Saint Colum Cille of Iona
The ninth of June is the important feast-day of one of the great spiritual lights of the Gælic world of late antiquity and a remarkable witness for social justice, Saint Colum Cille – also known as Saint Columba – the founding abbot of Iona. A visionary, a missionary, a wonderworker and an advocate for the poor, Colum Cille was also a great influence on humanitarian law through his pupil Saint Adamnán, and the tutor of the spirituality of Lindisfarne and the English North through his pupil Saint Aidan. Adamnán, in fact, was the one who wrote the first Vita of Saint Colum Cille, who was his kin. His early Life stressed the pro-poor political and social aspects of the miracles and prophecies of Colum Cille, whereas later Norman and post-Schismatic Insular hagiographies and miracle stories would downplay them.
Colum Cille was born to the illustrious Northern Uí Néill dynasty of Irish kings, specifically the Cenél Conaill of Tír Conaill, in the parish of Gartan. His parents were Feidhlimidh mac Fearghus Cennfada, and Eithne ni Mac Naue, the latter of whom was herself venerated as a saint. Tradition holds that Eithne lived as an anchoress, and died and was buried on an island named Hinba, which has been identified with Eileach an Naoimh in the Inner Hebrides, which sports a monastic complex supposedly founded by Saint Brendan the Navigator in the sixth century.
Shortly before Saint Colum Cille’s birth on the seventh of December, 521, his mother received an angelic vision. The angel gave to her a splendid tunic, and then took it back into his hands and spread it out over the whole of the earth. The angel then told Saint Eithne that her child was to be named ‘dove’, for he was destined for a life of meekness. He may or may not have been named after the Prophet Jonah, whose Hebrew name is cognate. In Gælic, colum cille means ‘church dove’. The word colum, ‘dove’, derives from the Latin columba and ultimately from the Greek κολυμβῐ́ς (‘grebe’); while the now largely-disused cille is cognate with the English cell (as in a hermit’s cell), and it survives in Gælic toponyms beginning with ‘Kil-’. This name signified Colum Cille’s meekness, but also the præmonition that he would become a monk.
His parents gave Colum Cille to Saint Cruithnechán to be baptised and educated, and he learned to love the Church, the Scriptures and the Psalms at that time. Colum Cille grew up tall and lean and strong, with a comely face and a strong, clear voice. One day while his young charge was sleeping, Cruithnechán beheld a glowing orb of fiery light above the head of his resting pupil. Saint Brendan the Navigator would later behold a similar orb over his head as he was serving the Gifts in the Liturgy. When he became a young adult, Colum Cille studied under several masters, including Abbot Fionnán of Movilla, a bard named Gemnán under whom he served as a deacon, and Venerable Fionnán of Clonard. The holy abbot and spiritual heir of Saint Padrig introduced him to the austerely ascetic but socially-minded spirituality of the Welsh monastics, in the tradition of Dewi Sant, which in turn of course derived from the monastic disciplines founded by Abba Anthony of the Ægyptian Desert.
Saint Colum Cille was apparently fairly fiery and strident in his youth, in sharp contradistinction to the meaning of his name. The Life authored by Saint Adamnán makes reference to a number of sharp rebukes, curses and prophesies which Colum Cille pronounced against the arrogant and exploitative rich. The saint, having been shown a certain wealthy and well-respected landowner named Lugud Clodus, lamented that he would die in his sins after stealing three cattle from his neighbour, slaughtering one and choking on the meat while lying with a prostitute. (It fell out as he said.) Yet again, when a rich man named Eugene drove Colum Cille from his door, Colum Cille railed back a curse upon him that he would lose all his goods and be killed on a threshing-floor by a beggar’s shillelagh. (He did and was.)
Saint Colum Cille did several prodigies and worked wonders for a poor husbandman named Columbán who loved God and shared what little he had with the saint. However, an envious and evil-minded nobleman named Eòin mac Conaill came and plundered Columbán’s cattle and his household goods, and made to set sail from Ireland to sell them in some foreign market. Colum Cille sternly rebuked Eòin and advised him to return what he had stolen, but Eòin scornfully laughed at him and set sail as planned. Colum Cille then waded into the waters of the sea at Camas nan Geall and invoked an imprecatory prayer. When he returned to land, he informed his disciples that Eòin would never make land, for a storm would arise that would wreck his ships and cause him to drown miserably. (And indeed that happened.) The mac Conaills would later come for vengeance upon Colum Cille while he was visiting his mother’s anchorage, and one of them would try to run him through with a spear. One of Colum Cille’s disciples named Findlugan, who was wearing his cloak and cowl, interposed his body between Colum Cille and his attacker, and wondrously the spear did him no harm. Several years after, when Colum Cille was in Iona, he prophesied that the mac Conaill retainer that had tried to kill him with the spear would be felled by an arrow shot in his name. He was: that arrow was shot by a certain Cronan mac Baithene.
