"Always cautious, Nicodemus," said Clement, alluding to the furtive night visit paid by Nicodemus to our divine Lord; but he checked the smile that played on his face, as he saw the tears rolling down the old man's cheeks.
"Pardon, pardon, my friend and brother! I did not mean to say aught painful."
"Nor have you. But I am overcome, in spite of myself, whenever I remember the eyes which beamed out upon me through the darkness of that night, and the face so transcendently beautiful, so tenderly compassionate, so profoundly sorrowful! That face and look are impressed here"—he laid his hand upon his heart—"I always bear them about with me like precious relics, which supply ample matter for my meditations. In the brightness of the day those sorrowful eyes shine out, in the darkness of night that beauteous face is luminous; in the desert and in the forum they alike are my companions, as they shall be to the grave."
He was silent. His eyes and thoughts seemed turned inward; the former as if riveted with dazzled, loving gaze on some unseen object which wholly filled the latter. After some moments, during which those present looked on in wonder, he became conscious of their presence and slightly embarrassed.
Clement, not seeming to notice the embarrassment, said:
"What changes have taken place since you and I became acquainted first! Having delayed beyond the midnight hour on Mount Calvary, I was brought by blessed Paul, with whom I was then travelling, to your house. I regret that altered circumstances and thickening clouds compel me to make a return of hospitality in these poor quarters. All are welcome; none more so than Nicodemus. I know all are satisfied while we have Him for whose love we resign all near us under the clouds," He pointed and bowed reverently toward the chapel, and then retired to prepare for the celebration of the sacred mysteries.
Meanwhile the eyes of all were fixed with curiosity on Nicodemus. His countenance was of the most decided Jewish caste. His face bore the wrinkles of over a hundred years; but his frame, like the sturdy oak whose surface may be serried by ages, did not present the appearance of decayed strength or health.
The visitors and guests of Clement entertained themselves with anecdotes of their respective missions; of the divers ways in which Providence had enlightened them with the true faith; of the countries through which they had preached, the people they had converted, the adventures they had met, and the miracles by which God had aided and rescued them. A history such as has never been, and cannot now be written, might be gathered from these conversations. A great many, especially the younger portion, felt a wish to question Nicodemus. They desired to hear from his own lips more of that beautiful face and those shining eyes that affected his imagination so much. They knew he referred to his nocturnal interview with the Redeemer; but they longed to hear more.
"Pardon me, venerable father," said Andronicus, with more courage than the others. "We would like to hear from yourself the history of your first interview withhim. We do not ask through idle curiosity, but because we love to hear every little thing about him."
"That evening and night, my children—you will excuse the liberty one so much older than yourselves takes in thus addressing you—that evening and night will never leave my memory. It was summer time. I was strolling to 'drink the evening air' beyond the Taffa gate. The ringing laughter and white garments of the young people, as they visited the springs outside the walls, aided with the freshness and beauty of the atmosphere and scenery in dispelling feelings of void and loneliness, which—I could not account for it—had been for some months creeping over me.I felt as if there were nothing in life to satisfy my heart. It was the hour for the evening sacrifice; I heard the trumpets of the Levites ringing out through the evening calm; and I saw the column of sacrificial smoke rising up from the temple, like a pillar of sand in the desert, through the clear air, until it was flattened by the far vault of heaven into fleecy clouds, which hung about its summit like the frescoes of a Corinthian capital. I stood to admire the beauty of its height and rounded straightness, when I was struck by an unusual glow in the heavens. I saw distinctly formed in the sky a golden crown, which seemed upheld over the inner court of the temple by a chain of sparks, as if suspended from the column of smoke. I was drawn toward the place; and after a quarter hour's hurried walk found myself at the avenue leading up to the temple. I was soon at the entrance, and, passing through the outer court, entered the open one of Sacrifice, over which the crown appeared to rest. The incense from the Levites' censers was ascending in curls about the column of sacrificial smoke like a binding of white ribbon about a black column. The court and side galleries were crowded. I lost sight of the golden crown; and began to fancy it was some play of imagination working on the sunset colors. I sought a remote corner of the hall, and, feeling a peculiar influence over me, bowed profoundly in the depths of my own soul before the majesty of Jehovah. Raising my eyes toward the smoking altar, I was seized with awe and terror in beholding the self-same crown resting over the head of a worshipper, who prayed in the shadow of a pillar. When the ceremony was over, I managed to get a glimpse of the face, which I recognized as that of Jesus of Nazareth. His eyes overflowed with tears. I yearned in my heart toward him by an almost invincible impulse; but I was afraid of being seen speaking to one so humble and so suspected. I waited and watched him on his way home. I followed him in the dusk as he hurried along a street, which I afterward saw him mark with footprints in his own blood. Turning suddenly at the cross formed by the road from the palace of Herod the Ascalonite and that now known as the 'Dolorous Way,' he addressed me:
"'What do you seek, Nicodemus?'
