Montalembert's entire life. He has put into it his Benedictine erudition, his passionate love for truth, the charming and dramatic power of his style in the narration of events, his inimitable talent for painting in words the portraits of those famous characters whom he wishes to present to the eye of the reader; and their traits remain ineffaceably stamped on the mind. Especially does the soul of the true Christian breathe on every page of the volumes. For more than forty years their author bent piously over those austere forms of the Benedictine monks of the early ages to ask them the secret of their lives, of their virtues, of their influence on their country and their age. He has studied them with that infallible instinct of faith which had disclosed to him a hidden treasure in those old monastic ruins, and in those dusty and unexplored monuments of their contemporary literature; the treasure, namely, of the influence of the church acting on the barbarians through the monks. This is the leading idea of the whole work. It would be a mistake to expect, under the title of Monks of the West, a history of mere asceticism, or a species of continuation of the Lives of the Fathers of the Desert. Writers no longer treat, as that work does, the lives of the saints. Readers are not satisfied with the simple account of the virtues practised or the number of miracles performed by the canonized children of the church. Modern men want to look into the depths of a saint's soul; to know what kind of a human heart throbbed in his bosom, and how far he participated in the thoughts and feelings of ordinary human nature. The circumstances in which he lived and studied, the opinions formed of him by his contemporaries, are weighed, and the traces left by his sanctity or genius on the manners and institu tions of his country are closely considered. The history of The Monks of the West is nothing else than a history of civilization through monastic causes. The third, fourth, and fifth volumes just published contain a complete, profound, exact, and beautiful account of the conversion of Great Britain to Catholicity. No work could be more interesting, not only to Englishmen, but to all who speak the English tongue. Hence, but a few months after the French edition of these bulky volumes, an English translation of them was given to the public, and is now well known and becoming justly wide-spread in the United States. Irish and Anglo-Saxons, Americans by birth or by adoption, Catholics and Protestants, there is not one of us who is not interested in a work which tells us from whom, and how, we have inherited our Christian faith. Even Germans will learn in the perusal of these volumes their religious origin; for it was from the British isles that the apostles of Germany went forth to their labors. The English language is the most universally spoken to-day; the sceptre of Britain rules an empire greater than that of Alexander or of any of the Cæsars. The latest statistics tell us that there are one hundred and seventy-four millions of British subjects or vassals. The two Indies, vast Australia, and the islands of the Pacific Ocean belong mostly to the Anglo-Saxon race, and feel its influence. But what are all those great conquests compared to these once British colonies, now called North America? Who can foresee the height to which may reach this vigorous graft, cut from the old oak, invigorated by the virgin soil of the new world, and which already spreads its shade over immense latitudes, and which promises to be the largest and most powerful country the memory of the monastic cities ever seen? Is it not therefore useful of the Thebaid, he was the chief and interesting to study the religious founder, though hardly twenty-nine. origin of this extraordinary race? Is years old, of a multitude of religious there an American in heart, or by houses. More than thirty-seven in birth, who is not bound to know the Ireland claim him as their founder. history of those to whom this privi- He was a poet of great renown, and leged race owes its having received a musician skilled in singing that in so large a measure the three funda- national poetry of Erin, which so inmental bases of all grandeur and timately harmonizes with Catholic stability in nations: the spirit of faith. He lived in fraternal union liberty, the family spirit, and the with the other poets of his country, spirit of religion? with those famous bards, whom he was afterward to protect and save from their enemies. Besides being a great traveller, like the most of the Irish saints and monks whose memory has been preserved by history, he had another passion for manuscripts. This passion had results which decided his destiny. Having shut himself up at night in a church, where he discovered the psalter of the Abbot Finnian, Columba found means to make a clandestine copy of it. Finnian complained of it as a theft. The case was brought to the chief monarch of Ireland, who decided against Columba. The copyist protested; anathematized the king, and raised against him in revolt the north and west of Hibernia. Columba's party conquered, and the recovered psalter, called the Psalter of Battles, became the national relic of the clan O'Donnell. This psalter still exists, to the great joy of the erudite patriots of Ireland. The history of the conversion of England by the monks answers all these questions. It comprises the apostleship of the Irish, and of the Roman and Anglo-Saxon elements during the sixth and seventh centuries. The Irish or Celtic portion of the history centres in St. Columba, whose majestic form towers above his age, illustrated by his virtues and influenced by his genius. The Roman element is represented by the monk Augustine, the first apostle of the Anglo-Saxons. Lastly, this race itself enters on the missionary career, and sends out as its first apostle a great man and a great saint, the monk Wilfrid, whose moral beauty of character rivals that of St. Columba. Shortly after these, as it were following in their shadow, walks the admirable and gentle Venerable Bede, the first English historian, the learned encyclopedist, alike the honor and glory of his countrymen, and of the learned of all nations. We cannot resist the pleasure of giving, though it be but very incomplete and pale, a sketch of the great monk of Clonard, the apostle of Caledonia, St. Columba.