ADAMNAN (ADAMNAN; Latin ADAMNANUS, ADOMNANUS and ADAMANUS; apparently a diminutive of Adam; erroneously ADAMANDUS), saint. – Irish monk, born at Drumhome in Donegal between 623 and 625. From 679 until his death in 704 he was abbot of Iona (Hy).
In 686, at the request of his people, he went to Aldfrid, king of Northumbria, who had once been his guest at Iona, and obtained the return of prisoners of war who had been deported two years earlier by his late brother Ecgfrith during a raid 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 was living), who converted him to Roman Church usages (concerning the calculation of Easter and the tonsure). On his return to Iona he suffered greatly at the hands of his monks, who were irreconcilably opposed to Roman customs. He then turned to his fellow-countrymen in Ireland (whither he probably went in 697, according to Gougaud, with the intention of concluding his campaign against the military service of women), and successfully overcame the obstacles of a long-standing and baneful dissension. St Egbert (q.v.) completed Adamnan’s work among the entire community of Iona. Through their heroic apostolate religious peace was restored and the noblest part of the Celtic Church returned definitively to communion with Rome.
Adamnan is the most illustrious successor of St Columba, to whom he was related. Bede describes him as “a good and wise man, most nobly instructed in the knowledge of the Scriptures” (Hist. eccl., V, 15); Ceolfrith, in a letter to Nechtan, king of the Picts, praises his prudence, humility and piety (ibid., V, 21); Alcuin places him among the “fathers who are preachers and teachers of life and morals” (cf. MGH, Poetae Lat., I, 3, 42). He is venerated as a saint, with commemoration on 23 September, the day of his death; in Scotland his feast is kept with a double rite. He is patron of the diocese of Raphoe and is popular in Ireland, where his name is also abbreviated to Adam.
We owe to him the Vita s. Columbae, a historical document of great importance for the Scottish Church, and the De Locis Sanctis, which Bede considered “very useful to many readers” and from which he drew material for his own Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (V, 15–17). This is a detailed account of the journey to Palestine made by the Frankish bishop Arculf (q.v.), “by teaching and dictation” as Bede puts it, ending with a picturesque description of a volcano (Stromboli), “which is always thundering”. Bede extracted from it his own little work of the same title, from which in turn sprang the pamphlet De situ Hierosolymae urbis atque ipsius Iudaeae, circulated under the name of Eucherius. Thus Adamnan’s work became the principal source from which the Middle Ages drew its knowledge of the holy places. He also compiled a commentary on Virgil, drawing on commentaries from Italy.
His reputation led to the attribution to him of certain ecclesiastical prescriptions known under the title Canones Adamnani (cf. Mansi, XII, 154 sqq.). There exists in Irish a Vision of Adamnan (Fis Adamnani), but this is not his work; the Cáin Adamnáin (Oxford 1905), however, the beneficent law which exempted women from taking part in battles (cf. Taticus, Ann. XIV, 35–36), seems to be genuinely his, an example of an ancient Irish treatise.
Studies: J. Mabillon, Acta SS. Ord. s. Bened., sect. III, pars 2, Paris 1672, pp. 469–502 (from p. 502 to p. 522, the opuscule De Locis Sanctis); Acta SS. Septembris, VI, Antwerp 1757, pp. 642–49 (23 Sept.); C. de Montalembert, Les Moines d’Occident, V, 3–4, Paris ed. 1886, pp. 10–16 (he calls Adamnan “immortel honneur de l’Église celtique”); C. Plummer, Ven. Beade Hist. Eccl., II, Oxford 1896, pp. 300–305 and 306 (index); P. Geyer, A. Abt von Iona, I, Augsburg 1895; II, Erlangen 1897; L. Gougaud, Les Chrétiens 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