Here the brethren were reassembled, and hither was brought the shrine containing the relics of St. Columba, which, according to what we have seen was the usage of the time, would be placed on the right, or south, side of the altar in the church, so as to be exposed for the veneration of the inmates of the monastery. It might be supposed that the monks of Iona would have felt a reluctance to leave a site hallowed by the memories of their venerated patron saint, even though the new site may have promised greater security; but it must be recollected that it is the presence of the saint’s body that hallows the site of the monastery he has founded, and confers upon it the privileges of an _Annoid_, or mother church. Any spot to which his relics might be taken would be equally sacred in the eyes of the community, and the new monastery equally endowed with the privileges connected with them. It was so with the monks of Lindisfarne, whose veneration accompanied the body of St. Cuthbert when forced to retreat from their monastery under very similar circumstances; and it hallowed every spot in which it was deposited, till it finally invested the church at Durham, which held his shrine, with the same feeling of devotion and reverence which had attached to their first seat in the island of Lindisfarne. [Sidenote: A.D. 825. Martyrdom of St. Blathmac protecting the shrine.] Whether the new stone monastery in Iona was to afford them better security against their pagan plunderers the Danes was now to be tested, as seven years had not elapsed before they renewed their attack; and we now get a glimpse into the state of the monastery at this time from a contemporary, in the metrical life of St. Blathmac, written by Walafrid Strabo, who himself died only in the year 849.[565] He tells us that Blathmac was of royal descent, heir of a throne in that rich Ireland which had given birth to him as her future king; that, renouncing all secular prospects, he resolved to lead a religious life and do honour to his name, which signifies in Latin ‘pulcher natus;’[566] that he surreptitiously joined a certain monastery, which his biographer does not name, but which was in his father’s principality, and finally, as abbot, ruled a venerable body of monks; that he finally, in order to attain the height of perfection, coveted the crown of martyrdom, and, in order to attain his desire, thought he could not do better than go to ‘a certain island on the shores of the Picts placed in the wave-tossed brine, called _Eo_,’ or Iona, ‘where Columba, the saint of the Lord, rests in the flesh. This island he sought under his vow to suffer the marks of Christ, for here the frequent hordes of pagan Danes were wont to come armed with malignant furies.’ He seems to have had the care of the monastery intrusted to him, and had not long to wait, ‘for the time soon came when the great mercy of God decreed to associate his servant