The same year which brought to Segine this important request from King Osuald of Northumbria brought him likewise a letter of not less importance, but one of a very different tenor, from the head of one of the dependent monasteries in Ireland. This letter^[313] was written by Cummian, one of the most learned of the Irish ecclesiastics, and believed to have been abbot of the monastery of Durrow in King’s County, founded by Columba shortly before he passed over from Ireland to Iona; and it is still extant. It is addressed to the abbot ‘Segine, successor of Saint Columba, and other holy men, and to Beccan the anchorite, his dear brother according to the flesh and in the spirit, with his wise companions.’ In this letter he tells him that, when the Roman mode of computation was first introduced into Ireland, he did not adopt it; but, retiring in private for a year, he entered into the sanctuary of God, that is, the holy Scripture, and examined it as well as he was able; after that, works on history; lastly, whatever cycles he could meet with. He then gives a very learned summary of the result of his investigations which led him to adopt the Roman system as correct. When the year had expired, he says, he applied to the successors of our ancient fathers, of Bishop Ailbe, of Kieran of Clonmacnois, of Brendan, of Nessan and of Lugidus, that they might tell him what they thought of the excommunication directed against them from the Apostolic See; and they having assembled together, some in person, others by representatives, at Magh Lene, or the plain of Lene, in which the monastery of Durrow was situated, came to the resolution that they ought to adopt without scruple the more worthy and approved practice recommended to them by the successors of the apostles of the Lord. They accordingly enjoined him to celebrate Easter in the following year with the universal church. Not long after, however, there arose up a certain whited wall, pretending that he was for upholding the traditions of his elders, which caused disunion and partly rendered void what had been agreed to. Upon this it was determined by ‘our seniors’ that if questions of a more weighty character should arise, they ought to be referred, according to the decree of the synod, to the head of cities. They therefore sent some that they knew to be wise and humble, as children to a mother, and having a prosperous journey by the will of God, and some of them having come to the city of Rome, they returned in the third year, and they saw everything accord with what they had heard, or rather they obtained a much clearer view of the matter, as seeing instead of hearing; and, being in one lodging with a Greek and a Hebrew, a Scythian and an Egyptian, they all celebrated their Easter together in St. Peter’s Church, while they differed from them by a whole month. And they solemnly assured him of this, saying, This Easter is celebrated to our knowledge all the world over. ‘These statements,’ adds Cummian, ‘I have made, not with a view to attack you, but to defend myself.’ Such is the substance of Cummian’s letter;^[314] and as the times for celebrating Easter according to the Roman and to the Irish computation would be separated by the interval of a month in the year 631,^[315] the synod must have been held about 630, the return of the deputies taken place in 633, and the letter have been written in the following year. According to Bede, Pope Honorius in this year ‘wrote to the nation of the Scots, whom he had found to err in the observance of Easter, earnestly exhorting them not to esteem their small number, placed in the utmost borders of the earth, wiser than all the ancient and modern churches of Christ throughout the world, and not to celebrate a different Easter, contrary to the Paschal calculation and the synodical decrees of all the bishops upon earth;’^[316] and the result was that, as Bede tells us, ‘the Scots which dwelt in the southern districts of Ireland, by the admonition of the bishop of the Apostolic See, learned to observe Easter according to the canonical custom;’ while the northern province of the Scots and the whole nation of the Picts adhered to the old custom of the country.^[317]

The distinction here drawn by Bede between the Scots inhabiting the southern districts and the northern province of the Scots obviously refers to the old traditional division of Ireland into two parts, termed severally Leth Mogha and Leth Cuinn, which were divided from each other by a ridge extending from the mouth of the Liffey to Galway, and termed Eisgir Riada.^[318] The southern districts were Munster and Leinster south of the Liffey. The northern division contained the rest of Leinster, Ulster and Connaught. Durrow, though a Columban monastery, was situated in the southern division, and probably now broke off from the jurisdiction of Iona and, along with the rest of the Irish Church in the southern division of Ireland, conformed to Rome.

