and back of the head. There have been several theories of the symbolic meaning of the tonsure; and if the prevailing theory, that it symbolised the crown of thorns, be the true one, the Columbites and their Irish brethren had certainly misunderstood it. The Abbot Ceolfrid, in his letter to the king of the Picts, presently to be noticed, explains this symbolisation in an appropriate and attractive manner. The tonsure is a crown, but it is a crown symbolical of humility and suffering of humility, as it removes the honours from the head, and exposes it shaven to the scorn of the thoughtless; of humility and suffering together, as it represents the crown of thorns around the Saviour's head. The Columbite tonsure, he said, might look like a crown in front, but behold it from the side, how grotesque it then became. In discussing the matter with St Adamnan, Ceolfrid had recourse to arguments more of this world, asserting boldly that the Columbites had adopted the tonsure of Simon Magus.1 Another method of debasing it was the assertion that it had been introduced by the swineherd of the pagan king who resisted the missionary labours of St Patrick. Adamnan yielded to the arguments of the English ecclesiastics on both the objects of controversy, the observance of Easter and the tonsure, when he was on a visit, or perhaps a mission, to his old pupil Alfrid, king of Northumbria. He endeavoured to bring the brethren over whom he ruled to the same view, but in vain. If their monastic obedience was still as absolute as in the days of Columba, it did not include compliance on such matters of old traditional observance. Adamnan went to Ireland, where he was

1 Bede, v. 21. 2 Adamnan; Reeves's Notes, 351. 3 Bede, v. 15.

more successful, at least in the southern portion of the island. But soon afterwards the pressure of Catholic unity was brought to bear on Iona. The letter of Ceolfrid, abbot of Jarrow, already referred to, was addressed to Naitan, king of the Picts, about the year 710; it occupies a considerable space in Bede's History, and may be profitably read by any one desirous of studying in full the grounds of the Catholic observance on both the disputed points, as set forth at the time when the schism was yet in existence.

We are told by Bede that King Naitan, to whom this state paper was addressed, was a studious man and an ardent seeker after Catholic truth, who had studied the matter for himself, and had come to a correct conclusion. He wished to be backed, however, by the high authority of the English ecclesiastics, and to be furnished by them with arguments sufficient to silence the gainsayers. As an inducement to give him earnest assistance in this matter, he expressed his wish to bring his dominions into general conformity with the Roman Apostolic Church, so far as the remoteness of his people from the Roman nation and language permitted. He desired, especially, that architects might be sent to him, who would build for him a church in the Roman manner, to be dedicated to St Peter. Hence the ample letter to the king of the Picts from the Abbot Ceolfrid.' We are told that it was translated into the Pictish language, and solemnly read to King Naitan and certain learned men.

The

1 In the preface, by Joseph Robertson, to the Statuta Ecclesiæ Scoticanæ, a suggestion is thrown out, that "the letter was written, probably by Bede's own hand, in an English monastery, in the name of the English abbot of Wearmouth and Jarrow," xvi.

sequel was, that the king accepted of the pontifical observance of Easter day and the tonsure, and decreed that it should be held among the clergy throughout his dominions.1 Had it not been that the object of this decree was to further Catholic unity as proclaimed from Rome, Bede would hardly have accepted it acquiescingly as he does, as coming from a competent authority on matters ecclesiastical.

It is a pity that there is hardly anything of a distinct kind on the other side to tell us how this decree was received. We can only see that there were difficulties. On the community of Iona itself it does not appear that the Pictish monarch felt himself entitled to enforce conformity. Near the period of Naitan's decree there are notices in the Irish annalists of children of Iona having been driven out of the Pictish dominion. The community of Iona conformed to the unity of the Church of Rome on both questions in the year 716. This is no doubt very close on the great letter and King Naitan's decree, yet it is significant that Bede records the conformity of Iona as a separate transaction, with a cause of its own. It was the work of Egbert, one of those favourites of his, whose zeal, piety, asceticism, and sacrifice of self to the great cause, he dwells on with affectionate earnestness. Egbert had devoted himself to a mission among the heathen Frisians and Danes on the Continent, when a friend and fellow-labourer in the cause gave him a message which he professed to have received from the lips of the Saviour. Its purport was

1 "Palam profiteor, vobisque qui adsidetis præsentibus protestor, quia hoc observare tempus Paschæ cum universa mea gente perpetuo volo ; hanc accipere debere tonsuram quam plenam esse rationis audimus, omnes qui in meo regno sunt clericos decerno," v. 21.

that Egbert was not to work among the heathen, but to bring into conformity the brotherhood of Iona, whose ploughs do not go straight. Through his persuasions Iona was brought to conformity both on the holding of Easter and on the tonsure in the year 716. There was great joy in the Anglo-Saxon churches on this event; and it was noted that while the Scots had communicated to them through holy Aidan the divine truth, so had they returned the gift by bringing their erring brethren to conformity with the rule of the Church.1

To enumerate all the religious houses, churches, and cells planted by the Columbite brethren and ruled from Iona, would make a tedious topographical list. The manner in which they spread one after another through the country has been exemplified in the achievements of Maelrubha and other subsidiary missionaries. Spreading over Scotland, the Columban Church met that of St Cuthbert at the Firth of Forth; for nearly what Iona was to the north of Scotland, St Cuthbert's establishment at Lindisfarne was to the north of England and the Lothians. For the rest of Scotland it has been well said that "the abbots of Iona were for many years in point of fact the primates of northern Scotland, and their monastery the centre of ecclesiastical government and religious enterprise."

"2

Evil days, however, were in store for this community of pious recluses. Nothing could have been better calculated to serve the purposes of the Norse sea-rovers than the collection of valuable movables which might belong to a religious house, easily accessible from the sea. They plundered Lindisfarne and such others as

1 Bede, b. iv. ch. 9, b. v. ch. 22.

2 Grub, Ecclesiastical History of Scotland, i. 69.

they could find near the coasts in England and Scotland, and thoroughly exhausted whatever was to be got along the Irish shores. Iona was, however, peculiarly in their way, and had no chance of toleration from them until they should be brought under the influence of Christianity. At a very early time this, the centre of ecclesiastical government in Scotland, was paralysed, but the parts of the system held together, and seem indeed to have been comforted and assisted by the powerful houses of the same brotherhood in Ireland. Adamnan is the last of the abbots of whom we have a distinct account, although, like the genealogy of an exiled royal house, the succession was kept up; and indeed some members of the order seem to have hung round their desolated abode, taking in the spirit of martyrdom the dangers and the hardships of such a lot. The traditions of the Church tell how the holy relics of St Columba were concealed in the island, and how in the year 825 Blaithmac suffered martyrdom, being slain by a party of the rovers because he would not give them access to the relics, or rather to the shrine containing those which were likely to be worth acquiring. A few years afterwards we hear of these relics being removedone portion to Kells, in the county of Meath, in Ireland, a spot rife with memorials and traditions of St Columba. The other portion was removed to Dunkeld, to which the ecclesiastical supremacy of Iona was virtually transferred in the middle of the ninth century. The chronicles make this the establishment of a bishopric there, which was for a time the primacy of Scotland. At all events, the community there set down was endowed by King Kenneth, and was in fact so well off, that the

1 See authorities in Lanigan, Eccles. History of Ireland, iii. 252. VOL. I.

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