Oldest Scottish book in existence—A sturdy survival—Criteria of age—Dorbene the copyist—Romantic history of the MS.—Now in Schaffhausen—Adamnan, a rare personality—Abbot and scholar—Influential career—Attitude to the two great questions that divided the Celtic churches—Pathetic estrangement—“Lex Adamnani”—A mighty social revolution—Death—His writings—“The Vision of Adamnan”—His Life of Columba in three parts—Remarkable contents—Most valuable monument of the early Celtic Church—List of MSS. in which preserved—Latin versus Gaelic.
Many Scottish visitors visit Schaffhausen, on the Rhine in Switzerland, and perhaps few of them are aware that in the public library there, is deposited one of the rarest and most interesting relics of Scotland.
It is a parchment MS. of sixty-eight leaves, each about eleven inches by nine. The volume looks as if in the original binding. Its sides are of beechwood, greatly worm-eaten and covered with calfskin, the sewing of the back very rude and curious, and the front would seem to have been formerly secured by clasps.
This is not a Gaelic work, though Gaelic names appear in it. It is written in Latin in double columns. Capital letters abound, some of them of great size and adorned with red and yellow paint. The summaries at the beginning, the headings of chapters, and the colophon of the scribe are all in rubric which on the whole is wonderfully fresh and beautiful.
Three handwritings may be traced: the first, that peculiar to the greater part of the book; the second, in evidence towards the end, in all probability the work of the same writer, but with different pen and ink and in smaller, rounder letters; the third, corrections in spelling by a later and much inferior penman.
The ink is dark, almost jet-black, except in some places where it has turned brown.
Such is the general appearance of the relic. And marvel not if a vague, far-away look steals into the eye when one reflects that this book which he sees and handles is well nigh, if not quite, 1200 years old; that it is, in fact, the oldest now existing, known to have been written in Scotland, and separated by the lapse of 100 years from the next most ancient.
A copy of Adamnan’s Life of St. Columba, made by one of his contemporaries in Iona—this, the sturdy survival is taken to be. And if the criteria of its age are not misleading, it dates from before 713 A.D. These criteria are in themselves profoundly interesting.
1. It is recognised that the handwriting is that peculiar heavy kind found in the oldest Gaelic MSS.—not quite so round as that in the Books of Kells and Durrow, but possessing many features in common, and certainly anterior to that of the Book of Armagh, fixed at 807.
2. Similarly the Latin spelling corresponds with that of the more ancient Celtic MSS. at home and abroad.
3. The Greek characters which appear in the text are in the semi-uncials of the period, without accents or breathings.
4. The later corrections, supposed to have been made on the Continent, are reckoned by Dr. Ferdinand Keller, an expert in the handwriting of Charlemagne’s time, to belong to the period between 800 and 820.
5. The parchment is in goat-skin, in colour and condition extremely ancient.
6. But more conclusive still is the remarkable colophon of the scribe at the end of the volume, where he says, “I beseech those who wish to transcribe these books, yea, rather, I adjure them by Christ, the judge of the world, after they have diligently transcribed, carefully to compare and correct their copies with that from which they have copied them, and also to subjoin here this adjuration: ‘Whoever readeth these books on the virtues of St. Columba let him pray to the Lord for me Dorbene that after death I may possess eternal life.’”
Here we have actually the name of the scribe—a splendid clue to the age of the MS. which critics have not been backward in availing themselves of. The name is so rare in the records that they had only a choice between two, one anterior to Adamnan’s day, the other his contemporary, and Abbot-elect of Iona in 713. But this latter Dorbene died that same year before assuming office, and only nine years after Adamnan himself. He in all probability it was who copied the Life.
To the objection, Why not by another of the same name? Dr. Reeves replies in effect, “Not likely, as the name is almost unique and pointedly connected with the Columban society.” And to the further objection that it might possibly be by a later hand from the autograph of this Dorbene, he answers, “Even less likely, as the colophon in Irish MSS. is always peculiar to the actual scribe, and usually omitted by other transcribers. And this is the only MS. of Adamnan’s Life that has the name and the colophon.”
