tale, and labouring to find what he might imagine to be the nucleus of truth contained in it, than he will feel himself justified in doing if he finds the same startling and effective story appearing again and again
1 Mo="my," a term of endearment.
" lusnla Sanctorum ct Doctoriiin ; or, If eland's Ancient Schools and Scholars, by the Most Reverend John Healy, D.D., etc., p. 223.
3 See Bishop Ilealy's Insula Sanctonun, etc., pp. 136-7.
70 THE CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.
in various lives with or without modification. Indeed, quite independently of any search for biographical facts, the examination of such materials for a com parative Christian mythology as are supplied, for instance, in the long row of great folios that make the Ada Sanctorum of the Bollandists, would form a study entirely worthy of the scientific inquirer. The task would doubtless necessitate the expenditure of much time and trouble ; and probably we shall have to wait till some patient German of large erudition and indomitable perseverance undertakes it. I may illustrate what I am thinking of by one or two ex amples. We have seen already how St. Kentigern, while still a youth, is greatly embarrassed for the want of ^fire, which had been extinguished throughout the monastery of St. Serf; he takes a branch of a green hazel-tree, breathes upon it. signs with the sign of the cross in the Name of the Trinity, and it immediately bursts into flame. Now this same Jocelyn, who so well hit off the prevailing taste, was requested by the Irish Archbishop of Armagh and the Bishop of Down to write a life of St. Patrick, and here we find St. Patrick, while still a child, miraculously making a good fire, not this time with green hazel branches, but with a lapful of icicles, which, similarly, he breathes upon and signs with the cross. Again, St. Mungo has the dead body of Fergus, "a man of God," placed in a wain drawn by "two untamed bulls," which move to the appointed burying-place. This miracle, we are told,1 was repeated in the cases of 1 Historians of Scotland, vol. v., Notes, p. 329.
EARLY LEGENDS. 7 I
several other saints, who are named as St. Fursey, St. Florentinus, St. Tressanus, St. Joava, St. Fachult, and St. Patrick. In the case of St. Gall, the story is varied; unbridled horses take the place of oxen or bulls.1 We have noticed in the Life of St. Ninian how the saint cleared a priest of false accusation by the voice of a new-born child. St. Aldhelm, the Saxon scholar of the seventh century, in a similar manner, when at Rome, extracts a declaration from a child nine days old which cleared the credit of Pope Sergius I. St. Brigid of Kildare, by a like adjura tion, proves the innocence of a bishop; and this story appears in one of the Lessons on the festival of that saint in the Aberdeen Breviary? A similar story is told in the mediaeval Lectionary of the Church of England of St. Britius, whose name still appears in the calendar of our Prayer-Book at November 13,^ with the slight variation that the saint himself is the accused and the child is a month old. Nor does even this instance exhaust all the parallels.
One other illustration may be offered of this tendency to the recurrence of certain striking stories. There may be differences of opinion as to the date when St. Baldred flourished, but we need have no doubt that a hermit of that name took up his abode upon the Bass-rock, which forms so remarkable an object at
1 I have not gone to the trouble of discovering who is meant by St. Joava, but I am sure the story is as true of him or her as it is of the others better known.
2 Pars hyem., fol. xlvi.
a See Sarum Breviary (edit. Procter and Wordsworth), Fascic. iii., col. 1033.
72 THE CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.,
the mouth of the estuary of the Forth, and that he laboured in good works among the people of the neighbouring parts of Lothian. He taught the faith, we are told, in three churches of that region — Ald- hame, Tynynghame, and Preston. On the death of the saint there was an eager contention which of these churches should have the honour of possessing his body. Prayer was made that a sign from heaven might be given to settle the question in debate ; and, lo, on the morrow, three bodies were found exactly alike, each laid out "with the same exequial pomp," and each congregation carried off one, which was ever after held in the greatest reverence.1 Bishop Forbes has pointed out a parallel to the triplication of the saint's body in the case of the great Welsh saint, St. Teilo ; while two bodies are produced in a legend of St. Patrick and in a legend of St. Monnena.-
Valueless, or worse than valueless, as these stones may appear to us, it is the part of the historian to remember that in former times such narratives entered largely into the religious beliefs and largely affected the religious sentiments of both clergy and people. None of them were too absurd to be read in the appointed Lessons of the Church,-'5 and they possessed all the qualifications for impressing and holding the imagination of a credulous and ignorant people.
It is worthy of mention that as late as the sixteenth
1 See Forbes' Kalcndars of Scottish Saints, p. 274. " Smith and Wace, Diet, of C/ir. Biog., s.v. Baldred. 3 The story of the multiplication of St. Baldred's body will be found in the Aberdeen Breviary •, pars hyein., fol. Ixiii., sq.
ALLEGED MIRACLES. 73
century the story of the triplication of St. Baldred's body appears in one of the philosophic writings of an eminent Scottish theologian, John Major, or Mair, who, after studying at Cambridge, became famous at Paris as a lecturer on Theology at the Sorbonne.1 In his commentary upon the Fourth Book of the Sen tences of Peter Lombard, a recognized text-book of the theological schools, Major, when treating of the Holy Eucharist, argues from the story of the body of St. Baldred that it is possible with God "that the same body can be placed drciimscript'we in different places at the same time."2
Once more ; in examining the ancient documents which are concerned with the lives of the saints, the critic is bound to take into consideration moral improbabilities, and what I may call miracles in t/ie moral and spiritual world, as well as miracles in the physical world. The cases where real discrimination and the exercise of sound judgment are needed (and such are very numerous) are, of course, very different from cases involving palpable absurdities like the following, which I adduce as affording illustrations,
1 In 1518 Major was induced to leave Paris for Glasgow, where he was made Principal Regent of the College, and con tinued to reside for five years. John Knox, the leader of the Scottish Reformation, was matriculated at Glasgow while Major was in office ; and Dr. ^Eneas J. G. Mackay — in his scholarly life of Major, prefixed to the translation of Major's Historia Majoris Britannia, printed by the Scottish History Society (1892) — conjectures that the fame of Major may have been the cause of Knox going to Glasgow rather than to St. Andrews.
- See A History of Greater Britain (1892), p. 87, note.
74 THE CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.
on a magnified scale, that will carry conviction even to the least suspicious of those addicted to hagiological literature. In a manuscript Life of St. Serf, preserved in Archbishop Marsh's library in Dublin, which has been printed in the Appendix to Dr. Skene's Chronicles of the Picts and Scots (pp. 412 — 423), we read how St. Serf was first Patriarch of Jerusalem for seven years, then Pope of Rome for seven years, and finally settled himself at the village of Culross on the northern shore of the Forth. Now, even if the records of the episcopal succession at Jerusalem and at Rome were more patent than they are of this startling allegation, it will be admitted that, to say the least, this is a highly improbable story. For myself, I could quite as easily credit that St. Serf, as we read in the same narrative, was miraculously born to his parents, Obeth, King of Canaan, and his wife Alpia, daughter of the King of Arabia, that on his way from Canaan to Jerusalem he crossed the Red Sea, like Moses, on dry ground, and that an angel cut for him a staff of the wood of the tree from which the Cross of Christ had been made. Again, when St. Serf, having surrendered the throne of St. Peter at Rome, despite the expostulations of the whole people, had advanced to the coast of France, he crossed the sea to England on dry ground, with 7,000,000 com panions of his pilgrimage.1 This large number of
1 After reading this narrative, it will not surprise the reader to learn that St. Adrian, who is also of royal descent, should come from Hungary to labour among the Picts, accompanied by 6606 companions, who were all martyred by the Danes. (Aberdeen Bnviary, pars hyem., fol. Ixii. )
LEGENDS OF ST. SERF. 75
fellow-travellers is doubtless a little surprising ; but we cannot assert that it involves a suspension of the physical laws of nature.1 Is it, however, more prob able than their mode of crossing the channel ? We certainly cannot wonder that when St. Serf met St. Edheunanus at the island of Inchkeith, after they had spent a great part of the night in secret converse, he should put to his friend the awkward question, " How am I to dispose of my family and companions?" After these things the reader becomes impatient of the subsequent stories of his healing the blind, raising the dead, and other such commonplaces. A brief stimulant to our jaded sense of wonder is supplied by the narrative of how the saint cured a man afflicted with an insatiable appetite by thrusting his thumb into the patient's mouth, and so expelling a devil by whom he had been possessed ; of how a pig which a poor man had killed for the saint's supper was found next morning safe and sound ; and lastly, of how a sheep-stealer, who was declaring his innocence by oath on the saint's wonder-working staff, was painfully convicted by the animal bleating inside the culprit. -
1 The text of the MS., as printed in the CJironicks of the Ficts and Scots, reads cum septan inilibus m ilium. Skene (Celtic Scotland, vol. ii., p. 256) seems to take in ilium as an error for Jiiilitum, and to understand the word as meaning monks. But the story is too absurd to be improved by the conjectures of the textual critic. The word wiles, it may be added, needs some such addition as Dei or Christi to signify' a monk.
2 Archbishop Usher was acquainted with this Life of St. Ser- vamis, and describes it as " packed with the most stupid lies " — a verdict that will probably be assented to by all (Brit. Eccl.
76 THE CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.
The extravagances and absurdities of many of the lives of the saints of the ancient Scottish, Irish, and British Churches were distinctly recognized in the seventeenth century by one who may justly be reckoned as in the very first rank of authorities on hagiological literature, the learned Jesuit, John Bol- landus (1596 — 1665), who initiated the vast design that has resulted in the long series of the Acta Sanc torum, volume after volume of which has been appearing, at varying intervals, from 1643 up to our own day. The attitude of the Church of which he was a member towards the miraculous scarcely per mitted him that freedom of critical investigation which is open to others ; and he himself was cer tainly by no means over-sceptical. But he was plainly somewhat staggered by the records of our national hagiology. He in a marked way particularizes in this connection the lives of the saints of Ireland, Scotland, and of the ancient British Church, rightly including among the latter the saints of Gallic Brit tany. In other words, the narratives of Celtic origin, in his opinion, have a portentous wildness of state ment which is characteristic. It is as much as could
Antic]., p. 353, edit. 1687). Yet these stories of the recreated pig and the bleating mutton formed part of the faith of the people of Scotland. They both are read in the Lessons for St. Serfs day in the Aberdeen Breviary. The Rev. T. Olden has been so good as to point out to me a similar story in Jocelyn's Life of St. Patrick. St. Patrick's he-goat, employed by the saint in carrying water, was stolen, killed, and eaten. The suspected thief declared his innocence on oath ; but "a vile-sounding bleat ing" in the stomach of the culprit revealed the truth. {Vita S. Pat., cap. xv.)
HIGHLY-COLOURED DESCRIPTIONS.. 77
be expected of him when he declares them to be "almost incredible." l And I am afraid it is only too true that the Celtic saints occupy this position of unenviable pre-eminence ; though I am bound to say the hermit saints of Egypt come in a good second.
