| Columba is not the first light-bearer who appeared amid the
darkness of Caledonia. He had pioneers as early as the second century. But history has
found no place on her page for the humble names of the men who first carried the message
of Heaven to our shores. In the fourth and fifth centuries there were evangelists among
the southern Picts, who may be regarded also as predecessors of the great missionary. An
hundred and fifty years before the light of Iona was kindled, a Christian sanctuary rose
on the promontory of Whithern; and the gleam of its white walls greeted the eyes of the
mariner as he steered his vessel amid the tides of the Irish Channel towards the Scottish
shore. This was the scene of the ministry of Ninian, who strove to diffuse the evangelical
light along the shores of the Solway, and over the wilds of Galloway. When Ninian rested
from his labours, there appeared, in the same region, Kentigern, or, as he is sometimes
called, St. Mungo. His memory still survives in the West of Scotland, where, humble and
courteous, he evangelised, and where he is popularly revered as the father of a long line
of pastors, which have been the glory of a city whose cathedral church bears his name. To
this age, too, belongs Palladius. Of him we know little beyond the name. He has left no
distinct foot-prints, and his story belongs to legend quite as much as to history.
Servanus was another of these early pioneers. He established his hermitage on the north
shore of the Forth, at the point where the waters of the Firth, issuing through the strait
at Queensferry, expand into an inland lake, encircled by banks of picturesque beauty. He
is said in latter life to have travelled as far as to Orkney, preaching the
"crucified" at the very threshold of the high sanctuary of Druidism, whose
rugged grandeur lent dignity, as it ruins now impart an air of melancholy to those
northern wilds. There is another name we must include in this roll of early Scotch
evangelists. That name is Patrick. True, the scene of his labours was not the land of his
birth. Nevertheless it was Scotland that in the end reaped the largest benefit from the
achievements of her illustrious son. In our judgment, Patrick was the greatest of all the
reformers which arose in the church of Britain before Wickliffe, not even expecting
Columba, for the mission of the latter to Iona was a reflex wave of the great movement
which Patrick set on foot on the other side of the Channel. In boldness, in popular power,
in elasticity of mind, in freedom of action, and in the grasp with which he laid hold of
Divine truth, he resembles rather the reformers of the sixteenth century, than the men of
his early day, whose light was dim, and who seldom permitted themselves a wider range in
their evangelistic efforts than the maxims and canons of their ate prescribed. But the
subject of Patrick is a large one, and place will be found for it afterwards.
The men of whom we have spoken, the
evangelists of the fifth century, Patrick excepted, were, no doubt, men of genuine piety,
of ardent zeal, and of holy life; but they were men of small build, and moved in a narrow
groove. They were lights in their several localities, and the age owed them much, but they
stood apart and lacked the appliances which organisation would have furnished them with
for making their influence wider than the sphere of their personal effort, and more
lasting than the term of their natural life. To them the Gospel was not a kingdom—the
figure under which its Divine Founder had set it forth, it was a life, a holy life; but
their piety had a strong tendency to run into asceticism, and asceticism is often but
another form of self-righteousness. There is abundant evidence that these men had their
own share in the weaknesses and superstitions of their age, and there could not be a
greater mistake than to speak of them as the giants of an early time, who were sprung of a
virgin soil, the virtues of which, having since waxed old and feeble, can no longer
produce as aforetime, and therefore it is vain to look for men of the same lofty stature
now as were seen upon the earth in those days. The truth is, that these men were not above
but below their successors. Nevertheless they towered above their contemporaries, and
their names deserve, and will receive, the reverence of Scotchmen in every coming age, as
the lights of a dark time, and the pioneers of a better day, inasmuch as they were among
the first to tame the rudeness and instruct the ignorance of their country.
