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St Columba,
Irish abbot, 'apostle to the Picts'
(Barberry, Barberis vulgaris, is today's
plant, dedicated to this saint)
About
the time that St
Patrick was taken to Ireland as a slave, Columba was born. It
was in the heart of the so called Dark Ages, the sixth century, when
Irish colonists and invaders, the
Scots, began migrating to Caledonia (later known as Scotland).
Columba (Columkill;
Colmcille; Colum; Columbus; Columcille; Columkill; Combs; December 7, 521 - June 9, 597 his feast day) was an
Irish missionary who helped re-introduce Christianity
to Scotland and the north of
England. He was born in
Donegal to Irish
royalty, the son of
Fedhlimidh and Eithne of the Ui Neill clan.
Columba was a poet, who had learned
Irish history and poetry from a bard named Gemman. Tradition has
it that, sometime around 560, he became
involved in a copyright wrangle with Saint Finnian over
a psalter. The dispute eventually led
to a pitched battle in 561 during which many men were killed. (Columba's
copy of the psalter has been traditionally associated with the Cathach
of St. Columba.) It is
said that on one occasion, so anxious was Columba to have a copy of
the Psalter that he shut himself up for a whole night in the church
that contained it, transcribing it laboriously by hand. He was
discovered by a monk who watched him through the keyhole and
reported it to his superior, Finnian of Moville. The Scriptures were
so scarce in those days that the abbot claimed the copy, refusing to
allow it to leave the monastery. Columba refused to surrender it,
until he was obliged to do so, under protest, on the abbot's appeal
to the High King Diarmaid, who said: "Le gach buin a laogh"
or "To every cow her own calf," meaning to every book its
copy.
As penance for these
deaths, Columba was ordered to make the same number of new converts
as had been killed. Exiled
in 563 to the island of Iona off the west coast of
Scotland, he founded and led a monastery there for 12 years, which
became the centre of his evangelising mission to Scotland. They built a monastery consisting of huts with
roofs of branches set upon wooden props, a rough and primitive
settlement. For over 30 years he slept on the hard ground with no
pillow but a stone. He and the monks
of Iona, including Saint Baithen of Iona and Saint Eochod, then evangelized the Picts.
There are many stories of miracles that Columba performed during his mission to convert the Picts. He made water from wine; made water issue from a rock; calmed a storm at sea; provided a miraculous catch of fish; multiplied a herd of cattle; drove a demon out of a milk pail; and cured the sick. A book owned by the saint could not be destroyed by water; through his prayers he destroyed a wild boar; he stopped serpents from harming people; angels and manifestations of divine light attended him throughout his life.
 Columba and Nessie
Columba is also the
source of the first known reference to the
Loch Ness
Monster. According to the story, in
565
he came across a group of Picts
who were burying a man killed by the monster, and brought the man
back to life. In another version, he is said to have saved the man
while the man was being attacked, driving away the monster with the
sign of the cross:
“Also at
another time, when the blessed man was for a lumber of days in the
province of the Picts, he had to cross the river Nes [Ness]. When
lie reached its bank, he saw a poor fellow being buried by other
inhabitants; and the buriers said that, while swimming not long
before, he had been seized and most savagely bitten by a water
beast. Some men, going to his rescue in a wooden boat, though too
late, had put out hooks and caught hold of his wretched corpse.
When the blessed man heard this, he ordered notwithstanding that
one of his companions should swim out and bring back to him, by
sailing, a boat that stood on the opposite bank. Hearing this
order of the holy and memorable man, Lugne mocu-Min obeyed without
delay, and putting off his clothes, excepting his tunic, plunged
into the water. But the monster, whose appetite had earlier been
not so much sated as whetted for prey, lurked in the depth of the
river. Feeling the water above disturbed by Lugne’s swimming, it
suddenly swam up to the surface, and with gaping mouth and with
great roaring rushed towards the man swimming in the middle of the
stream. While all that were there, barbarians and even the
brothers, were struck down with extreme terror, the blessed man,
who was watching, raised his holy hand and drew the saving sign of
the cross in the empty air; and then, invoking the name of God, he
commanded the savage beast, and said: ‘You will go no further.
Do not touch the man; turn back speedily’.
“Then, hearing this command of the saint, the
beast, as if pulled back with ropes, fled terrified in swift
retreat; although it had before approached so close to Lugne as he
swam that there was no more than the length of one short pole
between man and beast.Then seeing that the beast had withdrawn and
that their fellow- soldier Lugne had returned to them unharmed and
safe, in the boat, the brothers with great amazement glorified God
in the blessed man. And also the pagan barbarians who were there
at the time, impelled by the magnitude of this miracle that they
themselves had seen, magnified the God of the Christians.”
Saint
Adamnan, Vita Sancti Columbae (The Life of Saint
Columba )c. 690 CE
Translated by Anderson and Anderson 1961
(Adomnan was the ninth
Abbot of Iona from
679 until his death in 704.)
