IONA.
... While visiting his old
monastic master, Finian,
88
Columba found means to
make a clandestine copy of the Abbot’s Psalter, by shutting
himself up in the church at night, lighting his nocturnal work
by the miraculous light which escaped from his left hand while
he wrote with the right. The old Abbot discovered what was going
on, but dissembled his knowledge till the transcription was
completed from cover to cover. Then, indignant at what he
thought a theft, Finian claimed the copy, on the ground that a
copy made without permission belongs by right to the owner of
the original, seeing that the transcription is the son of the
original book. Columba was not the man to submit quietly to the
conclusion of such an argument; and the dispute was accordingly
referred to the King in his palace at Tara. He decided against
Columba, giving his judgment in a phrase which has passed into a
proverb throughout Ireland: “To every cow her calf”, and
consequently, to every book its copy. Great was the irritation
of the worsted poetmonk, and he vowed revenge; still higher rose
his ire when a provincial prince who had sought refuge near his
person was put to death by the King. In his passionate vexation
Columba stirred up the North and West of Ireland against the
monarch of Tara, who was defeated in a battle at which Columba
was present. The manuscript which had been the object of this
strange conflict of copyright, was afterwards venerated as a
national palladium, and became the great clan relic of the
O’Donnells. For more than a thousand years it was carried with
them into battle; it still exists, and can be seen without
difficulty in the museum of the Royal Irish Academy.
Though he had been
successful in his unjust retaliation, Columba soon felt the full
force of retribution. At a synod held near Kells, he was accused
of having occasioned the shedding of innocent blood, and
sentence of excommunication was in his absence pronounced
against him. Thanks to the intervention of the Abbot Brendan,
this sentence was withdrawn when Columba appeared in person
before the synod; but he was charged to win to Christ by his
preaching as many pagan souls as the number of Christians who
had fallen in the battle of which he had been the occasion...
89
* HHC: Title added.
Dated 567 C.E.