Page 93 - Demo

Chapter three 93
victim of the day, it rushed towards the man, lailing wildly. But just as it was about to strike, Colm Cille strode forward, raised his hand in the air and made the sign of the cross, before commanding the stunned creature to return to its lair beneath the dark waters: something it quickly did! This story echoes many Celtic beliefs surrounding ‘water horses’ and demons being banished by holy men.
Colm Cille
(6th century- translated from Irish Gaelic by John Montague) On some island I long to be,
A rocky promontory, looking on
The coiling surface of the sea
To see the waves, crest on crest
Of the great shining ocean, composing A hymn to the creator, without rest
Following the death of Colmcille, a monk named Augustine, later St. Augustine, was sent by Pope Gregory to convert the remaining pagans of England to Christianity. Augus- tine landed in Kent, but his mission made very slow progress and as a result, in 634, Oswald King of Northumbria, who was himself a Christian and had been educated at Iona, invited Aodan, later St Aodan, an Irish monk, along with several other Irish monks from Iona to found a monastery on the rocky tidal island of Lindisfarne, of the north-east coast of Eng- land.
For the next thirty years 634-664, Lindisfarne was the most powerful centre of Christian religious inluence in England. Irish bishops and monks preached there and from this special place they made converts all over the English Midlands and East Anglia, and their message spread south as far as Glastonbury and the river Thames. Aodan was succeeded at Lindis- farne by two Irishmen who would later become saints, Finan, and afterwards by Colmán, the Irish representative at the previously referenced Synod of Whitby in 664. As already mentioned, several diferences existed between the Celtic Irish Church and Rome, the most serious of which was the method of ixing the date of Easter. So when the Synod ruled against the methods used by the Irish monks, many made up their minds to leave England, including Colmán and his missionaries who departed Lindisfarne and returned to Ireland, settling irst at Inis Bó Finne-‘The Island of Inishboin,’ of the Mayo coast.