We meet with a passing notice of the monastery of Lismore in the following year, when Tighernac records the death of its abbot Eochaidh; and in the same year Abbot Segine appears to have founded a church in Rechrann, or the island of Rathlin off the north coast of Ireland.^[319]

Some years after a letter appears to have been sent from the Irish Church to Pope Severinus, who succeeded Honorius in 640, but died within the year, which called forth a reply from his successor John, while Pope-elect, by the person who had taken the letter, which Bede tells us was ‘full of great authority and erudition for correcting the same error,’ and at the same time admonished them to be careful to crush the Pelagian heresy, which, he had been informed, was reviving amongst them. Bede gives us the opening of this epistle thus:—‘To our most beloved and most holy Tomianus, Columbanus, Cromanus, Dinanus, and Baithanus, bishops; to Cromanus, Ernianus, Laistranus, Scellanus, and Segenus, priests; to Saranus and the rest of the Scottish doctors or abbots, greeting from Hilarius, the arch-priest and keeper of the place of the holy Apostolic See; from John, the deacon and elect in the name of God; from John the chief secretary and keeper of the place of the holy Apostolic See, and from John the servant of God and councillor of the same Apostolic See.’^[320] These Scottish doctors or abbots, with Tomianus, who was bishop of Armagh, at their head, all belonged to the northern province, and this appeal had no effect in altering their relation towards the Church of Rome. But it is instructive to observe that Segenus or Segine, abbot of Iona, is placed among the clergy of the Irish Church, of which his monastery, with its dependent monasteries in Scotland, was ranked as forming a part. Ten years afterwards news came of the death of Aidan, after a sixteen years’ episcopate over the church of Northumbria; and Finan, ‘who had,’ says Bede, ‘been sent from Hii, the island and monastery of the Scots,’ succeeded him.^[321]

Segine’s own death followed a year after. His successor was Suibhne, of whom we know nothing except that his father’s name was Cuirtri, but it is unlikely that at this early stage any one who did not belong to the tribe of the patron saint could be elected an abbot, and the only notice we have of him is his death after having been five years in the abbacy.^[322]

He was succeeded in the abbacy by Cummene Ailbhe, the nephew of his predecessor Segene, whose tenure of office was signalised by equally important events. His first year is coincident with the extension of the dominion of Osuiu, the Northumbrian king, over the Britons of Strathclyde, the southern Picts and the Scots of Dalriada; but, though the latter ceased for a time to possess an independent king, the rule of Northumbria could not have affected the church to which her own church was affiliated. Accordingly, when Finan, the successor of Aidan, died, we find that Colman was also ‘sent out of Scotia,’ and succeeded him as bishop.^[323] Tighernac records, in the same year, the death of Bishop Finan and of Daniel, bishop of Cinngaradh or Kingarth, in Bute; and in the following year, a visit of Abbot Cummene to Ireland;^[324] and, as Bede says of Finan that he was ordained and sent by the Scots, while, in the case of Colman, he uses the expression that he was sent out of Scotia, or Ireland, this rather confirms our suspicion that the bishops called in to consecrate these Northumbrian missionaries were the bishops of Kingarth, and that the death of Bishop Daniel in the same year rendered an appeal to Ireland necessary.

