Columba

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Columba bigraphy, stories - A Saint and gaelic missionary monk.

Columba : biography

7 December 521 – 9 June 597

Saint Columba ( ‘church dove’;Other names include Irish Gaelic Chille, Scots Gaelic Calum Cille, Manx Gaelic Colum Keeilley, and Old Norse Kolban or Kolbjørn.Kenyon, Sherrilyn. 7 December 521 – 9 June 597) was an Irish abbot and missionary credited with spreading Christianity in present-day Scotland. He founded the important abbey on Iona, which became a dominant religious and political institution in the region for centuries. He was highly regarded by both the Gaels of Dál Riata and the Picts, and is remembered today as a Christian saint and one of the Twelve Apostles of Ireland.

Columba reportedly studied under some of Ireland’s most prominent church figures and founded several monasteries in the country. Around 563 he and his twelve companions sailed to Iona in Scotland, then part of the Irish kingdom of Dál Riata, where they founded a new abbey as a base for spreading Christianity among the pagan Picts. He remained active in Irish politics, though he spent most of the remainder of his life in Scotland. Three surviving early medieval Latin hymns may be attributed to him.

Other early sources of Columba’s life

Both the Vita Columbae and the Venerable Bede (672/673-735) record Columba’s visit to Bridei. Whereas Adomnán just tells us that Columba visited Bridei, Bede relates a later, perhaps Pictish tradition, whereby the saint actually converts the Pictish king. Another early source is a poem in praise of Columba, most probably commissioned by Columba’s kinsman, the King of the Uí Néill clan. It was almost certainly written within three or four years of Columba’s death and is the earliest vernacular poem in European history. It consists of 25 stanzas of four verses of seven syllables each.

Through the reputation of its venerable founder and its position as a major European centre of learning, Columba’s Iona became a place of pilgrimage. A network of Celtic high crosses marking processional routes developed around his shrine at Iona.

Columba is historically revered as a warrior saint, and was often invoked for victory in battle. His relics were finally removed in 849 and divided between Alba and Ireland. Relics of Columba were carried before Scottish armies in the reliquary made at Iona in the mid-8th century, called the Brecbennoch. Legend has it that the Brecbennoch was carried to the Battle of Bannockburn (24 June 1314) by the vastly outnumbered Scots army and the intercession of Columba helped them to victory. It is widely thought that the Monymusk Reliquary is the object in question.

In the Antiphoner of Inchcolm Abbey, the "Iona of the East" (situated on an island in the Firth of Forth), a 13th-century prayer begins O Columba spes Scotorum… "O Columba, hope of the Scots".

Vita Columbae

The main source of information about Saint Columba’s life is the Vita Columbae (i.e. "Life of Columba"), a hagiography written in the style of “saint’s lives” narratives that had become widespread throughout medieval Europe. Compiled and drafted by scribes and clergymen, these accounts were written in Latin and served as written collections of the deeds and miracles attributed to the saint, both during his or her life or after death. The canonization of a saint, especially one who had lived on the fringes of the medieval Christian world like Saint Columba, required a well-written hagiography to be submitted to Rome, but popular belief and local cults of sainthood often led to the veneration of these men and women without official approval from the Catholic Church.

Writing a century after the death of Saint Columba, the author Adomnán (also known as Eunan), served as the ninth Abbot of Iona until his death in 704 A.D.http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01135c.htm

James Earle Frasier asserts that Adomnán drew extensively from an existing body of accounts regarding the life of Saint Columba, including a Latin collection entitled “De uirtutibus sancti Columbae”, composed c. 640 A.D. This earlier work is attributed to Cummene Find, who became the abbot of Iona and served as the leader of the monastic island community from 656 until his death in 668 A.D. or 669 A.D.http://books.google.com/books?id=JaliXwNMpFsC&pg=PA98&dq=vita+columbae+manuscripts&hl=en&sa=X&ei=r06FUYHeMNCUqwH3u4CICA&ved=0CDYQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=vita%20columbae%20manuscripts&f=false