They manufactured their own parchment from the hides of the wild
beasts that roamed in the forests around them, and bound their books
in boards of wood clamped with iron or ivory.

Such was the monastery of St. Gall, which owes its inception to the
journey through Europe of the great Columbanus and his
monk-companions--men whose lives, according to Bede, procured for the
religious habit great veneration, so that wherever they appeared they
were received with joy, as God's own servants. "And what will be the
reward," asks the biographer of Marianus Scotus, "of these
pilgrim-monks who left the sweet soil of their native land, its
mountains and hills, its valleys and its groves, its rivers and pure
fountains, and went like the children of Abraham without hesitation
into the land which God had pointed out to them?" He answers thus:
"They will dwell in the house of the Lord with the angels and
archangels of God forever; they will behold the God of gods in Sion,
to whom be honor and glory for ever and ever."


REFERENCES:

Lanigan: Ecclesiastical History of Ireland (Dublin, 1829);
Montalembert: Monks of the West (Edinburgh, 1861); Moran: Irish
Saints in Great Britain (Dublin, 1903); Dalgairns: Apostles of Europe
(London, 1876); Healy: Ireland's Ancient Schools and Scholars
(Dublin, 1890); Barrett: A Calendar of Scottish Saints (Fort
Augustus, 1904); Stokes: Six Months in the Apennines (London, 1892),
Three Months in the Forests of France (London, 1895); Fowler: Vita S.
Columbae (Oxford, 1894); Wattenbach: Articles in Ulster Journal of