y of Tours is perhaps the best
example.

He was before all things a bishop; he wrote indeed, as a French writer
has happily said, "en eveque"; but he was also a statesman and a very
keen observer of life. From his pages we learn how slight had been the
impression that Christianity had yet made on the lives of barbarous
men. We see kings still wondering that God's power could be greater
than their own, yet when they were awoke to terror by the thought of
death flying in craven fear to the feet of the minister of God. The
whole history is a tale of treacheries and murders, of quarrels and of
sins among men and women pledged to God; and yet it is evident that
behind the cruelty and crime there was a new spirit at work, slowly
transforming society by the conversion of individuals. It was a
transformation {53} which was going on all over Europe; nowhere at this
time, perhaps, more conspicuously than in Gaul and in Ireland. There
are many parallels between the Celtic "age of saints" and the Merwing
age of sinners. It is difficult to learn the full truth about either;
but out of the darkness comes the conspicuous witness of individual
saints. Of one or two of these a word may be said. Most notable is
one who served both Ireland and Gaul.

[Sidenote: S. Columban (540-615).]

The figure of the great Irish monk Columban is a light in the darkness
of the gross and cruel Merwing age. Born about 540, he died in 615,
after a life of achievement and hardness such as was given to few of
his time. He died at Bobbio, crowned with the halo of heroism and
sanctity; but he was born in distant Ireland, and the main work of his
life had been to introduce into Gaul the monastic movement which was
led in Italy by S. Benedict. During the intellectual and moral
weakness which the barbarian invasions brought upon the West the Church
in Ireland appeared to stand forth resplendent in the security of her
faith and virtue and in the cultivation of learning. In the warm
Celtic nature the Gospel, so late introduced, had found a natural home.
The monasteries which rose all over the land, with the huts of hermits
and the cells of anchorites, were the seed-plots of religion and sacred
lore. The community life of Christian religious was naturally grafted
on to the old Druid stock. The tribes of the Goidels became the
monasteries; the head of the family was the abbat; the country looked
everywhere to the monks for leadership. Thus Armagh an