[40] Scripsit Abegetoria, ccclxv. Nenn. Camb. MS. c. 57.
[41] Acta SS. Boll. Mart.
[42] Columba had previously studied in the school of St. Finian of Maghbile and received deacon’s orders, so that he could not have been a mere boy when he came to Clonard. But Adamnan tells us that he was still a youth, adhuc juvenis.
[43] Now Clonmacnois in King’s County.
[44] I should not have thought it necessary to remind the reader that St. Columba, the founder of Iona in 563, is to be distinguished from St. Columbanus the founder of Luxeuil in 585, had not so considerable a writer as Thierry, in his history of the Norman Conquest, spoken of them as the same persons.
[45] Act. SS. Boll.
[46] Ara Multiscilus, Schedæ de Islandia, cap. 2, quoted by Haverty, who sums up the number of Irish saints known to have settled in different parts of Europe as follows: 150 in Germany, of whom 36 were martyrs; 45 in Gaul, 6 martyrs; 30 in Belgium; 44 in England; 13 in Italy; and 8 martyrs in Norway and Iceland. They founded 13 monasteries in Scotland, 12 in England, 40 in Gaul, 9 in Belgium, 16 in Bavaria, 15 in Switzerland, 6 in Italy, and others in different parts of Germany.
[47] It is first spoken of by John of Salisbury, a writer of the twelfth century, who quotes no authority for the statement. With regard to the reproof administered to Bishop Didier, it is not denied, for the passage is extant in one of St. Gregory’s letters. But the real and authentic justification is given in the Gloss on the Canon Law, which explains that Didier’s fault did not lie in his studying humane literature, but in his giving public lectures in his church on the profane poets, and substituting the same in the place of the Gospel lesson. “Recitabat in ecclesia fabulas Jovis, et eas moraliter exponebat in prædicatione sua.” (Decret. pars i. dis. 86.) And again, “Beatus Gregorius quemdam episcopum non reprehendit quia litteras seculares didicerat; sed quia, contra episcopale officium, pro lectione Evangelica, grammaticam populo exponebat.” (Decret. pars i. dis. 37, c. 8. ed. Antwerp., 1573, quoted by Landriot, Recherches Historiques, p. 212.)
[48] St. Ignatius is generally spoken of as a disciple of the Apostle St. John. But many writers call him a disciple of St. Peter also, and some even represent that Apostle as placing him in the see of Antioch (S. Chrys. Hom. in S. Ignat. t. ii. p. 712). Tillemont (t. ii. p. 87, ed. 1732) quotes St. Athanasius, Origen and Theodoret, to the same effect. The historian Socrates speaks of St. Ignatius as introducing into the ancient Church of Antioch the alternate chant of two choirs (Socrates, lib. vi. c. 8.). Theodoret says that it was used there, in the time of the Arians, as a powerful instrument to oppose their blasphemous heresies.
[49] Bede, lib. i. ch. 27.