August 6, 2019 • 26 mins
The first modern copyright law was the Statute of St. Anne, passed in Great Britain in 1710. However, copyright disputes themselves are much older -- and in at least once case, an argument over copyright led to thousands of deaths. Listen in to learn the strange story of how Saint Columba and Saint Finian went into open battle over copyright.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you so much for
tuning in now. It is no secret that this, this show,
which we very much enjoy making, is not just a
bunch of fun for us, it's also literally our jobs,
which means we deal with some very strange legal situations.
(00:49):
We're going somewhere with this. My name is Ben, My
name is no Ben. Have you ever heard of the
band Negative Land? Yeah? I think so. Yeah, what do
they do? They have a song called copyright Infringement is
your best entertainment value? Maybe it's not a song, but
it's definitely a slogan of theirs. I used to have
a T shirt. But they were notorious for uncleared samples
that piste people off quite a lot. They made an
(01:09):
album called You two. On the cover of the album
and has the letter you and the numeral two and
then Negative Land very small at the bottom, and they
were sued by the band You two. Um. But this
actual album contained clips of famous radio DJ case caysum
um these outtakes where he's doing a dedication to a
song for someone's dead dog. Not to be confused with
(01:30):
super producer Casey Pegram. That's right, Casey Pegram. Are you
familiar with the letter you and the numeral two? I
am indeed, yeah. And the dog's name is Fluffy. And
you hear him getting riled up in between takes where
he's like, these guys are from England and who gives
a you know, Casey Casum and his non hearing him
in his non jovial kind of worst was a lot
of fun. But the copyright infringement is a big part
(01:54):
of what we do, not infringement specifically, but avoiding being
sued for infringements. Shall we say? Yeah? So a few
a few years ago, I made a rookie mistake on
an episode of car Stuff with my good pal. I write,
I Scott Benjamin Uh and we sang a snatch of
the birthday song on the air. Now, the birthday song,
(02:18):
it's exactly the song you're thinking of, is a cop
It has copyright, It has legal protection, which is why
you never hear it on sitcoms, for instance, or even
high quality television shows like Breaking Bad or something like that.
You'll hear, you'll hear something else. It's because you have
to legally pay someone to use that music, and nowadays
(02:43):
copyright law is something that we associate more with the
modern age. And I'm saying modern age as in like
the last two hundred years, you know. But today's episode
is about a much older, very vision of a copyright scrap.
And no, it's not about the mouse and how the
(03:06):
mouse affects copyright law. Yeah, uh, this is about it.
This is about an entirely different story and and it's
pretty old. I was surprised by how long ago this occurred,
nor I was too ben But in order to talk
about historic copyright law, we have to first discuss something
(03:27):
called the Statute of ann which was passed in seventeen
ten in Great Britain now the United Kingdom Um. And
before this statute was passed, publishers had an absolute monopoly.
But the Statute of anne Um did what very much
what the idea of like a you know, the public
domain kind of does so twenty one years of publishing
(03:50):
rights for the copyright holder. And the idea was to
promote the printing of new material. But the idea of
copyright has existed way before even this historic copyright law
around five sixty a d. We have a story that
actually involves a sort of a mini war, a skirmish,
(04:12):
I guess you could say, based around copyright um and
it all had to do with the ownership of particular
book of Psalms or a psalter known as the Cathatch,
which is one of the oldest surviving handwritten manuscripts in Ireland.
And this beef was between two saints, canonized monks of
(04:35):
the Catholic Church in Ireland. St. Columba and St. Finian.
That's right nowadays and even back during the days of
the statute of an copyright infringement will land you in court,
You'll have to pay fines and fees. You probably won't
go to jail, you probably won't be physically injured. In
(04:56):
this case, thousands of people would die as St. Phinn
Ian and St. Colombo went head to head and it
was all over the ownership of a copy of that
that psalter that you mentioned earlier. Knowl now, this Irish pronunciation,
it's a little tricky for us because we do not
speak Gaelic ourselves. It's spelled c A t h A
(05:20):
c h k katha. Yeah, it was like we heard, well,
let's let's just let's let the computer talk. This is
from a phrase concad k. Here we go concaid concadka.
It's at The reason this book is important is that
(05:43):
today it is the oldest surviving manuscript written in Ireland.
It is attributed to St Colomba. So the guy we
call Saint Colombo now was born calm Kill or colomb
Kill in about five twenty one. He had a lot
of names to like. One of them was call Um
(06:04):
mcphelan mc Fergus, which I I love. It's a lot
of fergus. It's a very lilting, gentle thing to say.
And Sill was added to his first name because he
spent so much time as a kid in the local church.
