St. Columcille — Ireland's First 'White Martyr'

Most people don't know it but Mel Columcille Gerard Gibson, the man who brought "The Passion of the Christ" to the big screen earlier this year, and stirred up a hornet's nest in the process, is named for two first millennium Irish St.s, Mel and Columcille.

Gibson is well named. Both St.s Mel and Columcille (pronounced Kolumkil) were deeply religious and devoted to their faith, as is, apparently, Gibson. St. Mel was one of the handful of missionaries who accompanied St. Patrick to Ireland in the fifth century, participated in the conversion of Ireland to Christianity, and later became a bishop in Ireland. Beyond that little is known about that holy man. St. Columcille, however, is a different story.

Like his namesake, Columcille, whose feast we celebrate this month, was a deeply devout but somewhat mercurial character. Regarded, along with Patrick and Brigid, as one of Ireland’s three great patron saints, Columcille is generally considered to be the first of Ireland's "white martyrs," the missionaries who, as a form of sacrifice and penance, exiled themselves from their beloved Erin to bring Christianity to the barbarian tribes that had overrun the rest of Europe.

Prince, poet, scholar, scribe, priest, monk, warrior, missionary - Columcille was also, like Gibson, something of a celebrity in his time. Born in 521 AD as Crimthann, prince of Clan Conail, he later became known among the Irish by his monastic nickname Columcille (Dove of the Church), but is frequently referred to by historians by his Romanized name, Columba.

Columcille (my preference), in addition to being all that has been described above, was something of a trend setter. He was the first white martyr, the first Irish missionary, the first loser in a copyright case, and according to legend, the first person in recorded history to encounter the Loch Ness monster. A man of many talents and almost unlimited energy, Columcille could have become Ireland’s high king had he chosen that path. Educated in both the pre-Christian bardic tradition and the Christian abbey of Clonard (on the river Boyne in what is now county Meath), he chose instead to devote his energies to the Christian priesthood. He was ordained at Clonard at the age of 25 and spent the next several years traveling throughout Ireland preaching and establishing monasteries – 41 in all, among them Derry, Durrow and Kells.

Columcille's preaching and monastery-making in Ireland came to an abrupt end when he was about 42. His love of scholarship and beauty, his prodigious skill as a scribe, his unlimited energy, and a scorching case of bad judgment all combined to set the stage for the first copyright case and his ultimate exile as the first white martyr and Irish missionary.

Columcille's mentor and teacher at Clonard, St. Finnian, returned from a pilgrimage to Rome with a beautifully decorated copy of St. Jerome's Psalter -- the Book of Psalms translated into Latin by St. Jerome in the fourth century, supposedly the only one in Ireland. Columcille wanted to make a copy; Finnian said no.

Being Irish and an aristocrat, Columcille had never been especially comfortable with the word "no." So the priest/prince, without Finnian's permission, borrowed the Psalter and copied it anyway. When Finnian discovered that Columcille had surreptitiously copied the Psalter, Finnian sued for return of the copy as stolen property. The issue was ultimately resolved by the High King of Ireland, Diarmait O'Carroll, who ruled in Finnian's favor, declaring: "To every cow her calf; to every book its copy."

Losing the first copyright case in history did not endear Columcille to Diarmait, and when one of Columcille's followers, a son of the King of Connaught (one of the four provinces of Ireland), was killed by Diarmait's soldiers in an unrelated matter, Columcille/Crimthann, Prince of Clan Conail, had had enough. The impetuous monk rallied his clan, and with the aid of Connaught, waged war on the High King, taking the field against Diarmait and his army at a place called Cuildremne in County Sligo. The battle was one-sided; by the time it was over Diarmait had suffered a humiliating defeat and 3,000 warriors lay dead.

But for the "Dove of the Church," it was a hollow victory. Realizing what he had done Columcille mourned the loss of so many Irishman, and although he had not actually drawn a sword, felt remorse for his part in their demise. He also realized that because of the battle, he had become an immediate embarrassment to himself, his faith and his country.

In order to redeem himself Columcille accepted an extraordinary penance -- exile. The penance required him to leave his beloved Ireland forever, and in his exile to bring as many souls to the faith as had perished at Cuildremne. In this manner Columcille became the first white martyr, sailing away from Ireland into the white sky of morning to an unknown destiny on a foreign shore.

Departing from Derry with 12 disciples in the year 563 AD, Columcille sailed northward toward the Hebrides off the coast of what is now Scotland, eventually landing on the island of Iona, which was then part of the Irish kingdom of Dal Riada. There he built an abbey on land given to him by his kinsman, the king of Dal Riada. Using Iona as his base of operations, Columcille set about converting the pagan inhabitants of the Scottish part of the British mainland.

Generally credited with the conversion of Scotland, Columcille's influence as a missionary during his own lifetime extended throughout the British Isles and perhaps as far north as Iceland. Iona became the model for many Irish abbeys founded outside Ireland. Columcille, the most respected Irishman of his time, became the model for all the white martyrs who ventured after him - and, to a certain extent, for one filmmaker some 1,500 years later.

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