The first attempt on a large scale to
Christianise Scotland was that of Columba. He was no solitary worker, but the centre of a
propaganda. Around him were twelve companions, who had drunk into his spirit, and had
voluntarily placed themselves under his rule, the better to carry out the great enterprise
to which he and they had become bound by a common consecration. This organisation was
consonant with the methods of the age, and was the only form of church-life which the
circumstances of Columba made possible. He stood in the midst of his fellow-labourers, not
as a master among his servants, but as a father amongst his family. The preliminaries
settled, the work was begun in earnest. It consisted of two parts: first, the training of
missionaries; for the little staff on Iona was not sufficient to do the service at
head-quarters, and at the same time occupy the mission fields of the mainland. The second
was the actual evangelisation of the country by personal visits. As yet no Christian
missionary, so far as is known, had crossed the Grampians. We trace a feeble dawn in the
south, but not a ray had penetrated the thick darkness that still shrouded northern
Scotland. Columba, as we have seen, was the first in person to venture into that region
over which till his coming, the Druid had reigned supreme. The door which Columba had
opened he succeeded in keeping open. Band after band of missionaries, from the feet of the
elders of Iona, poured in and took possession of the land. Following the course of the
rivers on the banks of which the thin population of that day was mostly located, the
evangelists kindled the light in numerous districts, both highland and lowland. That light
was a new life in the hearts which received it. There was a sweetness in the hut of the
Caledonian, and a brightness in the faces of his children, till then unknown. He flung
down sword and lance, and seized hold of mattock and plough, and soon a blooming
cultivation clothed valley and strath. After the church came the school. Letters and arts
grew up beneath the shelter of Christianity. Columba had enriched the world by calling a
new civilisation out of the barbarism. One fruitful century—from the middle of the
sixth to the middle of the seventh—had sufficed to enroll a new nation under the
banners of knowledge and liberty. As if the limits of Caledonia were too narrow, these
light-bearers carried their torch into England in the south, and Ireland on the west, and
for a century and a half Iona continued to be looked up to as the mother church by
institutions which followed her rule and owned her sway in all the three kingdoms.
We have already said that a century of
comparative quiet followed the first kindling of the light on the Rock of Iona. With its
rays a spirit of peace seemed to breathe over the land. Animosities died out, feuds were
forgotten, and battle ceased between Pict and Scot. This calm was the more remarkable,
inasmuch as outside the borders of Caledonia the fiercest storms of barbarian war had been
let loose on the world. England was in the throes of the Anglo-Saxon invasion; the sky of
Europe, from side to side, was dark with northern tempests; around the lamp of Iona alone
the storm slept. The solution is not far to seek. It was Iona that had chained the winds
in this northern land, where before they were seldom at rest. Columba was the friend of
both the Pictish and the Scottish monarchs—both were now converts to Christianity,
and their joint consent had been given to the planting of this institution at a point that
was intermediate as regards the territories of both. His purity and nobility of character
made him be looked up to both kings; his counsel was often sought, and his advice,
doubtless, was always thrown into the scale of peace. His sagacity would anticipate, and
his meekness would compose, quarrels before they came to the arbitrament of the sword.
Besides, every branch institution that was planted in either the Pictish or the Scottish
kingdom was a new bond of amity between the two peoples; an additional pledge of peace.
But it is not in a day that the passion of war is to be rooted out of the heart of a
nation; and though at this period there is no recorded outbreak betwixt the Scots and
Picts, the sword did not entirely rest. Both peoples indulged themselves with an
occasional raid into the neighbouring territories of the Britons of Strathclyde and the
Angles of the Lothians, and had to suffer the unavoidable penalties of retaliation.
It is now that the kings of Scotland—the
little Dalriada—come out of the dubious light in which they are hidden before the
days of Columba, and that the work of tracing the transactions of their reign becomes a
not altogether ungrateful task. Conal, king of the Scots, gifted, as we have said, the
little island to the great missionary; Bruidi, king of the north Picts, most probably
concurring. Dying three years after (A.D. 566), he was succeeded by his brother Kinnatell,
who, old and sickly, reigned only a few months. After him came Aidan. Before his
accession, Aidan had entered the Monastery of Iona, and put himself under the tuition of
Columba; and when he mounted the throne the abbot-missionary anointed him as king,
charging both monarch and people, said Buchanan, "to remain steadfast in the pure
worship of God, as they valued his blessing and dreaded His chastisement." A clearer
historic light falls on the reign of Aidan than on that of any Scottish monarch before the
union of the Picts and Scots. We have it on the concurrent testimony of Tighernac and the
"Saxon Chronicle," as well as of Adamnan, that he was endowed with princely
qualities, that his policy was wise, and that his reign on the whole was prosperous. His
first labours were undertaken for the internal pacification of his kingdom. He made an
expedition against the robbers of Galloway, punished and suppressed them. He held
conventions of his Estates. He renewed an old league formerly existing with the Britons.
