Iona Abbey: A Columban Monastery and Christian Centre in Scotland
Site at a Glance
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- 4.7
- Popularity
- Medium
- Country
- United Kingdom
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- Kingdom of Scotland
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Monastery
On this page24 sections
History
Iona Abbey is a historic Christian monastery on the island of Iona in the United Kingdom, founded by Saint Columba and twelve companions in 563 within the Gaelic kingdom of Dál Riata. It became one of Western Europe’s oldest Christian religious centres and a major base for the spread of Christianity among the Scots and Picts. The foundation was associated with the patronage of Conall mac Comgaill, king of Dál Riata, and Brude mac Maelchon, king of the Picts.
Columba and the early monastery
An earlier Christian sanctuary may have stood on Iona. Tradition connects it with Saint Oran, who was said to have died on the island in 549, while Pictish kings may have been buried there before Columba arrived. Iona may have appealed to Columba partly because both Picts and Scots already regarded it as a sacred place.
The early monastery was conceived as an ideal Christian community modeled on the heavenly Jerusalem. Its members followed the distinctive monastic customs now described as Celtic Christianity, worshipping and working within a network of Irish and British religious communities. They managed property, produced manuscripts and annals, and took part in local and regional society. Missionary work was important, but it was not the community’s only purpose.
Iona remained an influential Columban centre for several centuries. Saint Aidan lived there as a monk before helping to re-establish Christianity in Northumbria from Lindisfarne. Monks connected with Iona also founded or influenced monasteries in Ireland and on the European mainland. Annals compiled at Iona were incorporated into the Chronicle of Ireland until about 740, and tradition associates the production of the Book of Kells with Iona around the period before 800, although the manuscript later became associated with Kells.
Roman practices and Viking attacks
The community’s relationship with the wider Latin Church changed during the early eighth century. Around 716, after a period of internal difficulties, Iona accepted Roman practices under the influence of the Anglo-Saxon monk Ecgberht. The change brought Iona’s worship and church organization into closer alignment with Roman Christianity, although the continuity of Columban institutions and their later branches remained complex.
Iona also became a major centre of royal burial. Tradition names 48 Scottish kings, four Irish kings, and eight Norse kings of Man as buried on the island. Modern scholarship regards the larger royal totals as partly legendary and linked to Iona’s prestige. The island did receive prominent Hebridean and West Highland nobles, including Lords of the Isles, Maclean chiefs, and MacLeod chiefs.
Viking raids began in the late eighth century and continued through the ninth. The attacks damaged or burned the monastery, and 68 monks were massacred in the raid of 806 at the place later known as Martyrs’ Bay. Columban personnel and important relics were subsequently moved to Kells and other Irish centres, although Iona retained its religious importance. Amlaíb Cuarán, a retired king of Dublin, died there in 980.
Norwegian rule and the medieval abbey
Iona was seized by the king of Norway in 1114 and remained under Norwegian control for about fifty years. Somerled regained the island in 1164. In 1203, Somerled’s son Ranald, also known as Reginald, invited the Benedictines to establish a new monastery and founded an Augustinian nunnery south of the abbey. An Irish-led force raided the site in 1204 in reaction to the displacement of Columban influence.
During the medieval period, the abbey was closely connected with the Macdonald Lords of the Isles, the rulers of a major lordship across the Hebrides and parts of the western Scottish mainland. From the thirteenth century to the early sixteenth, the Macdonalds endowed and maintained the abbey, church, and nunnery. They treated Iona as their spiritual seat and effectively as the Cathedral of the Isles. Two Macdonalds named Angus became Bishops of the Isles, whose episcopal seat was at Iona.
The abbey church was greatly enlarged during the fifteenth century, particularly under the Macdonald Lords of the Isles and their abbots and bishops. The nunnery buildings were rebuilt during the same century. Most of the surviving medieval church fabric belongs to the period about 1421 to 1465, when the church was repaired and expanded after earlier neglect under Abbot Fingon MacKinnon.
Reformation and modern revival
After the Scottish Reformation, monastic life ended. The buildings were dismantled or abandoned, the monks and libraries dispersed, and the destruction of the buildings is also dated to 1561. During the reign of Charles I of England, between about 1630 and 1640, the abbey church was temporarily raised to the status of the Cathedral of the Isles. This revival ended after the Scottish church rejected bishops.
Restoration began in the later nineteenth century. George Douglas Campbell, the eighth Duke of Argyll, directed work on the abbey church between about 1870 and 1910, and ownership of the ruined abbey and nunnery remains passed to the Iona Cathedral Trust in 1899. In 1938, Reverend George MacLeod led a reconstruction group that helped rebuild the abbey and founded the Iona Community. Architect Ian Gordon Lindsay organized the reconstruction after the project was passed to him by Reginald Fairlie.
The Iona Community continued reconstructing the surrounding buildings and still uses the site as an ecumenical Christian centre. A square font was added in 1908 in memory of Theodore Marshall, Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland that year. Care of the abbey, nunnery, and associated sites passed to Historic Scotland in 2000. Iona Abbey remains the spiritual home of the Iona Community and a place of Christian pilgrimage. John Smith, a twentieth-century leader of the Labour Party, was buried on Iona in 1994.
Remains
Iona’s surviving remains combine an early monastic enclosure, the medieval abbey church and conventual buildings, burial grounds, chapels, carved grave slabs, and monumental crosses. The abbey church follows a cruciform plan, with a cloister to its north. The chapter house occupies the east range, while residential and refectory spaces lie above and in the north range. Skye marble is used in the abbey.
