the neighbouring districts, some resorted to an eremitical life and were slain by the Danes.90 Shrine and taken to In the meantime the security of Iona was threatened by A.D. 878. new enemies. These were the Norwegian Vikings who occu- relics of St. pied the Western Isles about the middle of this century, and Columba continued to do so from time to time, till their permanent Ireland. settlement in the Orkney Islands, towards the end of the century, led to a more continued possession of the Isles; and in the year 878 it appears to have been necessary to remove the relics of St. Columba from Iona to Ireland for safety. These consisted not only of the Mionna, or reliquaries, which had been so frequently taken to Ireland, but also of the shrine which contained the remains of his body; for we are told that in this year the shrine of Colum Cille and all his reliquaries were taken to Ireland to escape the foreigners,' 91 and two years later Feradach, son of Cormac, abbot of Iona, dies.92 He was, no doubt, the successor of Cellach, the abbot of Kildare, but his pedigree is unknown, and there is nothing to show whether he was connected with any other religious house. The line of Conall Gulban, however, the ancestor of the tribe of the patron saint, now comes in again, but merely to give to the abbacy of Iona its last independent abbot for many a long year. Flann, the son of Maelduin, whose death as abbot of Iona is recorded in the year 891,93 was a descendant of Conall Gulban; but one of the same tribe, Maelbrigde, son of Tornan, having been in 888 elected abbot of Armagh, the abbacy of Iona seems now to have fallen under his rule also, and thus he is described as 'coärb of Patrick and of Colum 90 See the interesting notice of the Coves at Caiplie and other places on the coast of Fife in the Sculptured Stones of Scotland, vol. ii., appendix to preface, p. lxxxvii.; and Dr. John Stuart's remarks in his Preface to the Chartulary of the Isle of May, p. v. 91 878 Scrin Coluim Cille ocus aminna orchena do thiachtain do cum 92 880 Feradach mac Cormac abbas 93 891 Flann mac Maileduin abbas Iae in pace quievit.—Ib. cille' in the Martyrology of Donegal, which adds that he was 'a man full of the grace of God, and a vessel of the wisdom and knowledge of his time.' 94 His death is recorded in 927.95 In his time, however, the shrine of St. Columba must have been restored to Iona, as we learn from the Life of St. Cadroë, a work of the eleventh century. Cadroë was a native of Scotia, or Scotland,96 and was born about the year 900.97 His father was Faiteach, a man of royal blood; his mother, Bania, of similar wealth and nobility. She had been previously married and had sons by her first husband; but after her marriage with Faiteach she continued childless, till, with her husband, she applied to the merits of St. Columba, and, going to his sepulchre and passing the night in prayer and fasting, had hardly slept, when they saw themselves in a vision holding two different candles, which suddenly united into one light, and a man of shining apparel appeared and told her that her tears had stained her stole and assisted her prayers in the sight of God, and that she should bear a son called Kaddroë, a future light of the church, who should have courage like his name; a warrior in the camp of the Lord, he shall go up unconquered against the opposing wall, prepared to stand in battle for the house of Israel.98 They awake full of joy, and after a time the woman has a son whom, according to the divine command, they call Kaddroë. When the child is old enough, his father's brother Beanus, an aged priest, wishes to put him to school, but the father objects, and insists that the child must be 94 Mart. Donegal. p. 55. 95 927 Maelbrigda mac Tornain Comhorba Patraic et Coluimcille, felici senectute quievit.-An. Ult. 96 At the time this life was compiled, the name of Scotia had already been transferred to Scotland, and a candid examination of the Life shows the scene of his early years was in Scotland. 97 He is said in the Life to have died in the seventieth year of his age and the thirtieth of his pilgrimage, but it began when Constantine was king of Alban, and Eric ruled at York. Eric's reign at York began about 938, and Constantin died in 942, which limits us to four years for the year of his birth. 98 Colgan explains Kaddroë as Cath, battle, Roe, the same as Agon, place of contest.