The interest attaching to it on account of its extraordinary age and subject-matter is greatly enhanced when we consider its history. For the old document had hairbreadth escapes and adventures, and if it could speak for itself doubtless could unfold a tale infinitely more surprising, because more real and tragic, than many of the miraculous incidents it does record. All the long agony of the early, the middle, and the modern ages has transpired since first it went a-wandering. Invasions, crusades, and revolutions, the rise and fall of systems and nations—whole populations passing swiftly and stormfully across the bosom of Europe into oblivion, and the book in the heart of the troubled area survives them all and emerges at length, as if from the debris, to reassert that “there lived a man.”
Adamnan, ninth Abbot of Iona, wrote the original in the years 691 to 693—that is, ten or twelve years before his death, which occurred in 704. In the second preface—for there are two—he tells us that it is the substance of the narratives learned from his predecessors, and is founded either on written authorities anterior to his own time or on what he heard himself from ancient men then living. And we know that he was sufficiently near the fountainhead, both in time and place, to be able to draw from authentic sources; for he wrote just a century after St. Columba’s death, and at the urgent request of his brethren. In his boyhood he had frequent opportunities of conversing with those who had seen and known the saint, and he was surrounded in the monastery and in the island with all the halo of association and piety in which the memory of his hero was enshrined.
The written material he could rely on was not meagre even at so early a date. There was the narrative of Cummene the Fair, seventh abbot of Iona, and thus one of his own immediate predecessors. His account Adamnan transferred entire and almost verbatim into the third book of his own work. It was really a tract entitled De virtutibus sancti Columbæ. In addition to this he had at least one other Latin memoir and various Gaelic poems in praise of the saint, such as the “Amra” of Dallan Forgaill, and those of Baithene Mòr, and perhaps of St. Mura.
In another of his books (De Locis Sanctis) the author informs us how he generally set about composing his literary efforts. He wrote the first draft on waxen tablets, revised and corrected it, and then from the text so prepared, a clean copy was neatly written out on parchment.
Dorbene the Scribhnidh may have copied the Life in Adamnan’s own time; if not quite so early, then shortly after his death. And whatever became of Adamnan’s original, Dorbene’s copy appears to have remained in the monastery till the beginning of the ninth century, when it was probably taken to Germany. At that time a strong tide of Scotic pilgrims set in towards Central Europe, owing no doubt to the Norse invasions, which rendered life and property insecure in Iona and elsewhere.
In 825 Blathmac was murdered in the monastery, along with several of the brethren, because he refused to tell where the Columban relics were hid. The likelihood is that after that narrow escape one of the fleeing monks carried the book to St. Gall or Reichenau on the Rhine. At any rate it is significant that Walafridus Strabus, formerly Dean of the Irish monastery of St. Gall in Switzerland, and then Abbot of Reichenau from 842–849, knew of the tragic event and wrote a poem in Latin on the death of Blathmac. And it was in this very house of Reichenau, that used to be frequented so much by Scotic missionaries, that the MS. was ultimately found. And quite casually too.
Ages had elapsed when, in the beginning of the seventeenth century, Stephen White, a learned Irish Jesuit in search of Gaelic documents on the Continent, luckily discovered it. He immediately transcribed the venerable codex, and gave Ussher, Colgan, and the Bollandists the benefit of his copy. Both the latter published the text—Colgan in 1647, the Bollandists in 1698.
Thereafter, a second time the original vanished. When or how it was removed from Reichenau is not known, but it must have been before that monastery was suppressed in 1799. Once more it emerged, this time at Schaffhausen, rediscovered by Dr. Ferdinand Keller of Zurich, the distinguished archæologist.
Writing of the interesting find in January 1851, Dr. Keller tells the story of its reappearance, showing into what sorry neglect it had fallen before it reached its ultimate coign of vantage. “The present proprietor of the MS. of St. Columba,” he says, “is the town-library of Schaffhausen. Here I found this codex in 1845 at the bottom of a high book-chest, where it lay pell-mell with some other MSS. and old books totally neglected, bearing neither title nor number.” It was twice borrowed by Keller, and on the last occasion in 1851 he made a valuable collection of facsimiles from it.
