Conceiving a Nation by Gilbert Márkus

Author:Gilbert Márkus
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

4

‘The just man will never waver’ (Psalm 111:6)

Adomnán and His World

It may seem strange in a book of six chapters, covering nine centuries of Scotland’s history, to devote an entire chapter to a study of one man. The man in question, however, happens to be the only individual in that entire period whose personality, biography, interests and ideas can be identified and examined with any confidence at all. Certainly, we hear of other interestingsounding individuals. There is Calgacus, the eloquent leader of the British resistance to Agricola, but we cannot be certain that Calgacus even existed and, if he did, everything we ‘know’ about him was written by Tacitus for his own reasons. We also meet warrior kings in the poetry of Aneirin and Taliesin, but these are literary creations that mostly conform to the stereotypes of heroic poetry. Other kings appear in the bare data of annal entries – a battle won, a ruler slain, a patronymic – but these do not emerge as personalities. They remain remote figures in the ceaseless manoeuvring of kingdoms and dynasties. Even a saint like Columba remains an idealised figure created by people writing about him after his death for their own purposes. A few dates and biographical details may emerge, a story here and there, but we encounter such people less as three-dimensional human beings than as the creations of later writers.

In nine centuries of the history of Scotland there is really only one person of whom this is not true. Adomnán mac Rónáin, the abbot of Iona from AD 679 to 704, emerges from his own writings and from writings about him as the one individual in the period of whom we can paint anything like a recognisable human portrait. This in itself would be a good enough reason to examine his life and work in some detail. But in addition it is worth reflecting on the huge influence that Adomnán has had on early medieval historiography. His writings, together with writings that emerged from his monastery, represent the greater part of what survives from Scotland during the first millennium. They have therefore determined much of the way we think about the period. By looking in detail at Adomnán and at the way he saw his world and represented it, we will be in a better position to weigh the significance of his evidence. His work sheds light on many aspects of Scotland’s early medieval history: law, kingship, the Easter controversy, the place of women and attitudes to violence.

We may look first at references to him by others which appear in the historical record. His death is recorded in AU 704: ‘Adomnán, abbot of Iona dies in the seventy-seventh year of his age’. His feast-day is on 23 September, and as a saint’s feast is almost always the day of his or her death we can assume that he died on that day. The reference to his seventy-seventh year implies that he was born between 24 September 627 and 23 September 628.

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