Feast Day: June 9th
Legend has it that one of the first High Kings of Ireland was the suitably named Niall of the Nine Hostages. It was his roving bands of pirates who captured a young Padraik and held him hostage for 6 years before his escape, and then return, to bring the Gospel back to the Emerald Isle. One of Naill’s great-great-grandson, a century after the great apostle of Ireland, was Columba. Born into the still-royal family, though now also surrounded by a Christian culture with schools and monasteries to form his early years, he had every comfort his world could offer.
(I often forget how early that all this happened. St. Patrick was born in England when Britain was still ruled by Rome. When he was bringing the faith to Ireland, the Franks had still not received the Gospel in France and the Council of Chalcedon had still not cemented the Church’s understanding of Christ’s Divine Personhood and divine and human natures. St. Columba, even a century later, 521-597 AD, still lived while St. Benedict was founding his monastery at Monte Cassino, Muhammad was born in Arabia, and Pope St. Gregory the Great sent missionaries to England, which, despite St. Patrick’s coming from there was still predominantly pagan.)
St. Columba was talented, intelligent, strongly built and a natural leader, but he chose to leave behind the comforts of a regal heritage in Donegal and commit himself to the austerities of the life of a monk. His skills were quickly manifested and he founded monastery after monastery around Ireland, most famously at Derry. They were places of prayer and consecrated life, agriculture and art, study and education, peace and prosperity. Well, until Columba messed it all up.
He had returned to the Abbey at Movilla where he had begun his studies and surreptitiously made a copy of the treasured psalter kept there by Finnian, who had brought it back from Rome, one of the famous translations by St. Jerome. To loop back to St. Patrick for a moment: during his life Jerome’s translation had been completed, but it had yet to reach ubiquity around Europe so sometimes St. Patrick quoted the scriptures from earlier translations. Of course, Finnian was quite proud then to have this bible, and Columba was quite interested in getting a copy of it despite Finnian refusing him that permission. Our gutsy, not yet saintly, Irish monk copied a section every night, and had the whole psalter ready to take with him when he prepared to depart but then the truth came out.
Finnian accused Columba of disobedience. Columba claimed he did nothing wrong in copying the bible. The High King was asked to adjudicate the decision, Diamait mac Cerbaill, the last High King to be inaugurated by pagan ritual, by this time it seems a Christian, and in any case a relative of Columba. Still, in the earliest recorded judgement on copyright infringement, he sided with Finnian. Columba was furious, and the details are muddy, but it seems that in the midst of some sort of contest of strength one of the Northern O’Naill’s (Columba’s side) injured or killed one of the southern O’Naill’s (Daimait’s side, perhaps his son), and fled to Columba’s monastery for protection. Despite the inalienable right of sanctuary, Diamait dragged the man out and killed him. And so began the Battle of Cúl Dreimhne, with thousands dead at the end of it, and Columba choosing a self-imposed exile to Scotland to do penance. He would build many monasteries there, became known for his holiness and wisdom, convert the King of the Pict’s to Christianity, and – fitting given what had brought him there in the first place – help to mediate disputes among the warring clans, and continued to transcribe books until his death.
Oh, and there was one famous time while working to convert King Brude that Columba came upon a group (of still pagan Picts) burying a man who had just been killed by a “water beast” in the River Ness. Columba touched the man, bringing him back to life, but knew the people needed a greater sign of Christ’s power to come to belief. He directed one of his young monks to swim the river. The Brother, Lugne Mocumin, leapt into the water and to the dismay of the crowd immediately attracted the beast. Columba calmly strode to the bank, made the sign of the cross and commanded the monster to stop, which it did instantaneously.
His Irish temper had, at long last, been yoked to Christ.
Fr. Dominic some months ago heard a podcast by the apologist, and polymath, Jimmy Akin about the Loch Ness monster. Unfortunately, these days, it seems unlikely we have a dinosaur still living there, and though eel DNA is present in large amounts, we don’t have strong evidence for a giant eel living in the loch at the moment. So we don’t know what monster Columba faced that day, but we do know that he converted the Picts, which would be able to assimilate with the southern (already Christian) tribes, uniting Scotland a generation later.