"I was startled by the sound of my own name, not dreaming that he knew it; and I glanced hurriedly up and down the arms of the Crossway to see if any one were within ear-shot.
"'Be not alarmed,' he said, in a voice which fell with velvet softness on mine ear. 'If you wish aught of me, enter here.' And he led the way to an humble house on the street to Calvary. There were two men, one young, with a cheek of downy softness, and the other middle-aged, with beard of bristling gray and fiery eye, awaiting him.
"'Rabbi!' they both exclaimed with glad surprise; but they hesitated when they saw me. For, as I afterward learned, they both recognized me as a member of the Jewish council, and therefore set me down as an enemy of their Master.
"'Peter,' he said, 'John and you will retire to another room. This man wishes to speak to me alone.'
"'But, Rabbi,' said Peter impulsively, 'do you know that he is one of—'
"'Peter!Iknew him before I saw him. Do as I direct.' And Peter with reluctance left the room.
We were alone. Regarding me with a look which seemed to penetrate my whole being to the most hidden secrets and littleness of my soul, he again asked:
"'What do you seek, Nicodemus?'
"'Rabbi!' I ventured to say, subdued as I was by the mild radiance of those piercing eyes, 'we all know you are from God, for no one can work the wonders you perform if God be not with him. I seek knowledge of the kingdom that is promised.'
"'Amen, amen!' he answered solemnly, 'I say to you, no one can see that kingdom who is not born anew of water and the Holy Spirit.'" Here Nicodemus related the conversation the substance of which is recorded in the third chapter of St. John's gospel.
"At parting," continued Nicodemus, "I told him that, if at any time I could be of service. I would be glad to render it. I shall never forget the answer: 'My hour is not yet come. When it is, your charity shall not be forgotten. It will be your office to clothe for the last time the nakedness of this temple!' He pointed to himself. I did not then know his meaning: but, when I saw his bloodless body on his blessed mother's lap, and had the happy privilege of preparing it for burial, I remembered and understood his words."
"I have heard a varied account of our Lord's personal appearance," said Damian, one of the missionaries, an Irishman, [Footnote 237] or, as the old annalists have it, aScotusby birth. "My venerated master, Joseph of Arimathea, who had many opportunities of seeing him, said that he at one time wore on his sacred humanity all the charms of godlike beauty, and at another presented in appearance almost the opposite extreme?"
[Footnote 237:Scotia, the ancient name of Ireland. In the reign of Domitian an Irish prince was a guest at the court. Joseph of Arimathea is said to have preached the gospel in the British Isles. At this time Britain was first discovered to be an island.]
"I remember distinctly the night I saw him in the court of the temple. I knelt beside him; and in the glare of the many lights saw every line and undulation of the golden ringlets that floated down his neck and shoulders. They were not of one color. At the summit they glowed with more than star-like brilliancy, which faded into other dazzling hues reflected from each undulation to their extremities. They talk of the colors of the rainbow; these were all exhausted in the surpassing loveliness of that noble head, above which the air-formed crown rested like a glory. When I saw his face as he rose from his knees, though sad in its expression as fancy in its furthest flight could paint it, it beamed with a beauty such as lover's eye never invested the beloved with, such as I shall never see until I gaze on it again, as I hope, in that kingdom, where, after God's increated beauty, it increases the happiness of the glorified to behold it. Once again I saw him. But, oh! how changed the human beauty of that face divine and those golden ringlets. They were matted in uncombed confusion with dried and drying clots of blood! The face was disfigured and ugly. I could scarcely imagine him the same person I had met in the court of the temple. These different appearances under different circumstances will no doubt account for the varying descriptions of him given by those who saw him." [Footnote 238]
[Footnote 238: Tradition is divided as to our Lord's personal appearance; some of the holy fathers describe him as a specimen of manly beauty; others say the contrary. We have borrowed from the letter of a Roman officer then in Judea.]
During the recital the old man's cheeks were wet with tears and his voice often trembled.
It was now after two o'clock, the hour appointed for the commencement of the celebration.
St. Justin, in his first apology to the Antonines, describes the manner in which the Christians celebrated their Sundays and other feasts. They met before sunrise and sang a hymn in praise of the Redeemer; then lessons from the Old and New Testaments were read, with the addition of prayers for the wants of the faithful and the conversion of the unbelievers; the presiding presbyter, who is a bishop or a priest, addressed the congregation; and finally, taking bread, blessed and brake it, saying, 'This is my body;' and in like manner he blessed and consecrated the chalice, saying, 'This is the cup of my blood.' The saint who was living at the period of which we write states the doctrine of the real presence and of the sacrifice as clearly as words can express them.
