The Abbey
The Abbey is the largest historical, architectural feature on Iona. The holy site’s transformation over the years from what would have been modest structures of Columba’s time, to the stone cathedral that currently inhabits the space, speaks to the deep and lasting Christian impulse that was seeded at this sacred site over 2,000 years ago.
When Saint Columba arrived on Iona from Ireland in the year 563 CE, there would have already been an early Celtic Christian community on the Island in the form of the Culdees and the lineage of pre-Christian, scholarly, Celtic Druids that had lived and taught there as part of an ancient and renown Druidic College. The Culdees (who tended to seek out and live amongst the people who comprised primary seats of learning and communities of learned Druids) were believed to have been groups of Essenes (both men and women) that travelled north and northwest out of the Holy Land in search of safer places to live.
The Culdees settled in existing sacred sites and communities of kindred spirits who were the scholarly Gaelic-speaking college communities of the High/Arch Druids. Such a community existed on Iona. The Celtic Druids were highly respected throughout the Celtic world for their extensive knowledge, abilities with Nature, legal expertise, and wise counsel to kings and queens of the clans. When Columba arrived with his twelve comrades and family in the year 563 CE, Iona was home to both Druids and Culdees who were already versed in the new Christian gospels.
The community and monastery under Columba’s leadership thrived. It particularly flourished in the 700’s as a centre of spiritual education as well as a centre for the sacred arts. Stone carving, metal and bronze works, and beautifully hand-crafted manuscripts created out of the scriptorium, all served to establish the reputation of Iona as a shining example of monastic living, the new Celtic Christianity, and the idyllic blending of the spiritual with the practical and creative.
The sea routes were the avenues for the development of trade, resource-acquisition, news and ideas as Celtic Christianity grew in Scotland, Wales, Northern England, and Ireland. The monastic centres developed by the Irish monks continued the exacting spiritual and intellectual education as well as the artistic orientation of the Celtic Druid roots of learning.
There was a long tradition on Iona of stonemason workshops and apprenticeships with master masons. In the Abbey Museum there is a fascinating collection of the best of Scotland’s medieval carved stones and crosses.
It is believed that the ‘Tall Crosses’ originated on Iona. At one time, there were many, many ‘Tall Crosses’. The 8th-century St. Martin’s Cross stands by the roadside in its original location, and a replica of St. John’s Cross is by the doorway of the Abbey. In the past, many of the ‘Tall Crosses’ served to delineate a pathway to the monastery.
Page from the Book of Kells.
The famous Book of Kells, a uniquely beautiful illuminated manuscript of the four Gospels of the New Testament (written in Latin), originated on Iona in the 8th century. The Book of Kells is known for its extensive artistry, abstract decorations, and images of animals, plants, and humans. In 806 it was moved from Iona to Ireland after multiple Viking attacks and plundering of the Abbey’s sacred treasures. A group of Columba’s monks took refuge, with the Book of Kells, in a new monastery at Kells, County Meath. In 1653, it was moved once again in the interests of its safety to Dublin, and has been on display from the mid 19th century in the Old Library at Trinity College.
The Abbey Museum and the Abbey entrance near the shop also have extraordinary displays of grave slabs that were commissioned by members of the elite fighting forces of the Lords of the Isles.
The photo above shows the carved grave slab of a women. The woman was the 16th century Nunnery Abbess, Anna MacLean, who died in 1543. Her beautifully carved stone slab depicts her in her Augustinian nun’s habit, with two small dogs, three towers, two angels, and a mirror and comb. The bottom part of the slab is broken but it is known to have been an image of the Virgin Mary with a sun and moon.
The first of multiple Viking raids on the sacred Isle of Iona was in 795 AD, and the worst was in 806 AD when 68 priests of the community were slaughtered on a beach. Raids also occurred in 825, and 986, weakening the monastery. Despite the repeated raids, Columba’s monastery survived until the end of the 12th century. (https://www.historicenvironment.scot)
Somerled, King of the Isles, “led the Gaelic revival (against Viking occupation) and restored the ancient Dalriadic claim to Argyll” (www.ionaabbeyandclandonald.com). Somerled initiated the construction of a mausoleum that was to be his family’s private chapel on Iona. The chapel was built over the gravesite of St. Oran. When Somerled was killed in 1164 CE, he was buried in his newly constructed ‘St. Oran’s Chapel’.
