68 FOUETH PERIOD. A.D. 590 TO 1049.
and the empty stone coffin where his body was laid together with that of his servant; his bones were removed afterwards to Dunkeld. The old convent was destroyed and the monks were killed by the wild Danes and Norsemen in the tenth century. The remaining ruins of lona — a cathedral, a chapel, a nunnery, a graveyard with the tombstones of a number of Scottish and Nor wegian and Irish kings, and three remarkable carved crosses, which were left of three hundred and sixty that (according to a vague tradition) were thrown into the sea by the iconoclastic zeal of the Reformation — are all of the Roman Catholic period which succeeded the original Keltic Christianity, and which lived on its fame. During the middle ages lona was a sort of Jerusalem of the North, where pilgrims loved to worship, and kings and noblemen desired to be buried. When the celebrated Dr. Johnson, in his Tour to the Hebrides, approached lona, he felt his piety grow warmer. No friend of missions can visit that lonely spot, shrouded in almost perpetual fog, without catching new inspiration and hope for the ultimate triumph of the gospel over all obstacles.1
1 " Hither came holy men from Erin to take counsel with the Saint on the troubles of clans and monasteries which were still dear to him. Hither came also bad men red-handed from blood and sacrilege to make confession and do penance at Columba's feet. Hither, too, came chieftains to be blessed, and even kings to be ordained — for it is curious that on this lonely spot, so far distant from the ancient centres of Christendom, took place the first recorded case of a temporal sovereign seeking from a minister of the Church what appears to have been very like formal consecration. Aclamnan, as usual, connects his narrative of this event, which took place in 547, with miraculous circumstances, and with Divine direction to Columba, in his selection of Aidan, one of the early kings of the Irish Dalriadic colony in Scotland.
" The fame of Columba's supernatural powers attracted many and strange visi tors to the shores on which we are now looking. Nor can we fail to remember, with the Reilig Odhrain at our feet, how often the beautiful galleys of that olden time came up the sound laden with the dead, — ' their dark freight a van ished life.' A grassy mound not far from the present landing-place is known as the spot on which bodies were laid when they were first carried to the shore. We know from the account of Columba's own burial that the custom was to wake the body with the singing of psalms during three days and nights before laying it to its final rest. It was then borne in solemn procession to the grave.
§ 18. ST. COLUMBA AND THE MONASTERY OF ION A. 69
The arrival of Columba at lona was the beginning of the Keltic church in Scotland. The island was at that time on the confines of the Pictic and Scotic jurisdiction, and formed a con venient base for missionary labors among the Scots, who were already Christian in name, but needed confirmation, and among the Plots, who were still pagan, and had their name from paint ing their bodies and fighting naked. Columba directed his zeal first to the Picts; he visited King Brude in his fortress, and won his esteem and co-operation in planting Christianity among his people. " He converted them by example as well as by word" (Bede). He founded a large number of churches and monasteries in Ireland and Scotland directly or through his dis ciples.1 He was involved in the wars so frequent in those days, Avhcn even women were required to aid in battle, and he availed himself of military force for the overthrow of paganism. He used excommunication very freely, and once pursued a plunderer with maledictions into the sea until the water reached to his knees. But these rough usages did not interfere with the vene ration for his name. He was only a fair type of his countrymen. " He had," says Montalembert, " the vagabond inclination, the ardent, agitated, even quarrelsome character of the race." He had the " perfervidum ingcnium Scotorum." He was manly, tall
How many of such processions must have wound along the path that leads to the Reilig Odhrain ! How many fleets of galleys must have ridden at anchor on that bay below us, with all those expressive signs of mourning which belong to ships, when kings and chiefs who had died in distant lands were carried hither to be buried in this holy Isle! From Ireland, from Scotland, and from distant Norway, there came, during many centuries, many royal funerals to its shores. And at this day by far the most interesting remains upon the Island are the curious and beautiful tomb-stones and crosses which lie in the Reilig Odhrain. They belong, indeed, even the most ancient of them, to an age removed by many hundred years from Columba's time. But they represent the lasting reverence which his name has inspired during so many generations, and the desire of a long succession of chiefs and warriors through the Middle Ages and down almost to our own time, to be buried in the soil he trod." The Duke of Argyll, I. c., pp. 95-98.
1 See a list of churches in Reeves, p. xlix.-lxxi., and Forbes, Kalcndar, etc., p. 306, 307 ; comp. also Skene, II. 127 sqq.