Christ is the world's Redeemer

Christus Redemptor gentium (‘… Redeemer of the nations’); so begins the Lat of a distinctive 6th-c text ascribed to Columba. Allegedly written to compensate for what Gregory considered too meagre praise of the Holy Trinity in an earlier work, it was printed in 1869 in Part 2 of The Book of Hymns of the Ancient Church of Ireland, ed by J H Todd. This is the 2nd part of a longer hymn whose first section is addressed to God the Father. In June 1897, long before the Scottish island of Iona was made a place of pilgrimage, study and social action, a service was held there to commemorate the 13 centuries since Columba’s death. Duncan McGregor, then ministering at Inverallochy in Aberdeenshire, preached the evening sermon, having translated this hymn for the occasion. The hymn was printed in the author’s St Columba: a Record and a Tribute later that year. With minor changes (2.5 was formerly ‘Christ the red cross ascended’) it appeared in the Irish Church Hymnal in 1919, the 1927 Scottish Revised Church Hymnary, in their successors and in several other current books. In some hymnals 1.2 reads ‘the lover of the pure’, and 2.3–4, ‘who wave their palms in triumph, and fire us for the fight’. In terms of Scripture, says Wesley Milgate, ‘the heart of the matter’ is in Ephesians 1 and Revelation 7.

This metre has a great many tunes; the hymn needs one which begins on a strong beat, and the traditional (or ‘folk’) Irish melody MOVILLE, from Co Kerry, has been found ideal. It was printed as the tune for Scorching is this love in 1902 in Stanford’s Complete Collection of Irish Music as noted by George Petrie. It was probably first used as a hymn tune, with these words, in the 1919 book. Charles H Kitson’s arrangement has become widely adopted since its appearance in RCH (1927). Moville is on the coast of Lough Foyle in Co Donegal, in the N of the Irish Republic; Columba attended a monastic school there before crossing the Irish Sea for Iona.

(Col[u]mcille, ‘the holy dove’), b Gartan, Co Donegal, Ireland 521, d Iona, Scotland 597. Born into a noble and powerful Irish family of the clan of Ui Neill, he was trained in monasteries in Ireland by (among others) Finnian of Ulster. He in turn was ordained in 551 and went on to plant several churches and other communities. In c563 he sailed with 12 companions to the island of Iona off the W coast of Scotland, land granted by King Conall mac Congaill. From there he spent the next 34 years spreading the faith and nurturing new Christian groups (‘encampments for God’) among the Celtic tribes in Ireland and as far as Argyll and the Hebrides, supported by local ‘kings’. Though never a bishop, he became the de facto church leader over a wide area of the W Highlands, conducting strategic ordinations; Brude, king of the Picts, was converted from paganism to be one of his followers. Some of his hymns were written in Lat, some in the Irish language. An early biography was written by (St) Adomnan. Nos.289, 755.

b Fort Augustus, Inverness-shire 1854, d Inverallochy, Aberdeenshire 1923. The parish sch, Dunrichen, Forfarshire, and the Univ of Aberdeen. He served as a missionary at Drumoak and Kincardine before being ordained in 1881 at the fishing village of Inverallochy. He ministered there for the remainder of his life. He was the author of St Columba, a Record and a Tribute (1898) which together with his translations did much to bring Columba’s work (qv) to greater notice in the churches. Long before the renewal of the work of Iona, MacGregor preached there in 1897 to mark the 1300th anniversary of Columba’s death He also wrote widely on other aspects of early Scottish church history, and published his own verse in Clouds and Sunlight. No.289.