The Gaelic word for churches sill spelled c I l
l E. That's right, and calm sil or kill was
(06:24):
it is actually translated to church dove in Gaelic. So
he was born in Donegal, Ireland, and he was a
descendant of Clan O'Donnell, a royal descendant in fact. And
we'll just referred to him as St Columba from here
on out because that's easier to say. Uh. He spent
most of his life literally with his nose in books,
studying in monastic schools in early Christian Ireland, and he
(06:48):
became part of a pretty important crew, the twelve Disciples
of Ireland, who were twelve very very learned gentleman who
studied under UH Saint Finnian himself. Um. He also came
a monk eventually and was a priest. Ah, there we go.
Player two has entered the game. Could you tell us
a little bit about St. Finian? Yes, so Sint Finian
(07:10):
of Clonard is indeed player too, also known as kluane
erard E r A I R D couldn't find that
one on four of a or Finian or finn on
nine UM. And he was one of the earliest monastic
saints of Ireland. He lived from four seventy to five
forty nine. So again he was this very important teacher
(07:32):
over this group of a very influential UH monks and
scholars in Ireland. He would have been much older than
them at the time um of in question of the
story UM. He is thought to have been born in Mischel,
County Carlo UM. And he was himself placed under the
care of another monk when he was a wee lad
(07:53):
named St. Fourth Cairn Um and that is the gentleman
who taught him the ways of the Lord Um in
Wales actually probably also taught him to read. Yeah, of course,
and that was a big deal because these manuscripts that
we're talking about, and the whole notion of copyright very
much hinges on this um. Thing we take for granted
(08:14):
today is the ability to read, and you had to
be studying under some very high level you know, uh
scholars in order to have that ability. It was a
special skill, you know, if we're just being off the cuff.
It was kind of like being able to fly a
hot air balloon. You might know someone who could read,
or know someone who knows someone, but you probably wouldn't
(08:36):
be reading yourself. Finny and eventually kind of solidified his
legacy by founding something called the Clonard Abbey Um and
that is where the twelve Apostles of Ireland studied under
him in Meath, Ireland, Sinc. Colombo was an honor student
(08:57):
in the world of the seminary. He was constantly praying.
Not when I say constantly praying, I'm not being hyperbolic.
He was always praying or writing. This guy wrote three
hundred books over the course of his life and when
we say rights, we also mean original works, and we
(09:18):
mean transcribing existing works, which was which was something that
quite a few people did in in this industry. He
was leading what some authors have called the book digitization
of his day. At Duro. He and his team of
monks copied every single sacred text they could get their
(09:40):
hand on. And something strange happened. Around five sixty A. D.
Columba and his mentor Finian came at Odds. You see,
Klimpa had acquired a new psalter, a book of psalms,
and he copied it. And he said, okay, I've copied it.
I'm gonna keep my copy of the work. And St.
(10:01):
Finnian said, oh no, no, no, no, no, no no, no, no no, no,
my friend, I don't think you can do that. It
belonged to him in the first place. And Columbus said,
why why can't I do this? The argument goes all
the way up to the king. The dispute eventually leads
(10:21):
to something I will woefully mispronounce the Battle of c
U L d r E I m h n E
the Battle of Cold Drayman. So here's how it all
went down. St. Columba copies the psalter st Finian says,
you can't do that, and of course we should mention
(10:42):
at this time these guys aren't saints. They are holy men,
but they have not been canonized beatified. So on, Yeah,
you don't have a refer to a person that's alive
as a saint, right That's that's that's that's pretty exclusively
a posthumous thing, not officially. So they take this argument
to the King and Columbus as it belongs to me
because I copied it. Finnian says, it belongs to me
(11:04):
because I own the original book. He couldn't have made
a copy without my book, therefore I should have both
of them. And in a Shamalan plot twist, the King
gives this following judgment to every cow belongs her calth,
therefore to every book belongs its copy. That's not what
I was expecting. That doesn't really jibe with the modern day,
(11:27):
you know. Uh. Columba says, well, I disagree with that,
and he doesn't walk away and kick rocks. Instead, he
instigates a rebellion against the king. So imagine going to
a court, whatever kind of whatever kind of court case
you might be involved in, something that is not concerning
(11:48):
violence or anything. It's it's an intellectual property I P
issue and then getting so angry about what the judge
decrees that you decide to overthrow the country, which is
which is what he attempted to do. He did successfully
get a clan together to try to overthrow the king.
It's pretty interesting and actually there were a few other
(12:10):
little things thrown in the mix that led to to
this this series of events. Yeah, Finnian said he didn't
give permission right for it to be copied. Not only
did he not give permission, like he exactly he they
were living under the same roof of the time. And um,
it's a little interesting, and it wouldn't really have the
details as to why he didn't ask for permission, because
he would have taken an awful long time to transcribe this,
(12:30):
because we've actually heard that some accounts that it is
actually a Gaelic translation of the Bible, the entire Bible.
