ADAMNANO (ADAMNAN; Lat. Adamnanus, Adamnanus and Adamnanus; apparently a diminutive of Adam; erroneously Adamandus), saint. - Irish monk, b. at Drumhome, in Donegal, between 623 and 625. From 679 to 704, the year of his death, he was abbot of Iona (Hy).
In 686, on a mission from his people, he went to Aldfrith, king of Northumbria, formerly his host at Iona, and obtained the return of the prisoners of war, deported two years earlier by the late brother of the said king, Ecgfrith, in the ill-fated expedition against Ireland: he himself led them back to their homeland. During this and a second stay in Northumbria, in 688, he visited Ceolfrith, abbot of Wearmouth and Jarrow (where Bede lived), who converted him to the usages of the Roman Church (for the computation of Easter and the tonsure). Having returned to Iona, he suffered much at the hands of his monks, who were irreconcilable to the usages of Rome. He turned then to his fellow countrymen of Ireland (where probably, according to Gougaud, he went in 697, with the intention also of concluding his campaign against the military service of women), succeeding happily in overcoming the obstacles of a baneful dissent by then centuries old. St. Egbert (v.) would complete A.'s work among the entire community of Iona. Through their heroic apostolate, religious peace was re-established, and the noblest part of the Celtic Church returned definitively to communion with Rome.
A. is the most illustrious successor of St. Columba, to whom he was bound by kinship. Bede calls him vir bonus et sapiens, et scientia Scripturarum nobilissime instructus (Hist. eccl., V, 15); Ceolfrith, in the letter to Naitanus, king of the Picts, celebrates his prudence, humility and piety (ibid., V, 21); Alcuin places him among the praeclari patres, morum vitaeque magistri (cf. MGH, Poetae Lat., I, 342). He is venerated as a saint: commemoration on 23 September, the day of his death; in Scotland his feast is celebrated in the double rite. Patron of the diocese of Raphoe, he is popular in Ireland, where his name is also abbreviated to Adam. We owe to him the Vita s. Columbae, a precious historical document for the Scottish Church; and the De Locis Sanctis, which Bede deems legentibus multis utilimum, going so far as to give a sample of it in the same Historia eccl. gentis Anglorum (V, 15-17). It is the detailed account of the journey to Palestine made by the Frankish bishop Arculf (v.), « docendo ac dictando », as Bede puts it, and it ends with the picturesque description of the volcano (Stromboli), « qui semper intonat ». St. Bede extracted from it his own work of the same name, from which was derived the little treatise De situ Hierosolymae urbis atque ipsius Iudaeae, circulated under the name of Eucherius. Thus A.'s work was the principal source from which the Middle Ages drew their knowledge of the holy places. He also compiled a commentary on Virgil, making use of other commentaries coming from Italy.
The fame of his name has caused certain ecclesiastical prescriptions known under the title of Canones Adamnani to be attributed to him (cf. Mansi, XII, 154 ff.). There exists in Irish a Life of A. (Fis Adamnán); but it is not his work. Such, instead, appears to be the Cáin Adamnán (Oxford 1905), the beneficent law that exempted women from taking part in battles (cf. Tacitus, Ann. XIV, 35-36), an example of an ancient Irish treaty.
Bibliography
Studies: J. Mabillon, Acta SS. Ord. 1. Bened., sect. III, part 2, Paris 1672, pp. 499-502 (from p. 502 to p. 522, the little work De Locis Sanctis); Acta SS. Septembris, VI, Antwerp 1757, pp. 642-49 (23 September); C. Montalembert, Les Moines d'Occident, V, 3rd ed., Paris 1868, pp. 10-16 (he calls him « immortel honneur de l'Eglise celtique »); C. Plummer, Ven. Bedoe Hist. Eccl., II, Oxford 1896, pp. 300-305 and 396 (index); P. Geyer, A. Abt von Jona, I, Augsburg 1895; II, Erlangen 1897; L. Gougaud, Les Chrétiennes Celtiques, 2nd ed., Paris 1911, pp. 191-93 and passim; M. Manitius, Gesch. der lat. Liter. des Mittelalters, I, Munich 1911, pp. 336-39; G. Brüning, Adamnans « Vita Columbae » und ihre Ableitungen, in Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie, 11 (1917), pp. 213-304.
Igino Cecchetti