While, however, Segine’s tenure of the abbacy saw the extension of the Columban Church into Northumbria, that of his nephew Cummene was doomed to see its extinction after it had for thirty years been the church of the country. The cause was the controversy regarding the proper time for celebrating Easter. It had been raised, during the episcopate of Finan, by some ecclesiastics who came from Kent or France; and among them, says Bede, ‘was a most zealous defender of the true Easter, whose name was Ronan, a Scot indeed by nation, but instructed in ecclesiastical truth either in the parts of France or of Italy, who, by disputing with Finan, corrected many, or at least induced them to make a more strict inquiry after the truth; yet he could not amend Finan, but on the contrary made him the more inveterate by reproof, and an open opposer of the truth, he being of a hot and violent temper.’^[325] The royal family, too, were divided. The queen, Eanfled, being from Kent and having a Kentish priest, Romanus, with her, followed the Catholic mode, so that one year the king and queen both celebrated their Easter at different times. Under Colman the controversy became more bitter, and the king Osuiu and his son Alchfrid were now opposed to each other, the latter having been instructed in Christianity by Wilfrid, a most learned man, who had been originally trained in the Scottish monastery of Lindisfarne, but had gone from thence to Rome to learn the ecclesiastical doctrine, and spent much time at Lyons with Dalfin, archbishop of Gaul, from whom he had received the coronal tonsure. Agilberct, bishop of the West Saxons, a friend to Alchfrid and to Abbot Wilfrid, having come to Northumbria, suggested that a synod should be held to settle the controversy regarding Easter, the tonsure and other ecclesiastical affairs. This was agreed to; and it was accordingly held, in the year 664, at the monastery of Streanashalch, near Whitby, where the abbess Hilda, a woman devoted to God, then presided. The king Osuiu and his son Alchfrid were both present. On the Catholic side was Bishop Agilberct, with the priests Agatho and Wilfrid, James and Romanus. On the Scottish side was Bishop Colman with his clerics from Scotia, or Ireland, the abbess Hilda and her followers, and Bishop Cedd of Essex, who had been ordained by the Scots, and acted as interpreter for both parties. The king called upon Colman and Wilfrid to conduct the discussion. It is given at length by Bede, but it is unnecessary to say more than that the usual arguments were used. Colman pleaded that the Easter he kept he received from his elders; and all his forefathers, men beloved of God, are known to have celebrated it after the same manner. Wilfrid opposed the custom of the universal church and the authority of Rome. Colman asks, ‘Is it to be believed that our most reverend father Columba, and his successors, men beloved by God, who kept Easter after the same manner, thought or acted contrary to the divine writings? whereas there were many among them whose sanctity is testified by heavenly signs and the working of miracles which they performed, whose life, customs and discipline I never cease to follow, nor question their sanctity.’sanctity.’ Wilfrid replied, ‘Concerning your father Columba and his followers, whose sanctity you say you imitate and whose rule and precepts you observe, which have been confirmed by signs from heaven, I might answer that when many, on the day of judgment, shall say to our Lord that in his name they prophesied and cast out devils and wrought many wonders, our Lord will reply that He never knew them. But far be it from me that I should say so of your father, because it is more just to believe what is good than what is evil of persons whom one does not know. If that Columba of yours—and I may say ours also, if he were Christ’s—was a holy man and powerful in miracles, yet should he be preferred before the most blessed prince of the apostles, to whom our Lord had given the keys of the kingdom of heaven?’ And as Colman admitted that these words were spoken to Peter, and could not show that any such power was given to Columba, the king decided to obey the decrees of Rome, and all present gave their assent and, renouncing the more imperfect institution, hastened to conform themselves to that which they found to be better.^[326] Bede then tells us ‘that Colman, perceiving that his doctrine was rejected and his sect despised, took with him such as were willing to follow him and would not comply with the Catholic Easter and the coronal tonsure—for there was much controversy about that also—and went back into Scotia, or Ireland, to consult with his people what was to be done in this case.’ And he adds that Colman carried home with him part of the bones of the most reverend father Aidan, and left part of them in the church where he had presided, ordering them to be interred in its sacristy.^[327]

The character which this most candid historian gives of the church of the Scots in Northumbria so much reflects that of the parent church of Iona, that it may be well to insert it. He says of Bishop Colman, ‘How great was his parsimony, how great his continence, the place which they governed shows for himself and his predecessors, for there were very few houses besides the church found at their departure, indeed no more than were barely sufficient for their daily residence. They had also no money but cattle; for, if they received any money from rich persons, they immediately gave it to the poor, there being no need to gather money or provide houses for the entertainment of the great men of the world? for such never resorted to the church except to pray and hear the Word of God. For this reason the religious habit was at that time in great veneration, so that, wheresoever any cleric or monk happened to come, he was joyfully received by all persons, as God’s servant; and, if they chanced to meet him as he was upon the way they ran to him and, bowing, were glad to be signed with his hand or blessed with his mouth. Great attention was also paid to their exhortations; and on Sundays the people flocked eagerly to the church or the monasteries, not to feed their bodies, but to hear the Word of God; and, if any priest happened to come into a village the inhabitants flocked together forthwith to hear from him the Word of Life. For the priests and clerics went into the villages on no other account than to preach, baptize, visit the sick and, in few words, to take care of souls; and they were so free from the curse of worldly avarice, that none of them received lands and possessions for building monasteries, unless they were compelled to do so by the temporal authorities.’^[328]