Some may, I fear, think that I have been unsym pathetic in my treatment of the lives of the saints of the Celtic period. But dealing, as- I was, with the trustworthiness of the documents, I do not know that I could have adopted any other line. I am quite willing to admit that, in many cases, the writers themselves believed the marvels that they reported. Allowance must, in all cases, be made for tempera ments characteristic of race. An excitable, senti mental, and highly-emotional people will be judged by a different standard from that applicable to those of a cold-blooded and phlegmatic disposition. Rude and uncultivated minds cannot be expected to pos sess the natural critical acumen which we find among peoples who have been subjected for generations to a strict mental discipline. Even at this day, how difficult it is for us to discover the real truth from the highly-coloured descriptions of contemporary events in Ireland.
Nor should we omit to notice, as contributing something to the influences affecting the work cf the old Celtic writers, the wild and sometimes awe- inspiring aspects of Nature in the midst of which they dwelt. Life upon desolate moorlands, or amid
1 General Preface to \heActaSattftorum, Jan. Tom. i., p. 34.
78 THE CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.
mountains often shrouded in mysterious gloom, or by the wild shores of the Atlantic, may well have fos tered a natural tendency to strange fancies and superstitious fears. Even now Ireland and the Scot tish Highlands can breed portents and prodigies which cannot breathe the air of regions occupied by people of Saxon descent. Those who have read the recently-published Journal of Sir Walter Scott may remember how, in 1827, Sir Walter was informed by Clanronald of a carefully-organized attempt made, apparently shortly before, to catch a water-cow^ which inhabited a small lake near the house of the chieftain. And the excellent editor of the Journal, Mr. David Douglas, adds the illustrative note that yet more recently the proprietor of Loch-na-Beiste, " moved by the entreaties of the people and on the positive testimony of two elders of the Free Church that the creature was hiding in his loch, attempted its destruction by pumping and running off the water ; this plan having failed, owing to the smallness of the pumps (though it was persevered in for two years), he next tried poisoning the water by emptying into the loch a quantity of quicklime." But the water- cow does not seem to have suffered materially, as it was seen in the neighbourhood as late as 1884. " This transaction," adds Mr. Douglas, " formed an element in a case before the Crofters' Commission at Aultbea, in May 1888." Surely, if we will not be very hard upon the grave and reverend " Free Church elders " towards the close of the nineteenth century, we must make allowance for the witness-bearing of
TASTE FOR THE MARVELLOUS. 79
the members of another Scottish Church a thousand years earlier.
It seems to me certain that " the law of demand and supply " prevails in regard to " miracles " as well as to other commodities. Where the ordinary interests of life are numerous and varied, there is little taste for the marvellous. Where, on the con trary, men's thoughts have small scope beyond the events of a somewhat monotonous existence, a ghost, a prodigy, or a miracle is eagerly accepted. It serves to stir the dull blood, and becomes a valued possession. Now, when men crave a stimulant of this kind, a supply is sure to be forthcoming among an imaginative people. The long evenings of winter spent by house holds gathered in the firelight supplied the fitting environment for the development of the myth. Exaggeration and embellishment were absolutely certain ; and will any one, knowing what human nature is, doubt that there was a good deal of deliberate invention ? But when a striking story that reflected honour on some local or national saint once got currency, it would have been felt by most as nothing short of irreverence or profanity to question its truth. And so, by and by, the silliest legends found their way, not only into the popular lives of the saints, but into the Service-books of the Church.
So
CHAPTER VI.
ST. COLUMBA.
IN treating of the career of the third great figure that is presented to us in the history of the evangeliza tion of Scotland, we are fortunate in possessing records of a very different kind from those with which we had to deal in the cases of St. Ninian and St. Kentigern. One of the most precious relics in the early records of any people is the Life of St. Coluniba, by the Abbat Adamnan. No wide interval of time intervened in this case between the writer and the subject of the biography. In his early years, Adamnan must have had " frequent opportunities of conversing with those who had seen St. Columba." All materials, written or oral, which lona could supply were at his disposal. He wrote his account in the island home of the saint, and "surrounded by objects, every one of which was fresh with the impress of some interest ing association." Though Adamnan was the ninth abbat of the monastery of lona, the succession of its chief officers had been rapid ; and it was only one hundred years after the death of the saint that he
8i
drew up his inestimable memoir. He had before him at least two written documents dealing with his subject, and of these he makes use.1 Whatever may be thought of his narratives of miraculous occurrences, there is no reason to suppose that he was not an honest relater of what he heard from others or found recorded in writing. And the innumerable notices of the ordinary incidents in the story of the founder of his house bear the unquestionable stamp of truthful ness. The whole work abounds in material by the help of which it is not difficult to reconstruct with much reasonable confidence the constitution of the brotherhood and to picture to ourselves the daily life of its members. The Scottish antiquary, Pinkerton, does not perhaps overrate the merits of Adam nan's work when he declares it to be " the most complete piece of such biography that Europe can boast of, not only at so early a period, but even through the whole Middle Ages." 2 And the latest and most learned editor of the work declares that " Adamnan's memoir is to be prized as an inestimable literary relic of the Irish Church : perhaps, with all its defects, the most valuable monument of that institution which has escaped the ravages of time." J And we must add that the inquirer into this period of Scottish ecclesias tical history is fortunate not only in the possession of this early memoir, but also fortunate to a very high degree in the consummate learning and judgment
1 Dr. Reeves, Historians of Scotland, vol. vi,, p. xx,
- Enquiry, etc., vol. i., p. xlviii.
3 Reeves, ut supra, Preface, p. xxxi.
F
82 THE CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.
exercised in its illustration by the late Dr. William Reeves, afterwards Bishop of Down and Connor.
The consideration of the supposed miraculous occurrences recorded by Adamnan will be con sidered in a separate chapter. We shall here endeavour to sketch the life of Columba, as it may be gathered from this work and from other ancient records.
In our sketch of the planting of the Christian Church in Scotland there now comes to be related an event, seemingly insignificant, but in reality pregnant with profound consequences to the future of religion, not only in Scotland but in Britain generally, and, indeed, not without its considerable influence on the fortunes of the faith in various parts of the continent of Europe.
One day, in the year of our Lord 563, there landed upon a small island off the west coast of Scotland an Irish monk, Columba by name, with twelve com panions, who had accompanied him from his native land.
It was not uncommon, in those days of violence, rapine, and frequent tribal quarrels, for men who had made choice of the life of monastic devotion to seek for the more complete retirement and greater security which were attainable by removing themselves out of the track of wars, with the danger of enforced military service, and away from the fear of the fierce marauding bands, from whose savagery few parts of the mainland were long exempt. Hence one of the characteristic features of Irish monasticism— -its fondness for island
iON.V, 83
homes. The islands off the west coasts of Ireland and Scotland abound to this day in ecclesiastical memories ; and many shadowy traditions gather round the remains of broken cross, ruined cell, or roofless chapel, over which have swept the spray- laden Atlantic storms of a thousand years.
In the particular case before us, other motives may have been at work in determining the choice, in the first instance, of "lona as a place of settlement, or, at all events, the continued preference shown for it. The little island that Columba made his home and head-quarters for thirty-five years, while being indeed a place of secure retirement, when retirement was sought, proved also a serviceable basis of operation in active missionary enterprise. Along the deeply- indented coast-line of the west of Scotland a boat with oars and sails gave the missionary of the sixth century almost as many advantages as he would possess at the present day. He could not, indeed, as we can with the aid of steam, defy wind and tide ; but, watching his opportunities, he could move about with ease, and choose his own places and his own time for landing and leaving.
In the monastic system of Ireland and Celtic Scotland, as elsewhere, the continuous round of Divine worship, the cultivation of the spirit of devotion, the study of Divine truth, the practice of self-discipline, were all duly cared for ; but with these were conjoined on the part of the Celtic monks a missionary zeal so earnest and an ardour of diffusive Christian love so glowing, that the lives of their
84 THE CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.
recluses and anchorites are seldom thought of, and our minds naturally dwell on the active and untiring missionary labours which have achieved such great things for the evangelization of our own land, and which subsequently extended their beneficent influence even to the remote regions of Germany and Switzer land and Italy.
But who was this Columba ? His story has been often told, and can never gain a hearing without stirring men's hearts, for it is indeed the story of a noble life, a life of high aims and unceasing endeavour, a life full of loving sympathy with his fellow-men, and of loving devotion to his Lord. And if Columba was not without his failings and faults, they are faults and failings that beset men of naturally warm hearts, strong will, and eager temperament, and such as are often found associated with the characters of those who have made a deep impression upon their fellows, and have gained for themselves commanding stations in the history of the world, or of the Church.
Columba was born in Donegal in the year 521. He belonged to the clan of the O'Donnels, which has again and again figured largely in the subsequent history of Ireland. He was descended on both father and mother's side from the families of powerful provincial princes.
We have seen that tradition has represented the two other great figures that attract the eye when we view the early history of religion in Scotland, St. Ninian and St. Mungo, as also of royal blood. And this, taken together with what we now learn was told
COLUMBA'S ROYAL DESCENT. 85
of St. Columba, may perhaps raise a suspicion in some minds that there is something of romancing in these old stories. But I do not think that farther consider ation will bear out the suspicion — I mean as regards this particular feature of the histories. It is true that there was a temptation to the ancient hagiologists to glorify their heroes by representing them as of exalted birth ; but taking ail the evidence into account, we may, I think, come to the conclusion that while in the case of Columba his royal descent and connection must be regarded as absolutely certain, in the other cases, more particularly that of St. Ninian, there is no sufficient reason to seriously question the statement. Again, we should remember that the bringing up of a child amid the traditions of a historic family, the inspiring effect of the stirring tales of forefathers and relations, and the comparative breadth of view that must have been found in the circle of a great chief, as contrasted with the mere personal cares and petty occupations of the common crowd, would all have helped to stimulate the imagination, and have made easier the influence of ideal motives in initiating great things. High courage and the spirit of adventure often comes amid such surroundings ; and both were indeed needed by the early Christian pioneers in Britain. In the case of Columba, as we shall see, his royal connections helped probably to determine his choosing his settlement among the islands of the west of Scotland. Again, we shall not be wrong in believ ing that, among a people so keenly alive to the claims of hereditary rank as the Celtic populations of Scotland
86 THF. CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.
and Ireland, the advantages possessed by Columba must have added vastly to his influence as preacher, missionary, and monastic ruler.
