Chasing the Wild Goose

The story of the Iona Community

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• Publisher: Wild Goose Publications
• Year: 1998
• Print ISBN: 9781901557008
• eBook ISBN: 9781849520836
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

The history of the Iona Community including the work of George MacLeod whose inspiration placed Iona firmly on the Christian map once again in the twentieth century.

Part One

THE BEATHING OF WINGS

1

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The Dove of the Church

Columba’s voyage from Ireland to Iona in AD 563 is one of the great foundational journeys of Western Christianity. The power of the man and the influence of his achievements can be gauged by the number of legends which surround him.

Getting access to the historical Columba is not easy. The written sources have to be handled with care — the writers were concerned not so much to record objective history as to provide inspiration for the faithful — but through the Dark Ages fog, however, the lineaments of a charismatic personality emerge. Before his birth in Donegal in 521, his mother, Eithne, is said to have been told by an angel in a dream that her son would be a prophet who would lead innumerable souls to the heavenly country. He was baptized Colum (Latin, Columba, which means dove).

The child’s father, Phelim MacFergus, was a king or chieftain of the Uí Néill, descendants of the famed Niall of the Nine Hostages, who reigned in Ireland at the time of St Patrick. Colum’s royal pedigree meant that he would have been a candidate for the High Kingship of Ireland, had his life not taken a different course.

Columba was fostered, as was the custom of the time, by a local priest. Adomnan, an abbot of Iona who wrote a life of Columba about a hundred years after the saint’s death, tells how the priest one day observed his house covered in a bright light and saw a ball of fire over the face of the sleeping boy. The priest prostrated himself, interpreting the fire as a sign of the Holy Spirit. As a child, Columba was noted for the time he spent in church, and his boyhood nickname ‘Columcille’ (Dove of the Church) stayed with him till the end of his life.

The spread of Christianity in Ireland, ever since the inspired leadership of St Patrick in the fourth century, had been accompanied by the emergence of monastic schools as important places of learning and piety. As soon as he was old enough, Columba was sent to the monastic school of Moville headed by St Finbar, a noted scholar and traveller. At the end of his study Columba was ordained a deacon. He then moved south to Leinster, where he studied the literature and myths of old Ireland under the tutorship of Gemmen, a Christian bard, finding scope for the love of poetry and rhetoric which marked his style of expression.

A story from his time at Leinster is narrated by Adomnan. When Gemmen and Columba were studying in the open air, a girl ran towards them pursued by a man who caught her and stabbed her to death. Columba, who had tried to protect the girl, cursed the murderer who ‘fell dead as did Ananias at the feet of St Peter’. It was the first of many powerful word-happenings attributed to Columba.

The youth’s studies were completed at Clonard, the most famous seat of learning in all Ireland. Each student had his own wattle hut, and each was expected to work in the fields. Under the leadership of St Finnian, the students memorized large parts of the scriptures as well as copying sacred manuscripts. Thus were the élite of the Irish church trained.

By this time an ordained priest, Columba, who was already recognized as a leader by his peers, embarked on his missionary task. He headed north into Ulster, his home territory, and established a number of centres of mission and learning. With prodigious drive and energy, he set about converting whole tribes. There are stories of contests with Druid leaders, symbolizing the struggle between Christianity and pagan religion for the soul of Ireland. Columba himself had great respect, and indeed love, for the ancient Druidic traditions and wisdom: what he wanted to do was baptize them and bring them under the lordship of Christ. The establishment of important Christian centres at places such as Derry and Durrow reveals the saint’s organizational and administrative abilities, as well as his love of learning.

It was this love of learning that led to a decisive watershed in his life. It appears that Bishop Finbar of Moville had returned from pilgrimage to Rome with a copy of the Vulgate version of the gospels. Columba is said to have secretly copied the manuscript, and Finbar took the matter up before the king. Diarmaid’s famous judgement, ‘To every cow belongs her calf’, meant that Columba had to give up the copied document. The tradition is that Columba persuaded his kinsmen to fight against the king, who lost three thousand men. The battle was later interpreted as a victory of Christianity over Druidism, and Columba’s prayers were felt to be the decisive factor.

