ADAMNANO (ADAMNAN; lat. Adamnanas, Adamnanas et Adamnanas; apparently a diminutive of Adam; erroneously Adamandus), saint. — Irish monk, born at Drumhome, in Donegal, between 623 and 625. From 679 until 704, the year of his death, he was abbot of Jona (Hy).
In 686, at the request of his people, he went to Aldfrid, king of Northumbria, formerly his host at Jona, and obtained the return of the prisoners of war deported two years earlier by his deceased brother Egfrid in the ill-fated raid against Ireland: he himself led them back to their homeland. During this and a second stay in Northumbria, in 688, he visited Ceolfrid, abbot of Wearmouth and Jarrow (where Bede lived), who converted him to the practices of the Roman Church (concerning the calculation of Easter and the tonsure). On returning to Jona, he suffered greatly at the hands of his monks, who were irreducibly opposed to Roman practices. He then turned to his fellow countrymen in Ireland (where he probably went, according to Gougaud, in 697, with the intention of bringing to completion also his campaign against women’s military service), successfully overcoming the obstacles of a disastrous, centuries-old dissension. S. Egberto (v.) would complete A.’s work among the entire community of Jona. Through their heroic apostolate, religious peace was restored, and the noblest part of the Celtic Church definitively returned to communion with Rome.
A. was the most illustrious successor of S. Columba, to whom he was related. Bede calls him vir bonus et sapiens, et scientia Scripturarum nobilissime instructus (Hist. eccl., V, 15); Ceolfrid, in his letter to Naitano, king of the Picts, praises his prudence, humility, and piety (ibid., V, 21); Alcuno places him among the praeclari patres, morum vitaeque magistri (cf. MGH, Poetae Lat., I, 342). He is venerated as a saint: his commemoration is on 23 September, the day of his death; in Scotland his feast is celebrated with double rite. Patron of the diocese of Raphoe, he is popular in Ireland, where his name is also shortened 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 We owe to him the Vita s. Columbae, a precious historical document for the Scottish Church; and the De Locis Sanctis, which Bede considered legentibus multis utilimum, going so far as to give an excerpt from it in the same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 Arculfus (v.), « docendo ac dictando », as Bede puts it, and it ends with the picturesque description of the volcano (Stromboli), « qui semper intonat ». S. Beda extracted from it his eponymous little work, from which derived the booklet 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 derived their knowledge of the holy places. He also compiled a commentary on Virgil, making use of other commentaries originating in Italy.
The renown of his name led to the attribution to him of certain ecclesiastical prescriptions known under the title of Canones Adamnani (cf. Mansi, XII, 154 ff.). An Irish Vitone of A. exists (Fis Adamnán); but it is not his work. Such, however, appears to be the Cáin Adamnán (Oxford 1905), the beneficial law that exempted women from participating in battles (cf. Tacitus, Ann. XIV, 35-36), an example of an ancient Irish treaty.
Studies: J. Mabillon, Acta SS. Ord. 1. Bened., sect. III, part 2°, Paris 1672, pp. 499-502 (from p. 502 to p. 522, the booklet 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