Early monastic settlement
Enclosure and timber buildings
The first Columban settlement probably consisted mainly of wattle-and-timber or wood-and-thatch structures. These included a church or oratory, a communal dining and kitchen area, a scriptorium for producing manuscripts, cells or dormitories, and a guesthouse for visitors and pilgrims. The original wooden chapel is believed to have been replaced by a stone chapel around 800.
The settlement was enclosed by a ditch and an earth bank. Part of this boundary may predate Columba’s arrival, and a surviving section lies to the north-west of the present abbey buildings.
Torr an Aba
Torr an Aba is a small mound within the monastic grounds, traditionally identified as the place where Columba worked and wrote. Charred wood from the mound has been dated, and a socket for a later cross remains visible. Elizabeth Fowler excavated the mound in 1956 and 1957. Another excavation recovered timber remains from a hut, with radiocarbon dates between about 540 and 650, possibly representing Columba’s writing cell.
Abbey church and conventual buildings
Medieval church
Only a small portion of the church associated with the 1203 foundation survives, principally in the north transept. The present medieval fabric largely dates from about 1421 to 1465, when the church was repaired and enlarged. It underwent substantial restoration in the late nineteenth century, especially in the nave, and was reconstructed further during the twentieth century by the Iona Community.
The south arches of the crossing carry carvings of biblical scenes, mythical animals, flowers, and aspects of daily life. The subjects include an armed horseman, a foot soldier, and a scene in which a cow appears to be being killed.
Cloister and chapter house
The cloister lies on the north side of the church and encloses an open courtyard. The chapter house occupies the eastern range, with residential and refectory spaces above and in the northern range. Twentieth-century carvings by Christopher Hall in the cloister depict birds, plants, and animals native to Iona.
Saint Columba’s Shrine
Saint Columba’s Shrine stands beside the church entrance at a location thought to have contained Columba’s tomb. The shrine was connected with the movement of Columba’s relics during the Viking period.
St Oran’s Chapel and burial grounds
St Oran’s Chapel
St Oran’s Chapel is the oldest surviving building on Iona and dates from the middle of the twelfth century. It was built either by Somerled or by his son. The chapel is a simple rectangular structure with a single entrance decorated in a manner also found in early Irish chapels.
Reilig Oran
St Oran’s Chapel and the adjacent Reilig Oran cemetery served as the burial place of the Lords of the Isles and the Macdonalds until the sixteenth century. The cemetery contains the group known as the Row of Kings, divided into three burial mounds. A central mound is traditionally dated to 685 and associated with 48 Scottish kings, while southern and northern areas are associated with four Irish kings and eight Norse kings of Man.
Reilig Oran contained at least three chapels in 1549. Only one remained by 1695, and that chapel disappeared during the eighteenth century. A second row of graves contains members of Clan Maclean and Clan Gillean, together with a MacLeod burial. Several surviving grave slabs have been kept in the abbey museum since 1974.
Grave slabs
Many West Highland grave slabs in the cloisters belong to the fourteenth-century style called the Iona school. These carvings commemorate members of clans including the Macdonalds, MacKinnons, Macleans, and MacLeods. Hunting scenes and swords are common subjects. Several slabs were moved from Reilig Oran for protection, while others are displayed in the abbey museum, a building formerly thought to have been the brothers’ hospital.
The museum contains the slab of Anna Maclean, prioress of the nunnery, who died in 1543, as well as slabs commemorating several abbots. The carvings preserve evidence of the burial traditions and artistic practices associated with Iona’s medieval religious and aristocratic communities.
Stone crosses
St Martin’s Cross
Four major Iona high crosses date from the eighth or ninth centuries and reflect Irish, Pictish, and English artistic traditions. St Martin’s Cross still stands beside the road. It was carved from a single block of stone quarried in Argyll. Biblical scenes cover its west face, while its east face carries interlaced serpent forms and bosses.
St Matthew’s Cross
St Matthew’s Cross dates from the ninth century. A stump remains outside the abbey church, while the weathered cross is displayed in the abbey museum. The Fall of Adam and Eve is its only clearly recognizable surviving scene.
St John’s Cross
The original St John’s Cross is displayed in the abbey museum. A replica made in 1970 stands near the entrance and in front of Saint Columba’s Shrine. The original cross is almost 2.2 metres wide and originally lacked a ring, which was added later to strengthen it.
St Oran’s Cross
St Oran’s Cross, probably the oldest of the principal Iona crosses, originally stood beside St Oran’s Chapel before being moved to the abbey museum. It consists of a shaft, side arms, and an upper arm. Its decoration includes serpentine motifs, bosses, the Virgin and Child flanked by angels, and a figure accompanied by a lion.
Maclean’s Cross
Maclean’s Cross was erected around 1500 near the parish church and the route traditionally called the Street of the Dead. More than three metres high, it was carved from a single block of stone and now stands on a modern base. Its carvings include a possible Maclean leader on horseback, abstract designs and flowers, two animals, and a heavily eroded Crucifixion scene.
Stone crosses on Iona served as grave markers and, especially between about 800 and 1000, as prominent carriers of Christian messages. Some of the large crosses were carved from stone transported by boat from Loch Sween, about 90 kilometres away.
Craft and industrial evidence
The abbey grounds contain evidence of wood-turning and metalworking. Glass used for windows or beads may date from the seventh century, and pigments from southern France have been identified among material associated with the monastery. Together with the buildings, manuscripts, burials, and carved stones, these remains reflect the range of activities carried out within the long-lived religious settlement.