So to do that by hand, he would have taken
him ages, and he had to do it at night
without this this person's knowledge. Uh so I'm a little
confused as to why he didn't just ask. Maybe the
guy was just a real pill as you would say,
(12:51):
with his property, and he's like, no, it's mine. What's
mine is mine, you can't have it. But I thought
their whole thing, their whole goal, was to make these
texts available more broadly. So I'm confused as to why
Finian was being such a such a jerk about the
right so proslytized to spread the word of God. But
even before this beef happened, there was a beef between
(13:14):
between Columba himself and the king because he gave refuge
to an escape political prisoner and um then the king
Diarmud actually went against their established laws of sanctuary, at
least their customs, and he had the escape ee captured
(13:35):
and executed, and then put Columba himself under house arrest,
at which point Columba tricked the guards, escaped and went
back to his hometown in tier Cornal, where he then
heard that the king was actually pursuing him quick point there. Though,
this idea of tricking guards and escaping doesn't make a
(13:57):
lot of sense if you think about it, I think
there was something more to the story. I think it
was bribery. It happens a lot even in the modern
day when you hear about people escaping in uh, you know,
in a cell or the uh maybe a dodgy, chaotic country,
that's true. But the idea of a little bit more
of like a capery, kind of like escape, maybe a
(14:19):
disguise of some sort. It's a lot more fun to
picture than just like slipping the garden, you know, um
some some coin. And this is all wrapped up in
the beef with the copied text as well. This was
like the that was kind of the straw that broke
the camel's back. I guess it was the pretext. This
text was the pretext for the war. The battle rather,
and this battle, which occurs in five hundred six D,
(14:42):
leads to according to sources, you could ballpark it at
up to three thousand deaths. It's not said explicitly who
won the battle, but here's the thing. It was Columba
who got punished for it. So I feel like we
can safely that the king won that skirmish, and people
(15:04):
were deciding what they would do to punish Columba even
talked about excommunicating him, which was a huge deal. Instead,
they let him stay a part of the faith and
he was forced to leave Ireland and he was given
the task to convert as many people to Christianity as
had died on the day of that battle, so up
(15:27):
to three thousand people if he wanted to properly pay
his penance. Yeah, he took this quite seriously. Um. And
he took off from Ireland and settled on the Isle
of Iona, off the west coast of Scotland, the mainland
of Scotland. And there he set up and he set
himself up a monastery. And you may be familiar, you
(15:48):
may that may ring a bell the Isle of Iona,
because that is where many of of Scotland's kings were buried,
including potentially Macbeth. So he had twelve power traveling companions
with him. Uh. And he settled in five sixty three
and began the work of putting together this monastery and
(16:09):
converting um folks to Christianity. So Iona becomes the center
of Columba's second act, his his redemption story, right, his
redemption song, if we want to quote Marley. He works
(16:30):
tirelessly teaching the Holy Word, the Gospel. He goes all
across Scotland attempting to convert the northern Pictish people. One
legend comes out of his adventures and that's that he
actually met Nessie, the locked Ness monster, and scared it
away by making the sign of the Cross as the
(16:52):
creature approached. His career was not over. He went on
to greatness. He became a Roman cath clergyman, and he
actually contributed to the most famous ancient Irish manuscript, the
Book of Kells, which you can go see today at Trinity.
(17:12):
It's also a really delightful children's animated film. It's true,
but even that was not enough to get this stain
of copyright beef off of his record, off of his CV.
He returned to his native land just one more time
before he died, and he passed away on June nine
(17:33):
in Iona, which he had become quite fond of. I mean,
like he he definitely had made this his second home.
And it sounds to me like he didn't live a
life of exile and shame. I mean, he went on
to do really great works and became a very revered
figure in the history of Roman Catholicism. Right yeah, And
(17:54):
he was sort of a proponent of what we would
call now copy left. Have you heard of this? No
coppy left is this arrangement where software or creative works
can be used, modified, distributed freely on the condition that
anything created by it is bound by the same condition,
you know what I mean. I think that's a great
(18:15):
way to pursue innovation. And I also do want to
mention one thing about St. Columba. Alright, So I'm really
into patron saints, right, I'm fascinated by the idea. I
want to know your favorite patron saint, especially their patron
of something obscure. St. Columba is one of the three
patron saints of Ireland. We all know the most famous one, St. Patrick, right,
(18:37):
but he's also the patron saint of Dairy, the town
d E r r y. Not like milk and cheese. No, no, no,
he's not that cool floods, book binders, poets and Scotland.
What about St Finian, you may ask, He is the
patron of the Diocese of Meath. I would say that
(19:00):
um um came out ahead there, and that's what you
get for bow guarding texts, you know, and being a
jerk about letting people copy your stuff. You know, I'd
say that, uh, generosity is a very important um thing
when it comes to sharing books, you know. I mean, Ben,
you are a very very well known book lender. You know,
(19:20):
you love for people to experience things that you yourself
have enjoyed and found culturally enriching. And I think that's
a very important thing when it comes to this stuff. So,
you know, be on the right side of history. Let
people borrow books, right be the library you wish to
see in the world. To paraphrase Guti. Actually that that
actually worked out. And uh, hey, oh you know we
(19:43):
haven't said it yet. We've got a birthday month coming
up for the three of us as well as our
Powell Matt Fredericks, so wild all of us. Yeah, this
is that we're in the midst of it right now.
