Since several people on the list seem interested in things Irish, here's a
brief account of St. C.

Columcille (Columba), Saint

There are at least 32 Irish saints named Columcille, which means "dove of
the Church."  The most important is Columcille of Iona (c. 521-97), the
patron saint of Scottish Christianity.  Along with Patrick and Brigid,
Columcille is regarded as one of the three greatest saints of Ireland-he
was the most influential of the three in the history of Irish Christianity.
Columcille was a member of the Uí Néill clan, descended from Cathair Mór,
king of Leinster.  As a monk in Ireland, Columcille founded three
monasteries: Derry, Durrow, and Kells-later legend increases that number to
100.  But Columcille left Ireland in peregrinatio in 563.  All sources
agree that this was not a completely voluntary act.  It may have been
caused by Columcille's dudgeon when he was accused of theft for copying a
manuscript without its owner's permission-according to late tradition, the
disputed copy is the Cathach of St. Columcille.  According to another
tradition, though, Columcille was responsible for causing the bloody battle
of Cúl Drebene (561), perhaps over sanctuary rights, and maybe the saint
even fought in the battle himself.  Legend reports that an ecclesiastical
council almost excommunicated Columcille, who then left Ireland as an act
of penance.
        Columcille went with a band of followers to the island of Iona, off
the west coast of Scotland, and formed a monastery there.  Soon word spread
of Columcille's great holiness, and many Irish monks came to join the
community.  Soon Columban monks began to spread out and form communities on
the Scottish mainland.  It seems likely that from the beginning they
intended missionary work among the Picts; certainly by the early eighth
century, the Venerable Bede thought that Columcille had come to the land of
the Picts specifically to convert them to Christianity.  The monks who over
the next two centuries spread a distinctively Irish Christianity to
Northumbria as well as to the Picts and Scots saw Columcille as their
spiritual father.
        In his lifetime, though, Columcille's great prestige rested on the
holiness of his life, especially his ascetic practices.  Despite the late
legend that Columcille had vowed never to return to Ireland, he actually
visited twice, acting in 575 as an intermediary between the rulers of
Pictland and in 585 intervening at the council of Druim Cett on behalf of
the filid (the traditional class of learned poets), who ever after regarded
the saint as their special patron.  The Amra Columcille, a eulogy composed
soon after the saint's death, one of the earliest extant works in the Irish
vernacular, says nothing of evangelization, but emphasizes Columcille's
reputation for holiness.  The author reports that Columcille had miraculous
powers, at one point even transforming a queen into a crane.  The Latin
saint's Life written by Adomnán of Iona in c. 700 presents Columcille as a
mirror of biblical sanctity, re-enacting in his own life many of the
miracles of both the Old and New Testaments.  This saint's Life is very
different from other Irish hagiographical works, since Adomnán, under
continental influence, presented his hero in the mold of the Roman St.
Martin and the Egyptian St. Antony of the Desert.  Still, the saint emerges
as a model of Irish Christianity: devoted to learning, able to speak with
animals and angels, and full of prophetic power.  Like other Irish saints
and the Virgin Mary in later medieval belief, the saint was even able to
protect evil-doers; Adomnán tells how in a posthumous miracle Columcille
protected wicked brigands from their enemies, because they had sung hymns
in praise of the saint.
        Columcille died in 597, the same year that Augustine of Canterbury
arrived in England, whose Roman-oriented missionary work would eventually
defeat Columcille's monasteries in their battle for control over the
English church.  He was buried at Iona, where his relics became a focal
point for pilgrimage, sometime in the eighth century being exhumed and
enshrined in a precious reliquary.  His bones were returned to Ireland in
878, to preserve them against Viking depredations.  The Ulster clergy
revived Columcille's cult in the eleventh century, which led to the
attribution of hundreds of contemporary poems to the saint.  Despite this
revival of popularity, it was probably in the twelfth century that
Columcille's relics were lost.  In modern times, powerful Catholic lay
organization in Scotland and England, the Knights of St. Columba, took
Columcille as its patron saint.  (In Ireland the same organization is known
as the Knights of St. Columbanus, while in the U.S.A. they are the Knights
of Columbus.)

Phyllis

Phyllis G. Jestice
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