Life
?625-704 [var. Adomnán; anglice Adamnan]; hagiographer,
not saint , hence err. S. Adamnan]; prob. b. Co. Donegal; same family
as St. Columba [Columcille]; ninth Abbot of Iona in 679; successful appeal
to Aldfrith King of Northumbria, an Iona student, for release of Irish
captives, 686; adopted Roman view of calendar; took part in synods in
Ireland, notably Birr, 697, where he won acceptance for his ‘lex innocentium
[law of innocents]’ protecting non-combatants in war (his draft preserved
as Cáin Adamnáin); the Lebor na hUidhri contains
Fís Adamnáin ["The Vision of Adamnan"],
ascribed to him by legend; compiled De Locis Sanctis, a treatise
on the Holy Land from the narration of Arculf, a French bishop who was
shipwrecked on one of the ‘Western Isles’ on his return from pilgrimage;
wrote a life of St. Columcille as Vita Sancta Columbae of which
there is a 12th c. manuscript copy in Schaffhausen Library, Switzerland;
in it Adamnán calls speaks of Columba's leaving Ireland as a peregrine (pro Christo peregrinari volens enavigavit), and argues for a pacific approach towards differences
over the Paschal calendar; d. 23 Oct; an Irish life of Adamnán
was compiled at Kells, Co. Meath, c.960; older tributes to him include
that by Bede (673-735) in Historia Ecclesiastica; the Vita was
edited by William Reeves in the Scriptores Latini Hiberniae series from
8th c. codex (1857). DIW DIB FDA OCIL
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Works
William Reeves, Vita Sancta Columbae: The Life of St. Columba
Founder of Hy, Written by Adamnan, Ninth Abbot of Iona, edited from 8th
c. Codex [for the Irish Archaeological and Celtic Society] (Dublin
UP 1857), and Do. [new edn. ... prepared under the superintendence
of the Bishop of Brechin and the notes rearranged by W. F. Skene] (Edinburgh:
Edmonton & Douglas 1874), clxxxiv, 385pp., 8o.; Vita Sancti Columbæ,
Life of Saint Columba, founder of Hy (Llanerch Enterprises 1988) [presum.
rep. edn. of above]; Daniel MacCarthy, ed., Life of
Saint Columba ... Translated from the Latin of St. Adamnan, with Copious
Notes (Dublin: J. Duffy & Co. [1861]), xxiv. 219pp., 8o.; Wentworth Huyshe, ed., The Life of Saint Columba
/ Columb-Kille A.D. 521-597 ... Newly Translated from the Latin (London:
G. Routledge & Sons 1905), lxix, 255pp., ill.; Denis Meehan, ed. Adamnan’s De
Locis Sanctis (Dublin 1958); Máire Herbert & Pádraig
Ó Riain, eds. Betha Adamnáin: The Irish Life of Adamnán
[Irish Texts Society, LIV] (London 1988).
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- Venerable Bede, Historia Ecclestica, V, 15-17, 21-22;
- William Reeves, The Life of St. Columba (Dublin 1857);
- C[harles] S[tuart] Boswell, An Irish Precursor of Dante: A Study on the Vision of Heaven and Hell Ascribed to the 8th c. Irish Saint Adamnan with a Translation of the Irish Text (London: Nutt 1908), 262pp.;
- Denis Meehan & Ludwig Bieler, eds., Adamnan’s De Locis Sanctis [Scriptores Latini Hiberniae, Vol. 3] (Dublin: DIAS 1958);
- A. O. and M. O. Anderson, Adamnan’s Life of Columba (London: [q.pub.] 1961);
- James F. Kenney, ‘The Irish Church in the Celtic Period’, in The Sources for the Early History of Ireland: An Introduction and Guide, Vol. 1 (New York: Columbia UP 1929; rep. edn. Dublin: Four Courts 1979), espec. pp.283-87;
- Pádraig Ó Riain, ‘Adamnán’s Age at Death, Fact or Symbol?’, in Studia Celtica Japonica, 5 (1993) [q.pp.];
- Thomas O’Loughlin, ‘Adomnán and Mira Rotunditas’, in Eriú, Vol. 47 (1996), pp.95-100; O’Loughlin, ‘The Diffusion of Adomnán's De Locis Sanctis in the Medieval Period’, in Eriú, Vol. 51 (2000), pp.93-106;
- David Woods, ‘Arculf’s Luggage: The Sources for Adomnán’s De Locis Sanctis’, in Eriú, Vol. 52 (2001), pp.25-52;
- W. B. Stanford, Ireland and the Classical Tradition (IAP 1976; this edn. 1984), pp.8, 183-84.
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Notes
William Reeves’s edn. of Adamnán’s Life of St Columba
or Colum Cille includes some poems in old Irish attributed to Adamnan
him cited in (Cited in Dominic Daly, The Young Douglas Hyde, 1974,
p.126.)
Douglas Hyde cites the date of composition of "The Death of Columcille" [sic], written by Adamnán, as 713. (See Justin McCarthy, ed., Irish Literature, Washington, Catholic University of America, 1904, Vol. 4, p.1618.)
John Eglinton remarked that Adamnán retained a monk to tell his lies for him. (See Bards and Saintsi [Tower Booklets No. 5], Maunsel, 1906, pp.53-49.)
Easter calendar: A controversary over the date of Easter arose in the 7th century when Roman missionaries found that Irish method for calculating the feast was out of keeping with that in Roma; between 629 and 636 the south of Ireland gave in to Roman pressure though the north only accepted the new method at the Synod of Birr in 696, while the community at Iona remained faithful to the Irish Church throughout the whole controversy. (See Beryl Schlossman, Joyce’s Catholic Comedy of Language, insconsin UP 1995, p.123.)
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)