From the Latin Life, O’Donoghue Page 257 About this time, as we read in Adamnan's Life of St. Columba; (L. iii.. c. xvii) "four great holy founders of monasteries came from Ireland to visit St. Columba in the island of Hinba.” These were St. Comgall, founder of the great monastery and school at Benchor (Bangor, hodie) on the southern shore of Belfast Lough; St. Canice, founder of Aghaboe and Kilkenny; St. Cormac Ua Liathain, a favourite disciple of St. Columba's, whom he had appointed abbot of his great foundation at Durrow (county Westmeath), when he was leaving Ireland for Iona; and St. Brendan of Clonfert, the greatest "founder of monasteries" of them all. These holy men invited their host, St. Columba, to celebrate Holy Mass in their presence; and then, as Adamnan relates: "During the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, St. Brendan Mac Ua Alti saw, as he told Comgall and Cannech afterwards, a ball of fire, like a comet, burning very brightly on the head of Columba the whole time he stood before the altar offering the Holy Sacrifice." This notable reunion of these illustrious saints took place on the island of Hinba, (Not surely identified; it lay not far from Iona ) where St. Columba founded an oratory or cell, some time after his establishment at Iona, and whither he retired occasionally for. closer and less distracted communion with God than he found possible at his greater church and monastery there. Adamnan relates, circumstantially, several of those retreats of Columba to this island, and the wonderful manifestations of the Divine favours and the communications of the Holy Spirit made to him there on such occasions. On this occasion of the visit of St. Brendan and his saintly companions to the island, St. Columba was probably engaged in one of those spiritual retreats, and the globe of fire which St. Brendan was permitted to behold flaming over his head during the celebration of the Holy Mass, was, no doubt, a meet emblem of the fulness and fervour with which the Spirit of God communicated His graces to the ardent soul of the saint while celebrating the divine mysteries. St. Brendan was several years older than the other saints who were present. He was then, probably, far beyond his eightieth year, for the incident must have occurred some years after the founding of the monastery at Iona by Columba, in A.D. 505, when St. Brendan had already passed that great age. It is hard to think Page 259 that the venerable patriarch would, at such a period of his life, have travelled from the shores of Lough Corrib or from Clonfert, hard by the Shannon, over land and sea, to distant Iona or Hinba, for the mere purpose of a friendly visit to St. Columba, and we may well believe that the arduous journey had a much higher and holier purpose. We have already seen (see page 213, ante) "that St. Brendan had laboured long and successfully in an apostolic mission in North Britain and the Isles, of what was afterwards called Scotland, more than twenty years before Columba had set foot on Iona or commenced his first mission amongst his kinsmen, the Albanian Scots; and we may surmise that even amid the cares and duties of his arduous ministry in Ireland during all those years, our saint did not lose sight of, nor a loving interest in, the fruits of his apostolic labours among the Orkneys and the Isles, of which he has been since honoured as the apostle. He very probably visited the scenes of those early labours from time to time, in order to preserve and promote the growth of the seed of Christian faith and morality that he had sown; and perhaps it was in the course of one of those tours of visitation, which he continued to make even in his extreme old age, that the incidental visit to Columba on the island of Hinba took place. Here he found the great saint who was destined to be his worthy successor in the apostolate of that land and of those isles wherein he himself had laboured so zealously; and it may have been that, though, like the high priest of old, he was then the "lamp of God about to be extinguished," he saw in the vision of the "globe of fire, blazing like a comet, over the head of Columba," the augury and the consoling assurance that this new apostle of the Northern Picts and of the Page 260 Orkneys and the Isles, as Columba has been justly styled, was raised up and specially blessed by God to carry on, with more signal success and more glorious results, the apostolic work he had himself commenced many years before. If St. Brendan thus evinced a paternal interest in the fruits of his early missions in North Britain by those kindly visits to the scenes of his labours there, we must believe that he failed not to make similar visits occasionally to those religious foundations throughout Munster, and especially those in and near his native district in West Kerry, which were the earliest, and therefore probably the dearest, objects of his holy zeal and solicitude. It would be strange, indeed, that the venerable father should favour his spiritual children in the islands of Bute and Kilbrandon and Tirree, and many other islands on the coasts of North Britain, with those paternal visits, and omit similar tokens of an affectionate interest in the holy communities at Inis-da-droman, on the Shannon, and at Ardfert, his first love, and at the other monasteries of West Kerry, who all venerated him as their founder and their holy patron. He therefore visited all those houses from time to time, probably to the latest period of his life; and perhaps it was on one of the latest of those visitation tours among his West Kerry foundations, that the incident occurred to him that is related in the interesting story (see page 278, postea) of the "Holy Well of Brendan's Anointing," where he is said to have sailed in his currach; from one of his oratories on the Blasquet Islands, across Dingle Bay, to visit the little monastery of his disciple St. Beoan, in the Glen (bar. of Iveragh), Page 261 the remains of which are still known as Kilbeoanigh (the cell or church of St. Beoan). While we contemplate the venerable patriarch thus visiting his spiritual children in his numerous religious houses in Ireland and Scotland, we may feel how justly Adamnan ranks him among "the great holy founders of monasteries," and we may well apply to him the praises bestowed by (Life of St. Malachy, c. vi.) St. Bernard upon another of them, St. Comgall of Bangor: "He was the parent of many thousand saints, and the head of many religious establishments, that were holy and fruitful in saints. . . . Indeed, the spiritual children of this holy man had so multiplied throughout the whole of Ireland and Scotland, that in them would seem to have been verified the words of the Psalmist: 'Thou hast visited the earth, and hast plentifully watered it; thou hast many ways enriched it. The river of God is filled with water; fill up plentifully the streams thereof and multiply its fruits." (Ps. lxiv.)