He was more successful in Ireland. On his return thither with the captives in A.D. 686, a Synod seems to have been held for the purpose of bringing about this change, to which he himself alludes in his Life of St. Columba. Neither the time nor place of the Synod can be exactly ascertained; it is not unlikely, however, that it took place on the Hill of Tara at the “Rath of the Synods,” where tradition still marks out the place of “Adamnan’s Tent,” and “Adamnan’s Cross.”[275] Others think it was held at a much later date in A.D. 696 or 697, when “Adamnan’s Canon” was published, to which we shall refer later on. It is certain, however, that Adamnan exerted his great influence thenceforward to introduce the new Paschal observance into Ireland, although he did not perhaps finally succeed until towards the end of his life.
On this occasion Adamnan’s visit was not of long duration; but he paid a second visit to Ireland in A.D. 692—fourteen years after the death of his predecessor, Failbhe, as the Annals say. This time it was a political question that attracted him from Hy. For forty reigns the men of Leinster had been paying the cow-tax, known as the Borumean tribute, to the princes of the Hy-Niall race, to which Adamnan himself belonged. Finnachta, however, the reigning High King, the old friend of Adamnan, remitted this tribute at the prayer of St. Moling, whom our Annalists represent as having recourse to a curious equivocation to effect his purpose. The king, at the prayer of the Saint Moling consented to remit payment of the tax for “the day and night.” “All time,” said the saint, when the king had pledged his royal word to this remission, “is day and night; thou canst never re-impose this tax.” In vain the monarch protested that he had no such intention; the saint kept him to his word, promising him heaven if he kept it, and the reverse if he did not. When Adamnan heard how weakly the king had yielded the ancient rights of the great Hy-Niall race, he was somewhat wrathful, and at once sought out the monarch, and asked to see him. The king was playing chess, and told Adamnan’s messenger, who asked an interview for the saint, that he must wait till the game was finished; then he played a second and was going to play a third, when the saint threatened him with reading a psalm that would not only shorten his life, but exclude him from heaven. Thereupon he came quick enough, and at once Adamnan said, “Is this true that thou hast remitted the Borumha for day and night?” “It is true,” said the king. “Then it is the same as to remit it for ever,” said the saint; and he “scolded” him in somewhat vigorous language, and made a song on him on the spot, calling him a foolish, white-haired, toothless king, and using several other epithets the reverse of complimentary.
Of course all this is the work of a northern bard, who puts into the mouth of Adamnan language which he would use himself; nevertheless, there is a substratum of truth in the story highly coloured as it is by poetic fiction. In the end, however, the writer adds:—“Afterwards Finnachta placed his head on the bosom of Adamnan, and Adamnan forgave him for the remission of the Borumha.” Shortly after, however, Adamnan was again angry with the king, and foretold “that his life would be short and that he would fall by fratricide.” The Irish life gives the true cause of the anger and the prediction; it was because Finnachta would not exempt from taxes the lands of Columbkille, as he exempted the lands of Patrick, Finnian, and Ciaran. This not unnaturally incensed the saint against the ungrateful king, whose throne he had helped to maintain. The prediction was soon verified; Finnachta fell by the hand of a cousin in A.D. 697.
It was on his return to Hy after this second visit that Adamnan seems to have written the Life of Columbkille. Shortly after he paid a third visit to Ireland in A.D. 697, and apparently spent the remaining seven years of his life in this country. It was in that year, most probably, was held the Synod of Tara in which the Cain, or Canon of Adamnan, was promulgated. According to a story in the Leabhar Breac there are four great Laws, or “Canons” in Ireland. The Canon of Patrick, not to kill the clergy; the Canon of the nun Dari, not to kill the cows; the Canon of Adamnan, not to kill women; and the Sunday Canon, not to travel on that day. The origin of the Canon of Adamnan was this:—He was once travelling through Meath, carrying his mother on his back, when he saw two armies in conflict, and a woman of one party dragging a woman of the other party with an iron reaping hook fixed in her breast. At this cruel and revolting sight, Adamnan’s mother insisted that her son should promise her to make a law for the people that women should in future be exempted from all battles and hostings. Adamnan promised and kept his word[276]—in A.D. 696, according to the Ulster Annals. That is he procured the passing of a law exempting women and children—innocentes—from any share in the actual conflict or its usual consequences, captivity or death. This fact is substantially true, though considerably embellished in the details.[277] And Ireland owes the great Abbot a lasting debt of gratitude for procuring the enactment of this law, which was afterwards re-enacted in A.D. 727, when the relics of Adamnan were removed from Iona to Ireland and the “law renewed.” There were several other Canons probably enacted at a Synod held at Armagh about the same time, but this is far the most important of them all.