Reginald, 1153-1207, son of Somerled, initiated the building of both the Abbey and the Nunnery for Benedictine and Augustinian worship, respectively. Reginald had made a pilgrimage to both Rome and Jerusalem, and had himself lived a monastic life during his final years. It was his son Donald, and the descendants of Donald, the (mac) Donalds, ‘Lords of the Isles’, and the Clan Donald Abbots and Bishops who were the developers, builders, and custodians of the Abbey (and the Nunnery). (http://ionaabbeyandclandonald.com)
In the 1400’s there were major alterations and expansions of both the Abbey and the Nunnery. But monastic life came to an end with the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1537, and the Protestant Reformation in 1560.
“The Abbey church was substantially expanded in the 15th century, but the monastic life came to an end at the Protestant Reformation in 1560, when the Abbey was dismantled and abandoned, and its monks and libraries dispersed, as was the case with numerous other abbeys throughout the British Isles.
It was briefly revitalised by Charles I in the 1630s as the Cathedral of the Isles, but faded into oblivion when bishops were abolished in the Scottish Church.
It again re-emerged in the 1870s, when the 8th Duke of Argyll began restoring the buildings.
It was substantially rebuilt and restored in 1899 after the original Benedictine Abbey and associated buildings were gifted to the Church of Scotland by the Duke of Argyll.”
In 1938, George McLeod founded the Iona Community. The Iona Cathedral Trust and Iona Community engaged in major restorative work on the Abbey under the leadership of George McLeod.
“Born just before the start of the 20th century into a famous ecclesiastical dynasty, George MacLeod became disturbed by his increasing awareness of ‘two nations’, the rich and the poor, while working as a young minister in Edinburgh during the 1920s. Disillusioned by post-WWI rhetoric about a ‘land fit for heroes’, he shocked his many admirers by taking a post as a minister in Govan, a poor and depressed area of Glasgow. Although he had been awarded the Military Cross and the Croix de Guerre for bravery during the war, he moved inexorably towards socialism and pacifism during the Depression years, while his theology evolved in mystical, cosmic and political directions.
In 1938, feeling that a radical move was necessary to meet the needs of the times, MacLeod embarked on the imaginative venture of rebuilding part of the ancient abbey on the isle of Iona. He utilised the skills of unemployed craftsmen, and persuaded trainee ministers to work as labourers. Out of this was born the often controversial Iona Community, which over the years has trained clergy for work in deprived areas, produced innovative worship for the world church, pleaded for disarmament, inveighed against world hunger and advocated joint ecumenical action on social issues.” (www.ionabooks.com)
Shortlisted for the prestigious McVitie’s Scottish Writer of the Year Award when first published, the book ‘George MacLeod, Founder of the Iona Community’ by Ron Ferguson, Wild Goose Publications is, “The definitive biography of one of the twentieth century’s most fascinating and influential churchmen, an outspoken challenger to the status quo and the founder of the radical and often controversial Iona Community”. (www.ionabooks.com)
Since 1938, the Christian ecumenical Iona Community organization has worked tirelessly to provide opportunities for visitors to engage in work, worship, and learning in and around the Abbey.
The Abbey has been managed by Historic Scotland since the year 2000.
My research into the historical development of the Abbey led me down some of the intricate and complex paths of clan leaderships, rivalries, and decisive gruesome battles for dominance amongst the land-owners and competing religious allegiances. Naturally, there are conflicting views and opinions about the long history of the Islands in general, and Iona, in particular.
I will end this section on The Abbey with a quote from John Phillip Newell, a prolific writer, teacher, and preacher of Celtic Christianity. Newell has hosted retreats on Iona for many years, and is a much loved and respected guide for pilgrims and spiritual seekers to Iona.
“Our religion, like much of Western culture, has suffered a tragic imbalance. The neglect and exploitation of the earth have gone hand in hand with a subordination and abuse of the feminine.
This has often included a fear of the feminine and its deep birthing energies.
Praying in the Nunnery is part of the growing desire in us to bring back into relationship again so-called opposites that have been torn apart, the masculine and the feminine, as well as the life of humanity and the life of the earth.”