Um Casey myself, you, Ben and Matt all are our
le those roor and leos? What get out? Sorry, well,
(20:06):
I'm I'm more month oriented. I don't see a lot
of leoistic traits. But also a full disclosure, one of
my first freelance writing gigs was writing a horoscope column
and the editor hired me because I said I didn't
think there was much to it and that it would
be easy to write vague horoscopes. But I got out
(20:29):
of it and I had I have a lot of
respect for people who do believe it as a sort
of psychological evaluation. But I don't know. I don't know
if you could look at the four of us and say, well,
we have a lot in common. We're human, right, we
have the same number of limbs. That's I don't know.
Personality wise, though, I've always found I've observed that there
are some pretty interesting traits that you can associate with
(20:51):
people's personalities that are you know, predicted by astrology. But
you know, it's that confirmation bias thing that that always
uh throws a wrench into the right or what if
we're messing with people's personalities from the day that they
can understand a language by telling them that's their personality.
I don't know about all that. I I've always been
pretty fascinated by it and found some stuff that was
(21:13):
pretty interesting for me. But you know, we welcome all
perspectives when it comes to everything. Uh. And here's an
interesting little tidbit to wrap up on. In nineteen fifty seven,
there was an archaeologist in Britain named Charles Thomas who
uh excavated this wooden hut on the Aisle of Iona
and believed, without any way to prove it that it
belonged to St. Columba Um and only just recently, in
(21:37):
two thousand and seventeen, a team of historians belonging to
Historic Environment Scotland did radio carbon dating on some of
the samples that were found in ninety seven during that excavation,
and they found pieces of something called hazel charcoal that
they were able to date back a fifteen hundred years
to a time when Columba was absolutely in thick of
(22:00):
his Iona days. Um, so there you go. So he did,
he did live there, he did, and those radio carbon
dated the site back about fifteen hundred years to a
time when Colombo was absolutely living there. So this definitely
would have been as Hut, and this would have been
the time where he was spreading Christianity to the Pictish
people of the Scottish Aisles, So that would have been
(22:22):
more of a Celtic polytheistic religion, almost almost akin to
something we referred to as paganism. Get Celtic poly theism
probably often depicted as druids or something in popular mass media.
But I think it's always a wonderful and inspiring thing
when we are able to connect these ancient stories with
(22:44):
true physical artifacts. Do a little bit of object journalism,
which I have to talk about later. I'm really into
this thing now. I will see in the defense in
the defense of horoscopes, astrology, and other sorts of psycholog
tragical batteries. For anyone who may be concerned that I'm
pooh pooing it or throwing out the baby with the
(23:08):
heavenly bathwater. I do want to say one thing that's
been creepy for most of my life. Always ended up
dating aquarians. I don't know why. I seriously think there
was maybe one exception in middle school. Aquarius is I
think it's aquarians? Isn't what I guess? So yeah, I
never thought about that. And did you ever hear about that? Uh?
(23:28):
That astrological sign that was found? It's a story for
another day. Casey, do you remember that one? I don't
remember this now. Oh my gosh, you guys, it's a
true story, but we don't have time for it today.
Thank you so much for tuning in. What are your
favorite patron saints and what are they? Patrons of bonus
points if it's super obscure, and hey, nol, what would
(23:52):
you be the patron saint of? Probably procrastination? Patron saint
of procrastination. I like it. I like it. Um, Casey,
I'm not gonna put you on the spot because I
know you hate that, So let's just call you the
patron saying of not being put on the spot for today.
How's that? So there you go? I love that? Uh
and what would you be the patron saying of Let
(24:13):
us know? We're on Facebook, we're on Instagram, we're on Twitter.
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(24:34):
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(24:54):
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(25:17):
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You know. But luckily we haven't actually been injured by
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definitely never happens by writing those iTunes reviews. Yes, so
thanks to you for listening. Thanks to our super producer
Casey Pegram. Thanks to Jonathan Strickland. That rapscallion, that's scad,
(25:40):
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who composed our theme, research associates Gabe Lucier and Ryan Barrish.
Thanks to Christophrocios here always in spirit, and thanks to
you Ben Bowling for for being a checker shirt wearing friend.
Thanks to you, Noel Brown, and thanks to you say
Colombo for looking out for book blogers. We'll see you
(26:00):
next time, folks. For more podcasts from My Heart Radio,
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you so much for
tuning in now. It is no secret that this, this show,
which we very much enjoy making, is not just a
bunch of fun for us, it's also literally our jobs,
which means we deal with some very strange legal situations.
