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Singing in the Rain on Hinba? Archaeology and Liturgical Fictions, Ancient and Modern (Adomn
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204 Singing in the Rain on Hinba? Archaeology and Liturgical Fictions, Ancient and Modern (Adomnán, Vita Columbae 3.17) ÉAMONN Ó CARRAGÁIN and TOMÁS Ó CARRAGÁIN In two major articles, Jennifer O’Reilly has taught us to read Adomnán’s Vita Columbae in convincing new ways.1 The essence of her approach is to take seriously Adomnán’s spirituality, and hence the literary integrity of his text. Much dominated by nineteenth-century positivism, modern scholarship has all too often fragmented the Vita Columbae. All too often, scholars have been reluctant to discuss the signs and miracles, as though they saw them as embarrassing reflections of primitive superstition. Other parts of the text are mined, at times naively, for ‘facts’ about social and political history, topography , archaeology and whatever else may be of interest to modern scholars. Such fragmentation of the Vita is not good scholarly practice. As Jennifer O’Reilly comments in ‘The Wisdom of the Scribe’: However, the same stories which have provided modern historians with glimpses of contemporary book production and have set archaeologists discussing the likely form and location on Iona of Columba’s writinghut , disconcertingly show that Columba’s pen, his inkhorn, the vellum on which he wrote, generated marvels and prophecies, and that from his writing-hut he commanded both demons and angels. . . . Such wonders are not presented as an editorial comment on historical episodes but are conveyed through the very narrative; the scribal equipment and activities which Adomnán describes are charged with an other-worldly significance whose precise meaning, it seems, is never spelled out.2 Her approach has already been properly influential.3 We shall apply her approach to a single short chapter of the Vita, the concise narrative of how four visiting Irish saints found Columba, not at Iona, but on Hinba, an unidentified island on which there was a monastery dependent on Iona. Adomnán specifies that each of the visitors had, like Columba, founded one or more monasteries: thus we will refer to them as the ‘four founders’ or, Singing in the Rain on Hinba? 205 including Columba, the ‘five founders’. We quote the Latin text of the chapter from the standard Anderson edition: De columna luminosa sancti viri de vertice ardere visa ALIO IN TEMPORE iiii. ad sanctum visitandum Columbam monasteriorum sancti fundatores de Scotia transmeantes in Hinba eum invenerunt insula ; quorum inlustrium vocabula Comgellus mocu-Aridi, Cainnechus mocu-Dalon, Brendenus mocu-Alti, Cormac nepos Leathain. Hi uno eodemque consensu elegerunt ut sanctus Colum coram ipsis in ecclesia sacra eucharistiae consecraret misteria. Qui eorum obsecundans jusioni simul cum eis die dominica ex more post evangelii lectionem eclesiam ingreditur. Ibidemque dum misarum sollemnia celebrarentur sanctus Brendenus mocu-Alti, sicut post Comgello et Cainnecho intimavit, quendam criniosum igneum globum et valde luminosum de vertice sancti Columbae ante altare stantis et sacram oblationem consecrantis tamdiu ardentem et instar alicujus columnae sursum ascendentem vidit donec eadem perficerentur sacrosancta ministeria.4 We give the English translation by Richard Sharpe, because we will refer throughout the present paper to his excellent introduction to, and commentary on, the Vita Columbae: How a column of light seemed to shine from St Columba’s head Once, four saints who had founded monasteries in Ireland came to visit St Columba. When they arrived at Hinba, they found him there. The names of these famous men were Comgall moccu Araidi, Cainnech moccu Dalann, Brendan moccu Altae and Cormac Ua Liatháin. When the sacred mysteries of the Eucharist were to take place, with one accord they chose St Columba to act as celebrant. He obeyed their command, and with them he entered the church as usual on the Lord’s day after the Gospel had been read. There, while the sacrament of the mass was celebrated , St Brendan moccu Altae saw a radiant ball of fire shining very brightly from St Columba’s head as he stood in front of the altar and consecrated the sacred oblation. It shone upwards like a column of light and lasted until the mysteries were completed. Afterwards St Brendan disclosed what he had seen to St Comgall and St Cainnech.5 Modern scholarship on this narrative exemplifies that fragmentation to which Jennifer O’Reilly refers.6 Scholars pay little or no attention to the miracle or its function in the narrative. Instead, most of the commentary on the chapter, apart from identifying the four founders,7 has focused on Adomnán’s statement that Columba entered the church at...