Page:The ancient Irish church.djvu/73

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SAINT COLUMBA.
69

century, we have the Kells workmen making a metal book-shrine for the O'Donnells of Donegal, to whom they owed allegiance because Columba was an O'Donnell. At a much later date, early in the thirteenth century, the Columban monastery of Derry sent some of its inmates to Iona to repel the Bishop of Man, who wanted to assert his authority, and had erected some buildings there. This was of course a considerable time after the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland, and shows how long the confederation, and to some extent the independence of the Columban monasteries, continued.[1]

  1. See Stokes' Ireland and the Anglo-Norman Church, where a most interesting chapter deals with the continuance of the Celtic Church in Ireland in Anglo-Norman times.