Clement, with his assistant deacon and subdeacons, sat in front of the altar. On the seats on each side were Nicodemus, Andronicus, Damianus, and the other clergy and missionaries.Aurelian and Sisinnius were astonished to observe that their acquaintance and friend Clement was the chief in the Christian assemblage; and that his principal minister, in fact, his attendant deacon, was Vitus, the young officer of the imperial household, who had made himself so remarkable the night of the emperor's feast. But their amazement was doubly increased when, after the clergy had taken their seats, a procession of females veiled in black emerged from a side-door and knelt before Clement, opposite the centre of the altar. In front were two matrons, and between them the slender figure of a younger female, whose head and shoulders were concealed by a white veil. Aurelian's breath came thick and fast; Sisinnius, too, was excited. But Zoilus by a significant pressure restrained any open manifestation of their feelings.
The hymn chanted was composed specially by one of the brethren for the time and feast. It was as follows:
Christmas Hymn.The flocks lay on the midnight plains,Where Jacob tended his of old, [Footnote 239]Where David woke his earliest strainsAnd sang the Lion of Judah's fold,Gloria, gloria, gloria in excelsis Deo!
[Footnote 239: The plains of Bethlehem, where Jacob had tended the flocks of his father-in-law, and David those of his father.]
When suddenly the skies grew bright,And angel choirs in countless throng,With flashing wings, lit up the night,And chanted, as they passed along,Gloria, gloria, gloria in excelsis!"Now glory be to God on high,And peace on earth to fallen man;"With star-like clearness through the sky,'Twas thus the angel anthem ran,Gloria, gloria, gloria in excelsis!We saw them by the new star's lightAbove the stable where He lay;We watched them through the livelong night,And through the heavens we heard them say,Gloria, gloria, gloria in excelsis!
After the hymn had been sung and the lessons from the sacred Scriptures had been read, the pope addressed the assembly in earnest words. He spoke of the mystery of the incarnation and the birth of the Redeemer, by which the promises made to the patriarchs and prophets were fulfilled. He said that there were amongst them that night those who, during his earthly life, had conversed with the "Word made flesh." He pointed out Nicodemus, who had taken the lifeless body of the Master down from the cross, and who had the singular privilege of seeing Christ arisen in his glorified humanity. "We, therefore," he concluded, "have no reason to repine, for we know in whom we trust. We may be poor in subjection, exposed to persecution. The amphitheatre and the beasts, the prison, the rack, and other tortures may await us. But we are not like those who have no hope, no security of the unseen hereafter. We depend on that love which induced him to allow himself to be nailed in agony on the cross, and, what is more, to be yoked, as it were, not only for time, but for eternity, to a body of flesh and blood like ours. That love is the guarantee that he will use his power to raise us up as he has promised, if it be our happy lot to 'confess him before men' by the shedding of our blood. And of his power how can we doubt? He who, when dead himself, yet was able to raise himself from the tomb up to a glorious and impassible existence, has power, now that he is seated in glory at the Father's right hand, to do the same for us. Let us not be sad, then, like those who have no hope. Let us gird ourselves for the contest before us." And he proceeded to strengthen his audience by showing how little the short sufferings of time were when balanced by the weight of glory to follow for ever. He then continued the ceremonies. As he approached the consecration, Aurelian and Sisinnius, despite the thoughts that engaged their minds, were struck by the rapt devotion and fervent prayers of the crowd of worshippers in the body of the chamber. They themselves had taken their place behind so as not to be observed; Zoilus had arranged this. Between them and the altar there was a large and motley gathering: slaves, plebeians, and some whose dress belonged to the rank of Roman knights; Jews, Greeks, and barbarians; men of different colors, races, and countries bowed before the altar and were animated by one spirit.There was no distinction, save only that shown in the separation of the men from the women on the two sides of the chapel. The words of consecration, pronounced in a half-audible voice, fell ominously on the ears of Aurelian. "Hoc est CORPUS meum." Whose body? he asked himself. "Hic est calix SANGUINIS mei." Whose blood was contained in that cup? Were not those vague rumors true about the murder of infants in those Christian meetings? Alas! it was horrible to think that his own beloved Flavia had been entrapped and was now a sharer in those bloody orgies. But he would rescue her, or lose his fortune or his life in the effort. Different somewhat were the reflections of Sisinnius. The words of Clement had touched in his heart a chord which still vibrated with a longing to hear more. After all, had these men solved the mystery of death and of the life beyond the grave?
