Open [38.2 MB]

Ireland and the Making
of Britain
of Arculf, a Gallic bishop who visited lona after he had
been in Palestine, and Adamnan presented a copy of the
work to King Aldfrid. Adamnan is credited with a life
of St. Patrick as well as with poems reproduced by
Tighernach, the Annals of the Four Masters, and the Book
of Lecain. He is said to have written a history of the
Irish nation up to his own times and an Epitome of the
Irish Laws of Metre. In the Liber Hymnorum there is
a poem in Gaelic called Adamnan's Prayer. In the
Leaber na h'Uidhre or Book of the Dun Cow is the
famous Fis Adhamhnain or Vision of Adamnan attributed
to him, a truly remarkable precursor of Dante's Divina
Commedia, in which the "high scholar of the Western
World" visits heaven and hell. His fame endured in a
degree only inferior to Columcille's. Contemporaries
like Coelfrid offered their tributes to his character and
learning. Bede calls him "a good and wise man, most
While
nobly versed in the science of the Scriptures." 1
Alcuin classes him with Columbanus and other dis-
tinguished Irishmen as "renowned brothers, masters both
of manners and of life." 2
A line of forty-nine abbots, of whom Adamnan was the
ninth, succeeded Columcille at lona, ending with Giollacrist
who died c. I2O2. 3
In course of time the
spiritual authority of lona passed eastward with the suc-
cess of Irish arms to the more central seat of government
which the Irish kings of Scotland established at Dunkeld.
The Danish descents on lona in the ninth century and
i "Vir bonus ct sapiens, et scientia scriptarum nobilissime instructus."
a "Patricius, Charanus, Scottorum gloria gentis,
Atque Columbanus, Congallus, Adamnanus atque,
Praeclari fratres, morum vitaeque magistri.
Hie pietas precibus horura nos adjuvet oranes." (Migne, LXXXVIII,
col. 777.)
3 Reeves, Life of St. Columba, by Adamnan (pp. 269-413), gives a list of
the forty-nine abbots with a brief biography of each and a chronicle, compiled
from the Irish annals, of the chief events under the encumbency of each.
154