Though Bede tells us in general terms that Colman returned to Ireland, he did not actually do so till after four years; for he mentions afterwards that Colman ‘repaired first to the isle of Hii, or Iona, whence he had been sent to preach the word of God to the Anglic nation. Afterwards he retired to a certain small island which is to the west of Ireland, and at some distance from its coast, called, in the language of the Scots, Inisboufinde,’ and’ and Tighernac places this event in the year 668.^[329] As he had taken the relics of Aidan with him, it was probably during this interval that he founded the church of Fearn in Angus, dedicated to Aidan, and the church of Tarbet, in Easter Ross, with which his own name is connected; and if he reported to Abbot Cummene, as no doubt he would, the discussion he had held with Wilfrid, and the appeal which he had made in vain to the authority of Columba as a man whose sanctity was testified by heavenly signs and the working of miracles, it probably led to Cummene’s writing the Life of their great saint, which Adamnan calls ‘the book which he wrote on the virtues of St. Columba,’^[330] in vindication of the assertion. This Life is still extant, and the whole of it has been embodied in Adamnan’s more elaborate production. Tighernac records the death of Cummene in the year 669, and along with it those of two saints who belonged to the church among the southern Picts—Itharnan or Ethernanus, of Madderdyn, now Madderty in Strathearn, and Corindu, or Caran, of Fetteresso in the Mearns.^[331]

His successor was Failbhe, son of Pipan, also a descendant of Conall Gulban, and the first year of his tenure of the abbacy also saw Wilfrid in possession of the diocese of York. According to Bede, he at this time administered the bishopric of York and of all the Northumbrians, and likewise of the Picts as far as the dominions of king Osuiu extended.^[332] His diocese therefore comprehended the territories of the southern Picts, the Britons of Strathclyde and the Scots of Dalriada, over all of which King Osuiu had extended his rule. Wilfrid retained this extensive diocese during the entire period of Failbhe’s abbacy; and, so far as he could make his power felt, his influence would no doubt be exercised against the Columban Church; for, as Eddi tells us, ‘under Bishop Wilfrid the churches were multiplied both in the south among the Saxons and in the north among the Britons, Scots and Picts, Wilfrid having ordained everywhere presbyters and deacons, and governed new churches.’^[333] But the territories of the northern Picts were beyond his reach; and Failbhe’s tenure of the abbacy is chiefly remarkable for the extension of the Columban Church to those rugged and almost inaccessible districts which lay on the western seaboard between Ardnamurchan on the south and Loch Broom on the north.

The principal agent in effecting this was Maelrubha, who was of the race of the northern Hy Neill, but belonged to a different sept from that which had the right of furnishing abbots to the monastery of Iona. He was connected through his mother with Comgall of Bangor, and became a member of that monastery which, as situated among the Picts of Ireland, well fitted him to be a missionary to those of the same race in Scotland. He came over to Britain in the year 671, and two years afterwards he founded the church of Aporcrosan, now Applecross,^[334] from which as a centre he evangelised the whole of the western districts lying between Loch Carron and Loch Broom, as well as the south and west parts of the island of Skye, and planted churches in Easter Ross and elsewhere. The dedications to him show that his missionary work was very extensive. In the same year Failbhe went to Ireland, where he appears to have remained three years,^[335] and was probably engaged in arrangements for extending the missionary work; for it is probably at this period that we must place the arrival of Comgan with his sister Kentigerna and her son Fillan in the district of Lochalsh, where they planted churches, as well as in the districts south of it as far as Loch Sunart.^[336] At this time too the church in Egg appears to have been restored.^[337] In the year 678 Wilfrid was ejected from his extensive bishopric, but Failbhe only survived this event one year, when his death is recorded; and at the same time we have a trace of the church in the eastern territories of the northern Picts, in the death of Neachtan Neir, who can be identified with the great saint of Deeside in Aberdeenshire, called by the people there, Nathalan, or Nachlan.^[338]

