§ 18. St. Columba and the Monastery of Iona.
John Jamieson (D. D.): An Historical Account of the Ancient Culdees of Iona, and of their
Settlements in Scotland, England, and Ireland. Edinb., 1811 (p. 417).
Montalembert: La Moines d’ Occident, Vol. III., pp. 99–332 (Paris, 1868).
The Duke of Argyll: Iona. Second ed., London, 1871 (149 p
*Adamnan: Life of St. Columba, Founder of Hy, ed. by William Reeves (Canon of Armagh),
Edinburgh, 1874. (Originally printed for the Irish Archaeolog. Society and for the Bannatyne
Club, Dublin, 1856).
Skene: Celtic Scotland, II. 52 sqq. (Edinb., 1877). Comp. the Lit. in § 7.
Saint Columba or Columbcille, (died June 9, 597) is the real apostle of Scotland. He is better
known to us than Ninian and Kentigern. The account of Adamnan (624–704), the ninth abbot of
Hy, was written a century after Columba’s death from authentic records and oral traditions, although
it is a panegyric rather than a history. Later biographers have romanized him like St. Patrick. He
was descended from one of the reigning families of Ireland and British Dalriada, and was born at,
Gartan in the county of Donegal about a.d. 521. He received in baptism the symbolical name Colum,
or in Latin Columba (Dove, as the symbol of the Holy Ghost), to which was afterwards added cille
(or kill, i.e. "of the church," or "the dove of the cells," on account of his frequent attendance at
public worship, or, more probably, for his being the founder of many churches.^80 He entered the
monastic seminary of Clonard, founded by St. Finnian, and afterwards another monastery near
Dublin, and was ordained a priest. He planted the church at Derry in 545, the monastery of Darrow
in 553, and other churches. He seems to have fondly clung all his life to his native Ireland, and to
the convent of Derry. In one of his elegies, which were probably retouched by the patriotism of
some later Irish bard, he sings:
"Were all the tributes of Scotia [i.e. Ireland] mine,
From its midland to its borders,
I would give all for one little cell
In my beautiful Derry.
For its peace and for its purity,
For the white angels that go
In crowds from one end to the other,
I love my beautiful Derry.
For its quietness and purity,
For heaven’s angels that come and go
Under every leaf of the oaks,
I love my beautiful Derry.
My Derry, my fair oak grove,
My dear little cell and dwelling,
O God, in the heavens above I
Let him who profanes it be cursed.
Beloved are Durrow and Derry,
(^80) In the Irish calendar there are twenty saints of the name Columba, or Columbanus, Columbus, Columb. The most
distinguished next to Columbcille is Columbanus, the Continental missionary, who has often been confounded with Columba.
In the Continental hagiology, the name is used for female saints. See Reeves, p. 248.