After the full completion of the sacrifice by the communion of the celebrant, Clement resumed his seat in front of the altar, with his face to the people. The golden plate which bound his temples flashed in the lamplight, and reminded many of Moses after his descent from the mount, with the rays beaming from his forehead. The three females, who had knelt during the ceremonies, now stood before the pope. The two matrons were turned sideways toward the congregation as they lifted the veil from the head of the central figure. In one of these Sisinnius recognized his own wife; and in the other a member of the imperial household, Priscilla, who had so gently restrained Vitus on the night of the emperor's feast from drawing the sword from his scabbard as the words fell from the stage:
"Domitian! Domitian! Beware! Beware!"
Aurelian's worst fears were confirmed as he saw, when the white veil was lifted, the beautiful features of Flavia Domitilla! But Zoilus kept beside him.
"My daughter!" said Clement, addressing Flavia, "have you duly and fully considered the step you propose taking?"
"Yes, father!" she answered, in a low, tremulous voice.
"But is there no other love to divide your heart from Him whom you propose espousing? Have you not pledged your troth and allegiance to another?"
"I did, when my eyes were shut to the eternal beauty of Him who has since revealed himself to me. If other love I have had, I now uproot it from my soul. I only ask to be permitted to devote myself to the service of Him whom my heart has too lately known, too lately loved. All other allegiance I hereby renounce."
"In the name, then, of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, I receive you as the spouse of him who has loved you from the beginning." He replaced the white veil upon her head; and, receiving a ring from Vitus, who stood beside him opposite Flavia, placed it on her finger. Then he administered to her the most holy sacrament. A smile played like a ray of sunshine over her countenance, which manifested the deep and overflowing happiness that welled upward from her soul.
Aurelian trembled like a reed as he heard her recall her promises to himself. But she was not mistress of her actions, he reasoned. Had he not seen her drugged with that unholy flesh and blood which were given her? Vitus, he thought, had so far succeeded; for was not he the only one present to whom she could be thus wedded? Zoilus watched his companions closely; and, when the assembly was dismissed, hurried them away by the private entrance.
Under the violets blue and sweet,Where low the willow droops and weepsWhere children tread with timid feetWhen twilight o'er the forest creepsShe sleeps—my little darling sleeps.Breathe low and soft, O wind! breathe lowWhere so much loveliness is laid;Pour out thy heart in strains of woe,O bird! that in the willow's shadeSing'st till the stars do pale and fade.It may be that to other eyes,As in the happy days of old,The sun doth every morning riseO'er mountain summits tipped with gold,And set where sapphire seas are rolled;But I am so hedged round with woe,The glory I no more can see.O weary heart that throbbest so!Thou hast but this one wish—to beA little dust beneath the tree.I would thou hadst thy wish to-day,And we were lying side by sideWith her who took our life awayThat heavy day whereon she died—O grave! I would thy gates were wide!
[Footnote 240: Montalembert's Monks of the West.]
It is consoling in these gloomy days to think of the time when Ireland was the Island of Saints, and gloried in the patronage of St. Patrick, St. Bridget, and St. Columbkill.
It is to a foreigner that we owe the biography of St. Columbkill—named "Columba" from the Dove of Peace, and "kill," from the many cells or monasteries that he founded. He was descended, says Montalembert, from one of those noble races in Ireland whose origin is lost in the night of ages—the Nialls or O'Donnells of Tirconnel, who were monarchs of Ireland from the sixth to the twelfth century. The child was instructed in religion by the priest who had baptized him, and the legends tell of angels who watched over him from his birth; and they say that he asked familiarly of his guardian angel if all the angels were as bright and young as himself. From the house of the priest he was sent to the monastery of St. Frinan at Clonard, where he studied and labored like the rest, and, though a prince, he ground the corn they ate. One of his companions, afterward a saint, was angry at the influence which Columba naturally possessed over the rest; but an angel appeared to him, and showed him the hatchet of his father, the carpenter, bidding him remember that he had only left his tools, but that Columba left a throne to enter the monastery. Clonard, says Montalembert, was vast as the monastic cities of the Thebais, and 3000 Irish students learnt there from the "Master of Saints." Among the crowds who came to learn was an aged bard, who was a Christian. He asked St. Frinan to teach him, in return for his verse, the art of cultivating the soil. Columba was a poet, and studied with the bard. One day a young girl, pursued by a robber, was murdered at their feet, and Columba foretold his death, and was renowned through the island as a saint. He was ordained a priest in 546, and became, when scarcely twenty-five, the founder of monasteries, of which thirty-seven are reckoned in Ireland alone. The most ancient of these was in the forest of Durrow, or the Field of Oaks, where a cross and well yet bear the name of Columba. It stood in Clenmalire, now in King's county; and the noble monastery, as Bede calls it, became the mother of many