Of Monks and Monsters: The Schaffhausen Vita Sancti Columbae

Even the “Generalia 1” signature reveals that the Vita Sancti Columbae the oldest book in the city library of Schaffhausen. The unremarkable codex has no lavish binding and no lavishly illuminated miniatures, although it was written in the scriptorium of the island monastery of Iona off the west coast of Scotland, where the Book of Kells was probably created some 100 years later as a masterpiece of island art. relief.

Nevertheless, the ‘Life of Saint Columba’ is a manuscript about which there is much to be said and which has much to tell. Written by Abbot Adomnán around AD 700, the codex is invaluable to historians and philologists and to our understanding of the history of the British Isles in the 6th and 7th centuries – a time when little written evidence for the region survives stayed. The Vita is also the oldest book ever to contain a single biography in Latin. And finally, the Schaffhausen manuscript is of utmost importance to cryptozoologists, as we will see below.

But first the external features of the codex: measuring 29 x 22.5 cm, it is approximately A4 size and written on 71 parchment leaves made from the hides of calves (vellum) were produced. The book was last republished in 1941. The copyist, who calls himself Dorbbéne in the colophon, uses the Irish semi-uncial, a rounded script developed at the beginning of the 7th century.

At the same time, elements of the later insular minuscule are already recognizable, namely the connections (ligatures) between individual letters and the use of space-saving abbreviations for words or parts of words, characteristic of Irish manuscripts. Another innovation is the use of word spacing, introduced around this time for legibility by Irish scribes, as Latin was a foreign language to them. The Vita is thus an important milestone in the development of the later Carolingian script because it can be dated.

But who was Columba, also called Colm Cille, who is today considered one of the patron saints of Ireland and Scotland? The protagonist of the Vita was born in Ireland some 1500 years ago, according to tradition on December 7, 521, and died in 597. The young nobleman was educated in the monastery of Saint Finnian of Clonard. Around AD 560, he is believed to have caused the first documented instance of copyright infringement. He had copied a book of psalms from the Movilla monastery and wanted to keep this copy, while the abbot believed that the copy belonged to the monastery library.

A warning was not enough: the dispute ended in the battle of Cúl Dreimhne, which left 3,000 killed and wounded – an episode hidden in the Vita Sancti Columbae (and whose direct connection to the book dispute is doubted by recent research). The Psalter believed to have been written by Columba at the time, the Catchis now kept in the Royal Irish Academy, Dublin.

Soon after, in 563, the saint broke up with some companions peregrination (self-imposed exile as an ascetic monk) to Scotland, where Bridei, king of the Picts, commissioned the small island of Iona to found a monastery. His new home in the west of Scotland was part of the Kingdom of Dál Riata and was culturally linked to Ireland. But while Ireland had been evangelized some hundred years earlier and developed into a center of Christian Latin learning, the Scots and Picts had not yet converted to Christianity.

The vita describes how Columba devoted himself to this task. His status as a member of the noble Cenél Conaill clan and descendant of the legendary high king Niall Noígíallach was useful: even as a simple abbot he could stand on an equal footing with the Pictish king. Thus the British Isles were Christianized from two directions: in the north by the Irish-Scottish missionaries under Columba, in the south by Augustine of Canterbury, sent from Rome.

But back to the manuscript in the city library of Schaffhausen: the hagiography written by Adomnán is formally based on known lives of saints such as those of Anthony and Martin of Tours. It is not a historical record, but is intended to place the founder of the monastic community of Iona in line with prophets and apostles. Rather than giving a chronology, it offers accounts of his prophetic ministry, miracle work, and angelic appearances in an attempt to substantiate his status as a saint.

Columba can predict storms and know if travelers will arrive safely – a useful gift in the North Atlantic island world, where the weather changes quickly and the small, leather-covered curraghMonks’ boats can easily be swallowed by a whirlpool.

In one beautiful episode, he predicts the arrival of an exhausted and starving guest: a heron has been thrown off course by a storm over the Irish Sea. The bird is cared for by the brothers for three days before returning to “the beautiful part of Ireland” where Columba comes from.

As befits a true saint, he heals the sick, raises the dead, and turns water into communion wine. A butcher’s knife he has absently blessed can no longer harm humans or animals, so the monks melt it down and apply the metal as a safety coating to their other tools and implements.

Columba stops a young monk’s chronic nosebleed and chases a devil out of the milk pail. Traditions of the monastic community of several generations mix here with folk tales, especially when it comes to the protagonist’s encounters with wild animals and monsters.

Particularly noteworthy is his encounter with a water monster (“aquatilis bestia”): when the saint and his companions pass along the banks of the River Ness, a man is buried who had just fallen victim to the attack of the beast. The sea monster – “whose appetite was not appeased but only stimulated” – reappears, ready to devour Columba. But with the sign of the cross he orders the monster to retreat, which it does to the astonishment of the Picts present. For example, the Schaffhausen manuscript contains the first recorded sighting of a monster at Loch Ness.

It is still unclear how the book came to Schaffhausen from the Inner Hebrides. When Iona was attacked by the Vikings in 795 and again and again in the following decades, many monks moved to the continent and brought their manuscripts, their illuminating art and their Latin learning to Lake Constance, where 200 years earlier the Irish wandering monks Gallus and Columbanus the younger had been active. Presumably the Vita Sancti Columbae to this region in the second half of the 9th century.

The property entry “Liber Augie maioris” on the first page of the codex in a 13th-century manuscript proves that he was at the time at the Reichenau Monastery, about 40 kilometers upstream from Schaffhausen. The manuscript may have been brought to safety there along with other treasures from the abbey of St. Gallen when the Magyars invaded.

In an unknown way it ended up in the public library of Schaffhausen, the current city library, which grew out of the possession of the medieval Benedictine and Barfüsse monasteries and the parish church of St. John. The Vita was rediscovered here in 1772.