Celtic Scotland (Volume 2); A History of Ancient Alban (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: who they were and whence they came, they replied,' We are Irish, dwelling at the very ends of the earth. We be men who receive naught beyond the doctrine of the evangelists and apostles. The Catholic faith, as it was first delivered by the successors of the holy apostles, is still maintained among us with unchanged fidelity;' and their leader gave the following account of himself,' I am a Scottish pilgrim, and my speech and actions correspond to my name, which is in Hebrew Jonah, in Greek Peristera, and in Latin Columba, a dove.'i0 In this guise they appeared before the people, addressing them everywhere with the whole power of their native eloquence. Some learned the language of the country. The rest employed an interpreter when they preached before the laity. To ecclesiastics they spoke the common language of the Latin Church. Their leader, Columbanus, was a man of commanding presence and powerful eloquence, and endowed with a determination of character and intensity of purpose which influenced, either favourably or the reverse, every one with whom he came in contact. From the kings he soon obtained permission to settle in their territories and to erect monasteries; and two monastic establishments soon arose within the recesses of the Vosges mountains, which now divide Alsace from Francethose of Luxeuil and Fontaines, to which the youth of the country flocked in numbers for instruction, or for training as monks. They had not been long established there when the Contro- Gaulish clergy became aware that in the new monasteries regarding the festival of Easter was occasionally celebrated on a different Sunday from that observed by the Eoman Church, i0 Columbanus in Epist. to Pope He calls himself 'perigrinus Scotus,' Boniface IV., says'Nos enimSS. and adds,'Sed talia s...