Celtic Scotland : $b A history of ancient Alban. Volume 2 (of 3), Church and cultureSkene, W. F. (William Forbes)
History
Celtic Scotland : $b A history of ancient Alban. Volume 2 (of 3), Church and culture
Skene, W. F. (William Forbes)
Celts -- Scotland; Civilization, Celtic; Scotland -- Antiquities, Celtic; Scotland -- History -- To 1603
Adamnan, though, as Bede says, a man of peace and providentially removed
before the coming Easter, when matters would have been brought to a
crisis between him and his recalcitrant monks, seems notwithstanding to
have left a legacy of discord behind him. For the first time since the
foundation of the monastery of Iona, we find in the successor of Adamnan
an abbot who was not a descendant of Conall Gulban. Conmael, son of
Failbhe, was of the tribe of Airgialla in Ireland, who were descended
from Colla Uais; but three years after Adamnan’s death we find Duncadh,
who belonged to the tribe of the patron saint, obtaining the abbacy.
Then three years after we have the death of Conmael as abbot of Iona.
After his death appears Ceode, bishop of Iona, who dies in 712, and in
713 Dorbeni obtains the chair of Iona, but after five months’ possession
of the primacy dies on Saturday the 28th of October in the same year.
During the whole of this time, however, Duncadh is likewise abbot.[350]
The explanation seems to be that the community of Iona had become
divided on the subject of the Easter question, and that a party had
become favourable to Adamnan’s views. As he had not succeeded in
bringing over any of the Columban monasteries, they were driven to
obtain an abbot elsewhere, and procured the nomination of Conmael; while
the opposing party having got the upper hand three years after, Duncadh,
the legitimate successor of the line of Conall Gulban, obtained the
abbacy, and there was thus a schism in the community—one section of them
celebrating their Easter after the Roman system, who had at their head
Conmael, Ceode the bishop, and Dorbeni; and the other and more powerful
section maintaining, under the presidency of Duncadh, the old custom of
their church. After narrating how ‘at that time,’ that is, in 710,
‘Naiton, king of the Picts who inhabit the northern parts of Britain,
taught by frequent study of the ecclesiastical writings, renounced the
error by which he and his nation had till then been held in relation to
the observance of Easter, and submitted, together with his people, to
celebrate the Catholic time of our Lord’s resurrection,’ Bede closes his
notices of the monastery of Iona by telling us that ‘not long after,
those monks also of the Scottish nation who lived in the isle of Hii,
with the other monasteries that were subject to them, were, by the
procurement of our Lord, brought to the canonical observance of Easter
and the right mode of tonsure. For in the year after the incarnation of
our Lord 716, the father and priest Ecgberct, beloved of God and worthy
to be named with all honour, coming to them from Ireland, was very
honourably and joyfully received by them. Being a most agreeable teacher
and most devout in practising those things which he taught, he was
willingly heard by all; and, by his pious and frequent exhortations he
converted them from the inveterate tradition of their ancestors. He
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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