The strength of St. C.'s character appears to have been in its earnestness. There is no reason to think that lie was reputed either wiser or more learned than the better class of the ecclesiastics of his age. But the same enthusiastic temper which won for him in boyhood the name of "Columba of the Church," continued to animate him throughout life. The length and frequency of his fasts and vigils are spoken of as nearly incredible. With this asceticism he combined unwearied industry; no hour passed without his allotted duty of prayer, or reading, or transcribing, or other work. As the prevailing austerity of his. disposition was often lighted up by gleams of tender ness and kindness, so it appears to have been clouded at times by anger and revenge. "But whatever sort of person lte was himself," wrote Bede, in allusion probably to these infirmities, "this we know of him for certain, that lie left after him successors eminent for their strict continence, divine love, and exact discipline; men who follow. indeed, doubtful cycles in their computation of the great festival [i.e. Easter], because, in that far out of the world abode of theirs, none had ever communicated to them the synodal decrees relating to the paschal observance, but yet, withal, men diligently observing those works of piety and chastity, and those only, which they were able to learn from the writings of the prophets, evangelists, and apostles.
The ecclesiastical system of St. C. was in so far peculiar that, in the words of Bede, Iona "had always for its ruler a presbyter abbot, to whose jurisdiction both the entire province, and the bishops themselves also, contrary to the usual order of things, must own subjection, after the example of that first teacher of theirs, who was no bishop. but
a presbyter and monk." The jurisdiction usually reserved to the episcopate was thus transferred to the abbatial office; little more being left to the bishop than the right of ordination, and a certain measure of precedence in the celebration of divine service. St. C. himself, as well as his followers generally, till the year 716, kept Easter on a dif ferent day, and .shaved their heads after another fashion, than obtained in other parts of western Christendom. But, with these exceptions, their creed and rites appear to have been substantially the same.
The life of St. C. was written by two of his successors in the abbacy of Iona—Cui mine Ailbc (637-669), and St. Adamnan (679-704). The first of these lives is incorpo rated in the second, which is altogether one of the most valuable works now extant on the early ecclesiastical history of Scotland and Ireland. It has gone through many editions: the last, and incomparably the best—a hook, indeed, beyond praise—being that of William Reeves, n.n., printed at Dublin in 1857, for the Bannatyne club and the Irish archeological and Celtic society, and included in the series of Historians of Scotland, published by Edmonston and Douglas. Besides his Vita. Sancti Columbw, Adamnan wrote De Loth' Sanctis, an interesting account of Jerusalem and its neighborhood, from the information of a French bishop, who, in returning from the Holy Land, was driven among the western isles of Scotland. This tract has been more than once printed, and its chief passages were transcribed by Bede in his Historia Ecclesiastics Gcntis Anylorum, We learn from it that waxed tablets for writing were iu use among the disciples of St. C. in lona at the close of the 7th century.