(00:49):
We're going somewhere with this. My name is Ben, My
name is no Ben. Have you ever heard of the
band Negative Land? Yeah? I think so. Yeah, what do
they do? They have a song called copyright Infringement is
your best entertainment value? Maybe it's not a song, but
it's definitely a slogan of theirs. I used to have
a T shirt. But they were notorious for uncleared samples
that piste people off quite a lot. They made an
(01:09):
album called You two. On the cover of the album
and has the letter you and the numeral two and
then Negative Land very small at the bottom, and they
were sued by the band You two. Um. But this
actual album contained clips of famous radio DJ case caysum
um these outtakes where he's doing a dedication to a
song for someone's dead dog. Not to be confused with
(01:30):
super producer Casey Pegram. That's right, Casey Pegram. Are you
familiar with the letter you and the numeral two? I
am indeed, yeah. And the dog's name is Fluffy. And
you hear him getting riled up in between takes where
he's like, these guys are from England and who gives
a you know, Casey Casum and his non hearing him
in his non jovial kind of worst was a lot
of fun. But the copyright infringement is a big part
(01:54):
of what we do, not infringement specifically, but avoiding being
sued for infringements. Shall we say? Yeah? So a few
a few years ago, I made a rookie mistake on
an episode of car Stuff with my good pal. I write,
I Scott Benjamin Uh and we sang a snatch of
the birthday song on the air. Now, the birthday song,
(02:18):
it's exactly the song you're thinking of, is a cop
It has copyright, It has legal protection, which is why
you never hear it on sitcoms, for instance, or even
high quality television shows like Breaking Bad or something like that.
You'll hear, you'll hear something else. It's because you have
to legally pay someone to use that music, and nowadays
(02:43):
copyright law is something that we associate more with the
modern age. And I'm saying modern age as in like
the last two hundred years, you know. But today's episode
is about a much older, very vision of a copyright scrap.
And no, it's not about the mouse and how the
(03:06):
mouse affects copyright law. Yeah, uh, this is about it.
This is about an entirely different story and and it's
pretty old. I was surprised by how long ago this occurred,
nor I was too ben But in order to talk
about historic copyright law, we have to first discuss something
(03:27):
called the Statute of ann which was passed in seventeen
ten in Great Britain now the United Kingdom Um. And
before this statute was passed, publishers had an absolute monopoly.
But the Statute of anne Um did what very much
what the idea of like a you know, the public
domain kind of does so twenty one years of publishing
(03:50):
rights for the copyright holder. And the idea was to
promote the printing of new material. But the idea of
copyright has existed way before even this historic copyright law
around five sixty a d. We have a story that
actually involves a sort of a mini war, a skirmish,
(04:12):
I guess you could say, based around copyright um and
it all had to do with the ownership of particular
book of Psalms or a psalter known as the Cathatch,
which is one of the oldest surviving handwritten manuscripts in Ireland.
And this beef was between two saints, canonized monks of
(04:35):
the Catholic Church in Ireland. St. Columba and St. Finian.
That's right nowadays and even back during the days of
the statute of an copyright infringement will land you in court,
You'll have to pay fines and fees. You probably won't
go to jail, you probably won't be physically injured. In
(04:56):
this case, thousands of people would die as St. Phinn
Ian and St. Colombo went head to head and it
was all over the ownership of a copy of that
that psalter that you mentioned earlier. Knowl now, this Irish pronunciation,
it's a little tricky for us because we do not
speak Gaelic ourselves. It's spelled c A t h A
(05:20):
c h k katha. Yeah, it was like we heard, well,
let's let's just let's let the computer talk. This is
from a phrase concad k. Here we go concaid concadka.
It's at The reason this book is important is that
(05:43):
today it is the oldest surviving manuscript written in Ireland.
It is attributed to St Colomba. So the guy we
call Saint Colombo now was born calm Kill or colomb
Kill in about five twenty one. He had a lot
of names to like. One of them was call Um
(06:04):
mcphelan mc Fergus, which I I love. It's a lot
of fergus. It's a very lilting, gentle thing to say.
And Sill was added to his first name because he
spent so much time as a kid in the local church.
The Gaelic word for churches sill spelled c I l
l E. That's right, and calm sil or kill was
(06:24):
it is actually translated to church dove in Gaelic. So
he was born in Donegal, Ireland, and he was a
descendant of Clan O'Donnell, a royal descendant in fact. And
we'll just referred to him as St Columba from here
on out because that's easier to say. Uh. He spent
most of his life literally with his nose in books,
studying in monastic schools in early Christian Ireland, and he
(06:48):
became part of a pretty important crew, the twelve Disciples
of Ireland, who were twelve very very learned gentleman who
studied under UH Saint Finnian himself. Um. He also came
a monk eventually and was a priest. Ah, there we go.
