Co. Kildare, and Swords, Co. Dublin), but it is certain
that they too were established much later. One such place
was Kells, County Meath, associated with the Book of
Kells. Although traditions claim that Colum Cille
founded this monastery, we know that it was estab-
lished about 804–807. Likewise, the famous manu-
script was sometimes later, erroneously, attributed to
the saint. The one monastery that we can be certain
that Colum Cille did found in Ireland, probably in the
580s on one of his return trips from Iona, was Durrow
in County Offaly. Other places in Ireland that have
strong traditional connections with the saint include:
Glencolumbkille, in County Donegal, and Tory Island,
nine miles off the coast of the same county. In the
1850s, William Reeves listed thirty-seven churches in
Ireland, and fifty-three in Scotland, that had dedica-
tions to Colum Cille; most of these, however, origi-
nated later than the life of the saint.
Adomnán links Colum Cille’s departure from Ire-
land with the battle of Cúl Dreimne in 561. Cúl
Dreimne was near Drumcliff, County Sligo, where later
there was a monastery dedicated to St. Colum Cille.
The annals say that victory was gained for the northern
Uí Néill on that ocasion, “through the prayer of Colum
Cille,” over Diarmait mac Cerbaill. The facts about this
battle became enshrouded in legends that suggest that
Colum Cille himself had been responsible for it, and
that it was as penance for this that he went into exile.
Modern scholars and the earliest sources available,
however, would suggest that Colum Cille’s exile was
voluntary; Adomnán called him a “pilgrim for Christ.”
This sort of practice, exile for the love of God, became
known in the Irish church as “white martyrdom.” A list,
drawn up about the early eighth century, claims that he
left Ireland accompanied by twelve companions.
Iona
Colum Cille eventually established his most important
monastery (c.562/3) on Iona, a small island off the Isle
of Mull, off the west coast of Scotland. This was to
become one of the most influential ecclesiastical centers
in western Christendom. A rectangular earthwork
enclosing about eight acres, built, apparently, by earlier
settlers, was re-occupied by the Irish monks; within it
they built their monastery. We can get some impression
of what that monastery was like from Adomnán’s Life.
The great restored Benedictine Abbey that dominates the
island now was begun in the early thirteenth century, but
there are some earlier buildings, including one that is
pointed out as the burial place of the saint, despite
another tradition that he was reburied at Downpatrick.
Among the significant early monuments on Iona are the
three great High Crosses, dedicated respectively to St.
Oran, St. John, and St. Martin, that were carved, in that
order, between about 750 and 800.
Many other churches and monasteries in Ireland,
Scotland, and northern England were founded from
Iona, that is, the federation known as the Familia
Columbae; some of these, although not all those
claimed, were founded within the lifetime of the saint.
Colum Cille did travel away from Iona, up the Great
Glen of Scotland and even back to Ireland. He attended
a significant meeting in Ireland around 590, between
his relative, the important Donegal king Áed mac
Ainmerech, and the king of an Irish colony in Scotland,
Áedán mac Gabráin. The Convention of Druimm Cete,
as this meeting came to be known, and at which Colum
Cille is said in legend to have saved the poets from
expulsion from Ireland, gave rise to a whole host of
legends. Colum Cille is, himself, remembered as a
poet. Three Latin poems attributed to him are possibly
genuine, but there are many others in Irish, which later
propagandist poets put into his voice. The apparently
contemporary manuscript of the Psalms, known as the
Cathach, is also claimed as his work, but this has
neither been substantiated nor disproved.
Colum Cille died on Iona, probably on June 9 (his
feast day) in 593 or 597. Very shortly after his death,
the long poem known as the Amra Choluimb Chille
(Elegy of Colum Cille) was written, allegedly by the
famous poet Dallán Forgail. Other similar poems prais-
ing Colum Cille were written in the seventh century,
and we know that a liber de virtutibus sancti Columbae
(book on the virtues of saint Columba) was compiled
in the mid-seventh century, although only one para-
graph survives as a quotation in a version of Adom-
nán’s Life. In the later twelfth century another Life of
Colum Cille was written in Irish, probably in Derry.
This took the form of a homily for preaching on his
feast day. The text is structured, mainly, as an account
of the saint’s alleged journey around Ireland, founding
churches and monasteries.
The most elaborate Life of Colum Cille was written
just over a thousand years after his birth, in 1532. This
was prepared for Maghnus Ua Domhnaill who, in
1537, became chieftain of Tír Conaill (most of Co.
Donegal). Throughout the Middle Ages, many other
works, both hagiographical and secular, were also writ-
ten about, or referred to, Colum Cille, each of which
developed the fabulous legends about him and moved
his fictional character ever more distantly from that of
his true identity. Professor Pádraig Ó Riain has also
argued that several other early Irish saintly characters,
such as St. Cainnech of Achad Bó, are really aliases
of Colum Cille.
In England, Durham Cathedral, as inheritor of
some of the traditions of the seventh-century mon-
astery on Lindisfarne Island off the coast ofCOLUM CILLE