Finally the aged record, after well-nigh 1200 years’ vicissitudes, was published by Dr. Reeves, Bishop of Down, in 1856, and his work republished in 1874 by the publishers of the Series of Scottish Historians, this time with English translation and re-arrangement of the Notes, which Dr. Reeves permitted in order to adapt the book to a wider circle of readers.
A truly romantic history, taking it all in all, is this story of the ancient wanderer which has come to honour in a foreign land, but has not yet found a way home to its native soil. What would Schaffhausen take and part with it? Scotland has never asked. Some day she may, when she awakens to the fact that the very oldest and, at the same time, one of the most intensely interesting monuments of her literary history is an alien in a strange country.
Apart from the book itself, the hero of the book, and its faithful copyist, there is a fascination and much insight to be drawn from a study of the personality of its author. Adamnan, like Boswell, has achieved immortality through an enthusiastic and almost self-effacing hero-worship. His great object, as he tells us again and again, is to show up the wonderful character of the saintly Columba, and any deed or tale that he thinks will enhance the prestige of this “great father and founder of monasteries” goes down with unfailing devotion.
Born about the year 624 in Donegal, Adamnan, like Cummene, was a kinsman of St. Columba. Indeed, the three men were descended from three brothers, all of royal lineage. His peculiar name is understood to be a diminutive of Adam, and is frequently followed by the patronymic Ua Tinne, meaning grandson of Tinne. Of his father Ronan, or his mother Ronnat, we know absolutely nothing beyond their descent, which was of high degree. And of his own childhood and youth there remains only a single legend, supposed to be the creation of a later age, reporting his first meeting with Finnachta, afterwards monarch of Ireland, with whom Adamnan was on the most friendly terms. This Finnachta, as his biographer relates, was riding along one day to his sister’s house with a numerous cavalcade, when he met a schoolboy with a jar of milk on his back. In his haste to get out of the way the stripling knocked his foot against a stone, and tripping, down went the jar with its contents upon the ground. Whereupon the great prince spoke kindly to the boy and assured him of protection, bidding him not to sorrow over it. To whom the latter replied, “O good man, I have cause for grief, for there are three goodly students in one house and three more of us are attendants upon them. And how we act is this: one attendant from among us goes out in turn to collect sustenance for the other five, and it was my turn to-day; but what I had gathered for them has been spilled upon the ground, and what grieves me more, the borrowed jar is broken and I have not wherewith to pay for it.”
These are the boyish and dramatic circumstances in which Adamnan emerges on the canvas of tradition. From his youth it would thus appear that he was inured to hardship, and consequently qualified for the rigorous discipline of the monastic life. Plain living went with high thinking, and the quiet, thoughtful student soon acquired a reputation for scholarship. He was just the kind of man to obtain entrance into the distinguished circle of Iona, and though we cannot trace his career as subordinate there, with certainty, we know that in 679, when fifty-five years of age, he became head of the institution. At that period the monastery was already known far and near for its learning. And there seems little doubt that the new abbot was, taking him all in all, the ablest and most accomplished of St. Columba’s successors. A great linguist, he knew not only Latin, but, it may be inferred from his writings, Hebrew and Greek also.
Four years prior to his own promotion, Finnachta had become king in his native country. That monarch, it would appear, never lost sight of the boy with the jar, whose whole bearing indicated a youth of rare promise. The latter was afterwards invited to his court, and ultimately constituted the king’s spiritual adviser (anamchara). This we have on the authority of an ancient bardic composition in a vellum MS., formerly in the possession of W. Monck Mason, Esq.
Besides his interesting relations with Finnachta, Adamnan was fortunate in possessing the friendship of King Aldfrid of Northumbria. This intimacy probably dates from the time when the latter as prince had occasion to seek refuge in Ireland from his intriguing foes. At that time he may have even been, as Duald Mac Firbis’s annals affirm, a pupil of Adamnan.
At any rate, with two such royal friends, the influence of the Ionan abbot was very great. And on important occasions he served as ambassador or “go-between” in matters of State betwixt the two kings. For example, after a raiding expedition by the North Saxons on Meath, Finnachta got him to undertake a mission to his friend Aldfrid to negotiate for the return of the captives, and the abbot had the satisfaction of personally conducting sixty of them back to Erin in 686.
