June 9th is the feast of St Columba (or Colum Cille – “Dove of the Church”), whose life was recorded and celebrated in the Vita Columbae by Adomnán (ninth Abbot of Iona) who died in 704, and in a poem written within a few years of his death which lays claim to be the earliest vernacular poem in European literature.
Born in what is now County Donegal in December 521, Columba was a direct descendant of Niall of the Nine Hostages, a 5th century Irish high king. By the time of his birth, Christianity was in the process of supplanting druidism, and thriving monasteries had become the centers of theological study.
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