At his baptism the boy was given, as is supposed, the two names — Crimthann, a " wolf," and Colum, a " dove." The former name, which might have been very appropriate had the noble child devoted him self in after life, like so many of his ancestors and relations, to war and rapine, was dropped by the Christian priest and missionary ; and Colm, or, in its Latin form, Columba, is the name under which he has become famous in Church history.1
Columba, it is said, was from early years devoted to attendance on the services of the Church. We do not find in his case, as in that of some others who in the days of their subsequent penitence did great things for Christ, that he was in early days led astray by the seductions of the world or of youthful pleasures. He is represented as from boyhood devoted to the prac tice of piety, and as an eager student. He first attended the monastic school of St. Finnian of Moville, at the head of Strangford Lough ; and there he was ordained deacon. He next moved south into Leinster,
1 In after time the word "kille" was sometimes added to the word " Colm " — either on account, as is said, of the great number of churches founded by him, or on account of his early devotion to attendance at church. The name Colum in different forms was a great favourite. The suffix an is a diminutive, and has given us the very common name of Colman = Columan. Dr. Gammack (in Smith and Wace's Dictionary of Christian Bio graphy] supplies notices of 41 Colmans ; and Archbishop Usher says that upwards of 230 of that name are to be found in records of Irish saints.
MONASTERY OF CLONART). 87
and placed himself under the instruction of a secular teacher — the " bard " Gem man. At a subsequent time we shall find him exerting himself successfully for the protection of the Irish bards (the professional poets and chroniclers of Ireland), at the great Council of Drumceatt. He was himself a skilful writer of verse, and we possess, not only some remarkable Latin hymns, but also some poems in his Irish vernacular, which have been, not without reason, attributed to his pen.1 Thus we see he did not despise what was the chief form of secular culture known to his age and country.
We next find Columba attending the most famous school of ecclesiastical learning of that day in Ireland — the monastery of Clonard, situated on* the upper waters of the Boyne, under another St. Finnian.2 Clonard, in respect to the vast number of its monks and students, reminds one of a mediaeval university. Usher seems to accept the statement that reckons its scholars as three thousand. And here Columba remained for several years.3
It is of much interest to note that Columba, in attending the schools of the two Finnians, became probably acquainted with the monastic systems of
1 See Appendix I. for a translation of the poem Altus Prosator attributed to Columba.
2 The name in the forms Finian, Finan, Fintan, Findan, etc. , is very common. It is the diminutive of Finn = white, i. c. prob ably "the light-haired." Finnian of Moville is sometimes referred to under the name Find-bar = white head.
3 The numbers at Clonard find a parallel in the case of the Irish Bangor.
THE CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.
both the north British school of Candida Casa (where Finnian of Moville had studied), and also of the south British, or Welsh, school of St. David (under whose instruction at Menevia, Finnian of Clonard had been a pupil). In Columba the influence of St. Ninian in Galloway came back to another part of Scotland by a strange route.
It is also interesting to know that both these St. Finnians are commemorated in Scottish mediaeval calendars, and that Finnian of Moville, appearing under the form Vinnin or Wynnin, has, as has been thought, given his name to the town of Kilwinning in Ayrshire.
At Clonard Columba gained much skill in the art of the copyist, which, in other hands, was brought afterwards to such marvellous artistic perfection, as we find in the superb decorations of the Book of Kclls and other Irish manuscripts. It was while a resident at Clonard that Columba was ordained Presbyter ; and the story that refers to the incident is so curious and instructive, that it is worth being related. Its historic value, indeed, is of the slightest. Reeves declares it to be a fiction of a later age, but it illus trates very well some of the ecclesiastical usages of the time. St. Finnian, who was at the head of the great monastery, was not himself of higher rank than presbyter, but perhaps he desired to have Columba as a resident bishop, who would perform all the needed episcopal duties of the place. Accordingly, as the story runs, he sent Columba to Etchen, bishop at the monastery of Clonfad (in Westmeath), with a
COLUMBA'S ORDINATION. 89
request for his consecration. On reaching Clonfad and inquiring for the bishop, Columba is informed that he is ploughing in a neighbouring field. On finding the bishop and disclosing his errand, he is received in a very kind manner, but through some error as to the wishes of St. Finnian, or some other unaccountable mistake, Columba is ordained only priest, and not bishop. Now let us observe what may be learned from this legend, supposing it to reflect the ecclesiastical notions current at a very early date in Ireland. We saw already that St. Mungo was con secrated bishop by only one Irish bishop, and the same practice — which, as I have said, has always been reckoned by the Church generally as raHd, though uncanonical and irregular — seems to have continued, at least on occasions, till the twelfth century. Cer tainly Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury (1070 — 1093), complained of the practice as existing in Ireland in his day ; and the complaint was repeated by his successor, Anselm (1093 — HI4).1
This curious story not only points to the practice of consecration by a single bishop, but suggests the notion that what is known as consecration per saltum (that is, that consecration to the higher grade without formally passing through the lower) was then recog nized. Very many hundred years afterwards, when James VI. desired to restore the episcopal succession to Scotland, this question of per saltum consecration was discussed, and the bishops of the Jacobean epis copate were consecrated (with the sanction of the
1 Usher, /->/. Epist. Hibern. Sylloge, xxvii., xxxv., xxxvi.
QO THE CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.
most learned theologians of England) without being required to go through the inferior grades of deacon and presbyter. The conferring of the higher office was held to include the authority to exercise the functions of the two lower.1
Columba appears never afterwards to have sought the rank of bishop ; and the sentiment that it was unbecoming that any of his successors should possess a higher dignity than their great patron became a well- defined practical rule of the Columban monasteries.
But we must hasten over the remainder of the story of Columba in Ireland. After spending some time at another monastery, that of Glasnevin (now a suburb of Dublin, where are situated beautiful Botanic Gardens and a great public cemetery), he devoted, according to Bishop Reeves, some fifteen years to planting churches and monasteries in various parts of Ireland ; and in view of his subsequent settlement in lona, it is not uninteresting to observe that some of his Irish monasteries were situated in islands off the coast, as, for example, Lambay, Rathlin, Tory, and Inishowen.2
1 After the great rebellion, however, when in 1661 episcopacy was again restored to Scotland, two Scottish divines — Leighton and Sharp— consecrated bishops at Westminster, were required to submit to previous ordination as deacons and presbyters. The validity of the former consecrations to the episcopate (in 1610) was not indeed questioned, but it was probably thought wiser to anticipate and prevent the raising of doubts at a later time.
2 St. Columba's labours in Ireland have gained for him the distinction of being reckoned in Ireland as one of "the Three Patrons " of the country — St. Patrick and St. Brigid being the other two.
COLUMBA LEAVES IRELAND. 91
We now come to the time when Columba entered upon his labours in Scotland. This was not till he had reached forty-two years of age, but the remaining thirty-four years of a very active life were spent almost wholly either in his home at lona, or among the other islands, or on the mainland of Scotland, engaged chiefly in the work of converting the heathen Picts of the north, and in teaching and building up the scattered and enfeebled Christian communities of men of his own race already existing in the western highlands.
Why did Columba leave Ireland ? Different reasons have been assigned. Some contend that the love of God and of his brethren was to him a sufficient motive, and that his immediate objects were the instruction of the Christian Irish of the principality in Argyll, and the conversion of their neighbours, the Northern Picts.1 It is necessary to be acquainted with the fact that for some considerable time before Columba' s day, Scots from the north coast of Antrim, and belonging to the district called Dalriada, had been emigrating to the west of what is now Scotland, passing over the narrow channel that separated them from the Scottish main land. They probably might easily land in Cantire, and spread up along the western coast of Argyll ; and so they founded another principality of Dalriada, and laid the foundations of that other Scotia or Scotland,
1 See Dr. George Grub, EccL Hist, of Scot., vol. i., p. 49, and Dr. Skene, Celtic Scotland, vol., ii. p. 79 ; and this view seems to be accepted as the more probable by Prof. Stokes, Ireland and the Celtic Church , p. 112 sq.
92 THE CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.
which eventually took sole possession of the name. 'The great body of these Dalriads was Christianized > before their emigration to Britain. Conal, the reigning prince of the British Dalriads at the time of Columba's first visiting that region, was a kinsman of the saint. Those who care to trace the genealogy and family history of Columba can do so with the help of Bishop Reeves ; but it must suffice here to say that Columba's royal descent and connections served him in good stead in his work among the Scots in the region of Argyll and the more southern islands.
Professor Stokes, who here substantially follows Skene,1 suggests (and I think he has here rightly gauged the high spirit and chivalrous temper of the man) that the imminent danger to which the new colony was exposed of extinction at the hands of the pagan Picts, stirred the heart of Columba to go to the effective assistance of his brethren, by bringing to their aid, " not the might of temporal warfare, but of those spiritual weapons which alone can curb and restrain unre- generate nature." Certainly it was only two or three years before the arrival of Columba among the British Scots that they had received a terrible defeat from the Northern Picts, under their warlike and, as Bede calls him, "most powerful king," Brude, whom we shall presently meet again in the history of Columba. What would have deterred timid natures may well
1 Skene says plainly, "This great reverse (?. e. the defeat of ' the British Scots by Brude) called forth the mission of Columba, f commonly called Columcille. and led to the foundation of the ! monastic Church in Scotland." Celtic Scotland, vol. ii., p. 79.
REASON FOR LEAVING IRELANb. 93
have acted as a powerful attraction to the generous, ardent, and right-royal soul of Columba.
Such seems a probable account of the reasons that actuated Columba in seeking this new field of labour, as they commend themselves to some among our ablest recent historians.
Bishop Reeves, however, is evidently not disposed to regard as altogether valueless the account which, from a very early date, had currency and acceptance in Ireland, and which represents the settlement of Columba at lona as an involuntary exile, due to ecclesiastical censures passed upon him for the part taken by him in originating and urging on a war in which much Christian blood was shed on both sides.1 At any rate, there might be just cause of complaint against me if I were to omit a story which, even if without historical foundation, is often referred to, and which should therefore, if for no better reason, be known to those who claim to possess acquaintance with the life of.lhe saint.
Briefly told, the story runs as follows. His old teacher, St. Finnian of Moville gave on one occasion permission to Columba to examine, for the purpose of study, a manuscript of the Book of Psalms, or, as some say, a manuscript of the Gospels, which was Finnian's property. But Columba was not content
1 The Rev. II. J. Lawlor has observed very justly that the two accounts are not inconsistent. " St. Columba (i) determined to engage in missionary work : this may have been in consequence of the judgment of Molaise ; (2) he chose a particular sphere of work : to this he may have been guided by the considerations referred to by Skene and Stokes."
