Every night he would sneak off in the dark to indulge his secret lust- his lust for copying a rare manuscript of the Gospels….
Behind every myth lies a truth; beyond every legend is a reality, as radiant, sometimes as chilling as the story itself.
Something lie hearing Saint Patrick’s Day oratory and the boasts of the ancient glories of Holy Ireland. “Land of Saints and Scholars,” as the famous brag tends to run. As usual, one is inclined by bored habit to put it down as defensive sloganeering.
Saint Columba—Read More:http://www.allmercifulsavior.com/icons/Icons-Columba.htm
Yet the truth and the fable go hand in hand. Little Eire was, after Cromwell, a “most distressful country” and is now merely a charming nation in the North Atlantic with a precarious balance of trade. Nonetheless, in her high day the glory was genuine. For several hundred years- from the fifth century until the tenth- in that green, garrulous, rain-washed, crotchety island the twin lights of learning and Christianity burned steadily, when over Europe they had almost entirely flickered out. Actual saints and real scholars preserved a persecuted faith, a classic but perishing literature, and by there immense efforts restored both to Western Europe when the era was ripe.
—Adoration of the Magi, by Rogier Van der Weyden, c. 1455, central panel of altarpiece tryptych from Saint Columba’s parish church, Cologne—Read More:http://actionplanetgreen.blogspot.ca/2012/01/three-wise-men-season-greetings-fix.html
“While Pope Gregory the Great was reproving a Gallic Bishop for studying Latin grammar and poetry,” writes the British historian George Macaulay Trevelyan, “the Irish Christians were busy saving it for the world in their remote corner where the Papal censure was unheard.”
“Remote” is the key word. Ireland, never having been conquered, or civilized, by the Roman legions, remained safely itself until the ravages of the Vikings in the ninth and tenth centuries and of the Englishman Strongbow- Richard FitzGilbert de Clare, Earl of Pembroke- in 1170 reduced it to a vassalage. And by then her wandering missionaries had done their work in Scotland, in England, on the Continent. Europe was again Christian, and knowledge had revived. The Dark Ages were over.
—Rogier was at the height of his artistic powers when, in around 1455, he painted this altarpiece for the church of Saint Columba in Cologne. The Saint Columba Altarpiece unites three scenes which represent sequential rather than simultaneous events: the Annunciation (left wing), the Adoration of the Magi (central panel) and the Presentation in the Temple (right wing). The three scenes show the coming of Christ to earth and his subsequent recognition as ruler of the world by the three earthly kings, and as the promised Messiah by the devout Simeon and the prophetess Anna. The figure of the Virgin Mary is emphasized by the uniform blue of her clothes, a color flanked by intense red and occurring nowhere else in the altarpiece. The exterior of the altarpiece had only a protective coating, with no painted scenes.—Read More:http://hoocher.com/Rogier_van_der_Weyden/Rogier_van_der_Weyden.htm
In one man among Ireland’s heroes who thrived during the first ecstatic centuries is embodied in all that is most characteristic of the Irish nature. He was Columba, also called Columkill, “The Dove of the Church.” ( to be continued)…
COMMENTS