Source
Sacred cow
The cow is under the protection of Saint Columba who would not allow
any on Iona because “where a cow is, there a woman is also, and
where a woman is, trouble follows”.
St Columba's
feast day is June 9. In
art, he is depicted with a basket of bread and an orb of the world
in a ray of light, or else with an old, white horse.
St
Columba is associated with the story of how the robin got its red
breast by pulling out the thorns piercing the crucified Christ’s
forehead.
More and More
Iona,
sacred site to Catholics
The
Encyclopaedia of the Celts
The Iona (Celtic) cross
The
well-known ‘Celtic cross’ is the Iona cross, from Columba’s
monastic isle. Iona crosses, decorated with interlace and knotwork, were used in illuminated
manuscripts until the Romanesque period, probably to banish demons
and generally ward off evil.
“The cross is among the oldest and most
universal symbols. In preliterate societies it often represented a
conjunction of dualities. The horizontal arm was associated with the
terrestrial, worldly, feminine, temporal, destructive, and negative,
passive, and death, while the vertical arm connoted the celestial,
spiritual, masculine, eternal, creative, positive, active, and life.
Often symbolic of the four astrological elements of earth, water,
fire, and air, a cross was also perceived as the cosmic axis from
which radiated the spatial dimensions of height, length, width, and
breadth, as well as the directions of north, east, south, and
west.” Source
(a very good overview)
 St
Columba, Iona and the Druidic yew tree
“Veneration of the yew continued into Christian
times where they have always been associated with churchyards. An
early medieval Irish poem fragment refers to a yew outside an
early Celtic Christian cell:
“There is here above the brotherhood
A bright tall glossy yew;
The melodious bell sends out a
clear keen note
In St. Columba's church.
“Although from Ireland, this verse may refer to
the Isle of Iona, the sacred island of St. Columba off western
Mull, Scotland, which is said to derive its name from the Gaelic
word for 'yew-tree', Ioho or Ioha. The island was once a powerful
Druid centre, planted with sacred groves of yew, and the
traditions of Iona traditionally involve rebirth and
reincarnation. On mainland Scotland, St. Ninian, a priest in Roman
Britain, planted numerous yews in the churchyards, including the
famous Fortingale Yew in Perthshire where Beltane fires were lit
each year in a cleft of the trunk. A rhyme about this tree states:
"Here Druid priests their altars placed,
And sun and moon adored.
“For yew was one of the nine sacred trees for
kindling Beltane fires, and the old Scottish rhyme about the
need-fire calls it 'the tree of resilience." Another famous
Scottish yew stood at the Tobar an luthair, the Yew Tree Well in
Easter Ross. Its presence lent healing qualities to the water,
until someone cut the tree down. Whoever did the deed must have
regretted it, for an old curse stated:
“Well of the Yew Tree, Well of the Yew Tree,
To thee should honour be given;
In Hell a bed is ready for him
Who
cuts the tree about thine ears.”
Source
A miracle
“On
the appointed day as he had intended the Saint came to the
long lake of the river Ness, followed by a large crowd. Then
the magicians began to exalt, because they saw a great mist
brought up, and a stormy adverse wind ... so our Columba,
seeing that the elements were being roused to fury against
him, called upon Christ the Lord. He entered the boat, and
while the sailors hesitated, he himself, more steadfast,
ordered the sail to be raised against the wind. When this was
done, and with the whole crowd looking on, the ship moved with
extraordinary speed, sailing against the contrary wind.”
SA Thorpe Source
Columba and the
lucky monk
We know that animal sacrifice was practised in Britain at least
until 1778.
While scholars argue about the practice of human sacrifice in
pagan Britain, some say it was customary, when starting construction
on a new major building, to sacrifice a person, preferably a virgin,
and place the body beneath the foundation stone.
The gods were
appeased by this act, as they thought mere mortals presumptuous to
design and create prominent buildings. Furthermore, the spirit of
the sacrificed person, because they had been honoured by being
chosen as the lucky one to die, was thought to reside in the
building, protecting all who went in inside.
Even after Christianity came to
Britain and Ireland, the practice continued for quite some time. It
is said that when St Columba
(he who drove away the Loch Ness Monster) came to Iona off the Scottish west
coast and began building monasteries there and on neighbouring
islands, the walls of one of them kept falling down. Saying that
this was because the customary sacrifice hadn’t been made,
Columba’s superstitious monks demanded that a human being be
buried beneath the foundation stone. Persuaded, the saint allowed
the horrible practice to be performed, and a monk named Oron was
chosen by lot to be the lucky one. After he was buried under the
stone, the problems in construction ended.
It is interesting to note that there is a Hebridean
island named Oronsay,
and on it are the ruins of an ancient priory reputedly founded by St
Columba. Perhaps the name of the sacrificed monk is commemorated in
the name of the island.
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