94 THE CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.
with only reading the book ; he forthwith proceeded to make a transcript of it. When the account of this infringement of copyright reached the ears of St. Finnian, it roused him to warm indignation. He de manded that the copy should be handed over to him, together with the original. This demand Columba stoutly refused ; and eventually it was resolved that the question in dispute should be referred to the decision of the King of Meath. The king in full court decided against Columba. The principle on which the decision was based was one laid down in the Brehon law; and the judgment was delivered, ''To every cow her calf belongs, and so to every book its child-book." Columba's proud temper would not brook this adverse ruling, and he resolved to resort to arms with the aid of his clansmen, the Northern Hy- Neill. No doubt he would represent it to himself as a struggle, not on account of a paltry book, but for the sake of a principle of justice and right. We know how easy it is for good men when angry to find that they are not contending for self but for principle. A battle was fought at Cooldrevny (somewhere between the town of Sligo and the neighbouring Drumcliffe). Victory went with the Ulster allies of Columba, and 3000 men of Meath were reckoned among the slain. I offer no opinion on the probability of this story ; I would only say that in estimating the evidence we should not fail to take into account the fierce spirit of the age. Again, we must not omit to remember the very slight occasions that have at almost all times been found sufficient in Ireland to stir up clan-feuds ; nor,
EXCOMMUNICATION 'OF COUJMiU. 95
finally, the historical fact that at that time, and long after, it was not considered derogatory to the members of the monasteries to bear arms and take an active part in bloody wars.
The story in one of its forms then goes on to say that Columba, after the slaughter at Cooidrevny, con sulted his " soul-friend," /. e. his confessor and spiritual adviser, Molaise, who then lived on the wild island of Inismurray, six miles off the Sligo coast.1 Perhaps Columba was already suffering the excommunication by an ecclesiastical synod of which we hear in another account. Indeed, we have the authority of Adamnan for saying that he was for a time excommunicated \ Adamnan says for trivial faults, and, as it afterwards appeared, unjustly. At any rate, Molaise is said to have enjoined upon Columba as a penance to leave his dear Ireland, and to devote himself to missionary labours among the heathen Picts until he had con verted to Christ as many souls as his recent conduct had brought down to death upon the battle-field.
In accord with the story I have now related, is the further feature of the legend (which is certainly not without a tender and poetic beauty of its own), that Columba, attended by twelve companions, having sailed from Ireland in compliance with the penance enjoined upon him, first landed at the island of Oron- say ; but finding that from the highest point of the
1 See an extremely interesting account of this island and its ecclesiastical remains, quoted by Stokes, Ireland and the Celtic Church, vol. i., p. 184 sy. I have visited Inismurray, and can testify to the profoundly interesting character of the place.
<;f) THE CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.
land he could still see the distant coast-line of his beloved Ireland, he again embarked, and finally settled at lona, after having satisfied himself that no longer was Ireland visible.1
From the documents sifted and examined in the historic spirit, it would appear that a grant of the island of lona was made to Columba by his kinsman Conal, the reigning prince of the colony of Dalriads in Scotland ; and it seems not improbable that before the landing of Columba on lona, the island already con tained a Christian community. But, however this may have been, henceforth lona was to be for ever associ ated pre-eminently with the name of Columba.
The eventful landing of Columba in lona is to be ' placed, as has been said, in the year of our Lord 563.
Columba, having built a church and monastic cells of a rude kind, and generally organized his little com munity in the island, soon turned his attention to labour among his Irish brethren in British Dalriada, and more especially to the grand design of Chris tianizing the enemies at once of his countrymen and of the faith — the northern pagan Picts.
At this time the kingdom of the Pictish king, Brude, the son of Mailcon, was powerful and widely extended. The principal residence of the king was situated not far from Inverness.- Columba was at-
1 It has been conjectured by some that Columba's leaving Ireland was a self-inflicted penance.
2 Reeves places the royal residence at the vitrified fort of Craigphadrick, the remains of which are still to be seen ; but Skene, as I think, with more reason, is disposed in favour of Torvean, or else the eminence known as the Crown. Celtic Scotland, vol. ii., p. 1 06
VISIT TO KING BRUDE. 97
tended on his journey to the fortress of Brude by some of his trusty companions. Two of them, both famous in Church history, were Picts by race, though of the Irish branch ; and it looks like what might be called an " undesigned coincidence " to find them associated in the narrative with the mission to the Picts of the north. One was Comgall, abbot of the famous monastery of Bangor in the county of Down. The other was Cainnech or Canice, who has given his name to the ancient city and cathedral of Kil kenny. He was known in Scotland as Kenneth, and, judging from the number of churches dedicated under ' his name, he was second only to St. Columba and St. Bride (/. e. Brigid) in popularity.1
The Christian monks, when they arrived at the palace of King Brude, were met by closed and fastened doors ; but before the sign of the cross, as the story is told, the locks flew back, the gates opened, and Columba and his companions entered.
The Life of St. Columba, by Adamnan (of which we shall have to speak more fully later on), abounds from beginning to end with stories of the miraculous, and, as we shall hereafter have occasion to observe, many of them are intractable by any fair process, and must either be accepted as they stand, or else be set down as pure inventions, or at all events inventions with only the smallest grain of truth for a basis. In this par ticular instance, however, it is easy to see how some metaphorical expression as to the wonderful removal
1 See, for a list of dedications, Forbes' Kalendars of Scottish Saints, p. 297.
G
98 THE CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.
of formidable obstructions to the preaching of the faith, and "the opening of a door " (in Pauline phrase ology) for the servants of the Cross might have originated the story.1 King Brude is represented as awe-struck by what had happened ; he receives the missionaries with reverence, and in due time re- ' nounces heathenism, and is baptized into the faith 1 of Christ. With the conversion of the king came 1 rapidly the conversion of the people, after the manner not uncommon among the Celts, with whom the honour due to the chief is often regarded as demand ing that his people shall follow his wishes in respect to creed and religion as in other things.2
Here it is natural to ask the question : What was the character of the paganism of the Picts ? Skene has investigated the subject with his customary thoroughness, and has come to the conclusion that it did not differ substantially from the paganism of the Scots of Ireland. Accordingly, the documents relating incidentally to the early religions of both countries may be considered together. Unfortunately the notices of Irish and Scottish heathenism are not very numerous, and nowhere do we get a detailed description of it. But the result of inquiry leads one to believe that there was certainly no largely developed or elaborate mythology. The late learned Dr. James Henthorn Todd goes indeed so far as to say that " there is no evidence of their having had any personal gods." 3 The
1 See i Cor. xv. 9 ; 2 Cor. ii. 12 ; Col. iv. 3.
2 Illustrations of this statement may be found in the Scottish Highlands within modern times. s Life of St. Patrick, p. 414.
THE DRUIDS. 99
sun, the moon, and the stars, the sea, the rivers and wells, the clouds and the mountains, were certainly objects of religious veneration, but whether only as the habitations of the earth-gods (whom the Christian missionaries regarded as demons) or not, it is difficult to say.
In the early lives of the Celtic missionary saints their most vigorous opponents are certain persons called Druids (Druad/i) or, in the Latin records, magi. But these Druids do not recall to us the sacerdotal figures that are pictured under that name in Caesar's familiar account of the religion of the Gauls ; they are pre sented rather as sorcerers, magicians, and, if we may borrow the name from South African paganism, " medicine-men." It is now generally acknowledged that the stone circles and cromlechs that are to be found in various parts of the country do not exhibit to us the remains of heathen temples and altars, but are, in truth, sepulchral monuments. The magi of the Columban records are not apparently priests, but wizards, who have gained control over the powers, personal or impersonal, that underlie the forces of nature. There was much, in this Druidism, of the religion of fear. Magical rites, spells, and incantations, designed to ward off the ill-will of the dread mysterious powers, or to stimulate and direct their energies against enemies, are a common feature in the narratives.
It is of deep interest to observe how these preten sions of the magi, or Druids, were met by the Christian missionaries. In general, it would seem that the missionaries themselves accepted the supernatural
100 THE CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.
character of the power possessed by the Druids, but ! regarded it as obtained, through God's permission, ' from evil spirits. Hence there is no attempt made by the missionaries to disprove the Druids' miraculous performances, no. attempt to expose them, as would : probably be the mode of procedure with our modern missionaries in similar circumstances. Columba and the other ancient saints are not represented as explain ing away the marvels of their opponents, but as out- rivalling them. And the contests that are pictured to us at once recall to mind the trials of strength between Moses, the servant of the Lord, and the magicians of Egypt, in the Old Testament story. To take an example from the history of St. Columba. On the saint letting it be known on what day he was about to leave the Court of King Brude, the powerful Druid, Broichan, told him that on that day he could not depart, for that he (Broichan) would raise a contrary wind, and bring down the darkness of mist from the mountains. Columba replied that all our actions are in the hands of God, who would do as seemed to Him fit. On the day fixed, as the Druid had foretold, a contrary wind arose and increased to a tempest, while great darkness came down upon the lake (Loch Ness). But Columba, despite the murmurs of the sailors, embarks, orders the canvas to be spread in the teeth of the gale, and sails his boat triumphantly against the wind, to the amazement of the assembled crowd. Adamnan, commenting on this, observes that it is not to be wondered at that God should at times permit the demons to exercise their power upon the
BELIEF IN THE SUPERNATURAL. IOI
winds and waves. There is no attempt at explaining the storm on that day by suggesting that it was a coin cidence, any more than there is an attempt to ration alize the wonder of Columba's navigation, as some might do, by supposing him to be sailing " very close to the wind."1
Now, if we succeed in reconstructing in imagination the then existing conditions of social life, I think we shall be satisfied that it must have been far easier to effect the conversion of the people on the principles accepted by Columba and his followers than it would have been had the missionaries attempted to show that the much- honoured magi were mere impostors, and the prevailing faith in the supernatural utterly baseless. As it was, the missionaries admitted the reality of the heathen miracles, but declared that He whom they served could do yet greater things, and manifest His superior power. There is no escaping the conclusion that the Celtic missionaries and the Fathers of the Celtic Church were themselves unhesitating believers in what would in our time be regarded as puerile superstitions. But we may well believe that in the providence of God such a nearness of intellectual level between teacher and taught materially assisted their evangelistic labours. And we are instructed in the lesson, which we shall again and again have to bear in mind, that a great body of baseless superstitions may be held compatibly with large measures of Divine truth, with the most sincere piety, and with high intellectual ability and acumen.
1 Vita S> ColumlhC) lib. ii., c. 35.
102 THE CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.
On the part of most modern writers dealing with the lives of the great pioneers of the Faith in Britain, there seems to be a shrinking from telling those portions of their histories that indicate the wide difference in the intellectual standpoints of those times and of these. The feeling is prompted, I dare say, by the sentiment of reverence for those great servants of God. Yet I am sure that if we only attain to a true understanding of the situation, neither respect nor reverence will be wanting, even when we are at first tempted to smile at the grotesque forms in which the beliefs of those distant days very frequently took their shape.
