St Adomnán (Eunan) (624-704) 9th abbot of Iona
Adomnán or Eunan was born in Donegal. He became a monk in Iona and was
its ninth abbot in 679. He is the author a life of his kinsman St
Colmcille. He intervened to liberate war captives and to claim safety
during war for women, children and clerics. His open-mindedness also led
to the ending of the conflict between the Roman and Celtic Churches.
Of the Uí Chonaill family
Born into the Uí
Chonaill family, he may have spent some time at the Columban monastery
in Durrow before joining the Iona community where he was chosen as its
ninth abbot in 679.
His Life of Columba
He wrote a Life
of Columba, to whom he was related. Although its purpose is not strict
history, but to highlight tha saint's virtues, and is modelled on the
Lives of the Desert Fathers especially Antony and Evagrius, it is full
of memorable descriptions.
It stresses Columba's relationship with God
and his fight against exploitation, carelessness, falsehood, and murder.
Adomnan upholds Columba as an Irish saint whose faith transcends petty
divisions.
De locis sanctis
Adomnán also wrote a book on the "holy places" - Jerusalem, Damascus, Constantinople and Alexandria - called De locis sanctis,
based on descriptions given him by word of mouth by a French bishop
Arculfus, who had been shipwrecked in western Britain and took refuge in
Iona.
Conflict between Celtic and Roman usage in the Church
As
the ultimate superior of the Ionan monastery of Lindisfarne, Adomnán
made a number of visits to Northumbria. The first was in 686.
While he was there, he became aware of the unresolved conflict and
tensions in the years after the Synod of Whitby (664) between Celtic
observances and the Roman observances.
Celtic monasteries had a
different method for calculating the date of Easter, a different
tonsure, and the abbot held administrative superiority to a bishop.
In visiting the monasteries of Wearmouth and Jarrow, Adomnán held
long discussions with the Abbot Ceolfrith of Wearmouth.
Eventually he
became convinced that, whatever about the equally sacred origins of the
differing customs - the Celtic way was based on St John and had long
been the custom in the Eastern Church - it was better for the
universality of the Church for the Celts to adopt the Roman usage.
Over
the next eighteen years he tirelessly worked to convince Iona and other
Celtic monasteries to do so.
Setting captives free
Another reason for
Adomnán's visit to Northumbria in 686 was to persuade King Aldfrith to
release sixty Irish prisoners and in this he was successful.
When later
he attended the Synod of Birr 697 he convinced the participants
that women, children and clerics should be exempt from war and not be
taken prisoners or slaughtered.
This came to be known as The Law of the
Innocents or Adamnan's law (Cain Adomhnáin) - and is a kind of preview of the present-day Geneva Convention.
Patron of Raphoe diocese
Adomnán or Eunan, as he
is now more commonly called in Ireland, is the principal patron of the
diocese and the cathedral in Letterkenny is called after him.
His feast
is on 23rd September.