others; so that Dermach as well as Hy became nurseries for the hundred monasteries founded by Columba. It has been said that St. Patrick had kindled such a flame of devotion that the saints were not satisfied with monastic life without retiring to the solitude of the surrounding forests, and there, under the canopy of the vast oaks, which had for ages possessed the wilderness, they found a more silent and solemn cloister. Such had been the monastery of St. Bridget at Kildare, and such was Durrow; and in the forest of Calgachus, in his native country, Columba built Derry, in a deep bay on the sea which separates Ireland from Scotland. There he dwelt, and he would not permit one of the oaks to be felled unless it was injured by age or storms, and then it was used as fuel for the stranger or the poor. Here he wrote poems, of which, says Montalembert, only the echo has reached us. The following verses might be written by his disciples, but they are in the most ancient Irish dialect, and perhaps convey the thoughts, it not the words, of Columba:
"Had I all countries where the Scottish tribesHave made their dwelling, I would choose a cellIn my own beauteous Derry, which I loveFor its unbroken peace and sanctity.There, seated on each leaf of those old oaks,I see a white-winged angel of the sky.O forests dear! home and cell beloved!O thou Eternal in the highest heaven!From hands profane my monasteries shield,My Derry and my Durrow, Rapho sweet,Drumhorne in forests prolific. Swords, and Kells,Where sea-birds scream and flutter o'er the sea,Sweet Derry, when my boat rows near the shore,All is repose and most delicious rest."
There are traces of the saint in these beloved foundations: among the ruins of Swords are still seen the chapel of St. Columba, and a round tower and holy well, but not the missal written by himself and given to the church. We have the rule he wrote for the monasteries, but it is said to have been borrowed from the oriental monasteries. He founded Kells in 550, and dedicated it to the Blessed Virgin. St. Columba's devotion was not confined to his own monasteries; he loved that founded not long before by St. Eudacus in Arran, the Isle of Saints:
"Arran, thou art like sunshine, and my heartYearns on thee in thine Ocean of the West;To hear thy bells would be a life of bliss;And, if thy soil might be my last abode,I should not envy those who sleep secureBeside St. Peter and St. Paul. My light,My sunny Arran! all my heart's desireLies in the Western Ocean and in thee!"
There are eleven Irish and three Latin poems said to be written by St. Columba, and one of these is in praise of St. Bridget, who was living when he was born. Columba was not only a poet himself, but the friend of the bardic order, who held from Druidic times so high a rank in society, and who frequented monasteries as well as palaces. Columba received even the wandering bards of the highways into his monasteries, and especially in one which he founded in Loch Key, which was afterward the Cistercian House of Boyle. He employed them to write the annals of the monastery, and to sing to the harp before the community. He loved books as well as poetry; and his passion was transcribing manuscripts which he collected in his travels, and he is said to have made with his own hand three hundred copies of the gospels or psalter. One of these remains. It is a copy of St. Jerome's translation of the four evangelists, and an inscription testifies that he wrote it in twelve days. He was once refused by an aged hermit the sight of his books, and the legend says that, in consequence of his anger, the books became illegible at the hermit's death. The anger of Columba about another manuscript led to more important consequences—his own conversion from a literary monk to an ascetic missionary. While he visited his old master, St. Frinan, he shut himself up by night in the church to make a secret copy of the psalter. His light was seen, and the abbot claimed possession of the copy. Columba appealed to his kinsman, the supreme monarch Dermot, who was the friend of monks; for, when an exile, he had found a refuge in the monastery of St. Kieran, the schoolfellow of Columba, which they both had built in an islet of the Shannon, and which became Clonmacnoise. Dermot decided that the copy belonged to the abbot. Columba was indignant. The murder of a prince of Connaught, whom he had protected, increased his anger against Dermot, and he foretold his ruin. His own life was in danger, he fled toward Tirconnel, and the monks of Monasterboys told him that his path was beset. He escaped alone, and passed through the mountains, singing as he went his song of confidence; and, as tradition says, these verses will protect all who repeat them on their journeys:
"I am alone upon the mountain, O my God!King of the sun! direct my steps, and guardMy fearless head among a thousand spears;Safer than on an islet in a lakeI walk with thee; my life is thine to giveOr to withhold, and none but thou canst addOr take an hour from its appointed time.What are the guards? they cannot guard from death.I will forget my poor and peaceful cell,And cast myself on the world's charity;For he who gives will be repaid, and heWho hoards will lose his treasure. God of life.Woe be to him who sins! The unseen worldWill come when all he sees has passed away.The Druids trust to oaks and songs of birds:My trust is in the God who made me man,And will not let me perish in the night.Him only do I serve, the Son of God,The Son of Mary—Holy Trinity,The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, with himIs my inheritance; my cellIs with the monks of Kells and Holy Moen."
