pointed out that the two names are really the same. Both mean 'Dove.' The termination kill means 'Church'; so that Columkill is 'Dove of the Church.' The addition is said to have been made in token of the great piety which Columba exhibited at an early age.
Columbanus, of whom we have now to speak, belonged to the monastic school of Saint Comgal at Bangor in the County Down. It is said that there were three thousand scholars in this establishment. This is scarcely credible, the less so as we know that the old biographers never stuck at a little exaggeration. On the other hand, if they exaggerate the numbers, they altogether underrate the learning with which these old schools abounded, for they were quite unable to appreciate it. When we read their works we are sorely tempted to think that the men whom they commemorate were as narrow-minded, as credulous, as superstitious, and as ignorant as they were themselves; and then when we find places described in general terms, and in very bad Latin, as centres of learning and wisdom, we are somewhat inclined to put the learning and wisdom along with the miracles in that region of myth, where everything is quite too unsubstantial and visionary for the founding of any serious historical argument.
Happily, we have better evidence than the writings of the biographers. In this case, for example, some of the works of Columbanus have come down to us, and they tell us what could be learnt in the old Irish schools, because it is certain that whatever learning he possessed was obtained before he left the country. From these works we find that he wrote Latin, both prose and verse, in excellent style; that he knew Greek, which was more than the Pope
