which may be recognised in the nearly contemporary life of the saint written by the ninth abbot of Iona, Adamnan. The objects which Columba set before himself after his migration to Iona were political as well as religious. His kinsmen, the Scots of Dalriada, were harassed and oppressed by the pagan Picts in the east of the island, whose king, Brude, had in the year 560 inflicted a crushing defeat on the Scottish king, Gabhran. Columba would fain convert the Pictish conqueror to Christianity, and at the same time obtain more generous treatment for his beaten countrymen; and by the magic of his personality he achieved a striking success in both directions. King Brude in 565 embraced Christianity, and relations of peace and friendship were established between him and the man whom, in 574, Columba succeeded in placing on the throne of Dalriada, Aidan, Prince of Strathclyde. The thirty-four years of Columba’s life, after his great migration, were spent in establishing monasteries in the land of the northern Picts, in the Hebrides and in his native Ireland, to which he paid several visits, and where the once excommunicated partisan was now an honoured, almost worshipped guest. These Columban monasteries, “the family of Iona” as they were called, were of a distinctly different type from that of the monasteries of the Benedictine rule. Like all the Irish monastic establishments they partook largely of the tribal character. The tribe gave the land, contributed to the support of the monks, had a right to receive, apparently without special charge, their religious ministrations, and in certain circumstances had also a right to nominate one of its members as abbot, though the first claim upon this coveted office resided in the family of the founder. It was thus that the first nine abbots of Iona were all descended from the same family, the northern Hy Neill, from which St. Columba himself had sprung. This tribal character of the monasteries suited the genius of the Celtic populations, and was one reason of the success of the missionaries in converting them to Christianity. It has been truly said[62] that “these large monasteries, as in their external aspect they appeared to be, were in reality Christian colonies into which converts, after being tonsured, were brought under the name of monks”.