Two years later he paid another visit to the Court in Northumbria. On both occasions a dreadful plague was raging in that country, and throughout a great part of Europe. In his usual ultra-rational manner Adamnan attributes his own immunity from the pestilence, and that of the Picts and Scots in general, to the intercession of his holy patron St. Columba.
On these tours he made the acquaintance of the leading clergy in the north of England. It is supposed he met Bede, then a young man, at the Court also. This distinguished historian gives various facts regarding the abbot and his movements. He appears to have read Adamnan’s book on the “Holy Places,” though it may be that he never saw the biography, which was a much later production. At least he makes no mention of it anywhere.
There were two great questions that then divided the Celtic churches—the celebration of Easter and the tonsure. Through his intercourse with the English clergy in Northumbria, and more especially, it is affirmed, through a lively discussion he had with the learned Ceolfrid, Abbot of Jarrow, Adamnan was persuaded to adopt the Catholic in preference to the Celtic usage in these matters. On his return to Hy the brethren strenuously opposed the innovation, and there was a lasting difference of opinion thus originated by his change of views. For years the abbot, who was pre-eminently a man of peace and unity—and, like the great and pious scholar he was, always open to conviction,—earnestly strove to win them over to what he deemed to be the better method, but did not succeed in his own lifetime, though in after years the change was ultimately adopted. In 692 he visited Ireland, and again in 697, between which years he wrote the book that has made his name and memory immortal. A man of great energy and incessant diligence, he was much on the move convening synods and negotiating affairs. Like his extraordinary patron, he interested himself in politics as well as in religion and literature, of which he was a shining light.
Unhappily the law which St. Columba had got enacted, exempting women from fighting in actual warfare, had soon fallen into abeyance, and Adamnan resolved to have it re-enacted. According to a legend in the Leabhar Breac and Book of Lecain, his attention was called to the inhuman custom in the following accidental way. One day he happened to be travelling through the plain of Bregia, says the legend, with his mother on his back, when they saw two armies in deadly conflict. During the heat of the combat his mother’s eye caught sight of a woman dragging another woman by means of an iron reaping-hook from the opposing battalion. The hook was fastened in the unfortunate victim’s breast. Sitting down overcome by the sight, the distressed Ronnat said to her son, “Thou shalt not take me from this spot until thou exemptest women for ever from being in this condition and from excursions and hostings.” Adamnan promised it. And at the important Synod of Tara, convened in 697, with the approval of King Finnachta, the point was carried, involving a mighty social revolution from henceforth in the life and customs of the Gael. For under the old regime, men and women went equally to battle.
The enactments of this synod were afterwards known in Latin as “Lex Adamnani,” and in Gaelic “Cain Adhamhnain.” In addition to a certain privilege conceded to him and to his successors of levying contributions for sacred purposes, Dr. Reeves thinks it was on this occasion that the questions of Easter and the tonsure were publicly discussed, and Adamnan’s views and usage adopted in Ireland.
Afterwards he seems to have been some years in that country promoting his reforms. He certainly was there in 701; and Bede mentions that he crossed from Erin to Hy the summer of the year that he died, and indicates that he had been there a considerable time previously. His death occurred on September 23rd, 704. It is thus touchingly commemorated by the great historian. “For it came to pass that before the next year came round he departed this life; the Divine goodness so ordering it that, as he was a man most earnest for peace and unity, he should be taken away to everlasting life before the return of the season of Easter he should be obliged to differ still more seriously from those who were unwilling to follow him in the way of truth.” He had apparently celebrated his last Easter in Ireland, and died at the mature age of seventy-seven.
His fame rests on his writings, chiefly the Life of St. Columba, and his book on the “Holy Places”—De Locis Sanctis. Adamnan himself saw not these Holy Land localities, but a French bishop on his return from the east was driven by a storm to spend the winter with Adamnan, who took down on waxen tablets his interesting accounts of the chief places visited, and afterwards wrote out, brevi textu, on parchment. It is better written and more fluent even than the biography, and when found many years after, it was published as “the earliest account coming from modern Christian Europe of the condition of Eastern lands and the cradle of Christianity.”
Adamnan presented the book to King Aldfrid of Northumbria. There are extant MSS. of it as old as the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries still on the Continent—at Rome, Corbey, Saltzburg, and other places.
