Adomnan s

Life of St. Columba

Although he is the patron saint of the land and his cross highlights Scotland s
flag, St. Andrew never set foot in Scotland. The most notable saint to actually
walk the soil of Scotland is St. Columba (Columcille in Gaelic, meaning dove of
the church ). A native of Ireland, he spent much of his life in the glens of
Scotland and the western isles, especially the small island of Iona, where he
founded his principal church and monastery in the mid sixth century.
Much of what we know of Columba comes from The Life of Saint Columba, a
biography written in the late 690 s by Adomnan, the ninth successor to Columba
as Abbot of Iona. Adomnan based his book on an earlier account of Columba s life
(now unfortunately lost) and the tales of Columba that Iona monks told about
their community s extraordinary founder.
The facts of Columba s life are scant. We know he was born about 521 AD into a
family of nobles in Ireland; Gartan in County Donegal claims to be his actual
birthplace. As was the common custom, he spent his formative years not among his
family but with his foster father, the holy man Cruithnechan, in Leinster. After
his training and education, Adomnan simply says Columba sailed from Ireland to
become a pilgrim and ended up at the tiny island of Iona.
Legend, however, paints a more complicated story, and states that the young
Columba spent some time at the monastery in Moville, Ireland. Intrigued by the
plentiful books there, he began to make a copy of one of the Psalters but was
caught in the act by the abbot, who considered this akin to stealing the actual
book, and he appealed to the Irish king for judgement. In what was probably the
world s first copyright lawsuit, the king decided the case in favour of the
abbot. Infuriated at this ruling, Columba followed a decidedly unsaintly course.
He rallied his kinsmen, the O Neills, and engaged the king s army in a battle in
which more than 3,000 men were killed.
Columba survived the battle and was brought before the religious and royal
authorities to face the punishments for his instigation of the conflict.
Miraculously, Columba managed to escape serious penalty. At the church trial, he
reportedly was preceded into the room by a column of white light, a portent that
the church elders determined to be a sign from above. Not wanting to defy a
divine omen, they decided not to excommunicate him. When brought before the
royal court in the year 563, the king also showed leniency and did not have him
executed, but instead exiled him. Remorseful for causing so many deaths, Columba
solemnly vowed to the Irish leaders that he would convert one person for each
one that had died during the battle. With a heavy heart, he set sail with twelve
companions and settled on Iona, from which his native land could not be seen.
Regardless of how he came to Scotland, he began to have an impact almost
immediately. In the short span of his life, his church at Iona would become a
key point for travellers, royalty and traders. It is not clear how successful
his religious missionary efforts were among the Picts and other peoples he
encountered, but he became involved enough with the local political landscape to
consecrate a king of the Scottish / Irish kingdom of Dalriada in 574.
Adomnan divides his biography into three distinct sections of the saint s life.
The first segment concerns Columba s predictions and prophecies. Many of those
described in the book parallel what Scotland would later call Second Sight, the