The conversion of the Northern Picts was the great triumph of Columba's missionary efforts. The labours involved in this undertaking are unfortunately scarcely touched by his biographers ; but we can gather that his whole life was one full of activity, and occupied by many interests. Beside his toils among the heathen, there were many toils among his Christian brethren of the mainland and of the neighbouring islands. His own community on lona held a place of first import ance in his heart. But the care and oversight of very many daughter monasteries and churches in the islands and in Ireland could not be escaped ; and we find him not confining himself to his island home, but from time to time, as the occasion required, visiting the Western Isles, the mainland of Scotland, and even Ireland. Affairs of general interest, at times affairs of political interest, would lay hold on him. Thus he takes the important step of " ordaining" Aidan to be King of
IRISH BARDS. 103
Dalriada, although the right of succession and his private preference indicated another for that dignity. Again, in the year 575, he attends a great gathering of chieftains and ecclesiastics held at Drumceatt (situated not far from Newtown-Limavady, in the county Londonderry). He accompanied the King of British Dalriada, and was himself attended (if we may trust the saint's poetical panegyrist, Dalian Forgaill) by twenty bishops, forty priests, fifty deacons, and twenty students. At this " Synod " of Drumceatt — a very im portant assembly, which is said to have lasted for fourteen months — Columba helped to effect the ex emption of the settlers in Albanian Dalriada from the payment of tribute to the chief King of Ireland. Another result of the intervention of Columba on this occasion is said to have been the mitigation of the harsh measures which it was designed to apply to the Irish " bards " — a class hitherto formally recognized, and possessing important privileges. The " bards " were at this time extremely numerous, and vexatiously exacting in their demand for maintenance for them selves and their retinue1 as they travelled through the country. Any reluctance to yield to their requests was met by a threat that satirical verses could be readily produced, and might prove disagreeable. In fact, the " bards " had, by their large numbers and by their ex cessive greed and annoyance, become a nuisance, and the Irish Congress, or " Synod," was about to abate the nuisance by abolishing the order of the bards alto-
1 Coinmed( — refection) was the name euphemistically given to this claim of the bards.
104 THE CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.
gether.1 Columba successfully pleaded for them, and laid down limitations as to the number of followers to be allowed to each bard, with a view to lessening the grievance not unnaturally complained of.2 On this occasion also, Columba exerted himself to obtain the release from captivity of Scannlan Mor, a prince of Ossory. In the attempt he was perhaps unsuccessful, but we see from the proceedings at Drumceatt, what is elsewhere confirmed, that Columba possessed a force and vigour of character that was capable of display ing itself in social, public, and state affairs, not less than in the more obscure field of missionary effort and of ecclesiastical economics and government. Had Columba lived in later days and amid different sur roundings, he might perhaps have presented to us, in one aspect of his character, the figure, as we may imagine, of a great cardinal or other powerful prelate, adroit in state-craft, and zealous in advancing the claims of the party which he had espoused. Nor do I think there is anything improbable in the supposition that Columba was concerned, after the founding of the settlement in lona, in the battle of Coleraine, fought on account of a dispute, probably about ecclesiastical jurisdiction, between him and St. Comgall, of Bangor.3 The name of Columba is also connected, though in a less definite way, with a third battle, fought only ten
the Irish king, had already issued against them a decree of banishment.
2 It was in gratitude for Columba's exertions on behalf of the bards that their head, Dalian Forgaill, composed his Amhra Cholnimchille, or Praises of Cohiinkille, see p. in.
3 In County Down, on Belfast Lough.
TRIBAL QUARRELS. 105
years before his death, between the northern and southern branches of the Hy Neill. At this distance of time, and with little or no information as to the cir cumstances, we are quite incapable of forming a judg ment on the Tightness or wrongness of Columba's supposed participation in these quarrels and the con sequent bloodshed. We know that in days of savagery or semi-barbarism it is not uncommon to find that physical force is the only remedy that can be em ployed against the violence of injustice. And we have to remember, as already observed, that the sentiment of the time was in no degree outraged or wounded by members of the monastic brotherhoods bearing arms and engaging in the bloody wars of tribal factions.1
The quick, high-spirited, and passionate natural temperament of this great man must not be dropped out of sight if we are to do him justice. But it is to other aspects of his character that we more readily turn. His spirit of self-denial, his devotion to the cause of Christ, his considerateness for others, his
1 "It was not until 804 that the monastic communities of Ireland were formally exempted from military service. . . . That even among themselves the members of powerful com munities were not insensible to the spirit of faction appears from numerous entries in the ancient annals. Of these, two — of which one relates to a Columban house — may here be adduced as ex amples : A.D. 673, 'A battle was fought between the fraternities of Clonmacnois and Durrow, where Dermod Duff was killed . . . with 200 men of the fraternity of Durrow . . .' A.D. 816, ' A battle was fought by Cathal, son of Dunlang, and the fraternity of Tigh-Munna, against the fraternity of Ferns, in which 400 were slain. "; Reeves? Introduction to Adamnan's Life of St. Columba, xlviii. (Historians of Scotland, vol. vi.). Other illus trations may be found in Prof. Stokes' Ireland and the Celtic Church, Lectures V. and X.
106 THE CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.
affection and tenderness for the brethren, his kindness even to dumb animals, and similar traits, make us able to understand how it was that he secured the enthusi astic love of the members of the fraternity at lona, and indeed of all his monasteries.
"What did St. Columba look like?" some one may ask. " What do we know of his personal appearance ? " Questions of this kind are the first I myself wish to have answered when I come to study any man's biography. " What like was he ? " was the question which the great historical painter — if I may not call him the great historian — Thomas Carlyle, was wont, more Scoticano, to ask about each character of the past that caught his fancy. In a letter of Carlyle's which, though little known as being buried ten fathom deep in the Proceedings of one of our learned societies, is full of interest, we read : " I have to tell you, as a fact of personal experience, that in all my poor historical investigations it has been, and always is, one of the most primary wants to procure a bodily like ness of the personage inquired after ; a good Portrait, if such exists ; failing that, even an indifferent if sincere one. In short, any representation, made by a faithful human creature of that face and figure which he saw with his eyes, and which I can never see with mine, is now valuable to me, and much better than none at all ... Often I have found a Portrait superior in real instruction to half-a-dozen written 'Biographies,' as biographies are written ; or rather, let me say, I have found that the Portrait was as a small lighted candle by which the Biographies could for the first
PORTRAIT OF COLUMBA. 1 07
time be read, and some human interpretation be made of them ; the Biographical Personage no longer an impossible Phantasm or distracting Aggregate of inconsistent rumours."1
Now, a contemporary portrait of Columba, in the sense here intended by Carlyle, we do not possess ; nor, if we did possess one, would it be of much value, for however admirably skilled the Irish decorative artists were in other directions, they seem to have been ostentatiously, even grotesquely, indifferent to any exactness of realism in the attempted portraiture of the human face and figure. All we can do then is to look for some vivid description of the personal ap pearance of this great missionary and saint, and failing that, to piece together as best we may the incidental notices that help to show us in any degree what manner of man he was. Even in this respect, un fortunately, the material is scanty, and lacking in the definiteness and precision that our age so eagerly demands. We may perhaps believe that Columba was tall and dignified in bearing, and that he had brilliant eyes, as later authorities aver. Adamnan tells he was "like an angel in appearance," and was "endeared to all, for a holy joy always beamed from his countenance manifesting the inner gladness with which the Holy Spirit filled his heart." -'
A powerful voice of great sweetness is referred to
1 Letter to David Laing on the subject of Scottish Historical Portraits, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland ', vol. i., part iii.
- Vita^ secnnda Prefatio.
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more than once, and the distance at which the words, and even syllables, were distinctly heard when he sang the Psalms seemed to his biographers to point to the miraculous — more especially, as to those who stood in the church with him his voice did not seem louder than the voices of others.1 The advantages of such a sonorous and yet musical voice to a preacher, many of whose sermons must have been delivered in the open air, was doubtless very great. There are other sug gestions in Adam nan's Life of Columba of a physical vigour and energy, which independently we might be led to suspect from the laborious character of the career of the saint.
The outlines of his mental, moral, and spiritual portrait may be more clearly gathered. When the head of a large and widespread community commands, as Columba did, the respect and admiration as well as the affection of its members, we cannot doubt his possession of many intellectual endowments. His biographer represented the general sentiment when he declared that Columba's intellectual abilities were of
1 " The voice of the venerable man, when singing in the church with the brethren, raised in a marvellous manner, was heard sometimes at a distance of four stadia, that is 500 paces, some times at a distance of eight stadia, that is 1000 paces." The poet Dalian Forgaill may be excused for the poetic licence of augmentation when he sang —
" The sound of his voice, Columcille's, Great its sweetness above all clerics ; To the end of fifteen-hundred paces, Vast spaces, it was clear."
Adamnan is careful to note that this peculiarity was only rarely observed.
INTELLECTUAL ENDOWMENTS. 109
the highest order and his practical wisdom great.1 His tenderness and readiness to sympathize with the sorrows and joys of others, united with a certain reserve and dignity that are not commonly found in combination with effusive sympathies, made a marked feature in his character. His indignation at injustice and cruelty, his affection for the brethren, his more than perfunctory hospitality to strangers, are constantly showing themselves in the incidents of his life as recorded by his successor. Like a true Celt, as he was, he gave ready expression to his emotions. We read of his smiles and his tears — sometimes of tears in copious abundance. Columba has been accused even by admirers 2 of a vindictive temper ; and the evident satisfaction with which his biographer multi plies instances where men of violence, murderers, and oppressors of the innocent were overtaken by death or misfortune, as foretold by the saint, seem at first to the hasty reader to lend colour to the charge. But the exact line where righteous indignation ends and the sin of vindictiveness begins it is not easy for the moralist to define. The wild life of that period of miserable disorder was not such as to promote the growth of the gentler virtues among any who were brought into contact with it. It was certainly not personal slights or indignities, as such, but wrong and injustice to others that ordinarily roused the anger of Columba.3
1 " Ingenio optimus, consilio magnus," Secunda Pro:/.
2 For example, by Montalembert.
3 Again, his biographer represents the saint rather as pre dicting than as invoking a just retribution upon wrong-doers.
IIO THE CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.
The laborious and untiring industry of Columba is testified to by Adamnan. Not an hour of the day passed without its occupations in prayer, or reading, or writing, or some other task. His fastings and his vigils were carried to an extent that seemed to surpass the powers of man's endurance, and yet he maintained the sweetness and the brightness of disposition that do not always accompany vigorous self-discipline.1 He had all the tender and passionate affection of the Celt for the land of his birth. Again, his widely diffused benevolence did not check the ardour of devoted personal friendships.