He strengthened himself on all sides; but the England of the day was too full of broils,
confusions, and battles, to make it easy for even the most peace-loving ruler to escape
entanglements and keep war from his borders.
The throne of Northumbria, at that time the
most powerful kingdom of the Heptarchy, was filled by Ethelfrith. His territories extended
from the Humber to the Forth, and from the rock of Bamborough, across the chalk downs of
York, westward to the border of Wales, in which the Saxon sword had cooped up the Britons.
The restless ambition of the pagan Ethelfrith made him the terror of his neighbours.
Seizing with the lust of extending his dominions, he led his army against the Britons,
whose kingdom extended from the Clyde to the Dee. Cadwallo, their king, demanded of Aidan,
who had renewed with him the league mentioned above, that he should send him help. He
obeyed the summons and sent him a contingent. Meanwhile the terrible Ethelflrith held on
his way to Chester. The inhabitants trembled as he approached. Twelve hundred and fifty
monks belonging to the Monastery of Bangor, after preparing themselves by a three
days’ fast, came forth and posted themselves betwixt the city and the Northumbrian
army. Kneeling on the ground and extending their arms to heaven, the besought help of God.
The heathen Ethelfrith, observing them in that unusual attitude, asked who they were, and
what they did. Being told that they were praying, he answered, "Bear they arms or
not, they fight against us when they pray to their God." In the rout that followed,
twelve hundred of these British clerics were slain. The Scotch contingent, carrying arms
suffered less than the poor monks, who were butchered without striking a blow.1
A more fatal field for Aidan and the Scots
was that of Daegsastan, fought a few years later. It was a terrible blow to the Britons of
Cumbria and Strathclyde as well. The engagement was a bloody one; the allied host of
Briton and Scot was completely overthrown, and the power of Ethelfrith more firmly
established than ever, and his name made a word of terror both on the Forth and on the
Clyde. About the same time that Aidan sustained this defeat he received intelligence that
Columba was no more. The death of his faithful counsellor affected the king even more than
the loss of the battle. Unable to bear up under these accumulated misfortunes, he retired,
Fordun informs us, to Kintyre, and died about the age of eighty.
When Aidan went to the tomb, the line of the
Scottish kings becomes again only dimly traceable. But if the royal house falls into the
background, the Institution of Iona, though Columba was now in the grave, comes to the
front, and for a full century after the death of its founder, stands full in view, shining
with a light undimmed, and working on the country with power undiminished.
Iona was the heart of Caledonia. It was the
nurse of the nation. It met the successive generations of Scotchmen, as they stepped upon
the stage, and taken them by the hand, lifted them up to a higher platform; and when the
sons succeeded their fathers, it started them on the higher level to which it had raised
their progenitors. Thus, storey on storey, as it were, it built up, steadily and solidly,
the social pyramid. As an illustration of the duality that is often observable in the
world’s affairs, at that very time an event of precisely the opposite significance
was taking place at the other extremity of the island. Augustine and his monks from Rome
were entering England (A.D. 597) by the very door by which Hengista and his warriors had
entered it a century before—the Island of Thanet. The pomp that marked the advent of
Augustine and his forty-one attendants is in striking contrast to the quiet and
unostentatious arrival of Columba and his twelve companions on the shores of Iona.
