On Friday, 3 June, 2005, gunshots were fired over an unauthorised copy of a Harry Potter manuscript. On one day in 561AD, people were killed over an unauthorised copy of a biblical manuscript. It seems that there’s not much new under the sun.
The warrior monk, Colmcille, a powerful giant of a man, surveyed with grim satisfaction the devastating aftermath of battle, in the shadow of one of the Emerald Isle’s most distinctive mountains, the flat topped Ben Bulbin. He had been vindicated, his honour and that of the church restored. Three thousand of the enemy forces lay dead around him and their king had fled the battlefield in disgrace, with his priests and druids. (Not one to burn any bridges of a supernatural kind, King Diarmaid maintained cordial relations with both Christianity and paganism but it hadn’t helped him that day).
The big man counted amongst the victors’ walking wounded, having received a gash in his side that would leave a scar for the rest of his life. His forces, according to legend, had suffered only one fatality who had strayed over a magical protective line laid down by the Archangel Michael, the supernatural ally called into the fray by Colmcille.
The short story of Colmcille and the Battle of the Book at Cooldrumman goes something like this –
Colmcille copied another monk’s manuscript. The other monk, Finnian, objected and they settled things the way they did in those days. Full stop, as they say.
Nowadays people can get heavily fined or even jailed for copyright infringement but it is not generally a capital offence. So how could a holy man, of all people, derive such a sense of righteousness and glory from the carnage of war, especially one apparently triggered by something as innocuous as the copying of a single manuscript?
The story begins on a dark and stormy night...
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