Not everyone saw it as a victory for Christianity. Columba was no diplomat, and his achievements had won him enemies as well as friends. At a hastily convened Synod, he was tried in his absence and excommunicated! The sentence was revoked, however, and Columba was enjoined to win as many souls for Christ as had been killed in the battle.

Tradition has it that the impetuous Columba then went into self-imposed exile with twelve followers: that he set sail for Scotland; that he and his men landed several times on the west coast of Scotland but carried on because they could look back and still see Ireland; and that they reached Iona and stayed there, satisfied that Ireland could not be seen.

The legend of the saint turning his back on his homeland, attractive though it may be, is unlikely to be true. Columba returned to Ireland many times. It is much more likely that the saint was responding to a call from his kinsfolk who had settled in Dál Riata. Yet it was an exile of a kind. The Irish tradition of exile was making a sacrificial journey for Christ’s sake, corresponding to the interior journey of the soul. The seas were the motorways of the day, and coracles — sturdy hidebound boats — regularly plied their trade off the coasts of Ireland.

So it was that Columba and his twelve followers, mainly relatives, landed on Iona on the eve of Pentecost, 563. As Adomnan put it, ‘In the forty-second year of his age Columba, resolving to seek a foreign country for the love of Christ, sailed from Scotia to Britain.’ The wings of the Wild Goose were beating.

Columba established his Iona community on the east side of the island, off the west coast of Mull, roughly on the site on which the medieval abbey now stands. Iona was known simply as ‘I’, or Island, and it is still known in Gaelic as I-Colum-Cille. (‘Iona’ itself is a corruption of the Pictish ‘Ioua’; by a curious coincidence, Iona means ‘dove’ in Hebrew.)

The brothers — sometimes referred to as Island Soldiers — would have had individual ‘bee-hive’ mud and wattle cells (not unlike an African bush village), and the church itself was made of oak. Other buildings would have included the hospitium (guest house), refectory, scriptorium, barns, stables, mill, smithy, carpenter’s shop and kiln. The fire in the kitchen would have been blessed and never allowed to go out.

Columba’s cell, excavated a few years ago, was on a mound with a commanding view of the Sound of Iona. He slept on bare rock with a stone for his pillow.

The monks, who wore tunics with hooded cowls of undyed wool, were divided into three groups. The Seniors conducted the daily services in the church, taught students and copied sacred manuscripts; the Working Brothers were the farmers, craftsmen and labourers; and the Juniors were novices undergoing training. Worship, work and learning were seen as part of the same tapestry.

Not far from Iona is an island called, in Gaelic, ‘The Island of Women’. The legend is that Columba would allow no women — or female cattle — on Iona.

The reputation of the community on Iona grew quickly, and curious visitors and pilgrims flocked to the island. Hospitality was a sacred monastic obligation, and Adomnan reports how Columba cancelled a fast day to give hospitality to ‘a certain troublesome guest’. He also recounts the saint’s legendary ability to sense when a guest was about to arrive. For example,

On a day when the tempest was fierce and the sea exceedingly boisterous, the saint gave orders, saying, ‘Prepare the guest chamber quickly and draw water to wash the stranger’s feet.’ One of the brethren enquired, ‘Who can cross the Sound safely on so perilous and stormy a day!’ The saint made answer; ‘The Almighty has given a calm evening in this tempest to a certain holy and excellent man who will arrive here among us before evening.’ And lo! that same day the ship for which the brethren had sometime been looking out, arrived according to the saint’s prediction and brought St Cainnech. The saint went down with his brethren to the landing place and received him with all honour and hospitality.

Hospitality was sacred, because Christ was in the stranger. The Gaelic Rune of Hospitality puts it thus:

I saw a stranger yestreen:
I put food in the eating place,
Drink in the drinking place,
Music in the listening place:
And in the sacred name of the Triune
He blessed myself and my house,
My cattle and my dear ones.
And the lark said in her song
Often, often, often
Goes the Christ in the stranger’s guise.
Often, often, often
Goes the Christ in the stranger’s guise.