Preceded by a tall silver cross, on which was suspended an image of Christ, and chanting
their Latin hymns, the missionaries of Gregory marched in triumphal procession to the oak
beneath which Ethelbert, King of Kent, had appointed to receive them. The interview with
the pagan king, held in the open air, for fear of magic, resulted in the grant of the
ruinous chapel of Durovern for their worship. On the site of this old fabric, once a
church of the Britons, there stands at this day the stately pile of Canterbury. Despite
that these two occurrences are parted by the whole length of Britain, there is a close
relation betwixt them. Augustine and his monks stand over against Columba and his elders.
It may seem to be one and the same faith that is being planted at this epoch at the two
extremities of our island; and we do not deny that in this mission host there may have
been some sincere lovers of the Gospel honestly bent on the conversion of the pagan
Saxons. But this band comes from one who has begun to scatter tares in the field, and the
intentions and wishes of the sower, be they ever so earnest and good, cannot prevent the
seed flung from his hand bearing fruit after its kind. The moment when that seed is
deposited in the earth is not the time to prognosticate what will certainly come out of
it. We must wait till the tree has grown and its fruits have ripened, and then we shall be
able to judge betwixt seed and seed. When we unroll the sixth and the thirteenth
centuries, and hang up the two side by side, we find that it is a contrasted picture which
they exhibit. In the sixth century the legate of Pope Gregory is seen bowing low before
King Ethelbert, and accepting thankfully the gift of an old ruinous building for his
worship. In the thirteenth century it is King John who is seen kneeling in the dust before
the legate of Pope Innocent, and laying crown and kingdom at his feet. The seed planted in
the sixth century has become a tree in the thirteenth, and this is its fruit.
When we return to Iona, it is to experience a
surprise. Among the scholars, from many lands, seated at the feet of the elders, and
drinking in the doctrine of the sacred volume, is a pupil, of all others the last we
should have looked to find here. He is of royal lineage, but not more distinguished by
birth than he is for his loving disposition, his diligence, his reverence for his
teachers, and his readiness to share with his fellows the labours of the field as well as
the studies of the school. Who is this youth? He is the son of the cruel, ambitious and
blood-thirsty King of Northumbria, the pagan Ethelfrith. Ethelfrith has been slain in
battle in 6l7. Edwin has seized his throne and kingdom; his children, chased from their
native land, have found asylum among the Scots, and the youth before us is Oswald, the
eldest son of the fallen monarch. We shall again meet him. Meanwhile Edwin, whom we now
behold on the throne of Ethelfrith, gave a new glory to the English race. His success in
war raised Northumbria to the first rank in the Heptarchy, and made its sovereign overlord
of its seven kingdoms. He displayed not less genius in governing than bravery in fighting.
He made security and quiet prevail from end to end of his realm, which reached from Kent
to the shores of the Forth, where he has left a monument of his reign in a city that bears
his name, and is now the capital of Scotland.
Ethelbert, King of Kent, gave Edwin his
daughter to wife. With his bride came Paulinus, one of the missionaries of Augustine,
"whose talk, stooping form, slender aquiline nose, and black hair, falling round a
thin, worn face, were long remembered in the North."2 There followed
frequent discussions at court betwixt the two faiths—that of Woden, and that of Rome.
These discussions resulted in the baptism of Edwin. The conversion of the King of
Northumbria woke up the slumbering zeal of the worshippers of Thor. A strong reaction set
in on the side of the old paganism. The converts of Augustine, though somewhat numerous,
had not strength to stem the tide. Augustine was now dead, and of the bishops whom he had
appointed to carry on his mission in England, all fled save one, leaving their flocks to
face the gathering storm as best they could. Penda, the pagan King of Mercia, stood forth
as the champion of the Thunderer, his zeal for his ancestral gods being quickened,
doubtless, by the prospect of throwing off the lordship of Edwin and recovering the
independence of his kingdom. The quarrel soon came to the battle-field. The two armies met
at Hatfield, A.D. 633. Edwin was slain in the fight, and victory remained with Penda.