Columba reached his country, and stirred up his clan, the Hy Nialls of the north, against Dermot, and the Hy Nialls of the south; and with the aid of the king of Connaught, whose son had been slain, Dermot was defeated, and fled to Tara. The victory was attributed to the prayers and fasts of Columba, and the manuscript which had caused this civil war became a national relic with the O'Donnells. It was a Latin psalter, and was enclosed in a portable altar, and carried by a priest into all these battles, and has been miraculously preserved to the present times.
But in the midst of his triumphs, Columba himself was conquered. He felt the pangs of remorse, and suffered the reproaches of the religious. He was summoned to a synod at Tailtan, and condemned, when absent, for having shed Christian blood. But Columba had always shared the contests of his clan, and, though a monk, was still a prince of the O'Donnells. He went to the synod which had condemned him unheard, to dispute their decision. When Columba entered, the abbot Brendan, founder of Berr, rose up and gave him the kiss of peace. All wondered, but the abbot said: "If you had seen, as I did, the fiery column and the angels who preceded him, you would have done the same. Columba is destined by God to be the guide of a nation to heaven." The excommunication was reversed, and the sentence of Columba was, that he should convert as many heathens as he had caused Christians to die in battle. Columba was safe, but not at rest; he went from desert to desert, and from monastery to monastery, to seek some holy teacher of penance. One hermit reproached him as the cause of war.
"It was Diarmid," he replied.
"You are a monk," said the hermit, "and should be patient."
"But," said Columba, "it is hard for an injured man to repress his just anger."
He went to Abban, founder of many monasteries, one of which was called the Cell of Tears. This meek soldier of Christ had often parted warriors in battle and gone unarmed to meet a pagan brigand, whom he converted to be a Christian and a monk. Columba asked him to pray for those whose death he had caused, and Abban told him their souls were saved. He then sought St. Molaisse, who was renowned for his study of the Holy Scriptures, and whose monastery is yet traced in the isle of Inishmurray, on the coast of Sligo. The stern solitary renewed the sentence of the synod, and added that of exile for life from his too beloved country. Columba obeyed. He told his warlike kinsmen, the Nialls of Tirconnell, that an angel had bidden him go into exile, on account of those whom they had slain on his account. None of them opposed the sentence, and twelve disciples determined to follow him. One was Mochouna, prince of Ulster. Columba refused at first the voluntary sacrifice, but yielded at last; and the devoted band left Ireland for ever.
It was in 563 that Columba left Ireland. Some say that he had offended King Diarmid by the severity with which he reproved vice. This is not the reason given by Adamnan, who succeeded him in his monastery of Hy, and left a collection of records, written at the end of the seventh century, which reveals the intention of the heroic apostle; and, as it contains facts related by competent witnesses, this precious relic of antiquity is more valuable than a well-arranged biography. It must have been from the traditions of his monastery that he describes the saint, who was by nature so warlike and impatient, as retaining a tender and passionate love for his country, and a sympathy with all his national habits, while he quitted Erin, in expiation of the crime to which that love had led him. Columba did more than this; he sacrificed his poetic tastes and learned pursuits to convert not only the half-Christian Dalirads, who had early left Erin for Scotland, but more especially the heathen Picts of the North, the descendants of the brave opponents of Agricola under Galgacus, who were not of his own Milesian race.
St. Columbkill was forty-two when he left his country in a wicker coracle covered with leather, in which he trusted himself with his twelve disciples, confiding solely in God, to brave the tempests and the enormous waves of the sea which parts the two countries, with only the light of faith and the strength of prayers to guide them through the rocks and whirlpools which beset the misty archipelago of isles lying below the mountains and deep bays, or fiords, of Lochaber. Adamnan describes his Irish tonsure, which showed an Eastern rather than a Roman teaching; the top of his head shaven, and his hair hanging down his back; his majestic countenance, whose pride was softened only by religion; his princely features, whose severity was mingled with a cast of irony; and his voice, whose tone commanded while it penetrated the heart, so that it is considered to have been one of the most miraculous of his gifts. Thus he braved the future, trusting in the simplicity of charity for safety in a savage land and savage tribes, to whom he brought the knowledge of truth and morals and the hope of heaven. His fiery temper, and the courage that fitted him for a soldier, and the genius which marked him for a poet or an orator, were devoted to the conversion of hostile chiefs; and the violence of his own feelings enabled him better to influence the people, while it was softened by the great sorrow of his life, the exile from his country. With a heart yearning for Erin and its noble clans, he reached the desolate island of Oronsay; and, ascending the highest part of the rock, he saw in the south the distant mountains of Dalreida. He rejected the consolation, and left the island for Iona. Then, finding that he could not from its highest point see the country he had abandoned, he fixed there his place of exile, and a heap of stones yet marks the spot where he discovered that the sacrifice was complete, and it is still called the Farewell to Ireland.
