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Death of Columcille
the vogue over a great part of Ireland. Adamnan seems
to have dwelt in Ireland from 697 to 701; and Bede
observes that he crossed from Ireland to lona the summer
before he died ; and alluding to the variance between him-
self and his brethren at lona, who could not be induced
to forsake the observances sanctioned by the devotion of
Columcille, adds: "For it came to pass that before the
next year came round he departed this life: the Divine
Goodness so ordering it that, as he was a man most earnest
for peace and unity, he should be taken away to everlasting
life before the return of the season of Easter he
should be obliged to differ still more seriously from those
1
who were unwilling to follow him in the way of truth.'
Adamnan, tho, like Columcille, of noble, and even
of royal birth, led a life of solid hard work, not disdain-
ing, any more than his great predecessor, to assist the
brethren in the manual labor of building, rowing, and
dragging overland ships laden with the hewn pine and
oak needed in their operations. In spite of this, his
literary work must have been extraordinarily voluminous.
1
Latin was his favorite medium of expression,
and he seems to have had a good working knowledge of
Greek and Hebrew. His "De Locis Sanctis," from which
Bede quotes, and which has happily been preserved, is
the earliest account coming from modern Christian
Europe of the condition of Eastern lands and the cradle
qf Christianity. 2
It was compiled from the conversation
1 In the prolog to his "De Locis Sanctis" he tells us how he worked,
writing the first rough drafts of his compositions on waxed tablets (tabulae
ceratae) and later transferring the finished copy to the membranes. Columcille
and his companions, when traveling, also carried such tablets with them
for the purpose of making notes.
* The reticences of Adamnan are as remarkable as what he says. He
has, for example, in his extant works no reference to the work of the Irish
missionaries in England, though the chief of them, Aidan, Pinan, Colman and
the others, were among the brethren of lona in his time. Never was there
a great work done in the world with less trumpeting on the part of those
who did it. Were it not for foreign testimony we would know very little
of the work of medieval Irishmen abroad, and indeed we know of only a
very small part of it.
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