We are now brought in our narrative to the very important period when Adamnan, the biographer of Columba, ruled over his monastery as ninth abbot. He was also a descendant of Conall Gulban, and belonged to the tribe of the patron saint. He was born in 624, just twenty-seven years after the death of Saint Columba. During the first six years of his abbacy, the rule of the Angles, under King Ecgfrid, still extended as far as it did during the reign of his father Osuiu. After the ejection of Wilfrid from the diocese in this its fullest extent, it was divided between Bosa and Eata, the latter being appointed bishop of the northern part; and three years afterwards it was still further divided, Trumuin being appointed bishop over the province of the Picts which was subject to the Angles. The defeat and death of King Ecgfrid, however, at the battle of Dunnichen in the year 685 terminated this rule of the Angles, and with it the interference of the Anglic bishops with the Columban Church. The Scots of Dalriada recovered their independence. The southern Picts were relieved from the more direct yoke of the Angles, and Trumuin fled from his diocese.

The new king Aldfrid had been long in exile in Ireland, where he was known by the name of Flann Finn, and Adamnan was on terms of friendly acquaintance with him. His first proceeding was to go on a mission to him to ask the release of the Irish captives whom Berct, King Ecgfrid’s general, had carried away from the plain of Breg; and the Irish Life of Adamnan gives us the route he took. It says ‘The North Saxons went to him and plundered Magh Bregh as far as Bealach-duin; they carried off with them a great prey of men and women. The men of Erin besought of Adamnan to go in quest of the captives to Saxonland. Adamnan went to demand the prisoners, and put in at Tracht-Romra. The strand is long, and the flood rapid; so rapid that if the best steed in Saxonland ridden by the best horseman were to start from the edge of the tide when the tide begins to flow, he could only bring his rider ashore by swimming, so extensive is the strand, and so impetuous is the tide.’ Adamnan appears therefore to have gone in his curach and entered the Solway Firth, which is evidently the place meant, and landed on the southern shore. He succeeded in his undertaking, and brought sixty of the captives back to their homes.^[339]

His next step was to repair the monastery, which had probably fallen into disrepair during Failbhe’s time; and for this purpose he sent twelve vessels to Lorn for oak trees to furnish the necessary timber.^[340] In this monastery he received Arculfus, a bishop of Gaul, who had gone to Jerusalem to visit the holy places, and returning home was driven by a violent storm on the west coast of Britain and made his way to Iona and passed the winter there. During the dreary winter months, Adamnan committed to writing all the information he could obtain from him as to the holy places; and this work is still extant.^[341]

In 688 Adamnan proceeded on a second mission to King Aldfrid, with what object is not known; but it appears to have been connected with the affairs of Dalriada. This second visit to Northumbria had very important consequences both for himself and for his church; for Bede tells us that ‘Adamnan, priest and abbot of the monks that were in the isle of Hii, was sent ambassador by his nation to Aldfrid, king of the Angles, where, having made some stay, he observed the canonical rites of the church, and was earnestly admonished by many who were more learned than himself not to presume to live contrary to the universal custom of the church in relation to either the observance of Easter or any other decrees whatsoever, considering the small number of his followers, seated at so distant a corner of the world. In consequence of this he changed his mind, and readily preferred those things which he had seen and heard in the churches of the Angles to the customs which he and his people had hitherto followed. For he was a good and a wise man, and remarkably learned in the knowledge of the Scriptures;’^[342] and Abbot Ceolfrid of Jarrow, in his letter to King Naiton of the Picts, who calls him ‘Adamnan, the abbot and renowned priest of the Columbans,’ says that he visited his monastery, and narrates at length the conversation he had with him, to which he attributes Adamnan’s conversion.^[343] ‘Returning home,’ continues Bede, ‘he endeavoured to bring his own people that were in Hii, or that were subject to that monastery, into the way of truth, which he himself had learned and embraced with all his heart; but in this he could not prevail.’ We have thus the anomalous state of matters that the abbot of the monastery had conformed to Rome, but that his monks and those of the dependent monasteries refused to go along with him. In the year after his return to Iona, the death of Iolan, bishop of Cinngaradh, or Kingarth in Bute, is recorded; and in 692, which the annalist marks as the fourteenth after the decease of his predecessor Failbhe, he went to Ireland, but for what especial purpose which might render the reference to Failbhe appropriate, we do not learn; and the following year we find him again in Iona, when the body of Brude mac Bile, king of the Picts, who died in 693, is brought for interment.^[344]

