Adomnán also tells us of many monasteries of Iona monks situated in Pictland. Her influence was felt in the English kingdom of Northumbria, too, where Iona founded the monastery of Lindisfarne. It was felt throughout Dál Riata, where Iona had several daughter houses, and where she claimed the right to 'ordain' the kings of Dál Riata. This influence was felt in Ireland, where Columba had also founded other monasteries. Such blood ties helped to raise Iona to be one of the most important churches in Scotland and Ireland, and to have huge influence. The abbots of Iona usually enjoyed close relations with these powerful kinsmen of theirs, who sometimes claimed rule over all of Ireland. He was a member of the very powerful Northern Irish clan of Cenél Conaill, part of the Northern Uí Néill kingdom. Most of the abbots of the monastery for the first century or more were related by blood to the founding saint. This is often the most useful way for a historian to read Saints' Lives from this period. Adomnán's work no doubt tells us something about Columba, but it tells us a great deal more about Adomnán, about how he saw his world and his role in it. Here we see the daily life of the monks, working in the fields, praying and singing in the church, studying, welcoming guests, supervising penitents, dealing with kings and warriors, sailing to and from Ireland, and much more.īy the time Adomnán was writing, however, Columba was a hundred years dead. Adomnán also wrote and promoted a law for the protection of women, the Cáin Adomnáin ('Law of Adomnán'), also known as the Lex Innocentium ('Law of the Innocents').īut as a source of information about the early monastery, Adomnán's Life of Columba is without parallel. ![]() He it was who wrote a book On the Holy Places, an account of the Holy Land which is a sophisticated work of scriptural scholarship, in which difficulties in understanding passages in the Bible are resolved by studying geographical information about the area. But the most important material of all is the writing of Adomnán mac Rónáin, the ninth abbot of Iona, who died in 704. The literature from Iona includes several poems thought to have been written there a chronicle kept on the island up to about the year 740, which was later copied into the important Annals of Ulster and a collection of Irish canons governing church and society which was probably made on the island in the early 8th century. By combining archaeology with the study of Iona writings, we can build up a detailed picture of the monastery, its way of life, its religious, social and political activities, and even its beliefs and ideas. ![]() We know more about Iona than almost any other insular monastery of its time, not just because of archaeological research, but because Iona monks left a great deal of writing. The church of Iona as it stands today, much restored in the 20th Century. Many centuries later, on this site, a large stone monastery was constructed. Archaeology has revealed the location of the monastery, and some of its features, including a large vallum or perimeter wall. Just as Dunadd seems to have been a royal power centre of Dál Riata, so the island monastery of Iona was the centre of church influence from the middle of the first millennium.įounded by the Irish saint, Columba, in the year 563, the monastery began as a gathering of small wooden buildings on the east side of the island.
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