Tidings soon reached Oswald, the son of
Ethelfrith, in the quiet retreat of Iona, of what had happened on the battlefield of
Hatfield. The young scholar had given his heart to his Savious by a real conversion. All
the more was he prepared for the task to which the fall of Edwin summoned him. He panted
to kindle in Northumbria the fire that burned at Iona, but in order to this he must first
seat himself on the throne of his ancestors. Inheriting the courage though not the
paganism of his father Ethelfrith, he set out for his native land, and gathering round him
a small but resolute band of Northumbrians, he began the struggle for the throne. The
distractions into which Northumbria had been thrown by the fall of Edwin favoured his
enterprise. Planting with his own hands the Cross as his standard on the field on which
the decisive battle was about to be fought, and kneeling with his soldiers in prayer
before beginning the fight, he joined battle with the enemy, and when it was ended he
found himself master of the field and of the throne of Northumbria (A.D. 634).
Oswald’s reign of nine years was a glorious one. To the bravery of his father
Ethelfrith, and the wisdom and magnanimity of Edwin, he added a grace which neither
possessed, but which alone gives the consummating touch to character—genuine piety.
Northumbria speedily rose to the pre-eminence it held under Edwin in the new England.
We have seen that it was good for Oswald
that, instead of being on the throne of Northumbria, he was sitting all these years at the
feet of the elders of Iona. We are now to see that it was good also for his subjects. A
little space sufficed to allay the tumults amid which he had ascended the throne, and then
Oswald turned to what he meant should be the great labour of his life, and the crowning
glory of his reign. He longed to communicate to his people the knowledge which had
illuminated his own mind. The bulk of the Northumbrians were still worshippers of Thor.
The Christianity which Gregory had sent them through Augustine, had not power in it to
cast out their pagan beliefs, and dethrone their ancestral deities. Oswald turned to the
north for a Christianity drawn from an apostolic source and instinct with Divine fire. He
sent to the elders of Iona, begging them to send a missionary to preach the Gospel to his
subjects. They sent him a brother of the name of Corman. The choice was no a happy one.
Corman was an austere man, who would reap before he had well sowed. He soon returned,
saying that so barbarous and stubborn a people were not to be converted. "Was it milk
or strong meat you gave them?" enquired a young brother sitting near, and conveying
by the question as much reproof as a sweet and gracious voice could express. All eyes were
turned on the questioner.
Brother, you must go to the pagans of
Northumbria," said they all at the same moment. Aidan, for so was his name, joyfully
accepted the mission. He was straightway appointed to the charge, Bede tells us, adding,
that "Segenius, abbot and presbyter, presided at his ordination.3
Bishop Aidan, as Bede called him, whom we now
see ordained by Presbyter Segenius, and sent to King Oswald, had a wide diocese. He had
all Northumbria, and as much beyond as he could overtake. But a fellow-labourer came to
his side in the cultivation of this large field; and that fellow-labourer was no less than
the King of Northumbria. Oswald and Aidan made their missionary tours in company, the
missionary preaching and the king acting as interpreter.4 Never was there a
more beautiful exemplification of the fine saying of Lord Bacon, "Kings are the
shepherds of their people." Ultimately there arose a second Iona on the coast of
Northumberland, in the Monastery of Lindisfarne, or Holy Island. The missionaries that
issued from it, the lands they visited, chasing before them the pagan darkness, and
kindling the light of the Christian revelation, belong to the Celtic evangelisation of the
seventh and eighth centuries, which will find a place farther on.