Colum Cille sent abroad a certain Pictish exile, a good man named Tarain, with his blessings. Tarain went with Colum Cille’s letter of recommendation to the house of one wealthy landowner named Feradach, who at first took him in hospitably, but later betrayed him and had him put to death. When Colum Cille heard this, he prophesied: ‘In autumn, before he shall eat of swine’s flesh that hath been fattened on the fruits of the trees, he shall be seized by a sudden death.’ Feradach, when he heard about this, laughed scornfully and, when the season came, ordered a pig to be slaughtered that had been fed on nuts, and a portion of the meat set aside so that he might eat it in defiance of the saint’s prophecy. But no sooner had he stretched out his hand to eat but he fell backwards in a seizure and died.
On another occasion, a wealthy man named Brendán flung himself at Colum Cille’s feet and asked for his prayers. But Colum Cille first upbraided Brendán for his exploitation of his tenants and other ‘peculiar vices’, and prayed for him only when he released them from their debts and made sorrowful atonement.
Together prominent with these episodes of divine wrath against the rich, are Colum Cille’s mercy and compassion on the poor – particularly slaves and women. He gained a reputation during his lifetime as ‘a refuge of the naked and a feeder of the poor’. His blessings for the poor husbandman Columbán are mentioned above. He performed similar wonders for a poor peasant named Nesan. Later, when he was in Iona, a poor peasant named Findchan of Delcross sent the saint some twigs and sticks to use for their lodgings. Colum Cille’s disciples reported that the poor man was skin and bones, near to starving. The saint had them send back to Findchan three measures of barley, which he was to put into the ground as seed at once. The peasant was incredulous, as sowing season was near over, and the reaping would come too late to be of any help. But the monks of Iona insisted. Findchan did as they said, and found that the barley grew miraculously fast: he sowed it in the middle of June, and it was ripe and ready for threshing by the beginning of August! Thus his family were saved from starvation.
He also managed to procure the freedom of a Scottish woman who had been taken as a slave by a druid named Broichan; at first he was not willing to give her up, but when he fell deathly ill with a sickness that none could cure, Colum Cille appeared before him with a small white pebble which could float in water. Colum Cille sternly rebuked the druid, saying that if he drank the water and kept his promise to release the slave, he would live; but if he was false to that promise, he would die at once. Broichan, however, lived: and his slave went free by the intercessions of the saint. At one time he left off his reading at his monastery in Iona to pray at the chapel with an impoverished woman of his mother’s kindred, who was in the midst of a painful life-threatening childbirth. By his prayers and hers to Christ, her life was saved and that of her child also.
When he was young, Colum Cille also apparently undertook an act of intellectual property infringement when he stealthily scribed an unauthorised copy of a Psalter belonging to Abbot Fionnán of Movilla. When this was found out, the angry abbot asked Colum Cille to return it; he refused, and the case went to court. The court ruling apparently sparked a political crisis that ended with Saint Colum Cille’s self-imposed penitential exile from Ireland in 563 – as it happened, the occasion for his establishment of the famous monastery at Iona. Another version of events has it that he was exiled for his support of the princes of Dál Riata against the Irish High King.
A page from the Cathach of Saint Columba
Whatever the case, Saint Colum Cille remained on Iona for the rest of his life, occasionally making voyages into Scotland among the Picts with several of his disciples. There he kept a monastic rule drawn primarily from the writings of Saint Basil the Great and from Saint John Cassian, both of which Eastern saints he dearly loved. Property was all held in common. Unlike the contemporary Benedictines, infant oblature was not practised on Iona, though children and the young were welcome on the island, to study or to stay with parents in pilgrimage. His Rule was mild in its demands upon his brethren, and stressed only the subordination of the monk’s will to that of his elder. But upon himself he carried out some extreme austerities that tested the limits of human endurance. Even in his old age he would shift himself bearing heavy sacks of grain, or those of the milled flour they provided. Lifelong he kept a strict fast, spent his nights and prayer, and when he needed rest he slept on a slab of rock with a stone for a pillow.
