It is not surprising that in such times the providential ordering of events should make a deep impression on the minds of succeeding generations, and that almost every transaction connected with such men should be read in the light which shines from behind the veil."1 Says Dean Stanley: "His career remains a glorious proof how the ban of the visible Church against the moving spirits of mankind may turn out to be vanity of vanities. Whatever the shortcomings of Columba, St Brendan was right in saying that we cannot afford to disdain a man predestinated to be the evangeliser and apostle of such a nation as Scotland."2 So St Columba's influence was magnetic and permeative: it goes far to show, what has been maintained, that the difference between an ordinary man and a man of genius is so vast as to be immeasurable; that the scale is one which reaches from zero to infinity. great was the reverence for his name that the Church would permit no departure from his customs; objects associated with him were carried by the tribes into battle, in the belief that thereby victory would be achieved. This feeling lingered long, for in the tenth century we learn that the men of Alba adopted as their standard for battle the crosier of Columcille; 5 "and in the twelfth century," adds Dr Stuart, "we find a fair barony belonging to the keeper of the brecbennoche, a banner of St Columba; while in the same age the highest sanction to an obligation with some was an oath per sanctum Columbam." Speaking of the Book of Deer, Dr Joseph Anderson says: "The terms in which the grants are expressed represent Columcille and Drostan as still present in the minds of the granters as the heads of the community to whom lands were given."7 So great was the reverence attached to St Columba's name in 1 Iona, pp. 49, 50. 2 Church of Scotland, by Dean Stanley, p. 31. 3 Duke of Argyll's Scotland Past and Present, p. 460. 4 Reeves' Adamnan, pp. 249, 319, 332. 6 Book of Deer, p. cx. * Pictish Chronicle, p. 406. 7 Scotland in Early Christian Times, vol. i. p. 173. this parish,1 and so influential the church through connection with him, that his relics were transferred here from Dunkeld, as we will see in a later chapter. It arouses the regret that the Chronicle of Abernethy, to which Fordun refers, is lost, and makes us feel what valuable and additional information we would have of his work if it could only be found. 1 "One of Columba's chief monasteries among the Picts was at Abernethy in Stratherne."--Maclear's Christian Missions in the Middle Ages, p. 89. I 12 CHAPTER X. THE CELTIC OR COLUMBAN MONASTERY AT ABERNETHY, "O, how great was the fervour of all religious persons when communities were first instituted! "How great their devotion in prayer! how great their longing for virtue! how rigorous their discipline! how reverence and obedience to those set over them were in high repute ! "Their footprints-still remaining-testify that they were indeed holy and perfect men, who, by so valiant a struggle, trampled underfoot the world. "Now he is reckoned to be great who just escapes open sin, or bears patiently his lot in life."-De Imitatione, bk. i. c. 18. We have now seen that the civil and ecclesiastical history of Abernethy are interwoven with each other; that its early civil importance led to its ecclesiastical influence; that its ecclesiastical influence deepened its civil importance. We have also seen that its early church is associated with the names of SS. Ninian, Bridget of Kildare, Ternan, Brendan, and Columba, and that its connection with such outstanding personalities must have attached to it great religious sanctity, and caused it to be venerated as the mother church in the territory of the Southern Picts. We will now try to recall the nature of the early Celtic Church in the parish, and depict the outstanding features of the early Church life and work. In a former chapter we have seen that the Picts and Scots were of the same blood, and spoke the same language with dialectic differences; that they were coming into closer league with each other, conspicuously so at the period about the close of the Roman occupation of Scotland. The ecclesiastical history is on the line of this development, and the Pictish Church system was modelled after the pattern of the Irish one. During St Columba's time the influence of the Scots was becoming predominant, and the Church in Pictland exhibits the same constitution, customs, and usages as the ancient Church of Ireland. Christianity was accepted there with all the enthusiasm of the Celtic nature, and St Columba's life is interesting, not only for itself, but as the representative embodiment of the national genius. Enthusiasm is communicative, and the result of his labours was to carry towards completion a movement that had before his time been begun, and to build up among a kindred people a Church system the same as that which existed in his own native land. Iona contained a monastic system that was essentially Irish in its constitution, and the same holds good of the monasteries among the Southern Picts; they were all organised after Irish models, and their influence is both religious and political-religious in so far as they brought spiritual good to Alban, political in so far as they manifest the genius of the Scots, and indicate a direction which was before long to be the predominant one. The Columban Church was monastic, and however corrupt the monastic Church did become in later times through the acquisition of extraordinary wealth and the indifference it introduced among the clergy, monasticism began as a high religious movement, as a very noble impulse that guided and moulded the minds of men. The Celtic monastery was sometimes founded on the mainland, but generally it was built upon an island in the centre of a midland lake, such as that of St Serf on Lochleven. It was not infrequently to be found on an isolated, unfrequented spot, yet it was such an institution that helped most effectually H to Christianise the people. The necessary thing was organisation, and that the monastery afforded. The people around lived in barbarism, disregardful of the sanctity of the domestic ties, of justice and righteousness. The monastic Church, through the humanities it represented, brought a healing influence to them. It brought order into the midst of disorder, virtue into the very presence of vice. It did not begin its work by attacking such tendencies, but brought the penetrative, diffusive power of holy lives. The Church received a grant of land from the king, as at Abernethy, and there it organised itself as a Christian colony under monastic rule, and consecrated itself by working, meditation, fasting, and prayer. The very unworldliness of its life came as a contrast to the barbarism of the warlike tribes, and the most irresistible of arguments was ever present before them, lives filled with purity, consecration, service. Such attracted the pagans at once, and when affection was created by saintliness, a preparation was made towards centring their faith in the religion that created it. Having done this, the monastic Church, whether on an island or the mainland, became a missionary centre, and its monks went about the country with the Gospels in their hands and the love of Christ in their hearts, leading the people to Christian belief and founding churches for Christian worship. The communicative instincts of the Celtic nature, possessed with enthusiasm and faith, created religious chivalry, and it is a thrilling page in our early history to recall the bravery of these early missionaries. We hear of them reaching the far-off islands of the Hebrides and even farther north, and the marvel is that they could overcome such stormy seas in their little boats. They used three kinds of boats: (1) canoes, made by hollowing trees, such as the natives already possessed; (2) currachs, made of skin stretched over wicker framework, such as still can be seen in use by the primitive people of the Aran Islands off the coast of Galway; (3) small sailing-vessels thus described by Adamnan, "The sailors |