Excerpt from Syllabus of a Course of Six Lectures on the Making of England, 449-1215II. Columba (521 founder of Iona and Apostle of Northern Scotland, was born in Donegal, and was the descendant of Irish kings. He was trained at Clonard, and spent the first forty years of his life in Ireland, evangelizing and founding monasteries like Derry and Durrow. Involved in a tribal war, he exiled himself from his native land, which he loved passionately, and sailed to Iona in 563, where he established a missionary settlement. His great work was the conver sion of the Picts of Scotland, and the training of men like Aidan, who brought about the conversion of Northern and Central England. A full biography of this remarkable Keltic missionary was written by his successor Adamnan (abbot of Iona, There is an eloquent account of Columba in Count Montalembert's Monks of the West, which, it has been said, is endowed with every merit except likeli ness to the original.III. Aidan, Keltic preacher of Christianity in Northumbria, whose work, though far greater and more enduring than that of Augustine, scarcely obtains even yet adequate recognition, was sent out from Iona about the year 634, and fixed his bishop's stool at Lindisfarne, or Holy Island. Splendidly supported by the saintly king, Oswald, who often acted as his interpreter, he won the North back to Chris tianity after its relapse. In the record of early English Christianity, there is no character more attractive than his. Bada, though a Roman historian, grieved by some of Aidan's Keltic customs, bursts into enthusiastic eulogy when he writes of him. It was the highest commendation of his doctrine, he says, that Bishop Aidan taught no otherwise than the life which he and his followers lived, for he neither cared to seek or love anything of this world, but delighted in distributing amonggthe poor whatsoever was given him by kings or rich men. He never spared the wealthy from fear or favor, if they erred in any point, but corrected them with sharp rebuke. He died near Bamborough in the year 651.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.