Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 8.djvu/600

582 Picts and Scots, and also among the northern Irish. No fewer than thirty-two separate religious foundations among the Scots, twenty-one among the Picts, and thirty-seven among the Irish, many of which occupied conspicuous places in the monastic history of the earlier middle ages, seem to have been planted by himself or his immediate disciples; the most celebrated of all these being the college of the Culdees, at Iona, which kept alive the flame of learning during a prolonged period of general ignorance and superstition, and became a centre of religious influence, which extended far beyond the range of its founder's personal labors, and caused his memory to be held in the deepest veneration for centuries afterward. The point on which I here desire to lay stress is the continuity of history, as trustworthy as any such history can be; the incidents of St. Columba's life having been originally recorded in the contemporary fasti of his religious foundation, and transmitted in unbroken succession to Abbot Adamnan, who first compiled a complete "Vita" of his great predecessor, of which there still exists a manuscript copy, whose authenticity there is no reason to doubt, which dates back to the early part of the eighth century, not much more than one hundred years after St. Columba's death. Now, Adamnan's "Vita" credits its subject with the possession of every kind of miraculous power. The saint prophesied events of all kinds, trivial as well as grave, from battles and violent deaths down to the spilling of an ink-horn, the falling of a book, the omission of a single letter from a writing, and the arrival of guests at the monastery. He cured numbers of people afflicted with inveterate diseases, accorded safety to storm-tossed vessels, himself walked across the sea to his island-home, drove demons out of milk-pails, outwitted sorcerers, and gave supernatural powers to domestic implements. Like other saints, he had his visions of angels and apparitions of heavenly light, which comforted and encouraged him at many a trying juncture, lasting, on one occasion, for three days and nights.

Now, it seems to me beyond all reasonable doubt that St. Columba was one of those men of extraordinary energy of character and earnest religious nature who have the power of strongly impressing most of those with whom they come into contact, moulding their wills and awakening their religious sympathies, so as to acquire a wonderful influence over them; this being aided by the commanding personal "presence" he is recorded to have possessed. And it is not surprising that, when themselves the subjects of what they regarded as "supernatural" power, they should attribute to him the exercise of the same power in other ways. In fact, to their unscientific minds it seemed quite "natural" that he should so exert it; its possession being, in their belief, a normal attribute of his saintship. That he himself believed in his gifts, and that many wonders were actually worked by the concurrent action of his own faith in himself and his followers' faith in him, will not seem unlikely to any one who has carefully