The island of Hy is low though rocky, and not a tree nor bush can live there; for not only do the winds sweep over it, but the very spray of the Atlantic moistens it with salt showers. It lies amid the islets on the coast of Morven, already celebrated by Ossian; Staffa and its basaltic columns are on the north, and Mull with its lofty mountains on the south. Barren islands lie on every side, separated by deep channels; and so narrow are the bays which run up between the mountains of the mainland that the water becomes a lake and the land a peninsula. Forests then clothed their sides; and the clouds, which almost always hang on their summits, fall and rise above the precipices and waterfalls of that lofty coast, peopled by unrecorded emigrants from Erin, whence Ossian had gone to Tara, and Fingal had made war and peace with the kindred tribes of Inisfail.
It was within sight of this repulsive field of labor, where his penance was to convert souls, that Columba and his missionaries founded a monastery destined to be the centre of religion and civilization to Europe. The first building was of twisted boughs inlaced with ivy, and it was many years before they cut down oaks in the forest of Morven to make the wooden edifices in use till the twelfth century. Thus Columba prepared for the future, but he had not forgotten the past. He felt the bitterness of exile, and wrote verses, in which he prefers "death in Erin to exile in Albania;" and then, in a plaintive but resigned tone, he sings:
"Alas! no more I float upon thy lakesOr dance upon the billows of thy gulfs,Sweet Erin; nor with Comgall at my sideHear the strange music of the wild swan's cry!Alas that crime has exiled me, and blood—Blood shed in battle—stains my guilty hand!My guilty foot may not with Cormac treadThe cloisters of my Durrow, which I love;My guilty ears may never hear the windSound in its oaks, nor hear the blackbird's song,Nor cuckoo, and my eyes may never seeThe land so loved but for its hated kings.'Tis sweet to dance along the white-topped waves,And watch them break in foam on Erin's strand;And fast my bark would fly if once its prowTo Erin turned and to my native oaks;But the great ocean may not bear my barkSave to Albania, land of ravens dire.My foot is on the deck, my bleeding heartAches as I think of Erin, and my eyesTurn ever thither; but while life endures—So runs my vow—these eyes will never seeThe noble race of Erin; and the tearFills my dim eyes when looking o'er the seaWhere Erin lies—loved Erin, where the birdsSing such sweet music, and the chant of clerksMakes melody like theirs. O happy land!Thy youths are gentle, thine old men are wise,Thy princes noble, and thy daughters fair.Young voyager, my sorrows with thee bearTo Comgall of 'eternal life,' and takeMy blessing and my prayer, a sevenfold part,To Erin; to Albania all the rest.My heart is broken in my breast; if deathShould come, it is for too much love of Gaels."
Time never effaced this passionate regret, and, as the legend says, when he was aged, he foretold that a wearied bird would be cast on Iona, and he bade his monks feed it till it could return to Ireland. But these regrets strengthened instead of dissipating his missionary ardor; and, while his natural disposition was unchanged, he became the model of penitents and ascetics and the most energetic of abbots. He received strangers and converted sinners. He established a rule for his monks, and dwelt himself like a hermit, lying on the bare ground upon a bed of planks. There he prayed and fasted, and there he continued to transcribe the sacred text, and to study the Holy Scriptures, so that three hundred copies of the gospel were written by his hand. Crowds of pilgrims visited him there, and many did penance; but one in particular received from him the same penance he was performing himself, an exile to the isle of Tiree and a banishment from the sight of Columba.