There was peace betwixt Northumbria and
Scotland all the days of Oswald. That noble and gracious monarch was too sensible of what
he owed to the elders of Iona, in sheltering his youth and opening to him the springs of
Divine knowledge, ever to think of invading their country. But when Oswald was succeeded
on the throne by his brother Oswy, the relations betwixt the two nations began to be
strained. The preponderating power of Northumbria pressed heavily upon all its neighbours,
the Scots and Picts included. The latter wished to recover from the Northumbrian monarch
the Pictish provinces on the south of the Forth, though they refrained from pressing their
demands to open rupture. But religious affronts came to embitter the feeling growing out
of political wrongs. Wilfrid, a young Northumbrian, educated at Rome, and a zealous
devotee of the Latin rite, appeared at the court of Oswy, and began to proselytise in the
interests of the Pontiff. Crafty and ambitious, expert alike at planning an intrigue or
conducting a controversy, he succeeded, after several conferences and disputations, the
famous Synod of Whitby among the rest (664), in inducing the king and his court to
renounce their allegiance to the church of Iona and transfer it to the Bishop of Rome.5
As the first fruits of Oswy’s perversion, the Scotch missionaries were driven out of
his dominions. By this time Aidan was dead; but Colman and Finan had been sent in his room
from the Presbyters of the Western seas. The enforced return of the missionaries to their
own country was felt as an affront by the Picts and Scots, and intensified the feelings
rankling in their hearts, and engendered by other causes. Nevertheless, during the
lifetime of Oswy, the peace remained unbroken. At this period a plague desolated all
Europe, "such as has never been recorded by the most ancient historians’; The
Scots and Picts alone are said to have escaped."6
Oswy dying in 670, he was succeeded on the
throne by Egfrid, and now the storm which had lowered so long burst. With "the doves
of Iona peace would seem to have taken flight from the realm of Northumbria. The reign of
the new king was little else than a continual successions of wars in the midst of which
Rome worked unceasingly to consolidate in England her ecclesiastical supremacy, ever the
foundation of her political dominancy. First, the Scots and Picts broke in to regain their
independence, but the attempt was premature. Next Egfrid turned westward, invaded
Galloway, and drive the Britons out of Cumbria, annexing the district, of which Carlisle
was the chief city, to the dominions of Northumbria, and enriching the Monastery of
Lindisfarne, from which the Columban missionaries had already been expelled, with part of
the spoils. His success in arms having brought him to the shores of the western sea,
Egfrid crossed the Channel and invaded Ireland. The Irish of the day were cultivating, not
arms, but letters, especially Divine letters. They were reaping the harvest which Patrick
had sowed, and their schools were the glory of their country, and the light of Europe. But
their church was not of Roman planting, and their nation found no favour in the eyes of
the Northumbrian king. He ravage their sea-board, and would have carried his ruthless
devastations into the interior had not the peaceful Irish, stung into sudden passion,
taken arms and driven him out of their country. He next turned northward on an expedition
from which he was never to return. At the head of a mighty army he crossed the Forth. The
Picts pursued the same strategy to entrap Egrid by which their ancestors had baffled
Agricola. They drew him, by a feigned retreat, on through Fife, and across the Tay, and
into Angus, luring him nearer and nearer the mountains. Pursuing a flying foe, as he
believed, he marched on to the spot where the Pictish army waited for him in ambush. The
place was Lin Garan, or Nectan’s Mere, a small lake in the parish of Dunnichen,
Forfarshire. The battle that ensued was decisive (685). Egfrid lay dead on the field, and
around him, in ghastly array, lay the corpses of his nobles and fighting men.7
A few fugitives, escaping from the field, carrying to Northumbria tidings which too sadly
realised their presentiment of evil which weighted upon the hearts of his subjects when
they saw their king setting out. The woes denounced by the Irish pastors, as he sailed
away from their ravaged coast, had in very deed fallen upon the unhappy monarch. The
consequences of the battle were important. The fetters of the Scots and Picts were
effectually broken. Never again, Nennius tells us, was Northumbrian tax-gatherer seen in
their territory. From the height of its fame as a military power, Northumbria fell never
more to regain its supremacy. The Northumbrian-Roman bishopric, which had been established
at Abercorn on the southern bank of the Forth, was swept away by the same victory which
wrested the Lotions from the scepter of the Northumbrian kings, and its bishop, Trumwine,
fled, panic stricken, on receipt of the news from Nekton’s Mere, nor halted till he
was within the walls of Whitely. This bishopric was an advanced post in the army of
aggression which was marching slowly upon Iona with intent of garrisoning the evangelical
citadel with Roman monks, or razing it to the ground. The lesser Institution of
Lindisfarne had been captured, and was now being worked in the interests of Rome; but the
victory was not complete so long as the parent institution retained its independence. Had
Egfrid triumphed at Nectan’s Mere, the extinction of Iona as an evangelical school
would have speedily followed: its teachers would have been driven out as those of
Lindsfarne had already been. But the defeat of the king gave it a respite, and for half a
century longer it remained a fountain of Divine knowledge to the Picts and Scots, and to
lands beyond the sea. The blood spilt on this Pictish moor was not in vain.