Besides these chief Latin works he is credited with a Life of St. Patrick; poems, quoted by Tighernach, the “Four Masters,” and the Book of Lecain; a History of Ireland to his own times, and An Epitome of Irish Laws in Metre. These two latter are only mentioned by Ward[16] (on what authority is not known), and may be probably only compilations of more modern times.
In the Liber Hymnorum, however, there is a short hymn in Gaelic entitled Adamnan’s Prayer. It may be read in Dr. Stokes’ Goidelica. And in the Leabhar Na h’Uidhre there is a more lengthy production known as “Fis Adhamhnain.” It is in the form of a sermon, and may have been written down some two hundred years after the abbot’s time. In this remarkable vision Adamnan figures as “the high sage of the western world,” and like Aeneas or Dante, he is privileged on the festival of St. John the Baptist to visit heaven and hell. The scenes he beheld are depicted in the original Gaelic with a realism and power of vivid imaginary detail that puts even Thomas Boston in the shade. As Dante found his Florentine enemies in not too comfortable circumstances in the Inferno, so Adamnan is here represented as seeing the Aircinnich—the lay administrators of the church lands, who too often abused their trust, in similar dool. But this sentiment alone is sufficient to show that the composition is of later date than Adamnan’s day, for such Aircinnich had yet to arise, and the broad acres they mismanaged.
It is said that at the time of the great Synod in 697 the public mind had for long been kept in such a state of suspense and alarm by the prevailing pestilences and portents, that the report of the abbot having some such vision made it so susceptible to his influence that he had far less difficulty in carrying into effect his revolutionary measures than he would have had in ordinary circumstances.
But all these things—writings and traditions alike—tend to show how this quiet, intellectual, studious, pious, and—from our point of view—amazingly credulous, yet influential scholar, impressed his own and succeeding ages.
Adamnan’s best known book is essentially a Life of St. Columba, written not in any chronological order, but on a characteristic plan of his own. There are two prefaces, and what would really be the gist and subject-matter of a modern biography is condensed by him into one short paragraph at the end of the second of these. The work is then divided into three parts or books. The first deals with prophetical revelations, the second with miracles, the third with visions of angels; and under these titles he groups all the most striking stories of the saint’s life. All the collateral information—and it is not much—regarding the history of the time, the social life, the manners, customs, language, topography, etc., we get merely by the way in the telling of the tale. Adamnan apparently had no thought that his readers would wish to know something of these, or if he had he did not deem it any part of his task to enlighten them. He was writing for his own times, and he could not conceive that the eye of any monk or other reader could wander off from the central luminary to mere details of the environment. It is at once the limitation and strength of the enthusiast and the specialist. How could he know that he was writing for the far-distant future?—this unassuming monk in his cell, unconsciously addressing a people who have emerged from his theory of the universe, and who listen and wonder at his stories, which to them have all the charm and interest of fairy tales.
Tempora mutantur, eheu! The little facts that incidentally dropped from his pen are those most sought and valued now, while the miracles, visions, and prophecies which he took to be the soul and substance of the book, wear a different aspect to modern eyes. It is these trifling details, sometimes mere names, that give us glimpses into the state of society in Ireland and Pictland, and into the civil and ecclesiastical history of the time.
Adamnan’s consuming desire at all times is to present “the evidences which the venerable man gave of his power.” And when we reflect that he believed that “by some divine intuition” St. Columba, “through a wonderful experience of his inner soul, beheld the whole universe drawn together and laid open to his sight, as in one ray of the sun,” we need not be surprised at the wonders unfolded. In the first chapter of Book I., and before entering upon illustrative examples, he gives a summary of his hero’s supernatural qualities. For example, he healed diseases; expelled from the island “innumerable hosts of malignant spirits, whom he saw with his bodily eyes assailing himself and beginning to bring deadly distemper on his monastic brotherhood.” The surging waves quickly became quiet at his prayer, and contrary winds changed into fair. He took a white stone from the river Ness and blessed it for healing purposes. This famous pebble floated like an apple when placed in water. In the country of the Picts he raised a dead child to life, and while yet a young man in Hibernia turned water into wine. An immense blaze of heavenly light was occasionally seen to surround him in the light of day, and he was frequently favoured with the society of bright hosts of celestial beings. He often saw just men carried by angels to the highest heavens, and reprobates hurried by demons to hell. The blessed man even foretold the destinies of individual men, pleasing or painful, according to their deserts. And “in the dreadful crash of wars he obtained from God by the virtue of prayer, that some kings should be conquered and others come off victorious.”
