Columcille became a pupil of Gemman, an old bard from Leinster, and also studied at monastery schools, including one governed by Finnian. Once he became a monk, he was devoted to his faith, and established monasteries at Derry (545), Durrow (553), and Kells (554); many other Irish monasteries claim him as their founder. Still, it appears that Columcilles' pagan roots remained strong. He is said to have enlisted his clan kinsman in his dispute with Diarmait, the High King, over the ownership of a copy he had made of a Psalter (a book of Psalms) owned by Finnian. The clan, who chafed under the High Kingıs rule, viewed Diarmaitıs ruling in favor of Finnian as another example of their oppression. A bloody battle followed at Culdremhne in 561, in which Diarmait was defeated and three thousand men died.

Columcille, perhaps dismayed by the ferocious bloodletting he fomented, departed Ireland about 563 and established a monastary in Iona, Scotland­on property likely provided by one of his pagan relatives. Much of his life was spent preaching to the Scots, known then as Picts.. (During his labors, Columcille traveled to Loch Ness and reportedly met its monster.) Western Scotland was almost entirely converted to Christianity by Columcille; for this, the faithful calls him a saint: St. Columba (Columba being the latinized version of his name.)

Columcille's Iona monastary flourished. Its scribes devoted themselves to bookmaking, as did monastary scribes all across Ireland and Scotland. Columcille himself is said to have transcribed more than three hundred books, and was working on a copy of a Psalter when he died in 597.

Through the efforts of Columcille and the others like him, the embers of literature and scholarship, nearly extinguished during the Dark Ages, were re-ignited. Remarkably, a few of the manuscripts from eighty generations ago are still with us. The Book of Kells, the Lindesfarne Gospels, and other mediaeval illuminated manuscipts are precious heirlooms of Western civilization. Even the book of Psalms that Columcille copied from Finnian, called The Cathach of St. Columba, survives and is part of the Royal Irish Academy collection in Dublin, Ireland. We treasure the manuscripts not only for their rare, stunning beauty, but also for the sentiment they embody: That words and ideas matter , and cherishing them is a labor of the ages.
 

" Setting the scene after the fall of the Roman Empire, when a great deal of knowledge had been lost and learning was little valued, Brown states: "Reading and writing were like magic, and the people who knew their secrets as rare as wizards." What a powerful idea for children working to master those skills today. This picture-book biography is gracefully written and illustrated with great delicacy and finesse, and the pictures are evidently ink drawings washed in watercolors of muted green, gray, and tan."
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