Note 548 — Chapter VII · THE COÄRBS OF COLUMCILLE.

Adamnan, B. iii. c. 24, says that the body of St. Columba was placed in a coffin prepared for it, and buried. He uses the strange word ‘ratabusta,’ which the transcribers of the Life apparently did not understand, as the MSS. present the following readings:—‘Rata busta,’ ‘intra busta,’ ‘rata tabeta;’ and the Bollandists alter it to ‘catabusta,’ an inversion of ‘busticeta,’ which Ducange defines as ‘sepulchra antiqua,’ ‘sepulchra in agro.’ It seems to have been an attempt to render in Latin the Irish ferta, which was either generally a grave, or, as Dr. Reeves has shown in his Ancient Churches of Armagh, p. 48, the equivalent of sarcophagus, or stone coffin, in which sense it is used here; but in Adamnan’s time his grave was undisturbed, and the place of his burial was well known; for he says that the stone which he had used as a pillow stands to this day as a monument at his grave, and that ‘until the present day the place where his sacred bones repose, as has been clearly shown to certain chosen persons, doth not cease to be frequently visited by holy angels, and illuminated by the same heavenly light.’ Bede, also, in talking of the ‘Monasterium insulanum’ founded by St. Columba, adds, ‘in quo ipse requiescit corpore.’—Hist. Ec., B. iii. c. 4. The passage in the Book of Armagh is as follows:—‘Colombcille, Spiritu Sancto instigante, ostendit sepulturam Patricii, ubi est confirmat, id est, in Sahul Patricii, id est, in ecclesia juxta mare proxima ubi est conductio martirum, id est, ossuum Columbcille de Britannia et conductio omnium sanctorum Hiberniæ in die judicii.’ The passage is obviously somewhat corrupt, and has been well explained by Dr. Reeves in the Introduction to his Adamnan, ed. 1874, p. lxxx. The word ‘proxima’ is in the original ‘pro undecima;’ but Mr. Henry Bradshaw, of the University Library, Cambridge, has happily suggested that the transcriber mistook the letters xi in proxima for the numeral undecim. Conductio is the word frequently used in connection with enshrining, and Martra, here rendered Martirum, has been shown by Dr. Reeves to be the word used to designate the enshrined bones of a saint, the word Mionna being used for other relics, consisting of articles hallowed by his use. The passage clearly shows that in 807, when the book of Armagh was compiled, the bones of St. Columba had been enshrined, and were then at the church of Saul Patrick.