No Bishop at Iona.

473

of that soul at the same time as he prayed for the safety of the companions of his voyage."*

No one of course could read this without taking from it the impression that Columba was a devout believer in purgatory, and was in the habit of praying for the repose of the souls of dead men. But when the case is sifted, it turns out that there is not one word of this in any of the ancient authorities; the sole witness referred to by the author is Manus O'Donnel, the sixteenth century writer, already so often named, who personally knew nothing of the matter, and who composed his work out of the trashy stories told by the peasantry, and from written sources of a very questionable kind. Unaware of the changes which a thousand years had wrought in the religious sentiments of the world, the old chieftain of Tyrconnel put feelings into the mind and words into the lips of Columba, of which the saint knew nothing, but which, had he lived in the sixteenth century, it would perhaps have been natural enough for him to entertain and express. It would be childish, however, in any man to accept such representations as historical.

Another very remarkable thing in the Church of Columba, is one to which the Count himself calls attention,† the absence of all territorial episcopacy. The abbot is supreme at Iona. All in the island are under him, and he is under none, either within the island or beyond it. No trace of a bishop residing there is discoverable during the lifetime of the Founder. One, indeed, is represented as visiting it incognito, and when his ecclesiastical rank is discovered, he is treated with respect, and the honour is devolved upon him of presiding at the public service, and dispensing the eucharist. Occasionally some strange bishop would arrive at the monastery on a visit to the abbot, and there is an instance of one being called upon in the monastery of a neighbouring island to perform the rite of ordination but the bishop of the Columba Church is a very humble personage indeed; his office and his personal character are his only recommendations: he is void alike of temporal rank, territorial power, and ecclesiastical jurisdiction. "Dioceses and parishes," as the Count truly observes, "were only constituted in the twelfth century," that is, six centuries after Columba. The bishop seldom makes his appearance in the pages of Adamnan, and when he does appear, he is overshadowed by the abbot; and the abbot at Iona, was, as every one knows, a simple presbyter only.

*

Farther, it is noteworthy that the original biographers of

Monks of the West," book ix., ch. vi., p. 221-22. ↑ Ibid. book ix. ch. viii. p. 281.

Ad. i. 44.

the saint, make no mention of the Roman Pontiff, or of the Roman Church, or of any ecclesiastical obedience due to the one or to the other by the Christians of Caledonia or Ireland. Bede himself was a warm partisan of the Romish customs and of the Romish Church, but he never leads his readers to suppose that the same could be said of Columba. Adamnan was himself an abbot of Iona, who succeeded the founder within a century from his death, and therefore was in circumstances to know the real facts of the case. In his work, he never names the Pope nor the Church of Rome. The Roman city is twice mentioned; in the one case it is barely named, in the other, speaking of the fame of Columba, he says it reached "the Roman city itself-the head of all cities." It was natural enough for an islander, inhabiting what might be called the Ultima Thule of Christendom, and personally unacquainted with the great cities of the East, to speak of Rome, even in its decline, as the first of cities-the capital of the world, without saying or thinking that he owed to it and its bishop any ecclesiastical obedience. If a man in New Zealand or Japan, with some geographical knowledge a little in advance of his countrymen, were to speak of London as the head of all cities, it would not follow from this that he considers himself bound to do spiritual homage to the Archbishop of Canterbury, There is no evidence that the thought of ecclesiastical fealty to any foreign, or even domestic ruler, ever entered the mind of Columba.

As to the Holy Scriptures, for "whose assiduous and profound study," a claim is put forward on behalf of the Primitive Church of Caledonia, the facts are these. Passages were constantly read in the public service; the psalter was sung in public and in private; manuscript copies were executed in monasteries of that age, and there was certainly no other books with which the monks of that age were so well acquainted. This is shewn by the fact that the monastic productions of the time quote Scripture far more frequently than any uninspired work whatever. But along with this, it must be kept in view, that the general ignorance of the age was profound, the number of people able to read was small, and books of all kinds were comparatively rare. These facts account for the circumstance, that while no ecclesiastical ban was as yet put upon the Bible, the mass of men were practically ignorant of it, incompetent to study it profoundly, and cherished many opinions and practices utterly at variance with it. This was the case over all Christendom in that age, no less than in

*Ad. ii. 46. "Pervenire ipsam quoque Romanam civitatem, quæ caput est omnium civitatum."-iii. 23.

His Faults as a Historian.

475

Scotland and Ireland, as is proved by the degenerate literature of the time. The only restriction then upon the use of Holy Scripture, was the restriction imposed by the absence of the schoolmaster and the printing-press. It was not till the sixteenth century, when Rome lost almost half her subjects, and traced the disaster to the popular use of Scripture in the vulgar tongue, that the pontifical ban was put upon the writings in which Christianity is revealed, and men were told that the use of the simple word of God, without the authorised command of the church, and the permission of the priest, is heresy and a crime.

