Columba (Colum), Saint

COLUMBA (Colum), Saint. - Of Jona, a great Irish saint of the 6th century, placed by the ancient hagiography of the island in a triad with St. Patrick and St. Brigid. By lineage he is certainly the most illustrious of the saints of Ireland, having been born, in 521, of the royal family of the Ui Néill: during his lifetime three of his first cousins were kings. His original Gaelic name was Crimthann: having entered the service of the Lord, he was given the name of Colum (dove) or Columcille (dove of the church): in Latin he was always called Columba. He received his religious formation at Moville, then at Clonard, and became in his turn a founder of monasteries. Derry (today Londonderry) and Durrow are the most important of his Irish foundations, which are reckoned at thirty-seven. In 563 he left Ireland, « pro Christo peregrinari volens ». Already from the 5th century the Irish (Scoti) had established themselves in Great Britain, to the south of the Picts, in the so-called Dalriada: this colony was Christian more in name than in fact. The southern Picts had been evangelized by St. Ninian, but had subsequently lost the faith. Among the northern Picts, beyond the Grampians, druidism still reigned. It was of these peoples that C. was thinking when he went to settle with 12 monks on a deserted islet situated 115 km. north of Ireland (separated from the Scottish mainland by the island of Mull, and from this by a channel about a mile wide) called I or Hy, later Jona, the name that has remained to it. The island soldier, « insulanus miles » as Adamnan calls him, lived in such solitude for thirty-four years. Soon disciples flocked to Jona in great number, and other monasteries and hermitages arose on the neighboring islands. These houses formed, with those of Scotland (which are reckoned at fifty-three in all) and with those of Ireland, which the holy founder had not ceased to direct, a vast monastic organization, which the texts designate by the names of « muintir Columcille, familia Columbae ». Unlike many Irish abbots of that period, the abbot of Jona was not a bishop: nevertheless he exercised over the neighboring churches and monasteries a jurisdiction similar to that of a metropolitan. This anomaly still persisted in the time of Bede (cf. Hist. eccl., III, 5).

For a great part of the 34 years that it lasted, the « peregrinatio » of the Saint was employed in the hard and dangerous work of apostolate among the Picts and the Scoti of Dalriada, whose king Aelhan Mac Gabhran was consecrated in 574 at Jona by C. himself. The eloquent word of C. (he was a poet, friend and defender of the filid, as well as a most skillful scribe), the prestige of his birth, the example of his most rigorous life, sowed his path with conversions, beginning with that of the king of the Picts, Brude. When C. died in 597, Scotland was in great part converted, and he well merits the title that has been given him, of apostle of Caledonia: his disciples continued and completed the work. They later acquired great merits toward the Anglo-Saxons with the foundation of Lindisfarne on the North Sea and with the effective work of apostolate carried out in the 7th century in their midst.

Many poems in Latin and Gaelic, in great part undoubtedly apocryphal, are attributed (11th-13th centuries) to C. For the hymn Altae prosator, which is probably his, the tradition is ancient (at least the 10th century).

The historical lineaments of C. are well defined. The accounts of his life have been handed down to us by three eminent authors, who flourished within a century of his death and in a position to be well informed: Cuimine Ailbe, 7th abbot of Jona (657-69), Adamnan, 9th abbot of Jona (679-704), and the Venerable Bede (673-735). The Vita Columbae of Adamnan is perhaps the most important monument of the Irish Church that has come down to us.

Anselmo M. Tommasini