St Columba Founds Iona (563): Monastery of the Hebrides

In 563 the Irish monk Columba, known in Irish as Colum Cille, sailed from Ireland with twelve companions and founded a monastery on Iona, a small island off the western coast of Scotland. Iona became the head of a family of monasteries in Ireland and Britain, the base from which Christianity spread to the Picts and to Anglo-Saxon Northumbria, and one of the great centres of learning and art in early medieval Europe.

Background: Columba and early Irish Christianity

Christianity reached Ireland in the fifth century, linked above all with the mission of Saint Patrick. Within a century monasteries had become the heart of the Irish Church. Large communities ruled by abbots, often from local royal families, were centres of prayer, study and book production.

Columba was born, according to tradition, on 7 December 521 at Gartan in modern County Donegal. He belonged to the Cenél Conaill, a branch of the powerful Uí Néill dynasty, and was a great-grandson of the semi-legendary king Niall of the Nine Hostages. As a young man he trained under the teacher Finnian and became a priest. Irish tradition credits him with founding monasteries in Ireland, including Derry and Durrow, although the details are uncertain.

Why Columba left Ireland

In 561 the northern Uí Néill, Columba’s kinsmen, won the Battle of Cúl Dreimne near Sligo. Adomnán, Columba’s biographer and a later abbot of Iona, mentions the battle and a church synod that tried to excommunicate Columba around this time, but does not explain the connection.

Later medieval stories filled the gap. The best known claims that Columba secretly copied a psalter belonging to Finnian, lost the dispute over the copy and then caused the battle, leaving Ireland as penance. These tales appear centuries later and cannot be trusted. Adomnán simply says that in 563, two years after the battle, Columba sailed to Britain wishing to be a pilgrim for Christ. Voluntary exile, called peregrinatio, was a respected form of devotion in the Irish Church.

The founding of Iona

Iona lies off the south-west tip of the island of Mull, at the edge of Dál Riata, a Gaelic-speaking kingdom that spanned north-east Ireland and Argyll in Scotland. According to the Irish annals, the island was granted to Columba by Conall mac Comgaill, king of Dál Riata. Bede, writing in 731, says instead that it was given by the Picts.

The monastery was built of wood, wattle and turf, surrounded by an earthwork boundary, traces of which survive. The monks prayed, studied, copied books, farmed, fished and received guests. Columba’s own cell stood on a small rise, and Adomnán describes him writing and praying there late into his life.

Columba’s mission and politics

Columba was both a churchman and a political figure. He travelled to the court of Bridei son of Maelchon, a powerful king of the Picts, near the River Ness, probably in the 560s. Adomnán describes miracles performed there, including his confrontation with a “water beast” in the river. How far Columba converted the Picts is debated, but Iona certainly became an important link between the Picts and Christianity.

In 574 Columba is said to have ordained Áedán mac Gabráin as king of Dál Riata, which some historians see as the earliest recorded Christian royal inauguration in Britain. He also attended the Convention of Druim Cett in Ireland, dated 575 in the annals though many historians prefer about 590, where kings settled the relationship between Dál Riata and the Irish Uí Néill.

Columba died at Iona on 9 June 597, the same year that Augustine’s mission from Rome landed in Kent. He was buried on the island, and his shrine became a place of pilgrimage.

Iona and Northumbria

Iona’s greatest influence came after Columba’s death. Oswald, a Northumbrian prince, spent his exile among the Gaels and was baptised by the Iona community. When he became king of Northumbria in 634, he asked Iona for a bishop. The monk Aidan arrived in 635 and founded the monastery of Lindisfarne on a tidal island off the Northumbrian coast.

From Lindisfarne, missionaries trained in Iona’s traditions spread Christianity across much of northern and central England. Differences with the Roman mission, especially over the date of Easter and the monks’ tonsure, were settled in favour of Roman practice at the Synod of Whitby in 664. Iona itself adopted the Roman Easter in 716.

Learning and the Vikings

Iona was a centre of scholarship. Its ninth abbot, Adomnán, wrote the Life of Columba around 697–700 and a treatise on the holy places of the Middle East, and in 697 promoted a law protecting women, children and clergy in war. Many scholars think the Book of Kells, the most famous Irish gospel book, was begun on Iona around 800.

The Viking age brought disaster. After the Viking raid on Lindisfarne in 793, Iona was attacked in 795, burned in 802, and raided again in 806, when sixty-eight members of the community were killed. A new monastery was built at Kells in Ireland between 807 and 814. In 825 the monk Blathmac was killed for refusing to reveal the hiding place of Columba’s shrine.

Later history

Monastic life never fully ended on Iona. Around 1200 Reginald, son of the Norse-Gaelic ruler Somerled, founded a Benedictine abbey and an Augustinian nunnery there. Tradition says many early kings of Scotland were buried in the graveyard of Reilig Odhráin. After the Reformation the buildings decayed. In 1938 the minister George MacLeod founded the Iona Community, which restored the abbey buildings over the following decades.

Myths and facts

Myth: Columba brought Christianity to Scotland. Christianity was already present in southern Scotland before him, associated with figures such as Ninian of Whithorn, and among the Gaels of Dál Riata. Columba’s achievement was to create a powerful monastic centre that spread and organised the faith further.

Myth: Columba founded a separate “Celtic Church”. Iona followed some customs of its own, such as a different way of calculating Easter and a distinctive tonsure, but it was part of the wider Latin Church and recognised the authority of Rome. The modern idea of an independent Celtic Church owes more to later religious debates than to the sources.

Fact: a book linked to Columba survives. The Cathach, a damaged Latin psalter of the late sixth or early seventh century now in the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin, was long believed to have been written by Columba himself. The attribution cannot be proven, but the manuscript is one of the oldest surviving Irish books.

Fact: the main source was written by a relative. Adomnán belonged to the same royal kindred as Columba, and his Life is organised around prophecies, miracles and visions rather than a simple narrative, so it must be read with care.

Timeline

• c. 521, 7 December: Columba is born at Gartan, Donegal (traditional date).
• 561: Battle of Cúl Dreimne in Ireland.
• 563: Columba sails to Britain and founds the monastery on Iona.
• 574: Columba ordains Áedán mac Gabráin as king of Dál Riata.
• 597, 9 June: Columba dies on Iona.
• 635: Aidan of Iona founds Lindisfarne in Northumbria.
• c. 697–700: Adomnán writes the Life of Columba.
• 806: Vikings kill sixty-eight members of the Iona community.
• 1938: The Iona Community is founded and begins restoring the abbey.

Why it matters

Columba’s foundation on Iona linked Ireland, Scotland and England in a single Christian network. It carried Christianity and literacy to the Picts and Northumbrians, produced some of the finest books and writings of the early Middle Ages and gave Scotland one of its most lasting religious symbols.