The conclusion that we reach, after a careful examination of the subject is, that it is quite a mistake to assert with some Protestants, that the British and Irish Christians of the sixth century were free from the Romish doctrines and practices of the age, and to claim them virtually as Protestant churches; while it is equally unfounded to talk, as the Count does, of "the absolute conformity of the monastic life of Columba and his monks, to the precepts and rites of the Catholic Church in all ages." Neither statement is absolutely true, but the truth lies between them. Various rites and practices were observed by Columba, which all true Protestantism would now repudiate, while to various doctrines and practices which Roman Christianity has since admitted, Columba was entirely a stranger. The church at that time in no country had advanced so far in the direction of human additions, as the Romish Church has since done; but in Iona, as in every other place, the seeds of error were sprouting rankly up, destined to yield in due time bitter and poisonous fruit. Such are the real facts. To this interesting portion of our national history, it were well if all could come with unpolemic and impartial eye, and try to discover the actual state of the case. Truth to every man should be dearer than the interests of party. The truth, when fully known, will not, we are persuaded, be all that either a warm Protestant or a zealous Roman Catholic could wish.

We cannot part from this able and eloquent writer without expressing our regret that we cannot give him the praise of a true historian. He is deficient in accuracy; he fails to draw the line between fact and fiction with a stern and a firm hand; he derives a large portion of his material from writers who had no means whatever of knowing personally the matters which they profess to describe, and who are known to have raked together the popular fictions of their time; his very facts are presented through a coloured medium which did not originally belong to them; and the product is sent out to the world as if it were a record of recognised and admitted truth. He looks at men and things with a poet's eye, and is gifted with the

power of shewing them to his readers as they are seen by himself. One peruses his book with the same sort of feeling that he peruses a lofty epic; he is charmed with its flowing style, and startling images, and brilliant descriptions, but is painfully conscious all the while that he is wandering through the fairy realms of fancy, not plodding the dull rough road of sober historic reality. His religious earnestness, his literary power, his poetic genius, win our admiration; but it is a very different thing when we come to weigh his statements in the balance of truth-the ultimate test by which everything that professes to be history, and not poetry, must submit to be tried. Tested in this way, his grandest paragraphs and most striking incidents, dwindle insensibly down to the smallest particle of fact, or melt away altogether, like a snow-flake in the sunshine. Where the application of the test indicates the presence of truth, the pure metal has constantly and carefully to be parted from the dross. His beautiful pictures elicit our admiration, but then we are never able to forget how very different the reality was. The Count fights as valiantly with his pen, as any of his ancestors ever fought with weapons of keener edge, or of more deadly aim; but no man knows better than himself that he fights in a hopeless cause. The consciousness that he pleads at the bar of the world on behalf of an institution which the world has virtually condemned, is never absent from his mind; and the sense of this falls like a dark shadow on the brightest pages of his book. Monasticism is a prisoner, against whom a verdict of guilty has been recorded, and who, before the judge dons the black cap, rises to say, through the Count's lips, why sentence of death should not be pronounced upon him; he may make, as he has done, a very eloquent and a very affecting speech, but the judge pronounces sentence notwithstanding, and justice must take its course.

Monasticism, there can be little doubt, is virtually dead this moment. The Count admits it had its faults; and we, on our part, will not be so ungrateful as to say that it did not serve the world in its time. But it were as idle now to attempt to save it from its doom, as to bring back the Vestal Virgins, or to recall the Amphictyonic Council into life. Once, perhaps, the world had need of such an institution, but it needs it now no more. Once, at least, the current of the world's opinion ran strongly in its favour; but now it runs with force irresistible in the opposite direction. The demand of our time is for something new,-for a creation of the present, at once vigorous and strong, not for a reconstruction of the old and the effete. In the ever onward progress of humanity, new institutious and new combinations will arise, specially adapted to the society and times which produce them, and much more likely to be

Cambridge Characteristics in the 17th Century. 477

useful than any revivified organisation of the past. One generation of the human suceeds another, the divine alone is immortal. Human institutions, like their authors, must of necessity grow old, and pass away, and leave room for others to succeed them. Let the dead past bury its dead. The wisdom of humanity is to improve the present, and to look forward to the future with hopefulness and faith.

ART. II.-Cambridge Characteristics in the 17th Century.

Cambridge Characteristics in the 17th Century. By JAMES BASS MULLINGER, B.A., St John's College, Cambridge. London and Cambridge: Macmillan & Co. 1867.

PRIZE essays are not for the most part very inviting pro

ductions. Even when written, as they sometimes are, by men of real learning and ability, their style is so ambitious, the desire for display is so painfully evident, that they are seldom read except by those on whom the duty falls of deciding upon their merits, or by those feeling a personal interest in the writers. There are of course exceptions to the general neglect to which this class of literature is consigned, and Mr Mullinger's essay deserves the exceptional favour due to a sensible and pleasant book. Although written in the first instance to obtain the approval of academic judges, it is entirely free from pedantry and rhetorical display. So far from obtruding himself unduly on the notice of his readers, the essayist frequently hides himself altogether behind well-chosen quotations, and allows contemporaries and eye-witnesses to tell the story of the eventful times to which his subject carries him. By this means, and by his own well written sketches, he has contrived to give us, in the compass of a very small volume, many a pleasant glimpse of those scenes and characters which, however familiar, Englishmen feel they can scarcely look upon too often. The essayist was certainly fortunate in his subject. Cambridge was a well chosen point from which to survey England during the 17th century. The historian of Cambridge, without going out of his way, may touch upon almost everything that was most important in the political and intellectual life of England in the period; for Cambridge was in one way or another connected with it all. Macaulay, in his essay on Bacon, has claimed for his own university a larger and more honourable part in the great movements of the 16th century than