Player two has entered the game. Could you tell us
a little bit about St. Finian? Yes, so Sint Finian
(07:10):
of Clonard is indeed player too, also known as kluane
erard E r A I R D couldn't find that
one on four of a or Finian or finn on
nine UM. And he was one of the earliest monastic
saints of Ireland. He lived from four seventy to five
forty nine. So again he was this very important teacher
(07:32):
over this group of a very influential UH monks and
scholars in Ireland. He would have been much older than
them at the time um of in question of the
story UM. He is thought to have been born in Mischel,
County Carlo UM. And he was himself placed under the
care of another monk when he was a wee lad
(07:53):
named St. Fourth Cairn Um and that is the gentleman
who taught him the ways of the Lord Um in
Wales actually probably also taught him to read. Yeah, of course,
and that was a big deal because these manuscripts that
we're talking about, and the whole notion of copyright very
much hinges on this um. Thing we take for granted
(08:14):
today is the ability to read, and you had to
be studying under some very high level you know, uh
scholars in order to have that ability. It was a
special skill, you know, if we're just being off the cuff.
It was kind of like being able to fly a
hot air balloon. You might know someone who could read,
or know someone who knows someone, but you probably wouldn't
(08:36):
be reading yourself. Finny and eventually kind of solidified his
legacy by founding something called the Clonard Abbey Um and
that is where the twelve Apostles of Ireland studied under
him in Meath, Ireland, Sinc. Colombo was an honor student
(08:57):
in the world of the seminary. He was constantly praying.
Not when I say constantly praying, I'm not being hyperbolic.
He was always praying or writing. This guy wrote three
hundred books over the course of his life and when
we say rights, we also mean original works, and we
(09:18):
mean transcribing existing works, which was which was something that
quite a few people did in in this industry. He
was leading what some authors have called the book digitization
of his day. At Duro. He and his team of
monks copied every single sacred text they could get their
(09:40):
hand on. And something strange happened. Around five sixty A. D.
Columba and his mentor Finian came at Odds. You see,
Klimpa had acquired a new psalter, a book of psalms,
and he copied it. And he said, okay, I've copied it.
I'm gonna keep my copy of the work. And St.
(10:01):
Finnian said, oh no, no, no, no, no, no no, no, no no, no,
my friend, I don't think you can do that. It
belonged to him in the first place. And Columbus said,
why why can't I do this? The argument goes all
the way up to the king. The dispute eventually leads
(10:21):
to something I will woefully mispronounce the Battle of c
U L d r E I m h n E
the Battle of Cold Drayman. So here's how it all
went down. St. Columba copies the psalter st Finian says,
you can't do that, and of course we should mention
(10:42):
at this time these guys aren't saints. They are holy men,
but they have not been canonized beatified. So on, Yeah,
you don't have a refer to a person that's alive
as a saint, right That's that's that's that's pretty exclusively
a posthumous thing, not officially. So they take this argument
to the King and Columbus as it belongs to me
because I copied it. Finnian says, it belongs to me
(11:04):
because I own the original book. He couldn't have made
a copy without my book, therefore I should have both
of them. And in a Shamalan plot twist, the King
gives this following judgment to every cow belongs her calth,
therefore to every book belongs its copy. That's not what
I was expecting. That doesn't really jibe with the modern day,
(11:27):
you know. Uh. Columba says, well, I disagree with that,
and he doesn't walk away and kick rocks. Instead, he
instigates a rebellion against the king. So imagine going to
a court, whatever kind of whatever kind of court case
you might be involved in, something that is not concerning
(11:48):
violence or anything. It's it's an intellectual property I P
issue and then getting so angry about what the judge
decrees that you decide to overthrow the country, which is
which is what he attempted to do. He did successfully
get a clan together to try to overthrow the king.
It's pretty interesting and actually there were a few other
(12:10):
little things thrown in the mix that led to to
this this series of events. Yeah, Finnian said he didn't
give permission right for it to be copied. Not only
did he not give permission, like he exactly he they
were living under the same roof of the time. And um,
it's a little interesting, and it wouldn't really have the
details as to why he didn't ask for permission, because
he would have taken an awful long time to transcribe this,
(12:30):
because we've actually heard that some accounts that it is
actually a Gaelic translation of the Bible, the entire Bible.