Nor can we pass over, as contributing to the fullness of the portrait, glimpses that show us a real sympathy with the brute creation. For example, Columba on one occasion gives directions to one of the brethren to feed and tend a poor crane, which, completely ex hausted by its long flight from Ireland, fell upon the western shore of the island of lona;2 while the story has been often told how, on the evening before the death of the saint, the pack-horse that used to carry the milk-vessels to the monastery, thrusting his nose into the bosom of the aged man as, in his weariness, he rested himself by the road-side, received from his grateful heart a farewell benediction.3
Any one who reads Adamnan's Life of St. Columba will not regard the praises Dalian Forgaill bestowed upon his memory as a mere professional e/oge. The
1 Secunda Prof at.
2 Adamnan, lib. i., c. 35.
3 Id., lib. i., c. 24.
PERSONAL INFLUENCE. Ill
words of the bard are felt in the main to express just the impression which the study of the biography has left behind, and they are comparatively free from the mere generalities of epitaph laudation. Mr. Skene thus cites the words of the poet, who describes the people as mourning over 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 with out a base cord, a perfect sage who believed in 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 a remembrance of the cross." 1
It has been claimed for one of the greatest men of letters in modern Europe 2 that his heart, which few knew, was as great as his intellect, which all knew. I shall not venture to say whether in that particular case facts justify the claim. But it is certain that great and widespread personal influence has been oftenest found where the warmth of the affections and the rich ness and sensibility of the emotional side of nature bulk large in combination with intellectual capacity and force of purpose. It is then that those with whom a great man comes in contact become not only his
1 Amhra Choluimchillc, as cited by Skene, Celtic Scotland, vol. ii., p. 145.
2 Goethe.
112 THE CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.
admiring disciples, but his ardent and enthusiastic followers. The affection, the loyal personal devotion which he inspires, far outweighs in practical value the ill-effects that are produced by the occasional errors of a hasty judgment, and of an impulsive and eager temperament. Columba's influence was due, we can scarcely doubt, in large measure to his combining in his own person the various and rarely united sources of power to which I refer.
Columba's labours included several voyages to Ireland, and journeys among the Irish monasteries. He also at times penetrates into the country of his converts, the Picts, beyond " the dorsal ridge of Britain." From time to time, probably for the sake of retirement and opportunities for more undistracted devotion, he visits and sojourns for a while in the little island of Hinba, which Reeves and Skene would identify with Eilean-na-Naoimh, a little further to the south of lona, north-west of Scarba, and where the ruined remains of a little church and of two bee-hive cells are still to be seen.1
His was a busy life of unceasing labour. After thirty years in lona had been completed, he seems to have felt his infirmities crowding upon him. He told his disciples that for many days he had been praying for his release that he might go to his "heavenly fatherland." But, as he added, "the prayers of many churches" had gone up to God that he might stay longer with them, and four years were to be added to his life. At the completion of the four years his end 1 See p. 294.
LAST DAYS OF COLUMBA. 113
was approaching. Following the account of Adamnan, and for the most part merely translating his words, we learn the affecting story of the saint's last days. It seems to me to possess a singular air of truthfulness ; and I give it in all its quaint simplicity, One day in the month of May, the old man, now worn-out with age, was drawn in a cart to visit the brethren at work in the western plain of the island, about a mile from the monastery, and calling them to him he began to say, " During the Paschal solemnities in April with desire I desired to depart to the Lord Christ, as He
had granted that I should if I preferred it. But lest for you the festival of joy should be turned into mourning, I chose to put off a little longer the day of my departure from the world." At this saying the monks were deeply grieved, and he sought as well as he could to cheer them with words of consolation. And then, still seated in the cart, he turned his face to the east, and blessed both the island and them that dwelt therein. When he had finished the words of blessing he was carried back to the monastery. A
H
114 THE CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.
few days afterwards, when he was celebrating mass as usual upon the Lord's Day, the face of the venerable man, as his eyes were raised to heaven, seemed brightened with a ruddy glow. Afterwards, in answer to the inquiries of the brethren, he told them how he had seen the angel of the Lord, who had come " to seek for a certain deposit dear to God." At a later time they came to understand that he spoke of his own soul.
The following Saturday (dies Sabbati} was the last day of his life. On that day, accompanied by his faithful and attached attendant, Diarmit, the vener able man went to bless the neighbouring barn. And, when he had entered, he blessed the barn and two heaps of winnowed com that were in it ; and then he spoke these words in thanksgiving: "I rejoice ex ceedingly, my children of the monastery (nionachi familiares\ that this year also, if I must depart from you, ye will have a supply sufficient for the year." And when Diarmit heard him thus speak, he said, " O Father, thou grievest us by so often making mention of thy departure." The saint made answer, " I have a secret to tell thee in few words, and if thou wilt faithfully promise to disclose it to no one before my decease, I shall be able to speak more plainly about my departure." When Diarmit had promised on bended knees, as the saint desired, the venerable man spoke and said, " This day is called in the sacred books the Sabbath, which, being inter preted, is Rest; and 'to me in very truth this day is the Sabbath, for it is for me the last day of this life of
FORETELLS HIS DEATH. 115
toil, the day upon which, after the anxieties and troubles of my labours, I go to rest (sabbatizo). In the middle of this approaching night of the sacred Lord's Day I shall, in the language of the Scriptures, go the way of our fathers ; for now my Lord Jesus Christ vouchsafes to call me, and to Him, I say, who calls me, in the middle of this night shall I depart. For so it has been revealed to me by the Lord Him self." When his attendant heard these sad words he began to weep, while the saint tried to comfort him as well as he could.
After this the saint comes forth from the barn ; and as he returned towards the monastery arid had gone half-way, he sits down at the place where afterwards the cross was erected, fixed in a mill-stone, where it may be seen at this day, says Adamnan, by the side of the road. And while the saint, wearied with age, was sitting there, and resting a little while, the white horse,1 that obedient servant that had been accus tomed to carry the milk-vessels backwards and forwards between the cow-shed and the monastery, approached, and coming close to the saint — strange to say — laid his head in the saint's bosom and began to whine, and, like a human being, to shed tears in abundance upon the breast of the saint, and with water dropping from his mouth began to make his
1 A recent writer relating this incident calls the animal an "old" horse. But a horse may be "white " without being old. The same writer, a few lines later, exercising the same spirit of reading into the narrative his own fancies, tells us that "at midnight he (Columba) crept into the chapel." Now that is what might be well supposed of a sick old man ; but the original
Il6 THE CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.
moan. Diarmit wanted to drive off the sorrowing creature, but the saint forbade him, saying, " Surfer him, surfer him, since he loves me, to pour out his grief into my bosom. Thou, though thou art a man with a rational soul, could in no way have known of my departure if I had not told thee ; but to this brute and unreasoning animal the Creator in His own way has revealed that his master is about to leave him." And then he blessed the sorrowing horse as he turned away from him .
After this the saint arose, and ascending the little hill above the monastery, he stood for a little on its top, and standing there, he lifted up both his hands and blessed the monastic buildings, saying, " This place, though it be mean to look at and narrow in its bounds, shall be honoured with great and distin guished honour, not only by the kings and people of the Scots, but by the rulers of barbarous and foreign nations with their subject peoples. And even the saints of other churches shall hold it in great reverence."
After these words he descended the little hill, and returning to the monastery, he sat writing the Psalter in his hut ; and when he came to that versicle of the thirty-third Psalm l where it is written, " They that seek the Lord shall want no manner of thing that is good," he said, " Here at the end of the page I must stop ; and what follows let Baithene write." At this point Adamnan interposes his comment, that as the last
tells us that he ran in before the rest, and if one were disposed to rationalize, we may suppose that a coroner's jury would have attributed the saint's death to a failure of the action of the heart. 1 In our English versions, Psalm xxxiv. 9.
LAST COMMANDS. 1 17
verse written by St. Columba was very appropriate to one about to enter on the good things of the eternal kingdom, so the next was equally appropriate to the new abbat, father and teacher of his spiritual children — " Come, ye children, and hearken unto me : I will teach you the fear of the Lord."
When the saint had completed writing the verse, he entered the church for the vesper office preceding the Lord's Day, and when it was finished he returned again to his little chamber, and rested for the night on his bed, where he had, instead of straw, a bare flag with a stone for a pillow, which at this day, adds Adamnan, stands like a kind of monument beside his grave.1 While he was resting thus upon his bed he gave his last commands to the brethren ; but Diarmit, his attendant, was the only one who heard him speak ing. "O my children," said he, "receive ye these last words of mine. Have peace and unfeigned charity among yourselves ; and if ye thus follow fhe examples of the holy fathers, God, the Comforter of the good, will be your helper. And I, dwelling with Him, will intercede for you. And He will not only supply you with a sufficiency of the things needed for this life present, but will also bestow on you the eternal rewards prepared for them that keep His com mandments." After these words, as Adamnan goes on to relate, the holy man kept silence. And at
] The visitor to lona may see deposited in the east end of the cathedral a rounded stone, which it has been found necessary to protect from relic-loving tourists by an iron cage. This is shown as, and may be in fact, " St. Columba's pillow,"
Il8 THE CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.
midnight, when the bell sounded, he rose in haste and passed to the church, and running more quickly than the others, he entered alone, and on bended knees he knelt beside the altar in prayer. His attendant, Diarmit, with some others, as they were coming up a little after, saw the whole building filled with a heavenly light, but when they came to the door the light faded suddenly. Then Diarmit, entering, called repeatedly in a voice broken with sorrow, li Where art thou, father ? " And before the brethren had brought the lights, feeling his way in the darkness, he found the abbot lying in front of the altar. He lifted him up a little, and sitting beside him, propped his holy head upon his bosom. In the meantime the body of the monks ran in with the lights ; and when they saw their father dying they burst into lamentations. Then Diarmit raised the holy right hand of the saint that he might bless the assembled monks. And the venerable father himself at the same time moved his hand as well as he could, so that, though he could not speak, he might by the motion of his hand be seen to bless the brethren.1 After which he immedi ately expired. Then the whole church resounded with loud lamentations of grief. When the matin hymns were finished, the body was carried by the monks, chanting Psalms as they went, from the church to the little hut ; and after three days of solemn obsequies, it was laid to rest in the burial-ground of
1 We have instances, in the Life, of Columba making the sign of the cross in blessing (lib. ii. 15, 28, 30), and this last action of his was in all probability an attempt to make the accustomed movement of the hand.
DEATH OF COLUMBA. 119
the monastery. Such ' is the account given us by Adamnan of the closing hours of a holy and noble life. Dr. Reeves, after a careful chronological inves tigation, decides that the death of the saint took place "just after midnight between Saturday the eighth and Sunday the ninth of June in the year 597." l
The greater monasteries of the Columban monks were, with the exception of lona, all situated in Ireland ; but some smaller foundations were to be found scattered in the western and northern islands of Scotland and in Pictland. We know that in the life-time of St. Columba, Tiree had its houses ; there was a house for a few of the brethren at Eilean-na- Naoimh, and a monastery at Oronsay may perhaps be attributed to the same date. Our records are so scanty that we can say little for certain as to the spread of the Columban houses in Scotland. Aber- nethy and Dunkeld may have been early Columban foundations ; but the numerous dedications of churches in the mainland and the northern islands afford but hazardous grounds for any sure conclusion.2 The church of Lismore, in the long and narrow island of that name, which lies in the mouth of Loch Linnhe, and is now daily skirted by steamers from Oban going
1 In the Booke of Common Prayer for the Use of the Church of Scotland, 1637, Columba is commemorated in the Kalendar at June 9, following the example of the mediaeval Church.