* Sprung from the noble race of O'Niall, which ruled Ireland during six centuries, educated at Clonard, in one of those immense monasteries which recalled The Catholic Publication Society will soon pub lish The Life of St. Columba, as given in the third volume of The Monks of the West. Nevertheless, as Christian blood. had flowed for a comparative trifle, and through the fault of a monk, a synod was convened and Columba was excommunicated. He succeeded in having the sentence cancelled; but he was commanded to gain to God, by his preaching, as many souls as he had destroyed Christians in the battle of Cooldrewny. To this injunction his confessor added the hardest of penances for a soul so passionately attached, as was that of Columba, to his country and his friends. The penitent was compelled to exile himself from Ireland for ever. Columba submitted. Twelve of his disciples refused to leave him, and embarking with them on one of those large osier, hide-covered boats which the Celtic peoples were accustomed to use in navigation, he landed on an island called Oronsay. He ascended a hill near the shore, and looking toward the south, perceived that he could still see the Irish coast. He reëmbarked immediately, and sailed in quest of a more distant isle, from which his native land should be no longer visible. He at last touched the small desert island of Iona, and chose for his abode this unknown rock, which he has made a partaker of his own immortality. We should read in M. de Montalembert's work the eloquent description of the Hebrides, and of that sandy and sterile shore of Iona, rendered glorious by so many virtues. "We were now treading,' wrote Dr. Johnson, the great moralist of the eigh teenth century, that illustrious island which was once the luminary of the Caledonian regions, whence savage clans and roving barbarians derived the benefits of knowledge and the blessings of religion. To abstract the mind from all local emotion would be impossible if it were endeavored, and would be foolish if it were possible.'* And he recited with enthusiasm those verses from Goldsmith's Traveller: Stern o'er each bosom reason holds her state, With daring aims irregularly great. Pride in their port, defiance in their eye, I see the lords of human kind pass by; Intent on high designs, a thoughtful band, By forms unfashioned, fresh from nature's hand. Fierce in their native hardiness of soul, True to imagined right, above control, While even the peasant boasts these rights to scan, And learns to venerate himself as man.' "t Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland. By Dr. Johnson. t The Monks of the West, vol. iv. book xi. ch. 2. Grace had accomplished its work. Arrived at Iona, Columba, one of the most high-spirited and passionate of the Gaëls of Hibernia, became a most humble penitent, a pattern of mortification to the monks, the most gentle of friends, and a most tender father. Having no other cell than a log cabin for seventy-six years, he slept in it on the bare ground, with a stone for his pillow. This hut was his oratory and library, into which, after working all day in the fields like the lowest of the brothers, he entered to meditate on the Holy Scripture and multiply copies of the sacred text. He is supposed to have transcribed with his own hand three hundred copies of the gospels. Devoted to his expiatory mission, he commenced by evangelizing the Dalriadian Scots, an Irish colony formed between the Picts of the north and the Britons of the south. This colony was on the western coast of Caledonia and in the neighboring islands, at the north of the mouth of the Clyde, in that tract of country afterward known by the name of Argyle. But these colonists were his countrymen. Soon he was called to lay hands on the head of their chief, thus inaugurating not only a new royalty, but also a new rite, which afterward became the most august solemnity in the life of Christian nations. This consecration of the Scot Aidan as King, by Columba, is the first authentic instance of the kind in the west. Later, crossing the Grampian hills, at the foot of which the victorious legions of Agricola stopped, and venturing in a frail skiff on Loch-Ness and the river which flows from it, he confronted those terrible Picts, the most deprav ed and ferocious of the barbarians, disputing, through an interpreter, with the Druids, thus attacked in their last retreat. He returned of ten to these savages, so that he finished, before his death, the conversion of the whole nation, dotting with churches and sanctuaries their forests, defiles, inaccessible mountains, their wild fens and their sparsely peopled isles. The vestiges of fifty-three of those churches are still traceable in modern Scotland, and even the most enlightened Protestant judges of the Scottish bench attribute the very ancient division of parishes in Scotland to the missionary monk of sacred Iona. He never forgot, in the midst of his labors, his beloved Ireland. He had for her all the tender passion of the exile; a passion which let itself out in his songs, full of a charming melancholy. "Better to die in pure Ireland, than to live for ever here in Albania."