Four years after, in the year 697, he goes again to Ireland, and on this occasion he was accompanied by Brude, son of Derile, king of the Picts. His object was to obtain the sanction of the Irish people to a law exempting women from the burden laid upon all, of what was called Fecht and Sluagad, or the duty attending hostings and expeditions. For this purpose a synod was held at Tara, which was attended by thirty-nine ecclesiastics presided over by the abbot of Armagh, and by forty-seven chiefs of tribes, at the head of whom was the monarch of Ireland. The law exempting women from this burdensome duty was termed ‘Lex innocentium;’ and the enactments of the synod were called Cain Adhamhnain or ‘Lex Adamnani,’ because among its results was the privilege of levying contributions under certain conditions.^[345] In the list of those present occurs the name of Brude mac Derili ri Cruithentuaithe, or King of Pictland. It is to the occasion of this visit to Ireland that must be referred the statement of Bede that ‘he then sailed over into Ireland to preach to those people, and, by modest exhortation declaring the true time of Easter, he reduced many of them, and almost all that were not under the dominion of those of Hii, from their ancient error to the Catholic unity, and taught them to keep the proper time of Easter. Returning to his island after having celebrated Easter in Ireland canonically, he most earnestly inculcated the observance of Easter in his monastery, yet without being able to prevail; and it so happened that he departed this life before the next year came round. For the divine goodness so ordained it that, as he was a great lover of peace and unity, he should be taken away to everlasting life before he would be obliged, on the return of the time of Easter, to have still more serious discord with those that would not follow him in the truth.’^[346] It would therefore appear that Adamnan did not return to Iona till the year of his death, which took place on the 23d of September in the year 704, and in the seventy-seventh year of his age.^[347]

At what period of Adamnan’s abbacy he wrote his life of the patron saint and founder of the monastery cannot be fixed with any accuracy, but it was after his visit to Aldfrid in 688; and, as he states that he did so at the urgent request of his brethren, and alludes incidentally to the discord which arose among the churches of Ireland on account of the difference with regard to the Easter feast, it was probably compiled before the same discord had arisen between the brethren of Iona and himself as their abbot.^[348] Neither can the precise period be fixed when he founded those churches in the eastern districts which are dedicated to him; but no doubt, after the termination of the Anglic rule over the southern Picts and Scots of Dalriada, he would be desirous to strengthen the Columban Church; and his relations with the kings of the Picts who reigned after the overthrow of the Angles were, as we have seen, cordial and friendly. In this work he appears to have been assisted by the family who had already evangelised the rugged district termed the ‘Rough Bounds,’ as the churches dedicated to them and him are found adjacent to each other. Among the northern Picts, Adamnan’s principal church was that of Forglen on the east bank of the river Doveran, in which the Brecbannoch, or banner of Columba, was preserved; and separated from it by the same river is Turriff, dedicated to Comgan. South of the range of the Mounth Adamnan’s most important foundation was the monastery of Dull in the district of Atholl, which was dedicated to him, and to which a very extensive territory was annexed; and closely contiguous to it was the district of Glendochart, with its monastery dedicated to Fillan, whose name is preserved in Strathfillan. Fillan again appears in Pittenweem on the south coast of the peninsula of Fife; and in the Firth of Forth which it bounds is Inchkeith, ‘on which Saint Adamnan the abbot presided.’^[349]