- Dr. Reeves gives a list of thirty-two "Columbian founda tions" in Scotland, and considers that the list "admits of con siderable enlargement," but very many of those recorded are no more than churches dedicated under the name of the saint, and may date from a period long subsequent to St. Columba.
120 THE CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.
north, is supposed to have been founded in the life time of Columba by a bishop, Moluag by name.1 It was in after times the seat of the bishopric of Argyll. Another contemporary foundation was Kingarth in the south of the island of Bute ; here, too, the founder was a bishop. Another missionary contemporary of Columba was St. Donnan, who settled in the island of Eigg. There are several Kildonans among the Scottish churches ; and doubtless this is largely due to his having, according to the common account, ob tained the glory of martyrdom. It is strange with what little opposition Christianity won its way in Scotland ; but in this case Donnan and fifty-two of his monks fell victims to the fury of the "queen" of the island ; though it should be stated that, according to another account, they suffered death at the hands of pirates. An Irish legend, which recurs in part in the Breviary of Aberdeen, assigns the origin of the Church in Aberdeen to a disciple of St. Columba, Machar by name. He was a bishop, and set out with twelve companions to preach the gospel. He was ordered to travel till he came to a river which exhib ited a curve like a bishop's crosier. This sign he found near the mouth of the river Don at Aberdeen, where the cathedral was afterwards dedicated under his name. Another missionary, named Maelrubha, a monk of St. Comgall's monastery at Bangor, settled (673) at Apurcrossan (Applecross, in Ross-shire), where he presided for forty-nine years. The Irish accounts represent him as dying a natural death ; but it is pro- 1 See pp. 307, 312.
MONASTIC FOUNDATIONS. 121
bably due to the Scottish story of his martyrdom by Norwegians that dedications to him are numerous in Scotland. It is interesting to note that, however great the fame of Columba justly is, other independent missionaries of monastic foundations distinct from his had their share in the work of evangelizing Scotland. Those who desire further information and further conjectures will consult the pages of Reeves and of Skene.1
1 As to Maelrubha, see more particularly Dr. Reeves' paper in the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries,. Scotland, vol. iii., p. 258. This saint is said to have founded a church on one of the islands in the beautiful lake in Ross-shire, Lochmaree, which takes its name from him.
122
CHAPTER VII.
IONA : ITS PHYSICAL FEATURES — THE CONSTITUTION
OF THE COLUMBAN " FAMILY " LIFE IN THE
BROTHERHOOD AT IONA.
IONA is a small island about three and a half miles long (in length lying north-east and south-west), and in its widest part about a mile and a half in breadth. It is separated from the great island of Mull l by a deep and narrow channel, or " sound," about a mile broad, through which the tides run with much force. It presents to the Atlantic a bold front, with outposts of isolated crag, or rocky islets, on the north-western, south-western, and southern side. From the south the heights slope down by a heather-covered surface of great irregularity to the middle of the island, where a comparatively flat plain (the corn-fields of the monastery) runs from the western to the eastern shore. Then the level again rises.
On the eastern side, close to the shore, and a little north of the central plain, stood the monastery of St. Columba. To the north-west of the monastery is the
1 This island is twenty-four miles long and thirty miles broad, and as seen from lona is indistinguishable from the mainland.
PHYSICAL FEATURES OF IONA. 123
highest point — a rocky hill rising to over 300 feet,1 known as Dunii.2 From this height on a clear day (which, in the moist climate that prevails, the visitor will find of less frequent occurrence than could be wished), a magnificent prospect is obtained. To the west is the wide sweep of the Atlantic ; on the east are the red-granite cliffs of the Ross of Mull, the trap terraces of Bourg, and, further inland, the mountain of Benmore, rising to a height of over 3000 feet. When the air is very clear the jagged faint blue out line of the Coollin Hills of Skye may be distinguished in the far north ; while the Paps of Jura may be seen in the south rising over the near Ross of Mull. The dis tance between these two extreme points north and south is ninety-six miles. Many other islands are visible in the distance, while the islet of Staffa is so close at hand that the characteristic columnar formation of its basalt rocks is readily distinguishable through the glass.3 In the choice of their settlements the Irish monks seem to have looked for islands not very remote from the mainland. Avoiding the greater islands, of which they could not hope to secure exclusive possession, and which would not supply the security and the isolation which they sought, they made their selection from among those that, without being very large, were yet sufficiently extensive to supply wholly, or in the
1 The Ordnance Survey gives the height as 327 feet.
2 Pronounced Doon-ee, with the accent on the last syllable.
:! For further details, see the minute and accurate description given by Skene (Celtic Scotland, vol. ii., p. 89 sq.\ See also the charming and most vivid account of the island and its surround ings in the Duke of Argyll's lona.
124 THE CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.
main, the tillage-ground and pasture required for the maintenance of the community.1
Columba landed in a little bay or creek 2 in the south of the island, but his monastery was constructed about two miles farther north, and if not situated exactly in the places occupied by the mediaeval build ings and enclosures that now remain, was certainly only a little removed from them.3
The original monastery would seem to have been of wood, or of wattles and clay. If bee-hive cells of stone then or afterwards occupied the ground, their material would probably have been used in the construction of the mediaeval buildings. No vestige of the original structure can now be distinguished.
If we would picture to ourselves what the monas tery at lona looked like in the days of Columba, we must fancy, at a distance of some two or three hun dred yards from the shore, a large enclosure, sur rounded by a high rampart or embankment (valluni] constructed of earth or perhaps of a mixture of earth and stone.4 Within this rampart was a space round
1 It would appear that as the community at lona grew in numbers, it was necessary to supplement home supplies. Even in Columba's time, Tiree (the Ethica Insula of Adamnan) had become, according to Reeves, " the farm-land of the mother island." Historians of Scotland, vol. vi., p. 309.
2 Known now as Port-na-churraich (or port of the coracle), marked by a brilliantly-coloured beach of "green serpentine, green quartz, and the reddest felspar " (Duke of Argyll's lona, p. 80). It has been lately asserted that jade has been found there.
3 About a quarter of a mile to the north of the present remains, as Skene contends, see Celtic Scotland, vol. ii., p. 100.
4 The rampart or cashell (a corruption of the Latin castellum) in some Irish monasteries was as much as fifteen feet high and nine or ten feet broad.
MONASTERY AT IONA. 125
which the lodgings of the monks were situated, and somewhat apart from the rest, on a little rising knoll, was the hut (turguriolum) of the abbat. The church, close by, with a little room abutting on it, and, as it would seem, having a door on the outside, and also one opening into the church, like many of our modern vestries, was probably the largest building on the island. There were also a refectory, and one or more guest-chambers, and without the enclosure, a mill, a kiln, a cow-shed, a stable for one or more horses, and a barn. A large community on a small island, however sparing in their diet, must have had some difficulty in finding an adequate supply of provisions. The land on the western part of the centre of the island was in tillage. In the harvest-time we read of the labouring monks reaping and bringing back loads of corn on their backs. There were sheep on the island. The cows may have been numerous, and their milk was largely used.1 " Fish were abundant, and could be obtained at all seasons. The large flounders of the Sound of lona are still an important item in the diet of the people. The rocks and islets all around swarmed with seals, and their flesh seems to have been a favourite article of food." : One of the alleged instances of Columba's prophetical powers relate to his foretelling the depredations made by a robber in a
1 In our own day the island, we know, could maintain more than 200 cows and 140 calves, about 6:0 sheep and 25 horses, beside some pigs. Duke of Argyll's lona, p. 92, edit.
2 Duke of Argyll, ut supra. The statement that seal's flesh was " a favourite article of food " seems unsupported.
126 THE CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.
breeding-ground of seals, which belonged to the monastery.1 The food resources of the island were supplemented by the corn-land of the neighbouring island of Tiree.
As might be expected, boats, large and small, of pine and oak, or of wicker covered with skin (curachs\ propelled by oars, or with sails, figure largely in the history. Indeed, again and again the narrative of Adamnan, even in its unconscious romancing, has caught and reflected with singular truth the varying tints, the light and shadows, the life and movement, the grace and mystery of the shifting currents of the ocean among the western islands. Whiffs of the sea breezes reach us with their briny odour. The authentic note of a dweller among the impressive surroundings of his island home may be caught in almost every page.2
It is worth observing that the familiar name by which St. ColumbaVisland is now commonly known seems to have arisen through an error of transcription on the part of copyists. The name habitually given to the place by Adamnan is the " lovan island " (loua insula], So it appears in the earliest extant manuscript of the Life, that of Reichenau, assigned to the beginning of the eighth century, that is, close to the date of the death of the author (703). In this form the word appears also in the two next oldest manuscripts of the Life — one of the ninth, and the other of the tenth century. Any
1 Vita, lib. i.3 c. 33.
" In the summer of 1889 I spent two delightful days upon the island, in company with the Bishop of Argyll. We each had a copy of Reeves' Adamnan, and felt that it could be but half appreciated when read elsewhere.
ORIGIN OF THE NAME IONA. 127
one familiar with the difficulty of distinguishing n from u, as written in mediaeval texts, will see at once how the error may have crept in. But it was fostered by some confusion, such as we find in our Scottish his torian, John Fordun, arising probably from the stress laid by Adamnan, in the beginning of his work, on the fact that lona (Jonah of the Old Testament) and Columba mean the same thing — the one being the Hebrew, and the other the Latin, for a "dove."
In the early Irish records the name of the island appears as la, Hya, or Hy. And this last form (pronounced ee) is still used in reference to the island by the Gaels of the Western Highlands.
Adamnan's Life of St. Columba, naturally enough, as written not for the information of later ages, but primarily for the use of his contemporary brethren of the monastery, enters into no detailed account of the constitution of the establishment, or of the every-day life of the community. But much may be gathered by the careful student from incidental allusions scat tered in abundance through the work. Dr. Reeves has, in a masterly way, grouped together such occasional references, and illustrated them from the stores of his copious erudition. In what follows I have seldom done much more than extract the more important features of his exhaustive discussion.
(i) It is very doubtful whether Columba composed any systematic Rule like that of his great contemporary, the founder of the Benedictines. But there is every reason to believe that the brethren were bound by the rules of Obedience, Chastity, and Poverty. The
128 THE CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.
authority of the abbat extended to all the members of the community, whether living in Hy — the insula primaria — or in the daughter and affiliated houses, the heads of which all received their charge from him. The whole community was known in Irish as the Muintir Choluimchille, or Family of Columkille.