* To this cry of despair succeed more plaintive notes breathing resignation. In one of his elegies, he regrets not being able to sail once more on the lakes and gulfs of his fatherland, nor to listen to the song of the swans with his friend Comgall. He mourns especially his having to leave Erin through his own fault, on account of the blood shed in the battles which he had provoked. He envies his friend Cormac, who can return to his dear monastery of Durrow, to hearken there to the murmur of the winds among the oaks, and drink in the song of the blackbird and the cuckoo. As for him, Columba, everything in Ireland is dear to him, except the rulers that govern it! In another poem still more characteristic, he exclaims: "Oh! what delight to glide over the foam-crested waves of the sea, and see the breakers roll on the sandy beaches of Ireland! Oh! how swiftly my bark would bound over the waters, if its prow were turned toward my grove of oaks in Ireland! But the Vol. iii. book xi. ch. 2. noble sea must only bear me for ever toward Albania, the gloomy land of the raven. My feet repose in my skiff, but my sad heart ever bleeds. From the deck of my boat I cast my eyes over the billows, and the big tears stand in my moistened gray eyes, when I look toward Erin; toward Erin, where the birds sing so melodiously, and where the priests sing like the birds; where the young men are so gentle, and the old so wise; the nobles so illustrious and handsome, and the women so fair to wed. . . Young navigator, carry with thee my woes, bear them to Comgall the immortal. Bear with thee, noble youth, my prayer and my blessing: one half for Ireland; that she may receive seven-fold blessings! and the other half for Albania. Carry my benediction across the sea; carry it toward the west. My heart is broken within my bosom; if sudden death should befall me, it would be through my great love for the Gaels." An opportunity was afforded him of seeing once more this beloved land of which he sang with such ardent enthusiasm. He had to accompany the king of the Dalriadians, whom he had just consecrated, to meet the supreme monarch of Ireland and other Irish princes and chiefs assembled in parliament at Drumkeath. There was question of recognizing the independence of the new Scottish royalty, hitherto the vassal and tributary of Erin. But as the exile had made a vow never again in this life to behold the men and women of Erin, he appeared in the national assembly with his eyes blindfolded, and his monk's cowl drawn over the bandage. Columba was listened to as an oracle in the parliament of Drumkeath. He not only obtained the complete emancipation of the Dalriadian colony, but he also Vol. iii. book xi. ch. 2. saved the order of the bards, whose proscription had been demanded by the king of Ireland. They were for ever won over to Christianity by the holy monk, and, transformed into minstrels, continued for the future to be the most efficacious propagators of the spirit of patriotism, the indomitable prophets of national independence, and the faithful champions of catholic faith. Arrived at the term of his career, the servant of God spent himself in vigils, fastings, and formidable macerations of the flesh. He knew in advance and predicted with certainty the day and the very hour when he should pass to a better life; and he made all things ready for his departure. He went to take leave of the monks who worked in the fields, in the only fertile portion of the island of Iona, on the western coast. He wished to visit and bless the granary of the community. He blessed the old white horse which used to carry from the sheep-fold of the monastery the milk which was consumed daily by the brothers. Having done this, he was barely able to ascend an eminence from which the whole island and monastery were visible, and from this elevated position he extended his hands and pronounced on the sanctuary which he had founded a prophetic benediction. "This little spot, so low and so narrow, will be greatly honored, not only by the kings and people of Scotland, but also by foreign chiefs and barbarous nations; it will be even venerated by the saints of other churches." He then descended to the monastery, 'entered his cell, and applied himself to his work for the last time. He was at that time busied in transcribing the psalter. At the thirty-third psalm, and the verse, "Inquirentes autem Dominum non deficient omni bono, he ceased and said: "Here I must finish; Baithan will write the rest." After this he went to the church to assist at the vigils of Sunday; then returning to his cell, he sat down on the cold stones which had been his bed and pillow for over seventy years. There he entrusted his solitary companion with a last message for the community. This done, he never spoke more. But no sooner had the midnight bell tolled for matins, than he ran faster than the other monks to the church. His companion found him lying before the altar, and raising his head, placed it on his knees. The whole community soon arrrived with lights. At the sight of their father dying, all wept. The abbot opened his eyes once more, looking around on all with a serene and joyous expression. Then, assisted by his companion, Columba lifted as well as he could his right hand, and silently blessed the whole choir of monks. His hands fell powerless to his sides, and he breathed his last. What a scene! Such were the life and death of this great man and great saint. After having loved Ireland so much, he could repose nowhere more appropriately than in her sacred soil. His body was transported thither to the monastery of Down, and buried between the mortal remains of St. Patrick and St. Bridget. three names, for the future inseparable, became interwoven with the history and traditions, and engraved in the worship and on the memory, the Irish people. Thus those of Such were the men to whom Ireland owed not only her indestructible faith, but also her intellectual and moral civilization. It is not sufficiently known that Ireland in the "They that seek the Lord shall not be deprived of any good." Ps. xxxiii. 11. |