Coluber

Coluber, a genus of non-venomous snakes, of almost world-wide distribution. It forms a type of the family Colubridæ, in which the common Ringed English Snake (Tropidonotus natrix) is also included. The Æsculapian Snake (Coluber æsculapii), so familiar from ancient times as a symbol of medicine, is the best known species. It is very common in Italy, is the species of the Schlangebad, and is widely distributed in Europe. It is of a predominantly brown colour, attains a length of 4 or 5 feet, and is readily tamed. All the members of the family are very typical, exhibiting few deviations from the general snake structure. See SNAKE.

Columba, St—called also ST COLUM-CILLE ('Columba of the Churches,') and ST COLM—was born (it is believed at Garton, County Donegal) in the north of Ireland, on 7th December 521. He was of high descent, his father Fedhlimidh, of the powerful tribe of the Cinel Conaill, being a kinsman of several of the princes then reigning in Ireland and in the west of Scotland; and his mother, Eithne, was also of royal blood. After studying under St Finnian at Moville on Strangford Lough, and under another St Finnian at Clonard (where he had as companions St Comgall, St Ciaran, and St Cainnech), he spent some time near Dublin; but in 546, when no more than twenty-five, he returned to the north and founded Derry, and, six or seven years afterwards, Durrow, the greatest of all his Irish monasteries. The belief that he had caused the bloody battle of Culdremhne in 561 led to his excommunication by an Irish ecclesiastical synod, and practically to exile from his native land.

Setting out in 563, when in his forty-second year, and accompanied by twelve disciples, he found a resting-place in the little island of Hy or Ioua, now better known as Iona (q.v.), or I Colum-cille, and having planted a monastery there, he set himself to the great work of his life, the conversion of the Pictish tribes beyond the Grampians. His missionary efforts were highly successful, but unfortu- nately very little is known of the way in which he effected his purpose. Bede speaks simply of his 'preaching and example.' Adamnan, extolling his gift of miracles, tells how the gates of the Pictish king's fort near Inverness burst open at his approach, and how, as he chanted the 45th Psalm, his voice was supernaturally strengthened so as to be heard like a thunder-peal above the din and clamour by which the Pictish magicians tried to silence his evening prayer under the walls of the Pictish palace. We get another glimpse of his missionary footsteps from the Book of Deer (q.v.), which records how 'Colum-cille and Drostan, the son of Cosreg, his disciple, came from Hy, as God had shown them, to Aberdour,' in Buchan; how 'Bede, a Pict, was then high-steward of Buchan, and gave them that town in freedom for evermore; ' how 'they came after that to another town, and it was pleasing to Colum-cille, for that it was full of God's grace; and he asked of the high-steward Bede that he would give it to him, but he gave it not; and, behold, a son of his took an illness, and he was all but dead, and the high-steward went to entreat the clerics that they would make prayer for his son that health might come to him; and he gave in offering to them from Cloch-in-Tiprat to Cloch-Pette-mic-Garnait; and they made the prayer, and health came to him.' In some such way as this St Columba and his disciples seem to have traversed the Pictish mainland, the Western Islands, and the Orkneys, establishing humble monasteries whose inmates ministered to the religious wants of the people. The parent house of Iona exercised supremacy not only over all those monasteries, but over all the monasteries that St Columba had built in Ireland, and over those that were founded by his disciples in the northern provinces of England. Thirty-four years appear to have been spent by St Columba in raising up and perfecting his ecclesiastical system in Scotland. But the labour did not so wholly engross him but that he found time for repeated voyages to Ireland, and for a visit to Glasgow, where St Kentigern or Mungo was restoring Christianity among the Welsh or British tribes of Cumbria and Strathclyde. The health of St Columba seems to have begun to fail in 593, but his life was prolonged till he reached his 76th year, when he breathed his last as he knelt before the altar of his church in Iona a little after midnight, between the 8th and 9th June 597. He was buried within the precinct of his monastery, and his bones—which were afterwards enshrined—the stone pillow on which he slept, his books, his pastoral staff, and other things which he had loved or used, were long held in great veneration.

Whether any original composition of St Columba's still survives is doubtful, though an Altus published by Dr Todd in the Liber Hymnorum, and republished by the Marquis of Bute in 1882, has been ascribed to him by unbroken tradition. Be this as it may, he was certainly eminent as a transcriber. Adamnan tells us that on the night before his death he was engaged on a transcript of the Psalter, and in the Annals of Clonmacnois it is stated that 'he (Columba) wrote three hundred books with his own hand . . . which books have a strange property, which is that if they or any of them had sunk to the bottom of the deepest waters they would not lose one letter, or sign, or character of them, which I have seen tried, partly by myself on that book of them which is at Dorowe.' The two existing specimens of St Columba's work, both preserved at Dublin, are the Book of Durrow just mentioned, and the Psalter known as the Cathac or Battler. This name it has received from the custom of bearing the relics of the ancient Celtic saints into battle as sacred victory-bringing ensigns. St Columba's crozier was also used in this way.

St Columba's character was very complex, but marked in all things by enthusiasm and earnestness. Warlike and aggressive by temper and descent, as well as from the spirit of the times, he was naturally more inclined to action than to melancholy, and yet he had a tendency to expatiate amid visions; and though his disposition was prevalently austere, he had frequent gleams of tenderness and kindness. 'Angelic in appearance,' says Adamnan, 'graceful in speech, holy in work, with talents of the highest order and consummate prudence, he lived during thirty-four years an island soldier. He never could spend the space even of one hour without study, or prayer, or writing, or some other holy occupation. So incessantly was he engaged night and day in the unwearied exercises of fasting and watching, that the burden of each of these austerities would seem beyond the power of all human endurance. And still in all these he was beloved by all; for a holy joy ever beaming on his face revealed the joy and gladness with which the Holy Spirit filled his inmost soul.'

In the ecclesiastical system of St Columba as in that of Ireland, the church was essentially monastic with 'neither a territorial episcopacy nor anything like presbyterian parity, but the same anomalous position of the episcopal order. The bishops were under the monastic rule, and as such were in respect of jurisdiction subject to the abbot, even though a presbyter, as the head of the monastery;' but while the power usually reserved to the episcopate was thus transferred to the abbatial office, 'the episcopal orders were fully recognised as constituting a grade superior to that of the presbyters,' and as carrying with them the functions of ordination and celebration of the eucharist according to the episcopal rite. St Columba himself, as well as his followers generally till the year 716, kept Easter on a different day, and shaved their heads after another fashion than obtained in other parts of Western Christendom. But with these exceptions, their creed and rites appear to have been substantially the same.

The chief authority for the life of St Columba is the account written by St Adamnan (q.v.), who was abbot of Iona from 679 to 704, and who incorporated in his work an earlier life by Cuimne (abbot, 657-669). Of this Dr Reeves published an edition in 1857 for the Bannatyne Club, re-issued in the 'Scottish Historians' series (1874); and there is one by J. T. Fowler (1894). See also Smith's Life of St Columba (Edin. 1798); Lanigan's Ecclesiastical History of Ireland (1822); Father Innes's History of Scotland (Spalding Club, 1853); Montalembert's Monks of the West, vol. iii.; Forbes's Kalendars of Scottish Saints (Edin. 1872); and Skene's Celtic Scotland, vol. ii. (Edin. 1877).