St
Columba
Columba,
c 518 - 597, or Colum Cille means 'dove'. Born a Scot in Donegal
and a member of the Royal family of Ui Neill, the descendants
of Neill, the most important people in Ireland in the 6th century.
Legend
suggests that he was the cause of a battle and that self-recrimination
forced him into exile in the year 563 to Scotland and eventually
to Iona.
However,
this is not mentioned by his biographer Adamnan, and emigration
amongst Scots from Ireland to Scotland was fairly common in this
period.After two years at the court of the King of Dalriada, Columba
founded the monastery on Iona with the help of King Aidan.
Iona
became in due course the source of a number of other Scottish
monasteries, the source of spiritual counsel for the Scottish
kings, and their burial place.
From
Iona, Columba made a journey to meet Brude, the king of the Picts
at his stronghold at Inverness, and it is then that he is fabled
to have met face-to face and saved one of his servants from a
monster in the River Ness, the origin of the legend of the Loch
Ness monster. Iona was for a long time, and is still often considered
to be, the spiritual centre of Christianity in Scotland and an
important abbey in the middle ages, with its influence stretching
far beyond Scotland itself.
Buildings
from that time exist, there are important Celtic crosses, and
the remains of Columba's cell are still believed to be visible.
His
relics, housed in a reliquary known as the Brecbennach of St Columba,
came to be symbolic of Scottish aspirations and were carried into
battle by kings of Dalriada and then kings of Scots. Most famously
they were carried before Bruce's army at Bannockburn.
Many
churches all across Scotland have been dedicated to St Columba
or St Colm, as he is sometimes known, and in the twentieth century,
Iona became the centre of the Iona Community, founded by Lord
George Macleod of Fuinary as an oecumenical organisation. International
in nature and concerned with peace and social justice the community
stands at the meeting point of politics and Christianity, a notion
which has been held to be true to the nature of the saint himself.
If
you would like to visit Iona as part of a highly personalized
small group tour of my native Scotland please e-mail me:
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