Mick’s travels

Iona: A Centre Of Early Christianity

This summer, Mick Aston took his camper van to Iona in the west of Scotland.

At long last, after many years of trying, in the summer I finally managed to get to visit the island of Iona, off the coast of Mull in the Inner Hebrides. It is impossible to over-emphasise the importance of Iona as an early medieval religious and monastic centre, and the influence of its chief occupant, St Columba. “Celtic” Christianity really should be called “western” or “insular” Christianity, as opposed to Roman, as there never seems to have been a unified organised “Celtic” Church for all the western areas of Britain: but anyone interested in it will inevitably be drawn to Iona. Much of early Christianity in England, and the monasticism that went with it, was ultimately derived from Iona. Christianity came to Northumbria via the mission of Bishop Aidan to Lindisfarne or Holy Island, itself an offshoot of Iona, and from there much of the north and the Midlands, including Mercia where I come from, was influenced by the Northumbrian Church.

I remember a map, produced years ago by EG Bowen, showing the areas of the British Church, the “Columban” Church and what he called the “inner province” – that is, the area influenced by St Augustine and his followers. It made the point that much more ground was covered in the conversion of England by the “Columban” or Northumbrian Church, than ever was achieved by St Augustine. After all, someone who sets out to convert pagan Anglo-Saxon England to Christianity and gets as far as Canterbury was not really trying! You can almost step out of a boat into Canterbury.

So who was this St Columba on Iona? Columba, or to give him his Irish name, Colum Cille, seems to have been born at Gartan, Co Donegal, in around AD521. He died in 597, the same year that Augustine and his “Roman” monks arrived in Kent. During his lifetime he was involved in founding monasteries in Ireland (such as Durrow, Co Meath). He came to western Scotland in around 561 and was given the island of Iona as a missionary base by the Pictish king: it was to be a centre for his mission to the Dal Riata, the people of Irish descent living in the area that is now mainly Argyll.

It was a long way to Iona. I took my camper van all through the mountains of Argyll (Ardgour and Morvern) using the ferries at Corran and Lochaline to get across to the Isle of Mull. It was then a long drive across Mull on singletrack roads with passing places to get to Fionnphort, where you get the ferry across to Iona. And this made the point most forcefully to me that Iona, while now remote by road, has always been more accessible by sea. We know that the early Irish monks and ecclesiastics used islands for their monasteries and hermitages (“a desert in the ocean” – Adomnan’s Life of Columba): in that sense Iona is ideally placed on the seaways of western Britain. To the north are Skye and the Inner Hebrides, and beyond are the Outer Hebrides, Orkney and Shetland, while to the south there are Jura and Islay and just beyond them the north coast of Ireland. Beyond, to the south, are the Isle of Man, Anglesey, Wales, Cornwall and eventually Brittany. I would love to travel between all these places by boat as the early monks must have done.

On Iona itself there is little to see of the early medieval Columban period monastery. Part of the great ditch, the vallum monasterium which demarcated the site, can still be seen, particularly to the west of the medieval abbey. A rock outcrop, the Torr an Aba, is said to be where Columba’s cell was located, and I spent a long time sat on the top of it looking over the abbey.

The present abbey, which is a renovation of the medieval Benedictine abbey founded in around 1203 by Reginald, son of Somerled, Lord of the Isles, has been restored from ruins in the 20th century. It is probably on the site of the early medieval monastery. Three buildings of the abbey (Michael chapel, the infirmary and the bakehouse) are on a different alignment and could just be a reflection of the earlier plan and alignments of the early monastery. Just to the side of the west door of the abbey church is a small restored building called Columba’s shrine. This has features of the Irish building tradition, like antae (projecting gable buttresses), and is like the small chapels housing the tombs of saints which can be seen on a number of Irish monastic sites (such as Clonmacnoise, Ardmore, Inishcaltra and Devenish) and may well have been the burial place of Columba.

But the great glory of Iona is the sculpture. Outside the west door of the abbey church there is a surviving complete eighth century cross dedicated to St Martin; a replica of the restored eighth century cross of St John (the original of which is now kept in the stone museum in the infirmary); and the base of the cross of St Matthew, the shaft of which is also in the museum.

There were other spectacular high crosses such as that of St Oran, which formerly stood at St Oran’s chapel. All around the main medieval abbey buildings there are other churches and chapels, together with the later medieval Augustinian nunnery, founded about 1200 by Reginald son of Somerled, with the first prioress his sister Bethoc or Beatrice.

There must be much more to find at Iona. In the meantime I am keen to visit the monasteries and hermitages associated with Columba on the neighbouring Scottish islands of Islay, Jura and Tiree.

More Travels: Iona

Jon Cannon.