So to do that by hand, he would have taken
him ages, and he had to do it at night
without this this person's knowledge. Uh so I'm a little
confused as to why he didn't just ask. Maybe the
guy was just a real pill as you would say,
(12:51):
with his property, and he's like, no, it's mine. What's
mine is mine, you can't have it. But I thought
their whole thing, their whole goal, was to make these
texts available more broadly. So I'm confused as to why
Finian was being such a such a jerk about the
right so proslytized to spread the word of God. But
even before this beef happened, there was a beef between
(13:14):
between Columba himself and the king because he gave refuge
to an escape political prisoner and um then the king
Diarmud actually went against their established laws of sanctuary, at
least their customs, and he had the escape ee captured
(13:35):
and executed, and then put Columba himself under house arrest,
at which point Columba tricked the guards, escaped and went
back to his hometown in tier Cornal, where he then
heard that the king was actually pursuing him quick point there. Though,
this idea of tricking guards and escaping doesn't make a
(13:57):
lot of sense if you think about it, I think
there was something more to the story. I think it
was bribery. It happens a lot even in the modern
day when you hear about people escaping in uh, you know,
in a cell or the uh maybe a dodgy, chaotic country,
that's true. But the idea of a little bit more
of like a capery, kind of like escape, maybe a
(14:19):
disguise of some sort. It's a lot more fun to
picture than just like slipping the garden, you know, um
some some coin. And this is all wrapped up in
the beef with the copied text as well. This was
like the that was kind of the straw that broke
the camel's back. I guess it was the pretext. This
text was the pretext for the war. The battle rather,
and this battle, which occurs in five hundred six D,
(14:42):
leads to according to sources, you could ballpark it at
up to three thousand deaths. It's not said explicitly who
won the battle, but here's the thing. It was Columba
who got punished for it. So I feel like we
can safely that the king won that skirmish, and people
(15:04):
were deciding what they would do to punish Columba even
talked about excommunicating him, which was a huge deal. Instead,
they let him stay a part of the faith and
he was forced to leave Ireland and he was given
the task to convert as many people to Christianity as
had died on the day of that battle, so up
(15:27):
to three thousand people if he wanted to properly pay
his penance. Yeah, he took this quite seriously. Um. And
he took off from Ireland and settled on the Isle
of Iona, off the west coast of Scotland, the mainland
of Scotland. And there he set up and he set
himself up a monastery. And you may be familiar, you
(15:48):
may that may ring a bell the Isle of Iona,
because that is where many of of Scotland's kings were buried,
including potentially Macbeth. So he had twelve power traveling companions
with him. Uh. And he settled in five sixty three
and began the work of putting together this monastery and
(16:09):
converting um folks to Christianity. So Iona becomes the center
of Columba's second act, his his redemption story, right, his
redemption song, if we want to quote Marley. He works
(16:30):
tirelessly teaching the Holy Word, the Gospel. He goes all
across Scotland attempting to convert the northern Pictish people. One
legend comes out of his adventures and that's that he
actually met Nessie, the locked Ness monster, and scared it
away by making the sign of the Cross as the
(16:52):
creature approached. His career was not over. He went on
to greatness. He became a Roman cath clergyman, and he
actually contributed to the most famous ancient Irish manuscript, the
Book of Kells, which you can go see today at Trinity.
(17:12):
It's also a really delightful children's animated film. It's true,
but even that was not enough to get this stain
of copyright beef off of his record, off of his CV.
He returned to his native land just one more time
before he died, and he passed away on June nine
(17:33):
in Iona, which he had become quite fond of. I mean,
like he he definitely had made this his second home.
And it sounds to me like he didn't live a
life of exile and shame. I mean, he went on
to do really great works and became a very revered
figure in the history of Roman Catholicism. Right yeah, And
(17:54):
he was sort of a proponent of what we would
call now copy left. Have you heard of this? No
coppy left is this arrangement where software or creative works
can be used, modified, distributed freely on the condition that
anything created by it is bound by the same condition,
you know what I mean. I think that's a great
(18:15):
way to pursue innovation. And I also do want to
mention one thing about St. Columba. Alright, So I'm really
into patron saints, right, I'm fascinated by the idea. I
want to know your favorite patron saint, especially their patron
of something obscure. St. Columba is one of the three
patron saints of Ireland. We all know the most famous one, St. Patrick, right,
(18:37):
but he's also the patron saint of Dairy, the town
d E r r y. Not like milk and cheese. No, no, no,
he's not that cool floods, book binders, poets and Scotland.
What about St Finian, you may ask, He is the
patron of the Diocese of Meath. I would say that
(19:00):
um um came out ahead there, and that's what you
get for bow guarding texts, you know, and being a
jerk about letting people copy your stuff. You know, I'd
say that, uh, generosity is a very important um thing
when it comes to sharing books, you know. I mean, Ben,
you are a very very well known book lender. You know,
(19:20):
you love for people to experience things that you yourself
have enjoyed and found culturally enriching. And I think that's
a very important thing when it comes to this stuff. So,
you know, be on the right side of history. Let
people borrow books, right be the library you wish to
see in the world. To paraphrase Guti. Actually that that
actually worked out. And uh, hey, oh you know we
(19:43):
haven't said it yet. We've got a birthday month coming
up for the three of us as well as our
Powell Matt Fredericks, so wild all of us. Yeah, this
is that we're in the midst of it right now.
Um Casey myself, you, Ben and Matt all are our
le those roor and leos? What get out? Sorry, well,
(20:06):
I'm I'm more month oriented. I don't see a lot
of leoistic traits. But also a full disclosure, one of
my first freelance writing gigs was writing a horoscope column
and the editor hired me because I said I didn't
think there was much to it and that it would
be easy to write vague horoscopes. But I got out
(20:29):
of it and I had I have a lot of
respect for people who do believe it as a sort
of psychological evaluation. But I don't know. I don't know
if you could look at the four of us and say, well,
we have a lot in common. We're human, right, we
have the same number of limbs. That's I don't know.