(2) The founder named his own successor, his cousin Baithene; and it was not till after the year 716 that a free election of the head appears to have been allowed. Of the first eleven abbats in succession to Columba, nine were certainly of the same family as Columba, and only one was certainly not of " founder's kin." The founder's successor was styled the Comarb, or Heir, of Columkille. The word comarb, which is pronounced almost as if written co-arb, is explained by Dr. J. H. Todd (St. Patrick, p. 155) as follows:— The word u properly signifies co-heir or inheritor; co heir or inheritor of the same lands or territory, which belonged to the original founder of a church or monastery ; co-heir also of his ecclesiastical or spiritual dignity. In the absence of territorial desig nations, this term was employed in the Irish Church to designate bishops or abbats who were the successors or inheritors of the temporal and spiritual privileges of some eminent Saint or founder. Thus the co-arb of St. Patrick was the bishop or abbat of Armagh ; the co-arb of Columkille was the abbat of Hy ; the co-arb of Barre was the bishop or abbat of Cork . . . The Bishop of Rome himself is frequently called co-arb of Peter, and sometimes also abbat of Rome, showing how completely the abbatial and co-arban
CONSTITUTION OF THE FAMILY. 129
authority, implying, as it did in Ireland, the rank of a feudal lord of the soil and chieftain over the inhabitants of the soil, swallowed up, as it were, and obscured the accident of a co-existing episcopal or sacerdotal char acter in the co-arb or spiritual chieftain." Sometimes the term Ard-comarb, or chief co-arb, is met with. Thus, while there were co-arbs of Columba at the Columban monasteries of Derry, Durrow, and Swords, the ard- co-arb of Columba was the Abbat of Hy.
(3) Perhaps it was, as suggested by the name Abbat (or Father] applied to the head, that the body of the monks (and sometimes even those who lived as serfs or clansmen on the territory of the abbat) were styled the family (muintir, familia). And certainly as regards Columba himself and his followers, the relations, as disclosed in the Life, were those of constant, affec tionate, and watchful care on the one part, and of filial reverence on the other. It would b2 difficult to find anywhere a more beautiful picture of loving solicitude and loving and reverential obedience than is revealed by innumerable unconscious touches in the work of the saint's biographer. Some of the monks are spoken of as " seniors," but I cannot satisfy myself whether they formed a distinct class, or were so termed only on account of their age or standing in the monastery.
(4) The monastic life in our records is frequently spoken of as a "warfare " (militia), and the term" soldier of Christ " (miles Christi) is a term very commonly used when it is meant to designate a monk, for which it is indeed employed as a simple equivalent. It was a name that would doubtless have special significance
i
130 THE CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.
and special attractions in that warlike age. The monastery, with its surrounding cashell or rampart, was, indeed, in more senses than one, a fortress.
(5) The life of the monk was primarily and essentially a devotion to the warfare of Christ in the world, but the weapons of that warfare were not carnal. Prayer, praise, and the hearing of God's Word formed a large part of the daily duties of the community. I do not know that we need doubt that the services of the " canonical hours " were duly held, with perhaps the exception of " compline." Vespers, a night service, and matins are very clearly referred to. The references to the lesser "day hours " are less distinct.
The Holy Eucharist was celebrated, it would seem, only on Sundays and festivals, and on special occasions at the order of the abbat.
(6) Even if the spiritual advantages of physical labour had not been fully appreciated, yet much manual work was absolutely necessary for the main tenance of the community. And so we have abundant references that show us that much time was expended in the island upon agriculture and the tending of cattle. The monks are shown ploughing, sowing, reaping, storing the corn, and grinding it into flour. A mill and a kiln are mentioned. A Saxon monk in Columba's time officiated as baker. Both cows and sheep appear on the island, and milk seems to have formed an important part of the diet of the establishment. Fish, too, are caught ; and the care and management of boats of all sizes must have occupied the time of many of the brotherhood.
LIFE IN THE BROTHERHOOD. 137
We possess, too, a very clear and interesting reference to the skill shown by the monks of the island in working in metals (lib. ii., c. 30).
(7) Wednesdays and Fridays were ordinarily ob served as fasts, but this rule did not extend to the weeks between Easter and Pentecost. The forty days of Lent were kept. It is an interesting feature to observe that a relaxation of a fast was permitted to the community in welcoming a stranger to the island.
(8) The monks slept on beds covered apparently with straw; but the great founder, even to the day of his death, slept on the bare rock with a stone for his pillow. Dr. George Petrie (Round Towers, p. 426) mentions that in the upper apartment of the building known as St. Columba's house at Kells, a flat stone is shown, six feet long, which is called " St. Columba's penitential bed."
In Adamnan's Life there is no detailed description of the dress of the monks, but they seem to have worn an inner garment called the tunic; and Columba's cowl (cuculld) is expressly mentioned, but in such a connection that it seems to me to suggest that either the ordinary monks did not at that time wear the cowl, or that Columba wore one of a distinctive shape or colour.1 The monks appear to have worn sandals.
1 " One of the wicked associates (of the sons Conall) was instigated by the devil to rush on the saint with a spear on purpose to kill him. To prevent this, one of the brethren, named Findlugan, put on the saint's cowl and interposed, being ready to die for the holy man." Vita, lib. ii., c. 25.
132 THE CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.
(9) It is not unlikely that, as in so many monas teries, there may have been at lona, in Columba's day, a school for the instruction of youths ; but the solitary mention of one Berchan, "a pupil (alumnus] learning wisdom" (lib. iii., c. 22), would seem to be too slight a foundation upon which to build a confident conclusion.
(10) The references to the copying of books are numerous. The saint himself is frequently described as thus occupied. And even in the feebleness of his old age, on the evening preceding his death, on returning to his hut after what is described as a fatiguing visit for the aged man to the barn, he sat down to his task of transcribing the Psalter, and continued till he reached the foot of the page. In an earlier part of the history we find Baithene, who was afterwards his successor, seeking for one of the brethren who would collate and correct a copy he had made of the Psalter. When the collation had been made, it was found that the copy was perfect but for a single omission of the letter / (lib. i., c. 17). Beside Psalters, we have it recorded (lib. ii., c. 8) that Columba wrote with his own hand a " Book of Hymns for the week " (Jiymnorum liber septimaniorum). And other transcriptions are else where mentioned (lib. ii., c. 45). There is no hint, so far as I have observed, of the transcriptions being adorned with artistic decoration ; and though I am conscious of the danger of an argument from silence, yet I can hardly doubt that anything like the elaborate ornament we are familiar with in some
HOSPITALITY TO STRANGERS. 133
Irish manuscripts would certainly have been noted by the biographer.
(n) The chief subject of study was the Holy Scriptures, as well with the abbat as with other members of the community ; and there is an inter esting story of how, on one occasion, some of the difficulties of the Word of God upon which he had meditated were supernaturally made clear to the saint.
(12) The abbat maintained such a measure of reserve as became his dignity. He not only slept, but studied and wrote, in his little hut somewhat apart from the main body of the buildings. There he was attended by his faithful servant and com panion, Diarmit. And sometimes we find two of the brethren standing in attendance at the door of the hut. Strangers arriving at the island had for mally to request an interview (lib. i., c. 2).
(13) Strangers visiting the island were numerous, and were received with hearty hospitality. Water was provided for the washing of their feet, and the guest-chamber was made ready for them. Of Bai- thene, the saint's successor, we are told expressly not only that he was "holy and wise, and experienced both in teaching and writing," but that he was affabilis et peregrinis appetibilis.
(14) Voyages of the monks to the neighbouring islands, to the mainland, and to Ireland, are of frequent occurrence. Timber had to be fetched from a considerable distance. Messages from the abbat had to be conveyed, and often excursions
134 THE CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.
were made across the great mountain ridge that forms the Scottish water-shed into the remoter regions of the Picts.
These notices, drawn almost exclusively from Ad airman's Life of Columba, may suffice to give some distinct conception of the constitution of the monastery and of the life of the brotherhood of Hy. The consideration of the position of bishops in the ancient Scotic Church will be dealt with, and some account of certain peculiarities of ritual observance will be given, in separate chapters.
135
CHAPTER VIII.
THE HISTORICAL CHARACTER OF ADAMNAN's 'LIFE OF ST. COLUMBA ' : THE MIRACULOUS ELEMENT.
THE work of Adamnan, to which the Christian Church is so deeply indebted for the story of the life of St. Columba, invaluable as it is for the unquestion ably truthful glimpses of the ecclesiastical and social life of a remote and obscure period of Church history, is written in a manner that is very unsatisfactory and often vexatious to the student who would follow in consecutive order the narrative of the saint's career. The Life is divided into three books, arranged on a somewhat artificial system. The first is devoted to recounting instances of Columba' s powers of prophecy, the second to his miracles, and the third to super natural appearances connected with the saint, such as visions of angels seen by him, or the visits of angels to him as seen by others, or the appearance of heavenly glory around his head or on his face, etc. And as regards time and place, the various occurrences here detailed are hopelessly jumbled together.
The value of Adamnan's work really consists not in what he was most desirous to tell, but in what
6 THE CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.
he incidentally lets slip or alludes to in passing. For myself, I do not care much to investigate whether it is really true that the saint prophesied that somebody would knock down his ink-horn and spill his ink. I am much more interested in the fact that he possessed an ink-horn (lib. i., c. 19). It may have an interest for some that the saint blessed a knife in such a way that it would never wound either man or beast, but it is to me more interesting to know that the monks were so skilled in the working of metals that, in complete faith in the miraculous property of the knife, they melted it down and were able to apply a thin coating of the metal to all the iron tools used in the monastery (lib. ii., c. 30). Knowing how differently different men are affected by the same evidence, I shall not scoff at any one who believes that a formidable wild boar in a wood in the island of Skye fell down dead at the prayer of the saint ; but I am myself more interested in learning that the wild boar was hunted in Skye in the sixth century (lib. ii., c. 27). I do not care to dis cuss whether it is really true that on the occasion of St. Columba's visit to the monastery of Terryglas in Tipperary, the locked doors of the church flew open at the word of the saint ; but it does seem worth noting that in those early days the doors of the monastic churches had their fastening of lock and key (lib. ii., c. 37). Adamnan records how Columba super- naturally detected the rank of a disguised pilgrim to lona. Whether it was by natural or supernatural agency the saint discovered the truth, it is to all students of ecclesiastical history of real consequence
ADAMNAN'S 'LIFE.' 137
to know the fact that Columba recognized his guest as possessing, on account of his rank as a bishop, special privileges and honours in the ritual of the Church not allowed to presbyters (lib. i., c. 35).
I will return presently to the miraculous features of the story, and will state frankly what I have come, after some consideration, to think about them. But I must here repeat that the Life of Adamnan gives us but little help in a chronological arrangement of the incidents related. We can gather, however, from the narrative enough to picture to ourselves the chief features of the saint's daily round of duty. How he was commonly attended in his little hut, built a little apart from the other buildings, by the faithful Diarmit; how he occupied much of his time in writing, part at least of which was the work of transcribing portions of the Holy Scriptures ; how with the monks he attended the services of vespers and matins in the church ; and how to the church the