And now, coming to the substance of the separate books in order, we need not dwell on the prophetical revelations, numerous and curious though they are, beyond giving one or two as typical examples. The credulity of the author and his capacity for belief are passing strange, and even foreign to an age like our own. A peasant, he tells us, once asked the saint by what death he would die. “Not in the battlefield nor at sea,” came the ready response, “but the travelling companion of whom thou hast no suspicion shall cause thy death.” And the man died through the effects of a wound accidentally caused by his own knife.
One wonderful experience may be quoted, as quite in line with Professor James’ argument in his Gifford Lectures at Edinburgh University (May, 1901). In discussing “The reality of the Unseen,” this brilliant exponent of the new Psychology instanced a number of curious cases of the occurrence of a “presence” to individuals, and he maintained that the sentiment of reality could indeed attach itself to things of which the representative faculty could frame only the dimmest sort of an idea. And abstractions other than the ideas of pure reason had the power of making us feel presences that we were impotent articulately to describe. No more striking example of his contention could be desired than the following. It is entitled, “Of the consolation which the monks when they were weary on their journey, received from the saint visiting them in spirit.”
Baithene and the brethren were returning in the evening to the monastery from the harvest work when something strange and unusual was felt by them all. It is thus described by an elder brother. “I perceive,” he said to the others, “the fragrance of such a wonderful odour, just as if all the flowers on earth were gathered together into one place. I feel also a glow of heat within me, not at all painful, but most pleasing, and a certain unusual and inexpressible joy poured into my heart, which on a sudden so refreshes and gladdens me that I forget grief and weariness of every kind. Even the load, however heavy, which I carry on my back, is in some mysterious way so lightened from this place all the way to the monastery that I do not seem to have any weight to bear.”
King Brude and his Druids had rather a different sensation when, outside their fortifications near Inverness, some of the latter tried to prevent the saint from chanting the evening hymns. Very much in the flesh this time, St. Columba began to sing the 44th Psalm so wonderfully loud, like the rattle of thunder, that king and people were terror-struck with the awful noise, and forthwith relented. Columba seems to have been more than a match for these pagan opponents. For in the second book, where the miracles are recorded, among other confusions to which he drove the resisting Picts, the following is recorded. When first he visited Brude, it happened that the king, elated by the pride of royalty, acted haughtily and would not open his gates to his distinguished visitors. But the man of God, observing this, approached the folding doors with his companions and, having first formed upon them the sign of the cross, he knocked and then laid his hand upon the gate, which instantly flew open of its own accord, the bolts sliding back with great force. The saint and his followers then passed through, and ever after, as long as he lived, king Brude knew how to respect and reverence his imperious visitor. It was to him that the latter gave the remarkable white pebble which effected cures. “And what is very wonderful,” says our author, “when this same stone was sought for by those sick persons whose term of life had arrived, it could not be found.” Even King Brude himself was abandoned in articulo mortis by the fateful pebble.
After giving examples of miraculous punishments inflicted on those who were opposed to St. Columba, Adamnan instances a few encounters with wild beasts, and as they relate to our own Scotland they are of ancient and exceptional interest.
“On one occasion,” to quote our author, “when the blessed man was staying some days in the Scian island (Skye), he left the brethren and went alone a little farther than usual to pray; and having entered a dense forest he met a huge wild boar that happened to be pursued by hounds. As soon as the saint saw him at some distance he stood looking intently at him. Then raising his holy hand and invoking the name of God in fervent prayer, he said to the beast, ‘Thou shalt proceed no farther in this direction; perish on the spot where thou hast now reached.’ And no sooner were these fateful words uttered than it appears his formidable opponent collapsed, expiring on the spot.”
