lf on the
island of Hy or Iona, where he erected a church and a monastery. About
the year 565 he applied himself to the task of converting the heathen
kingdom of the northern Picts. Crossing over to the mainland he
proceeded to the residence, on the banks of the Ness, of Brude, king of
the Picts. By his preaching, his holy life, and, as his earliest
biographers assert, by the performance of miracles, he converted the
king and many of his subjects. The precise details, except in a few
cases, are unknown, or obscured by exaggeration and fiction; but it is
certain that the whole of northern Scotland was converted by the labours
of Columba, and his disciples and the religious instruction of the
people provided for by the erection of numerous monasteries. The
monastery of Iona was reverenced as the mother house of all these
foundations, and its abbots were obeyed as the chief ecclesiastical
rulers of the whole nation of the northern Picts. There were then
neither dioceses nor parishes in Ireland and Celtic Scotland; and by the
Columbite rule the bishops themselves, although they ordained the
clergy, were subject to the jurisdiction of the abbots of Iona, who,
like the founder of the order, were only presbyters. In matters of
ritual they agreed with the Western Church on the continent, save in a
few particulars such as the precise time of keeping Easter and manner of
tonsure.

Columba was honoured by his countrymen, the Scots of Britain and
Ireland, as much as by his Pictish converts, and in his character of
chief ecclesiastical ruler he gave formal benediction and inauguration
to Aidan, the successor of Conall, as king of the Scots. He accompanied
that prince to Ireland in 575, and took a leading part in a council held
at Drumceat in Ulster, which determined once and for all the position of
the ruler of Dalriada with regard to the king of Ireland. The last years
of Columba's life appear to have been mainly spent at Iona. There he was
already revered as a saint, and whatever credit may be given to some
portions of the narratives of his biographers, there can be no doubt as
to the wonderful influence which he exercised, as to the holiness of his
life, and as to the love which he uniformly manifested to God and to his
neighbour.

In the summer of 597 he knew that his end was approaching. On Saturday
the 8th of June he was able, with the help of one of his monks, to
ascend a little hill above the monastery and to give it his f