Necan’s Mere killed others besides those
whom the Picts slew on the field with the sword, and history sometimes imparts its
finishing touch to a national disaster by singling out an individual woe. At the time of
the battle the good Cuthbert was bishop at Lindisfarne, or Holy Island, and waiting
trembling for news from the battlefield. When tidings came that king and army lay cold on
that fatal moor, the aged Cuthbert sickened and died. The circumstances of his last days
have a deep pathos. Cuthbert was born at the southern foot of the Lammermoors. Meditative
from childhood, when he grew up he entered the Monastery of Melrose, a branch of that of
Iona. Daily he wandered by the banks of the Tweed and the Teviot, instructing all he met,
whether young or old, in the truths of Holy Writ. He climbed the hills and talked with the
shepherds, as they tended their flocks amid the Cheviots; he crossed the wide moors,
where the silence seem holy, and entered the lonely huts with the message of life. The
flame of his sanctity spread through all the regions. Happy would it have been for
Cuthbert if his last years had been passed amid these peaceful scenes, and in the pursuit
of these pious labours. But it was fated to be otherwise. King Oswy, as we have seen, at
the Council of Whitby, declared in favour of Latin Christianity. The Columban monks were
expelled from Holy Island. "Icabod" was written upon the walls of the monastery.
And now the question came to be, where could one be found of so great repute for piety,
that his appointment as Bishop of Lindisfarne would bring back the glory that had
departed. Cuthbert was sought out and installed in the office. Disgusted with the
atmosphere of intrigue and selfishness which he here breathed, he fled from the monastery
and built himself a hermitage on the mainland. He was dragged from his retreat, and
brought back to his post in the island. He had not long returned till the crushing news of
the death of the king at Nectan’s Mere, and the consequent distractions of
Northumbria, came upon him and broke his heart. He retired to his hermitage on the
mainland to die. They who watched at his dying bed agreed to notify by signal to the monks
on the island the moment of his departure. They would place a candle in the window of the
hut in which he lay. One of the brotherhood, stationed on the tower of the monastery,
remained on the outlook. At last the eventful moment came. Peacefully Cuthbert drew his
last breath. The faithful attendant by his bedside rushed to the window with a
light. The pale gleam, carried the fatal tidings, shot across the narrow belt of
the sea that parted the island from the mainland. It was caught by the watchful eye of the
monk on the tower. Hurrying down to the chapel, where his brethren were assembled, he
announced to them that their bishop was no more, just as it happened to them to be
chanting, with dirge-like voices, the mournful words of the sixtieth Psalm, "O God,
thou has cast us off, thou has scattered us, thou hast been displeased. Thou
has shewed thy people hard things, thou hast made us to drink the wine of
astonishment."
FOOTNOTES
1. Extinctos in ea pugna ferunt de his
qui ad orandum venerunt viros circiter mille ducentos.—Beda, lib. ii. cap. 2
2. Green, History of the English People,
p, 19, Lond. 1875.
3. Aydanus accepto gradu episcopatus quo
tempore eodem monasterio Segenius abbas et presbyuter praefuit.—Beda, lib. iii. cap.
v.
4. Beda, lib. iii. cap. 3.
5. Wilkins, Concilia, p. 37; Beda,
lib. iii. cap. 25.
6. Buchan., Hist., lib. v. cap. 55.
7. Buchan., Hist. of Scot., lib. v.
cap. 56; Robertson, Early Kings of Scotland, vol. i. p. 12. |