The Life of St. Gerald of Mayo represents Adamnan as governing the monastery of that place, originally founded by the Saxons, for seven years. Tradition also connects the saint with the Church of Skreen in the county Sligo, of which he is the patron, and was in all probability the founder. As head of the Columbian Order it was his duty, from time to time, to visit the Columbian Churches in Ireland, of which there were very many, especially in Sligo and Donegal. He may thus have spent a considerable time in Mayo of the Saxons, although the Life of St. Gerald is very unsatisfactory evidence of the fact.
We cannot stay to notice the alleged “cursing” of Irgalach by Adamnan. The story is intrinsically improbable and unsustained by respectable authority. In the last year of his life, A.D. 704, he returned to Iona. Although the monks would not consent to give up St. Columba’s Easter, he loved them dearly, and wished to bless them before he died. After his noble life he might well rest in peace with the kindred dust of all the saints of Conal Gulban’s line that sleep in the holy island.
A century later, however, as we have seen, the sacred relics were transferred to Ireland, but it is not known for certain where they were laid.
Adamnan’s two most important works are his Vita Sancti Columbae, and his book, De Locis Sanctis.
The life of St. Columba has been pronounced by Pinkerton to be “the most complete piece of such biography that all Europe can boast of, not only at so early a period, but even through the whole middle ages.” Adamnan himself declares that he wrote the book at the earnest request of the Brothers; and that he states nothing except what was already written in the records of the monastery, or what he himself heard from the elder monks, many of whom saw the blessed Columba, and were themselves witnesses of his wonderful works. The entire narrative, which is written in fairly good Latin, furnishes ample proof of the truth of this statement. Hence the great value of this Life, not only as an authentic record of the virtues and miracles of St. Columba, but also as a faithful picture of the religious life of those early times by a contemporary writer, so well qualified to sketch it, and who does so quite unconsciously. The manuscript in the library of Schaffhausen is of equal authority with the autograph of the saint, if, indeed, it were not actually written at his dictation, so that the most sceptical cannot question the authenticity of this venerable record. The Life was printed from this codex by Colgan in 1647, and by the Bollandists at a later date. But the edition published in 1837 by Dr. W. Reeves for the Irish Archæological and Celtic Society, is by far the most valuable. The notes and appendices to this admirable volume render it a perfect mine of wealth for the student of Irish History.
Venerable Bede gives us a very full account of the treatise De Locis Sanctis, in the 16th and 17th chapters of the fifth book of his Ecclesiastical History. It is, he says, a book most useful to the reader (in that age). The author, Adamnan, received his information about the holy places from Arculfus, a bishop from Gaul, who had himself visited Jerusalem, Constantinople, Alexandria, and all the islands of the sea. When returning home a tempest drove his vessel to the west parts of Britain,[278] where he met Adamnan, probably in Hy, to whom he narrated all the noteworthy scenes he had gone through. Adamnan at once reduced the narrative to writing, for the information of his own countrymen. He presented the work to his friend King Aldfrid, through whose liberality copies were multiplied for the benefit of the young, if such be the meaning of Bede’s phrase:—“Per ejus largitionem etiam minoribus ad legendum contraditus.” Bede himself was greatly pleased with the book, from which he inserts several extracts in his own history, concerning Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Mount Olivet, and other places in Palestine. It was published at Ingoldstadt in 1619.