Personality wise, though, I've always found I've observed that there
are some pretty interesting traits that you can associate with
(20:51):
people's personalities that are you know, predicted by astrology. But
you know, it's that confirmation bias thing that that always
uh throws a wrench into the right or what if
we're messing with people's personalities from the day that they
can understand a language by telling them that's their personality.
I don't know about all that. I I've always been
pretty fascinated by it and found some stuff that was
(21:13):
pretty interesting for me. But you know, we welcome all
perspectives when it comes to everything. Uh. And here's an
interesting little tidbit to wrap up on. In nineteen fifty seven,
there was an archaeologist in Britain named Charles Thomas who
uh excavated this wooden hut on the Aisle of Iona
and believed, without any way to prove it that it
belonged to St. Columba Um and only just recently, in
(21:37):
two thousand and seventeen, a team of historians belonging to
Historic Environment Scotland did radio carbon dating on some of
the samples that were found in ninety seven during that excavation,
and they found pieces of something called hazel charcoal that
they were able to date back a fifteen hundred years
to a time when Columba was absolutely in thick of
(22:00):
his Iona days. Um, so there you go. So he did,
he did live there, he did, and those radio carbon
dated the site back about fifteen hundred years to a
time when Colombo was absolutely living there. So this definitely
would have been as Hut, and this would have been
the time where he was spreading Christianity to the Pictish
people of the Scottish Aisles, So that would have been
(22:22):
more of a Celtic polytheistic religion, almost almost akin to
something we referred to as paganism. Get Celtic poly theism
probably often depicted as druids or something in popular mass media.
But I think it's always a wonderful and inspiring thing
when we are able to connect these ancient stories with
(22:44):
true physical artifacts. Do a little bit of object journalism,
which I have to talk about later. I'm really into
this thing now. I will see in the defense in
the defense of horoscopes, astrology, and other sorts of psycholog
tragical batteries. For anyone who may be concerned that I'm
pooh pooing it or throwing out the baby with the
(23:08):
heavenly bathwater. I do want to say one thing that's
been creepy for most of my life. Always ended up
dating aquarians. I don't know why. I seriously think there
was maybe one exception in middle school. Aquarius is I
think it's aquarians? Isn't what I guess? So yeah, I
never thought about that. And did you ever hear about that? Uh?
(23:28):
That astrological sign that was found? It's a story for
another day. Casey, do you remember that one? I don't
remember this now. Oh my gosh, you guys, it's a
true story, but we don't have time for it today.
Thank you so much for tuning in. What are your
favorite patron saints and what are they? Patrons of bonus
points if it's super obscure, and hey, nol, what would
(23:52):
you be the patron saint of? Probably procrastination? Patron saint
of procrastination. I like it. I like it. Um, Casey,
I'm not gonna put you on the spot because I
know you hate that, So let's just call you the
patron saying of not being put on the spot for today.
How's that? So there you go? I love that? Uh
and what would you be the patron saying of Let
(24:13):
us know? We're on Facebook, we're on Instagram, we're on Twitter.
You can catch me on my personal Instagram at Ben
Bolan or on Twitter where I'm at Ben Bolan hs W.
I mainly just rocked the Instagram at how now Noel Brown.
Another fun place to get in touches through our Facebook
group Ridiculous Historians. You can do that by searching for
Ridiculous Historians on Facebook and you just have to answer
(24:34):
a simple question. Name one of the members of the show.
It could be me, It could be Ben, It could
be super Richer, Casey Pagram, could be Jonathan Strickland the
quis There could be Christopher Acios. Could just be a
fun little joker upun Yeah, if you, I mean, honestly,
do you make me laugh? You're in right absolutely hey,
And do us a slid, write us a review on
the podcast platform of your choice. Um, but doing it
(24:54):
through Apple podcast is always super helpful way of helping
people discover the show. Yeah, every week one of our
bosses walked through the office dragging a heavy headsman's axe
and uh, if we if we don't get good reviews,
sometimes that ax swings. It's true. I mean, not not
like at us in a dangerous way. Hr would never
(25:17):
allow that, just more like kind of in an intimidating thing.
He sort of drags it across the ground with sort
of a screen kind of sound and occasionally a whish.
You know. But luckily we haven't actually been injured by
this giant axe yet. But you can make sure that
definitely never happens by writing those iTunes reviews. Yes, so
thanks to you for listening. Thanks to our super producer
Casey Pegram. Thanks to Jonathan Strickland. That rapscallion, that's scad,
(25:40):
That scoundrel we call the Whister. Thanks to Alex Williams
who composed our theme, research associates Gabe Lucier and Ryan Barrish.
Thanks to Christophrocios here always in spirit, and thanks to
you Ben Bowling for for being a checker shirt wearing friend.
Thanks to you, Noel Brown, and thanks to you say
Colombo for looking out for book blogers. We'll see you
(26:00):
next time, folks. For more podcasts from My Heart Radio,
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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