But an experience on the mainland of the Picts seems to have been even more exciting. One day he had to cross the river Ness. And when he reached the bank of the river he saw some of the inhabitants burying an unfortunate man, who, according to the accounts of those who were burying him, was a short time before seized as he was swimming, and bitten most severely by a monster that lived in the water; his wretched body was, though too late, taken out with a hook by those who came to his assistance in a boat. The blessed man, on hearing this, was so far from being dismayed that he directed one of his companions to swim over and row across the coble that was moored at the farther bank. And Lugne Mocumin, hearing the command of the excellent man, obeyed without the least delay, taking off all his clothes except his tunic and leaping into the water. But the monster, which, so far from being satiated, was only roused for more prey, was lying at the bottom of the stream, and when it felt the water disturbed by the man swimming, suddenly rushed out, and giving an awful roar darted after him with its mouth wide open, as the man swam in the middle of the stream. Then the blessed man, observing this, raised his holy hand, while all the rest, brethren as well as strangers, were stupefied with terror, and invoking the name of God, formed the saving sign of the cross in the air, and commanded the ferocious monster, saying, “Thou shalt go no farther, nor touch the man; go back with all speed.” Then at the voice of the saint the monster was terrified, and fled more quickly than if it had been pulled back with ropes, though it had just got so near Lugne as he swam that there was not more than the length of a spear staff between the man and the beast. Then the brethren, seeing that the monster had gone back, and that their comrade Lugne had returned to them in the boat safe and sound, were struck with admiration and gave glory to God in the blessed man. And even the barbarous heathens who were present were forced, by the greatness of this miracle which they themselves had seen, to magnify the God of the Christians.
The raising of the hand and forming the sign of the cross in the air seems to have been a frequent and effective expedient. In the case of a youth who was returning from the milking of the cows with his pail on his back, and who stopped at the door of the cell where the blessed man was writing, it was the means of driving out a demon that lurked in the milk pail. No sooner had he left than the saint made the sign. Instantly the air was greatly agitated. The bar which fastened the lid of the pail being pulled back through the two openings which received it, was shot away to a great distance, while the lid fell to the earth and the greater part of the milk was spilled upon the ground. The demon that lurked in the bottom of the pail could not endure the power of the sign, and fled thus violently in terror.
Such is the unvarying style of Adamnan. That he himself credited those versions of stories reported is beyond question. “Our belief in the miracles which we have recorded,” he says, “but which we did not ourselves see, is confirmed beyond doubt by the miracles of which we were eye-witnesses.” Three times in his own experience he saw unfavourable gales changed into propitious breezes.
As Book III., dealing with visions and angels, embodies Cummene’s contribution, it is of the highest interest to consider some of its choice memories. “On a certain night,” proceeds chap. ii., “between the conception and birth of the venerable man, an angel of the Lord appeared to his mother in dreams, bringing to her as he stood by her a certain robe of extraordinary beauty, in which the most beautiful colours, as it were, of all the flowers seemed to be portrayed. After a short time he asked it back and took it out of her hands, and having raised it and spread it out he let it fly through the air. But she, being sad at the loss of it, said to that man of venerable aspect, ‘Why dost thou take this lovely cloak away from me so soon?’ He immediately replied, ‘Because this mantle is so exceedingly honourable that thou canst not retain it longer with thee.’ When this was said, the woman saw that the forementioned robe was gradually receding from her in its flight, and that then it expanded until its width exceeded the plains, and in all its measurements was larger than the mountains and forests. Then she heard the following words, ‘Woman, do not grieve for the man to whom thou hast been bound by the marriage bond; thou shalt bring forth a son of so beautiful a character that he shall be reckoned among his own people as one of the prophets of God, and he hath been predestined by God to be the leader of innumerable souls to the heavenly country.’ At these words the woman awoke from her sleep.”
A priest, to whose care the sacred youth had been confided, upon returning home from the church after mass found his house illuminated with a bright light, and saw in fact a ball of fire standing over the face of the little boy as he lay asleep. And in after years a higher personage, St. Brendan, reported that he observed a most brilliant pillar wreathed with fiery tresses preceding the same wonderful individual.
