Adomnan

Adomnan (Adamnan, Adam, Eunan) (627–704), abbot of Iona. He was born in Co. Donegal and became a monk in one of Columba's monasteries in Ireland. He was a biblical scholar and teacher, who moved to Iona under abbot Segene, whom he succeeded in 679. He became famous both as a writer and as a leading protagonist in Northern Ireland of the Roman system of calculating Easter. In 686 he came to Northumbria to obtain from his former pupil King Aldfrith the release of sixty Irish prisoners, captured during the reign of Egfrith (670–85). In 688 Adomnan visited Ceolfrith of Wearmouth, who converted him from the Iona tradition of Easter calculation and other practices. In 692 he took part in Irish synods and conventions as the ruler of Iona's monasteries in Northern Ireland. Then and in 697 he met with considerable success, pleading for the acceptance of the Easter dates which were kept by Rome and virtually all the Church in the West. At the Synod of Birr (697) he persuaded leading clerics and laymen to adopt the Law of Adomnan (Cain Adomnain) which protected women by exempting them from going to battle and insisting that they be treated by all as non-combatants. Boys and clerics were similarly protected and provision was made for effective sanctuary. These rules, the first example of their kind, came to be accepted all over Ireland.

Adomnan's principal work was the Life of his relative Columba, founder of Iona. This influential portrait of a charismatic pioneer is one of the most vivid Lives to be produced in its time. He also wrote a work on the Holy Places of Palestine, compiled from information provided by the French bishop Arculfus, who had been shipwrecked in western Britain. Bede knew this work, given to king Aldfrith, but not apparently the Life of Columba.

After Adomnan's death, Iona accepted the Roman Easter in 716. His cult flourished in both Ireland and Scotland with dedications to him in Donegal, Derry, and Sligo as well as Aberdeenshire, Banff, Forfar, and the Western Isles. In 727 the relics of Adomnan were brought from Iona to Ireland to help make peace between the tribes of Adomnan's father and mother. They were carried round forty churches which had been under Iona's rule: the people swore to obey the Law of Adonman. His shrines were desecrated by Northmen in 830 and 1030. Feast: 23 September.

Bibliography
Click here for a list of abbreviations used in this bibliography.

• Bede, H.E., v. 15–17, 21–2; A. O. and M. O. Anderson, Adomnan's Life of Columba (1990); tr. by R. Sharpe with Introduction (1995); critical edition of De Locis Sanctis in P. Geyer, Itinera Hierosolymitana (C.S.E.L., xxxix. 1898, 219–97) and by D. Meehan (1958); K. Meyer, Cain Adomnain (1905); L. Gwynn, ‘The Reliquary of Adomnan’, Archivium Hibernicum, iv (1915), 199–214; see also D. A. Bullough, ‘Columba, Adomnan and the achievement of Iona’, S.H.R., xliii (1964), 111–30 and xliv (1965), 17–33; J. M. Picard. ‘The purpose of Adomnan's Vita Columbae’, Peritia (1982), 160–77; M. N. Dhonnchadha, ‘The guarantor list of Cain Adomnain’, ibid., 178–215