Columba

For other uses, see Columba (disambiguation). Not to be confused with Columbanus. "Saint Columba" redirects here. For other uses, see Saint Columba (disambiguation).

Saint

Columba
Saint Columba, Apostle to the Picts
Apostle of the Picts
Born7 December 521 AD
Gartan, Tyrconnell, Gaelic Ireland
Died9 June 597 AD (aged 75)
Iona, Dál Riata
Venerated inCatholic Church
Eastern Orthodox Church
Anglicanism
Lutheranism
Major shrineIona, Scotland
Feast9 June
AttributesMonk's robes, Celtic tonsure and crosier
PatronageDerry, floods, bookbinders, poets, Ireland and Scotland

Columba (/kəˈlʌmbəˌ ˈkɒlʌmbə/) or Colmcille[a] (7 December 521 – 9 June 597 AD) was an Irish abbot and missionary evangelist credited with spreading Christianity in what is today Scotland at the start of the Hiberno-Scottish mission.[3][4] He founded the important abbey on Iona, which became a dominant religious and political institution in the region for centuries.[5] He is the patron saint of Derry. He was highly regarded by both the Gaels of Dál Riata and the Picts, and is remembered today as a Catholic saint and one of the Twelve Apostles of Ireland.[6]

Columba studied under some of Ireland's most prominent church figures and founded several monasteries in the country. Around 563 AD he and his twelve companions crossed to Dunaverty near Southend, Argyll, in Kintyre before settling in Iona in Scotland, then part of the Ulster kingdom of Dál Riata, where they founded a new abbey as a base for spreading Celtic Christianity among the pagan Northern Pictish kingdoms.[7][8] He remained active in Irish politics, though he spent most of the remainder of his life in Scotland. Three surviving early-medieval Latin hymns are attributed to him.[4]

  1. ^ Kenyon, Sherrilyn (2005), The Writer's Digest character naming sourcebook, Writer's Digest Books, p. 358, ISBN 9781582976495, archived from the original on 30 April 2016, retrieved 16 October 2015.
  2. ^ Columba (PDF) (in Norwegian), NO: Keltiskfromhet, archived (PDF) from the original on 19 October 2013, retrieved 30 August 2009
  3. ^ Edmonds, Columba (1913). "St. Columba, Abbot of Iona" . Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 4.
  4. ^ a b Quiggin, Edmund Crosby (1911). "Columba, Saint" . In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 6 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 737.
  5. ^ MacDonald, Aidan D. S. (2013) Iona and the Shrine of Columba, c.800-1200, CORA, University College Cork: Cork Open Research Archive, https://hdl.handle.net/10468/15058
  6. ^ Gratton-Flood, W.H. (1907). "Twelve Apostles of Erin" . Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 1.
  7. ^ Charles-Edwards 2000, p. 303.
  8. ^ Wagner & Konstam 2012, p. 14: states the Northern Pictish nations were still pagan while the southern Pictish kingdoms were Catholic


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