Two Monks Started First Recorded Copyright Battle, Resulting in Thousands of Deaths

When Finian found out what Columba had been doing he was outraged. He demanded that his former student hand over the copy, which was nearing its completion. But Columba was wouldn’t listen. To the increasing frustration of his former teacher, he refused to surrender his copy of the manuscript. Naturally, their once-friendly rapport became notably bitter and hostile. But neither man could have foreseen that their combined obstinacy was sowing the seeds of a bloody, pitched battle.

Unable to convince his student to do away with his copy, Finian arranged to have the matter brought before a tribunal presided over by the High King of Ireland, Diarmait mac Cerbhiall. Finian’s argument was straightforward: because the original text belonged to him, so too should any copy of it, especially one made under his own roof and without his consultation. Columba made the counterargument that, while Finian did indeed own the original, he had done all the work translating and therefore the copy should be his. He failed to convince the king, however, who arbitrated that:

“To every cow belongs her calf, therefore to every book belongs its copy“.

Unnecessary pastoral analogy aside, the king’s message was clear: as the owner of the original work, Finian was therefore entitled to ownership of any subsequent copy. Should we believe this to be true, King Diarmait’s words mark the first verdict in a copyright case in history. His verdict proved too much for Columba, however. The two may have been related by blood, but because of another run-in they’d had previously it was bad blood.

Shortly before bringing the matter of the manuscript before King Diarmait, one of Columba’s relatives, Curnan of Conn Acht, had participated in a hurling match—a quintessentially Irish sport still played today—in which he accidentally killed a member of the opposing team. Fearing for his life, he sought sanctuary with Columba, invoking the ancient “Law of Sanctuary”. It didn’t save him, however. King Diarmait sent a number of heavily armed men after Curnan and tearing him from Columba’s arms they put him to death on the spot without trial.

King Diarmait’s ruling, therefore, proved the final straw for Columba. Rallying the O’Neill clan to his cause, he instigated a full-scale revolt against the incumbent king. Eventually, the two sides met sometime in the mid-sixth century (dates range from 555 – 561 AD, though the latter is most commonly accepted) at the Battle of Cúl Dreimhne (the “Battle of the Book”).

Narratively speaking, it would be amazing to describe how the two sides drew up opposite one another one dewy, misty morning. It would be wonderful if I could say that Columba took part in the battle himself; that saints and sinners fought side by side with bravery and ferocity; and—though this is unlikely—that some participants realized the great irony of the fact they were fighting a battle that had originated with an entirely Christian attempt to spread the word of God.

But as is so often the case with battles of the Dark Ages, we know almost nothing about it; just that it took place in the túath (principality) of Cairbre Drom Cliabh, that it claimed the lives of around 3,000 men, and that it was a decisive victory for the Uí Néills and a crushing defeat for King Diarmait. We also know that the king was not among the dead strewn across the battlefield; though in hindsight he may have wished he had been.

King Diarmait would go on to lose the next battle he fought against the king of Tethbae and was ultimately murdered in 565 at the hands of yet another Irish king, Áed Dub mac Suibni. As for Finian, we know more about the success of his abbey than we do about the man himself. Finian’s copy of Jerome’s Vulgate Bible—the source of so much bloodshed—continued to attract hundreds of clerics and scholars to Movilla.

Both as a center of religious learning and, as recent archaeology has shown, of bronze and glass production, the abbey flourished until 823 when it was sacked by marauding Vikings. Though it recovered some of its former glory as an Augustinian abbey in the twelfth century, it would never again command the respect and prestige it once had. Molvilla Abbey’s functional history came to an end when, along with thousands of others, it was shut down by Henry VIII in 1542.

As for Columba, he went into exile shortly after the Battle of the Book. The story goes that a Synod of clerics, who blamed Columba solely for the bloodshed, debated between exile or execution. They were eventually persuaded to the former, on the condition that while in exile he would convert 3,000 people to Christianity; as many as had been slain upon the battlefield. He left Ireland in 563, boarding a leather-clad wicker coracle along with twelve others. Mercifully they weren’t lost at sea or dashed upon the rocks during their short voyage, instead washing up on the shores of the Scottish island of Iona in 563.

While his youth may have been marked by violence, Columba seems to have passed his later years living a life of quiet, albeit austere, serenity. His mission of converting Scotland to Christianity was underpinned by a simple, monastic daily routine; he consumed nothing but barley or oats, drank only water and slept on a cold, bare slab of rock. Once he was too weak to venture too far he spent his final years plying the craft he’d learned under Finian, diligently copying manuscripts.

On the eve of death, he was copying a Psalter, but stopped abruptly at the end of a sentence, announcing that Baithin, his cousin and successor, would have to complete the work. He then made his way to the church’s altar, where the monks found him the next morning. Hanging onto the altar and on the verge of death, Columba managed to summon just enough strength to give them his blessings before passing away.