Sanctus ex machina: Colum Cille in the Lives of other saints

Abstract

The medieval and early modern memory of Colum Cille is most clearly preserved in his own hagiographical tradition between Adomnán’s Vita Columbae, his Middle Irish Life, and Maghnus Ó Domhnáill’s Betha Colaim Chille. Colum Cille appears elsewhere in medieval and early modern Irish literature, and most notably in the medieval and early modern hagiography of other Irish saints. In the later medieval and early modern Lives Betha Berach, Betha Farannáin, and Betha Náile, Colum Cille is intentionally utilised in the texts to underscore the saints’ claims to church land and to ensure the tribute and respect to be paid to their respective monasteries. In Betha Maedóc Ferna he assists in the interpretation of angelic visions, and his testimony within the lives of Baithéne, first successor of Iona, legitimises the sanctity of his close companion. This paper will therefore explore the understudied and underlying themes of Colum Cille’s appearances in the hagiography of other saints in the sense of their representations of the cultural memory of Colum Cille from the later medieval Irish perspective.