Open [38.2 MB]

Ireland and the Making
of Britain
rary of Columcille, and outside of Ireland accomplished
a work paralleling that of Columcille within the Gaed-
haltacht. He was Columcille's junior by twenty-two
years. He was twenty years old when Columcille set out
for lona. He sailed for the Continent when Columcille
was twenty-two years in lona. He himself was, like
Columcille, the embodiment of the spirit and striving,
the awakened heart and developing intellect of his coun-
abroad on
try, and he made an extraordinary impression
the age in which he lived. But Columbanus, remarkable
as his personality was, remained totally unknown in
Ireland. Marvelous as were his gifts, he cut absolutely
no figure in Irish history and his career and personality
appear commonplace compared with the career and the
personality of Columcille. We have a life of Columbanus,
written by one of his immediate disciples, 1
just as we have
such a life of Columcille. We have Latin epistles written
by the hand of Columbanus, as well as Latin poems, rules,
instructions, sermons, directions, wonderful for their age.
From the authentic voice of Columcille himself there is
little that does not touch on the unearthly or that is not
in meter, Irish or Latin. In the stories that have come
down to us concerning him the poetical element is almost
always put forward in front of the practical,
and in few
episodes of his career is he ever shown as playing a
subordinate part. He is ever the high hero, the victor,
the champion, the darling of the gods, the idol of men
and women, the child of fortune, born to command in
heaven and in hell as well as upon the earth. Columcille
represents the poetry, as Columbanus maybe said to repre-
sent the prose, of the Ireland of the sixth century.
i Jonas in Migne, Pat. Lat, LXXXVII, Cols. 1009-46. Both Columbanus
and Columcille were more fortunate than St. Patrick in respect to their
biographers' nearness to their own time. The earliest reference to St.
Patrick is in the paschal epistle of Cummian (634) "Sanctus Patricius papa
noster."
118