St. Columba was among his kindred in Lochaber. The Scots were a Dalradian colony, allies of the O'Neills; and he was the kinsman of their king, Connall, and from him he obtained a grant of the island of Iona, and he labored among these halt-formed Christians. Then, as if he would break even this last tie to Erin, he became the apostle of the Picts, by descent Scythians, by habits savages and heathens. Unconquered by Romans or Christians, they dwelt in glens, inaccessible except by water, and deserved, like their ancestors, the description of Tacitus, as dwelling at the extremity of the earth and of liberty; and to them he devoted the remaining thirty-four years of his life. He crossed the mountains which divide the Scots from the Picts, and reached the chain of lakes which extends from sea to sea. He was the first to launch his fragile boat upon Loch Ness, and he penetrated to the fortress of their king, Brude, which occupied a rock north of Inverness. The king closed the doors of his fortress; but Columba made the sign of the cross, the doors rolled back on the bolts, and Columba entered as a victor. The king trembled in the midst of his council, and rose to meet the missionary; he spoke to him with respect, and became his friend, though it is not said that he became a Christian. But the Druids were his enemies. They were not idolaters, but worshipped the hidden powers of nature, the sun and stars, and believed the waters and springs had the powers which were attributed by the Druids of Gaul and Britain to oaks and forests. Columba drank their sacred water in defiance, and they tried to hinder him when he went out of the castle to sing vespers. He chanted the psalm "Eructavit cor meum;" and they were silenced.
St. Columba preached and worked miracles among the Picts, and, though he spoke by an interpreter, he made converts. One day on the banks of Loch Ness he cried: "Let us make haste to meet the angels, who are come down from heaven and await us beside the death-bed of a Pict, who has kept the natural law, that we may baptize him before he dies." He was then aged himself, but he outstripped his companions, and reached Glen Urquhart, where the old man expected him, heard him, was baptized, and died in peace. And once, preaching in Skye, he cried out, "You will see arrive an aged chief, a Pict, who has kept faithfully the natural law; he will come here to be baptized and to die;" and so it was.
He once healed a Druid by miracle; but he attempted to arouse the powers of nature against the saint, and, as he foretold, a contrary wind opposed the departure of Columba. But he bade the sailors spread the sail against the wind, and sailed down the Loch Ness in safety. Nor did he end his labors till he had planted churches and monasteries throughout these wild valleys and islands.
In 574, Connall was succeeded by Aidan on the throne of the Scots, and he desired to be consecrated by the abbot of Iona. Columba refused till he was commanded by an angel to perform the sacred ceremony at Iona—the first time it had been done in the West.
Montalembert observes that among the Celts the monastic was superior to the episcopal office, and therefore the abbot consecrated the first of the Scottish kings on a stone called the Stone of Destiny, which was ultimately carried to Westminster Abbey by Edward I., and is now the pedestal of the English throne. The Dalriads in Scotland were subject to the Irish kings, and it was to free them from their tribute that Columba was sent to Erin, which he thought never to see again. The new king went also, and they met the monarch and chiefs at Drumheath. Aed or Hugue II. was now reigning, and he it was who had given to his cousin Columba the site of Derry. Columba and St. Colman obtained the independence of Scotland; and afterward St. Columba attended another assembly, which was to decide the existence of the Bardic order. There were three kinds of bards: the Fileas, who sung of religion and war; the Brehons, who versified the laws; and the Sennachies, who preserved the history and genealogy of the ancient races, and decided on boundaries. These last frequented courts and even battle-fields, and their influence was now so much feared that the monarch proposed to abolish or to massacre the bards. They were, in truth, a Druidic order, but they became Christians, though they were independent of all but their own laws. Columba was a poet even to his old age, and he saved the bards from the anger of the king by proposing to regulate and diminish, instead of destroying, the order. His eloquence prevailed, and thenceforth the bards and monks were united in spirit. Fergall, their blind chief, sung to Columba his hymn of gratitude; and Baithan, one of his monks, admonished his abbot for his self-complacence. This Baithan was declared by Fririan, his brother monk, to be superior to any one on this side of the Alps for the knowledge of the Scriptures and the sciences. "I do not compare him to Columba," said he; "for he is like the patriarchs and prophets and apostles; he is a sage of sages, a king among kings, a hermit, a monk, and also a poor man among the poor."
Columba made afterward, several visits to his monasteries in Ireland, working miracles as he went; as when he went from Durrow to Clonmacnoise, and healed a dumb boy, who became St. Ernan. He was received there by the religious, who walked in procession to meet him, chanting hymns. He had not only a jurisdiction over all his monasteries, but a preternatural knowledge of all that went on there; and he once interrupted his labors at Iona to pray with his monks for the safety of some workmen at Durrow, and for softening the heart of its abbot, who was too severe on his monks. Columba was by nature impetuous and vindictive, and was still an O'Neill in party spirit. Often in the monastery of Iona he would pray for victory to his clan in battle, or he would pray for the men of his race or the kinsmen of his mother; and once, when aged, he bade them sound the bell of the monastery, (a little square bell, such as now hung round the necks of cattle,) and sound it quickly. The religious hastened around him, and he bade them pray for Aidan, his Dalraid kinsman, then in battle; and they prayed till he said, "Aidan has conquered."