It was not to be supposed that such a distinguished ornament of the church militant could escape the attention and intrigues of its arch-enemy. And so, on another day, while the holy man went to seek in the woods of Iona for a place more remote from men and fitting for prayer, he suddenly beheld, as he afterwards told a few of the brethren, a very black host of demons fighting against him with iron darts. These wicked demons, as the Holy Spirit revealed to the saint, wished to attack his monastery and kill with the same spears many of the brethren. But he, single-handed, against innumerable foes of such a nature, fought with the utmost bravery, having received the armour of the apostle Paul. And thus the contest was maintained on both sides during the greater part of the day, nor could the demons, countless though they were, vanquish him; nor was he able by himself to drive them from his island until the angels of God—as the saint afterwards told certain persons—and they few in number came to his aid, when the demons in terror gave way.
The chapter, which is far and away the most thrilling and humanly interesting, is the last of the volume, entitled, “How our patron Saint Columba passed to the Lord.” It lingers with loving memory over the closing scene of this remarkable life, giving a minute account of the saint’s last words and acts, his preparations for the impending change, and the manner and circumstances of his death. But as this is an oft-repeated and well-known passage, it need not be quoted here.
Adamnan’s Vita Columbæ is not the only ancient Life of St. Columba after Cummene’s, but it is undoubtedly the standard classic one, from which most of the subsequent biographies draw their facts and inspirations, with the exception, perhaps, of the “Old Irish Life,” which furnishes particulars not mentioned in this one.
Neither is the Schaffhausen document the sole existing MS. copy of the great biography. Dr. Reeves consulted as many as seven distinct MSS., three of which contained a longer and four a shorter text. Besides these he had heard of five other extant copies, more or less complete.
The seven from which he obtained his own various readings are the following:—
I. Codex A.—The famous Schaffhausen one, the oldest of all, dating from the early years of the eighth century.
II. Codex B.—A vellum of the middle of the fifteenth century, preserved in the British Museum.
III. Codex C.—The Canisian text, which was published in 1604 from a MS. in the monastery of Windberg, Bavaria.
IV. Codex D.—The second tract in a large vellum of the thirteenth century, in Primate Marsh’s library, Dublin.
V. Codex F.—A vellum consisting of fifty leaves, now in the Royal Library of Munich.
VI. Codex G.—A small quarto MS. on vellum of the early part of the ninth century, in the Library of St. Gall.
VII. Codex Cottonianus in the British Museum, also a vellum of the latter part of the twelfth century.
The others, which he had not seen, are variously distributed in Austria, Bavaria, Switzerland, and Belgium.
With all its defects, Adamnan’s masterpiece is the most valuable monument of the early Celtic Church which has escaped the ravages of time; imaginative, superstitious, magical, and steeped in hero-worship, it is characteristically Celtic and of surpassing interest to the archæologist and philologist.
Its value as such would have been vastly enhanced in these times had it been written in Gaelic, and doubtless, too, had the author condescended more on social and historical details. But Adamnan apparently had no high opinion of his native language as a literary medium. In his first preface he almost apologises for using Gaelic names of men and tribes and obscure places in the “base Scotic tongue,” which he thinks rude in comparison with the languages of foreign nations, and begs his readers not to despise a record of useful deeds on account of these native words inserted.
Dr. Reeves seems to regret that Adamnan did not follow the method of Bede and give us an ecclesiastical history instead of a biography. We cannot all share his sentiment. Had it been other than it is—had it even been in Gaelic—the probability is that it might not have survived. In Gaelic it certainly never could have attained the celebrity it enjoyed on the continent of Europe during the Middle Ages, and which helped to perpetuate it. On the other hand, without the memoir as thus preserved, the life of St. Columba, the greatest pioneer of Scottish history, religion, and literature, would now be as vague and jumbled as that of any mythical hero, even as that of the historical St Patrick outside his own “Confession” unfortunately is; and we should be ignorant of many points concerning which we have now first-hand information.
As it stands, the Vita Columbæ is still the most authentic voucher we have for various important particulars in the civil and religious history of the Picts and Scots, and the severe Pinkerton himself was perhaps never nearer the truth on Celtic subjects than when he pronounced it “the most complete piece of such biography that all Europe can boast of, not only at so early a period, but even through the whole Middle Ages.”