-4.SS., p. 503. dedicated to him who gave it. The mother then has another child called Mattadanus. They then go a second time to the tomb of St. Columba, and offer to him the second boy, and deliver the eldest to Beanus to be educated.99 The expressions used of the sepulchre and the tomb of St. Columba imply that they went to Iona; and the small cell at the west end of the abbey church, now called the tomb of St. Columba, is, as we have seen, in all probability the remains of the oratory in which the shrine of St. Columba was kept, and to which it must have been restored when the parents of St. Cadroë passed the night in prayer and fasting before it. And this connection with Iona is further indicated; for, when the boy reaches an age to require more advanced instruction, he is sent to Armagh, the metropolitan town of Ireland, to be further trained, at a time when, as we have seen, the abbacy of Iona was under the rule of the abbot of Armagh. 99 This part of the Life is printed in the Chronicle of the Picts and Scots, p. 106. 889. First ap the name tish from servi Pictish law. CHAPTER VIII. THE SCOTTISH CHURCH. A.D. 878-THIS is he who first gave liberty to the Scottish Church, which had been until now under servitude, according to the pearance of law and custom of the Picts." Such is the almost unanimous the Scot- testimony of the chronicles as to King Giric, who reigned Church' from 878 to 889; and this is the first appearance of the church when freed under the name of 'the Scottish Church.' At this time the tude under kingdom ruled by the new dynasty of kings of Scottish race was still the kingdom of the Picts, and the kings were still called kings of the Picts. Giric therefore must be regarded as such; and he seems also to have broken in upon the Tanistic law of succession, and reintroduced the Pictish law, by which the throne descended to the sister's children in preference to the son's; while by 'the Scottish Church' could only be meant that church which his predecessor Kenneth had constituted and placed under the rule of one bishop. The first, as we have seen, was the abbot of Dunkeld; but the election of this bishop was now in the hands of the church of Abernethy. Giric's object therefore probably was to secure the support of the Scottish clergy by conferring a boon upon their church. Whatever that boon may have been, the expression that he first gave it' seems to imply that it was something which the Pictish kings had not previously given, but in which he was followed by his 1 Hic primus dedit libertatem ecclesiæ Scoticanæ quæ sub servitute erat usque ad illud tempus ex consuetudine et more Pictorum. - Chron. Picts and Scots, p. 151. The Chron. of St. Andrews has, for consuetudine, Hic dedit ecclesiæ libertates Scoticana successors. What then was implied by the church being under servitude, and having liberty given to it? These are terms which, in connection with the church lands, have a very definite meaning. About thirty years before this date Ethelwulf, king of Wessex, as we are told in the Saxon Chronicle, in the year 855, 'chartered the tenth part of his land, over all his kingdom, for the glory of God and his own eternal salvation;' and in the deeds rehearsing this grant we find the same expressions used. Thus, in one grant he says that he has not only given the tenth part of his lands to the holy churches, but also 'that our appointed ministers therein should have them in perpetual liberty, so that such donation shall remain permanently freed from all royal service, and relieved from all secular servitude;' and in another there is a still more detailed explanation of it. He grants the tenth part of his lands to God and St. Mary, and to all the saints, to be safe, protected and free from all secular services, not only the greater and lesser loyal tributes or taxations, which we call Witeredden, but also free from every thing, for the remission of souls and my sins, to the sole service of God, without hosting or construction of bridges or fortification of citadels, that they may pray for us without ceasing, in as far as we have freed them from their servitude.'2 In the early Irish Monastic Church, the land granted for the endowment of a church or monastery to its first founder or patron saint, was usually called its Termon land, and was considered by right to have the privilege of sanctuary and to be free from any rents, tributes, or other exactions by temporal chiefs; but the close connection between the church and the tribe, and the rights of the latter in connection with the succession to the abbacy, led to a constant attempt on the part of the secular chiefs to bring these lands under the same obligations towards themselves as affected the tribe lands; and, when they 2 See Stubbs and Haddan's Councils, vol. iii. pp. 636, 638, 641. VOL. II. Y |