But Columba had not ventured to Scotland just to establish a colony of heaven. He was a missionary. He and his barefoot monks (known as the Peregrini — the wanderers) went out into the highways and byways to preach the Gospel. Iona was strategically well placed as a base for mission.

Christianity was, of course, far from unknown in Scotland. The great St Ninian, from his base at Whithorn in the fourth century, had inspired important evangelistic movements. But the impetus had waned under the pressure of tribal wars, and some of the fragile Christian communities had disappeared.

Columba shared Ninian’s pioneering spirit. To win over the Picts in neighbouring Alban, he set out to visit High King Brude, near Inverness. The visit was also of strategic importance — the establishment of friendly relations with Brude would secure the development of Iona and enable the Columban monks to move around more freely. The historic journey included a sail up Loch Ness and, apparently, a joust with the Loch Ness monster! Adomnan reports that Columba saw men burying someone who had been attacked by a monster which then turned on one of the monks.

Columba moved into action:

The blessed man raised his holy hand and invoking the name of God he formed the saving sign of the cross in the air and commanded the ferocious monster, saying, ‘Thou shalt go no further nor touch the man! Go back at all speed!’ At the voice of the saint the monster was terrified and rushed down the river.

Loch Ness Monster 0, Columba 1. The heathen were impressed.

The events in Inverness were no less miraculous, according to the saint’s biographer, with scenes reminiscent of the contests between Moses and Pharaoh.

The not unbiased account indicates that Columba and his followers sang vespers outside Brude’s palace. The Druids tried to drown them out, but Columba sent terror through them by singing the forty-sixth psalm in the thunderous voice for which he was renowned. The doors were locked against them, but the saint made the sign of the cross and they burst open.

The saint and his companions then passed through the gates. And when the king learned what had occurred, he and his councillors were filled with alarm, and immediately setting out from the palace he advanced to meet with due respect the blessed man, whom he addressed in the most conciliating and respectful language. And ever after from that day, the held this holy and reverend man in high honour as was due.

Amidst all the legendary elements and embellishments which surround him, Columba stands out as a genuinely heroic figure. Under his leadership, Iona inspired disciples to preach the Gospel in often dangerous circumstances. The monks from the mother house established many foundations, often named after the saint.

Columba’s fabled healing powers drew people to Iona — his prayers were felt to be particularly potent. Adomnan observes:

By invoking the name of Christ this man of admirable life healed the disorders of various sick persons. For either by his merely stretching out his holy hand, or by the sprinkling of the sick with water blessed by him, or by their touching even the hem of his cloak, or by their receiving his blessing on anything, as for instance on bread or salt and dipping it in the water, those who believed recovered their health.

He was not a man who went in for non-directive counselling. His rebukes to sinners could be heard over on Mull. Yet his spirit of forgiveness and compassion, especially for the poor, was well known. His love for all creation was equally renowned, and in Gaelic folklore he is the patron saint of cattle.

The importance of Columba and the pre-eminence of Iona can be seen in an event which occurred eleven years after his arrival on the island. Conall, king of the Dalriad Scots, died. Dál Riata was a key part of the Columban mission; its political future needed to be secured, so the choice of successor was crucial. Two brothers, Eoghan and Aidan, were the main contenders. Among the Gaels, the Arch-Druid or chief religious leader had a key role in the choice. Columba was the obvious guide. Although he was a close friend of Eoghan, Columba chose his brother, having dreamed three times that an angel of the Lord had commanded him to pick Aidan. Columba consecrated Aidan king of the Scots at a ceremony on Iona — the first king in Britain ever to be so consecrated.

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Toc
• Preface to the Revised Edition
• Acknowledgements in the Revised Edition
• Acknowledgements in the Original Edition
• Original Foreword
• Prologue
• Part One: The Beating of Wings
• Part Two: Flying in Formation
• Part Three: On a Wing and a Prayer
• Epilogue
• Postscript
• Bibliography
• Iona Community Information
• Wild Goose Publications’ Title List