COLOMBA (Columba), Saint. — By 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. For his own part he is certainly the most illustrious of the saints of Ireland, having been born in 521 of the royal family of the Uí Néill: during his lifetime three of his first cousins were kings. His original Gaelic name was Crimthann: upon entering the service of the Lord, he was given the name Colum (dove) or Columcille (church dove): in Latin he was always called Columba. He received his religious formation at Moville, then at Clonard, and in turn became a founder of monasteries. Derry (now Londonderry) and Durrow are the most important of his Irish foundations, which are reckoned at thirty-seven. In 563 he left Ireland, wishing to peregrinate for Christ. Already from the 5th century the Irish (Scoti) had settled in Great Britain, south of the Picts, in the so-called Dál Riata: 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. To these peoples C. directed his attention when he went to establish himself with twelve monks on a deserted islet situated 115 km north of Ireland (separated from the Scottish mainland by the Isle of Mull, and from this by a channel about a mile wide) called I or Hy, then Jona, a name which has remained with II. The island soldier, “insulanus miles” as Adamnan calls him, lived in such solitude for thirty-four years. Soon a great number of disciples flocked to Jona, and other monasteries and hermitages arose in the neighboring islands. These houses, together with those of Scotland (reckoned in all at fifty-three) and those of Ireland, which the holy founder had not ceased to direct, formed a vast monastic organization, which texts designate with the names “munitir 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 persisted even into the time of Bede (cf. Hist. eccl., III, 5).
A great part of the 34 years that his “peregrinatio” lasted was employed in the arduous and perilous work of apostolate among the Picts and the Scots of Dál Riata, whose king Aedhan Mac Gabhran was consecrated in 574 at Jona by C. himself. The eloquent word of C. (he was a poet, a friend and defender of the filid, as well as a most skilled 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 largely 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 apostolic work carried out in the 7th century among them.
Many poems in Latin and Gaelic, largely without doubt apocryphal, are attributed (11th–13th c.) to C. For the hymn Altus prosator, which is probably his, the tradition is ancient (at least 10th c.).
The historical features of C. are well defined. The accounts of his life have been handed down to us by three eminent authors, flourishing within a century of his death and in a position to be well informed: Cuimine Ailbe, 7th abbot of Jona (637–69), 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.