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Columcille, Apostle of Scotland
laid open to his sight as in one ray of the sun." He healed
diseases. He raised the dead to life. He subdued the
furious rage of wild beasts. He expelled by a word and
sign hosts of malignant demons. He calmed the surging
waves and changed the direction of the winds. Celestial
light played around him and celestial legions descended
to keep him company. He saw the souls of men ascending
to the highest heavens, or descending among the demons
of hell. He looked into the future and foretold the
destinies of men. His voice breathed incessant prophecy
and preternatural revelation.
Yet beneath all this aura of legend and wonder there
is a solid accompaniment of fact and historic reality
which has preserved Columcille to us as a living, breath-
ing, human personality, whose course from the cradle
to the grave is laid bare to us with a distinctness lacking
in any other career during the early Middle Ages. No
legendary dim figure is Columcille but a great and strik-
ing
historical character whose work constitutes a fact
in history as enduring and indissoluble as that of Caesar.
Legend made Columcille its own as it made Charlemagne
its own. But as Charlemagne had his Einhard as well as
his Trouvere, so Columcille had numerous witnesses to the
realities of his life as well as to its supposed wonders.
Nobody can doubt that Adamnan, for example, described
the phenomena and incidents of his patron's life as they
appeared to those who were living observers. It is only
in the supernatural agencies to which he ascribes natural
acts and processes that he goes beyond the record. The
facts themselves and their environments may be accepted;
the explanation of the facts often indicates the line where
pious fancy has superimposed the element of legend on
reality.
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