alleged ability to see things occurring at great distances and / or foretell

events yet to happen. Among the fifty predictions attributed to the saint are
the arrival of important visitors, victors in battles, successors to kings, and
the deaths of monks and neighbours. His predictions did not just concern people:
Adomnan relates the story of Columba predicting that a heron would arrive at
Iona and requested that one of his monks take care of the bird for three days
before sending it on its way. Another curious tale in this section of the book
tells that Baithene, Columba s cousin and successor as abbot, had copied a
manuscript and given it to Columba for final approval. Without looking at it,
Columba declared that Baithene s copy was perfect except for the letter i
missing in one word. The manuscript was examined carefully and found, indeed, to
be missing just that one letter.
The second section of Adomnan s book describes miracles performed by Columba.
This topic was important, because one of the reasons Adomnan wrote the book,
other than to give the community of Iona a history of its founder, was to
support the canonisation of Columba, for which miracles needed to be ascribed to
him. Acts such as healings and the raising of the dead are attributed to Columba
in this section of the book, along with some other peculiar phenomena: a demon
is cast out of a milk pail; seeds planted in mid June grow to full harvest in
just six weeks; and, nearly echoing St. Patrick, Columba changes all of the
poisonous snakes on Iona into non-poisonous ones.
One tale from this part of the book reads like a folk tale. Columba aided a poor
man by giving him a wooden rod, promising the man that it would not harm man or
cattle, but would yield a constant source of game. The man put the stake in the
woods near his home, and every morning he would find some animal had impaled
itself on the stake, so the man s family was well fed. His wife worried, though,
about people or cattle accidentally falling on the stake, and the legal
consequences. So the man put the stake into a nearby river, where salmon and
fish continually impaled themselves against it. The wife worried that fishermen
would injure themselves on the stake, so the man placed the wooden stake on the
roof of their house, where game birds continually flew into it. The wife
remained anxious, and the man eventually destroyed the stake to pacify her,
sending the family back to the harsh life of struggling for every morsel of
food.
This second section of the book also includes a cameo by one of Scotland s most
famous residents:
At another time, when the saint stayed for several days among the Picts, he
came to the shores of the River Ness. Reaching the shore, he saw some locals in
the midst of burying some unfortunate man. They told him that they had seen a
water beast snatch the man and maul him as he was swimming. Some of the men had
set out in a small boat to try to rescue the man, but they were too late. They
used hooks to retrieve his corpse from the waters.
Columba, after being told this story, amazed the crowd by telling his companion
Luigne to swim across the water and bring back a boat that was on the far shore.
Luigne obeyed the saint without hesitation, removed his clothes except for a
tunic, and dove into the water.
The beast was at the bottom of the water, its appetite merely whetted by its
first victim. Sensing the water stirring above by Luigne s swimming, it suddenly
rushed towards the swimmer with a great roar, its wide mouth open to its prey.

The crowd on the shore, both Columba s men and the locals, watched in terror.
The blessed Columba raised his hand and made the sign of the cross, and calling
on the name of God, spoke to the monster: Halt! Do not harm the man! Retreat at
once!
The sound of the saint s voice caused terror in the beast, and it fled so
swiftly that it appeared dragged under with ropes. It had been but the length of
a pole away from Luigne. Columba s companions were amazed when Luigne returned
to them in the boat, unharmed and safe.
Written in the late seventh century, this is Nessie s first appearance in print.
The third section of the book concerns Columba s experiences with heavenly
messengers and gives a poignant picture of his final hours on Earth. While
working on a manuscript on the night of June 9, 597, the elderly Columba came to
the end of the page and prophetically stated that he was done, and Baithene
will write what follows . Rushing to the midnight service, after seeing
mysterious lights coming from within the chapel, his companions found Columba s
body lying in front of the altar. Adomnan concludes his book with several
separate sightings of lights in the sky at the moment of Columba s death.
The bulk of the stories in the book take place on Iona, but Columba also
reportedly journeyed to the Scottish mainland and to other monasteries he had
founded, most notably the church on the island of Hinba, apparently the largest
of his monasteries outside of Iona. Scholars have debated for centuries about
the location of Hinba, arguing it to be the former name for Uist or Colonsay or
Jura. Unfortunately Adomnan gives no geographical clues other than saying that
Hinba features an inlet known as The Great Bay.
Later scholars would call the authenticity of the book s stories into question.
The Eighth Duke of Argyll, fond of Columba to the point of rebuilding Iona s
medieval church, treasured Adomnan s book for its portrait of daily life during
Scotland s ancient time, but claimed the stories of Columba s miracles were, by
and large, childish and incredible . Despite later doubts, Adomnan s
biography was successful. Columba was duly canonised as a saint and the book
left not only a legacy of the saint s life, but also presented an invaluable
glimpse of early Scotland.

Copyright: 1997 Douglas MacGowan

[First published in Dalriada magazine]