immediately came up, and without any regard to their presence, stabbed the girl with his lance under their very cloaks, and leaving her lying dead at their feet, turned to go away back. Then the old man, in great affliction, turning to Columba, said, “How long, holy youth Columba, shall God, the just judge, allow this horrid crime and this insult to us to go unpunished?” Then the saint at once pronounced this sentence on the perpetrator of the deed; “At the very instant the soul of this girl whom he hath murdered ascendeth into heaven, shall the soul of the murderer go down into hell;” and scarcely had he spoken the words when the murderer of the innocent, like Ananias before Peter, fell down dead on the spot before the eyes of the holy youth. The news of this sudden and terrible vengeance was soon spread abroad throughout many districts of Ireland, and with it the wonderful fame of the holy deacon.’[132] Thus there soon sprang up a belief that any violation of the protection to life afforded by these Christian communities would draw down on the perpetrator the vengeance of the Christian’s God. Adamnan’s Life is pervaded by similar instances of the insecurity of life and property through crime and oppression. [Sidenote: Privilege of sanctuary.] But these monasteries, or Christian communities, likewise claimed the privilege of sanctuary within their bounds, which was fenced by similar religious sanctions. The loss of a battle, or any similar misfortune which befell any one who had violated this right of sanctuary, was directly attributed to such violation, till it became a confirmed belief that it could not be infringed with impunity. Thus, when the battle of Culdremhne was fought between Diarmaid, king of Ireland, and the northern Hy Neill, in 561, in which the former was defeated, it was said to have been ‘in revenge of the killing of Curnan, son of Aedh, son of Eochaidh Tirmcharna, while under the protection of Colum-cille.’[133] The same King Diarmaid, too, drew upon himself the curse of Ruadhan of Lothra, one of the twelve apostles of Ireland, by violating his sanctuary and carrying off by force to his palace at Tara a person who had taken refuge with Ruadhan. On his refusal to deliver him up, ‘Roadanus and a bishop that was with him took their bells that they had, which they rang hardly, and cursed the king and place, and prayed God that no king or queen ever after should or could dwell in Tarach, and that it should be waste for ever, without court or palace, as it fell out accordingly,’ and as stated in an old Irish poem,— From the judgment of Ruadhan on his house There was no king at _Teamraigh_ or Tara.[134] The belief that the violation of the sanctuary of a Christian community would infallibly be avenged led to the fulfilment of the prophecy. [Sidenote: Law of succession to the Abbacy.]