St. Columba

Who they were

Columba was an Irish prince and monk and a scribe to the marrow, and his story turns on a copied psalter. Lent a precious manuscript, he copied it in secret. The owner appealed to the high king, whose ruling is the first copyright decision in the Western record: to every cow belongs its calf, and to every book its copy. It went against Columba.

The dispute fed into the battle of Cúl Dreimhne, and Columba, holding himself accountable for its dead, accepted an exile as penance that changed nations. He would leave Ireland and win for Christ as many souls as had fallen. In 563 he sailed with twelve companions to Iona, and from that small island he evangelized Pictish Scotland, advised kings, and founded the mother house of a monastic federation. He went on copying books to his last day and died at the scriptorium's work in 597. Adomnán's life of him preserves, among much else, the first recorded tale of a creature in the River Ness, which is worth exactly the smile it gets.

Why people turn to St. Columba

Scots and the Irish diaspora both. Writers and copyists, and anyone who makes things out of other people's work, for whom the cow and calf ruling is a standing examination of conscience. And everyone who turned a costly mistake into a mission, because the exile is the patronage.

How to ask their intercession

Over the work of copying and crediting rightly. And when the mistake is already made and unfixable, ask him for what he did next rather than for the mistake to be undone.