Once in Iona and taking up this penitential way of living, Saint Colum Cille’s temperament seems to have mellowed significantly, and he became every bit the meek and gentle dove his mother had named him. The Isle of Iona was kept holy, but open to all who truly sought penitence. Colum Cille would not let land a certain nobleman who had killed his father and slept with his mother, until he had done twelve years’ penance in Wales. (He never completed this penance such that he was welcome on Iona, but was killed by his enemies.) But another – a robber who had stolen from Iona’s stores of meat – Colum Cille welcomed with open arms into the monastery, giving him as much food as he wanted but preaching to him the way of repentance. He was uncannily able to tell, even among those inclined to the very worst of worldly evils, which among them might be capable of repenting; and these he welcomed like brothers. The wonderworking abbot was available to all, lay or monastic, who came to Iona, and he received them with hospitality and gave answers to their questions. His rede was such that he even managed to keep families from splitting apart.
Saint Colum Cille built dozens of churches in Scotland and northern England, and blessed perhaps as many as three hundred holy wells. He was also a meticulous scribe with a keen eye for beauty as well as accuracy, and in addition to his copy of Abbot Fionnán’s Psalter he cut and inked many original manuscripts of breathtaking beauty. He prayed diligently for all and shed copious tears, having been given that spiritual gift.
Under his rule and the rule of his successors, Iona became a great beacon of Orthodox Christian teaching on both Great Britain and Ireland, and monks from Iona preached the Gospel as far afield as the Orkneys, Iceland, and even the deep and still-heathen areas of the Continent. The depth of the scholarly knowledge stored in Iona’s libraries was nigh unmatched anywhere in the Christian West. Saint Colum Cille himself was versant and lettered in Greek, and studied astronomy and sæcular history as well as holy subjects.
Intriguingly – and this is too good a tidbit to pass up – Saint Adamnán’s Vita includes what may be the first known reference to the Loch Ness Monster:
On another occasion also, when the blessed man was living for some days in the province of the Picts, he was obliged to cross the river Nesa (the Ness); and when he reached the bank of the river, he saw some of the inhabitants burying an unfortunate man, who, according to the account of those who were burying him, was a short time before seized, as he was swimming, and bitten most severely by a monster that lived in the water; his wretched body was, though too late, taken out with a hook, by those who came to his assistance in a boat. The blessed man, on hearing this, was so far from being dismayed, that he directed one of his companions to swim over and row across the coble that was moored at the farther bank. And Lugne Mocumin hearing the command of the excellent man, obeyed without the least delay, taking off all his clothes, except his tunic, and leaping into the water. But the monster, which, so far from being satiated, was only roused for more prey, was lying at the bottom of the stream, and when it felt the water disturbed above by the man swimming, suddenly rushed out, and, giving an awful roar, darted after him, with its mouth wide open, as the man swam in the middle of the stream. Then the blessed man observing this, raised his holy hand, while all the rest, brethren as well as strangers, were stupefied with terror, and, invoking the name of God, formed the saving sign of the cross in the air, and commanded the ferocious monster, saying, “Thou shalt go no further, nor touch the man; go back with all speed.” Then at the voice of the saint, the monster was terrified, and fled more quickly than if it had been pulled back with ropes, though it had just got so near to Lugne, as he swam, that there was not more than the length of a spear-staff between the man and the beast. Then the brethren seeing that the monster had gone back, and that their comrade Lugne returned to them in the boat safe and sound, were struck with admiration, and gave glory to God in the blessed man. And even the barbarous heathens, who were present, were forced by the greatness of this miracle, which they themselves had seen, to magnify the God of the Christians.The holy man of Iona lived and worked and prayed there for thirty-four years. Saint Colum Cille made a final prophecy concerning his beloved monastery and island. He spoke that although his monastery would fade, Iona would be untouched even though much of Britain would be deluged in coming centuries, and that in the final days Iona would once again be home to a flourishing monastery. He reposed in the Lord on the ninth of June, in the year 597. On that very night a great column of fire was sighted off the eastern coast of Ireland, ascending into the heavens.
One further wonder is worth dwelling on here. Saint Columba appeared to Óswald King of Northumbria in a vision on the eve of the battle at Hefenfelþ. There he predicted to the Northumbrian king a great victory over the forces of Cadwallon, whom Óswald would go on to defeat and slay in the battle. The tale of this visitation, and the aftermath of the battle, caused many Northumbrians to turn to Christ and believe. Holy father Colum Cille, true friend to the poor and oppressed, pray unto Christ our God for the salvation of our souls!
By your God-inspired life
You embodied both the mission and the dispersion of the Church,
Most glorious Father Colum Cille.
Using your repentance and voluntary exile,
Christ our God raised you up as a beacon of the True Faith,
An apostle to the heathen and an indicator of the Way of salvation.
Wherefore O holy one, cease not to intercede for us
That our souls may be saved.
Isle of Iona, Scotland
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