[162] See D’Arbois de Jubainville, Introduction, etc., p. 129 sqq.; Bertrand, La Religion des Gaulois, chap. xx. (Paris, 1897). Also O’Curry, o.c. passim.
[163] For this whole story see H. Zimmer, “Über die frühesten Berührungen der Iren mit den Nordgermanen,” Sitzungsbericht der Preussischen Akad., 1891 (1), pp. 279-317.
[164] For the life of Saint Columba the chief source is the Vita by Adamnan, his eighth successor as abbot of Iona. It contains well-drawn sketches of the saint and much that is marvellous and incredible. It was edited with elaborate notes by Dr. W. Reeves, for the Irish Archaeological Society, in 1857. His work, rearranged and with a translation of the Vita, was republished as Vol. VI. of The Historians of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1874). The Vita may also be found in Migne, Patrologia Latina, 88, col. 725-776. Bede, Ecc. Hist. iii. 4, refers to Columba. The Gaelic life from the Book of Lismore is published, with a translation by M. Stokes, Anecdota Oxoniensia (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1890). The Bodleian Eulogy, i.e. the Amra Choluim chille, was published, with translation by M. Stokes, in Revue celtique, t. xx. (1899); as to its date, see Rev. celtique, t. xvii. p. 41. Another (later) Gaelic life has been published by R. Henebry in the Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie, 1901, and later. There is an interesting article on the hymns ascribed to Columba in Blackwood’s Magazine for September 1899. See also Cuissard, Rev. celtique, t. v. p. 207. The hymns themselves are in Dr. Todd’s Liber Hymnorum. Montalembert’s Monks of the West, book ix. (vol. iii. Eng. trans.), gives a long, readable, and uncritical account of “St. Columba, the Apostle of Caledonia.”
[165] The Irish monastery was ordered as an Irish clan, and indeed might be a clan monastically ordered. At the head was an abbot, not elected by the monks, but usually appointed by the preceding abbot from his own family; as an Irish king appointed his successor. The monks ordinarily belonged to the abbot’s clan. They lived in an assemblage of huts. Some devoted themselves to contemplation, prayer, and writing; more to manual labour. There were recluses among them. Besides the monks, other members of the clan living near the “monastery” owed it duties and were entitled to its protection and spiritual ministration. The abbot might be an ordained priest; he rarely was a bishop, though he had bishops under him who at his bidding performed such episcopal functions as that of ordination. But he was the ruler, lay as well as spiritual. Not infrequently he also was a king. Although there was no common ordering of Irish monasteries, a head monastery might bear rule over its daughter foundations, as did Columba’s primal monastery of Iona over those in Ireland or Northern Britain which owed their origin to him. Irish monasteries might march with their clan on military expeditions, or carry on a war of monastery against monastery. “A.D. 763. A battle was fought at Argamoyn, between the fraternities of Clonmacnois and Durrow, where Dermod Duff, son of Donnell, was killed with 200 men of the fraternity of Durrow. Bresal, son of Murchadh, with the fraternity of Clonmacnois, was victor” (Ancient Annals). This entry is not alone, for there is another one of the year 816, in which a “fraternity of Colum-cille” seems to have been worsted in battle, and then to have gone “to Tara to curse” the reigning king. See Reeve’s Adamnan’s Life of Columba, p. 255. Of course Irish armies felt no qualms at sacking the monasteries and slaying the monks of another kingdom. The sanctuaries of Clonmacnois, Kildare, Clonard, Armagh were plundered as readily by “Christian” Irishmen as by heathen Danes. In the ninth century, Phelim, King of Munster, was an abbot and a bishop too; but he sacked the sacred places of Ulster and killed their monks and clergy. See G. T. Stokes, Ireland and the Celtic Church; Killen, Eccl. Hist. of Ireland, vol. i. p. 145 sqq.
[166] The title of saint is regularly given to the higher clergy of this period in Ireland.
[167] “The History of Ireland by Geoffrey Keating” in the original Gaelic with an English translation, by Comyn and Dineen (Irish Texts Society. David Nutt, London, 1902-1908).
[168] This means that he copied a manuscript belonging to Finnian.
[169] The Life of Colomb Cille from the Book of Lismore.
[170] Adamnan.
[171] B.G. iv. 1-3; vi. 21-28. For convenience I use the word Teuton as the general term and German as relating to the Teutons of the lands still known as German. But with reference to the times of Caesar and Tacitus the latter word must be taken generally.