44th year. Twelve companions, the apostolic number,
accompanied him on his voyage. For thirty-four years he
was the legislator and captain of Christianity in those
northern regions. The King of the Picts received baptism
at his hands; the Kings of the Scottish colony, his
kinsmen, received the crown from him on their accession.
The islet of I., or Iona, as presented to him by one of
these princes. Here he and his companions built with
their own hands their parent-house, and from this Hebridean
rock in after times was shaped the destinies, spiritual
and temporal, of many tribes and kingdoms.

The growth of Iona was as the growth of the grain of
mustard seed mentioned in the Gospel, even during the
life of its founder. Formed by his teaching and example,
there went out from it apostles to Iceland, to the Orkneys,
to Northumbria, to Man, and to South Britain. A hundred
monasteries in Ireland looked to that exiled saint as
their patriarch. His rule of monastic life, adopted either
from the far East, from the recluses of the Thebaid, or
from his great contemporary, Saint Benedict, was sought
for by Chiefs, Bards, and converted Druids. Clients,
seeking direction from his wisdom, or protection through
his power, were constantly arriving and departing from
his sacred isle. His days were divided between manual
labour and the study and transcribing of the Sacred
Scriptures. He and his disciples, says the Venerable
Bede, in whose age Iona still flourished, "neither thought
of nor loved anything in _this_ world." Some writers have
represented Columbkill's _Culdees_, (which in English