of stone and wood; nothing is shown but the spot on the South of the island where he landed, and
the empty stone coffin where his body was laid together with that of his servant; his bones were
removed afterwards to Dunkeld. The old convent was destroyed and the monks were killed by the
wild Danes and Norsemen in the tenth century. The remaining ruins of Iona—a cathedral, a chapel,
a nunnery, a graveyard with the tombstones of a number of Scottish and Norwegian and Irish kings,
and three remarkable carved crosses, which were left of three hundred and sixty that (according to
a vague tradition) were thrown into the sea by the iconoclastic zeal of the Reformation—are all of
the Roman Catholic period which succeeded the original Keltic Christianity, and which lived on
its fame. During the middle ages Iona was a sort of Jerusalem of the North, where pilgrims loved
to worship, and kings and noblemen desired to be buried. When the celebrated Dr. Johnson, in his
Tour to the Hebrides, approached Iona, he felt his piety grow warmer. No friend of missions can
visit that lonely spot, shrouded in almost perpetual fog, without catching new inspiration and hope
for the ultimate triumph of the gospel over all obstacles.^85
The arrival of Columba at Iona was the beginning of the Keltic church in Scotland. The
island was at that time on the confines of the Pictic and Scotic jurisdiction, and formed a convenient
base for missionary labors among the Scots, who were already Christian in name, but needed
confirmation, and among the Picts, who were still pagan, and had their name from painting their
bodies and fighting naked. Columba directed his zeal first to the Picts; he visited King Brude in
his fortress, and won his esteem and co-operation in planting Christianity among his people. "He
converted them by example as well as by word" (Bede). He founded a large number of churches
and monasteries in Ireland and Scotland directly or through his disciples.^86 He was involved in the
wars so frequent in those days, when even women were required to aid in battle, and he availed
himself of military force for the overthrow of paganism. He used excommunication very freely,
and once pursued a plunderer with maledictions into the sea until the water reached to his knees.
But these rough usages did not interfere with the veneration for his name. He was only a fair type
of his countrymen. "He had," says Montalembert, "the vagabond inclination, the ardent, agitated,
(^85) "Hither came holy men from Erin to take counsel with the Saint on the troubles of clans and monasteries which were
still dear to him. Hither came also bad men red-handed from blood and sacrilege to make confession and do penance at Columba’s
feet. Hither, too, came chieftains to be blessed, and even kings to be ordained—for it is curious that on this lonely spot, so far
distant from the ancient centres of Christendom, took place the first recorded case of a temporal sovereign seeking from a
minister of the Church what appears to have been very like formal consecration. Adamnan, as usual, connects his narrative of
this event, which took place in 547, with miraculous circumstances, and with Divine direction to Columba, in his selection of
Aidan, one of the early kings of the Irish Dalriadic colony in Scotland.
" The fame of Columba’s supernatural powers attracted many and strange visitors to the shores on which we are now
looking. Nor can we fail to remember, with the Reilig Odhrain at our feet, how often the beautiful galleys of that olden time
came up the sound laden with the dead,—’their dark freight a vanished life.’ A grassy mound not far from the present landing
place is known as the spot on which bodies were laid when they were first carried to the shore. We know from the account of
Columba’s own burial that the custom is to wake the body with the singing of psalms during three days and nights before laying
it to its final rest. It was then home in solemn procession to the grave. How many of such processions must have wound along
the path that leads to the Reilig Odhrain! How many fleets of galley must have ridden at anchor on that bay below us, with all
those expressive signs of mourning which belong to ships, when kings and chiefs who had died in distant lands were carried
hither to be buried in this holy Isle! From Ireland, from Scotland, and from distant Norway there came, during many centuries,
many royal funerals to its shores. And at this day by far the most interesting remains upon the Island are the curious and beautiful
tombstones and crosses which lie in the Reilig Odhrain. They belong indeed, even the most ancient of them, to, in age removed
by many hundred years from Columba’s time. But they represent the lasting reverence which his name has inspired during so
many generations and the desire of a long succession of chiefs and warriors through the Middle Ages and down almost to our
own time, to be buried in the soil he trod." The Duke of Argyll, l.c., pp. 95-98.
(^86) See a list of churches in Reeves, p. xlix. lxxi., and Forbes, Kalendar, etc. p. 306, 307; comp. also Skene, II. 127 sqq.