Adamnan, though, as Bede says, a man of peace and providentially removed before the coming Easter, when matters would have been brought to a crisis between him and his recalcitrant monks, seems notwithstanding to have left a legacy of discord behind him. For the first time since the foundation of the monastery of Iona, we find in the successor of Adamnan an abbot who was not a descendant of Conall Gulban. Conmael, son of Failbhe, was of the tribe of Airgialla in Ireland, who were descended from Colla Uais; but three years after Adamnan’s death we find Duncadh, who belonged to the tribe of the patron saint, obtaining the abbacy. Then three years after we have the death of Conmael as abbot of Iona. After his death appears Ceode, bishop of Iona, who dies in 712, and in 713 Dorbeni obtains the chair of Iona, but after five months’ possession of the primacy dies on Saturday the 28th of October in the same year. During the whole of this time, however, Duncadh is likewise abbot.^[350] The explanation seems to be that the community of Iona had become divided on the subject of the Easter question, and that a party had become favourable to Adamnan’s views. As he had not succeeded in bringing over any of the Columban monasteries, they were driven to obtain an abbot elsewhere, and procured the nomination of Conmael; while the opposing party having got the upper hand three years after, Duncadh, the legitimate successor of the line of Conall Gulban, obtained the abbacy, and there was thus a schism in the community—one section of them celebrating their Easter after the Roman system, who had at their head Conmael, Ceode the bishop, and Dorbeni; and the other and more powerful section maintaining, under the presidency of Duncadh, the old custom of their church. After narrating how ‘at that time,’ that is, in 710, ‘Naiton‘Naiton, king of the Picts who inhabit the northern parts of Britain, taught by frequent study of the ecclesiastical writings, renounced the error by which he and his nation had till then been held in relation to the observance of Easter, and submitted, together with his people, to celebrate the Catholic time of our Lord’s resurrection,’ Bede closes his notices of the monastery of Iona by telling us that ‘not long after, those monks also of the Scottish nation who lived in the isle of Hii, with the other monasteries that were subject to them, were, by the procurement of our Lord, brought to the canonical observance of Easter and the right mode of tonsure. For in the year after the incarnation of our Lord 716, the father and priest Ecgberct, beloved of God and worthy to be named with all honour, coming to them from Ireland, was very honourably and joyfully received by them. Being a most agreeable teacher and most devout in practising those things which he taught, he was willingly heard by all; and, by his pious and frequent exhortations he converted them from the inveterate tradition of their ancestors. He taught them to perform the principal solemnity after the Catholic and apostolic manner;’ and Bede adds, ‘The monks of Hii, by the instruction of Ecgberct, adopted the Catholic rites, under Abbot Dunchad, about eighty years after they had sent Bishop Aidan to preach to the nation of the Angles.’^[351] It is rarely, however, that, when a change is proposed in matters of faith or practice, a Christian community is unanimous, and there is always an opposing minority who refuse their assent to it. So it must have been here, for in the same passage in which Tighernac notices the adoption of the Catholic Easter in 716 he adds that Faelchu mac Dorbeni takes the chair of Columba in the eighty-seventh year of his age, and on Saturday the 29th of August; while he records the death of Abbot Duncadh in the following year.^[352] We have here again a schism in the community; and no sooner does Abbot Duncadh with his adherents go over to the Roman party, than the opposing section adopt a new abbot.

The greater part, if not the whole, of the dependent monasteries among the Picts seem to have resisted the change, and to have refused obedience to the decree which Bede tells us King Naiton had issued, when ‘the cycles of nineteen years were forthwith by public command sent throughout all the provinces of the Picts to be transcribed, learned and observed;’ for we are told by Tighernac that in 717, when Abbot Duncadh had died and Faelchu remained alone in possession of the abbacy, the family of Iona were driven across Drumalban by King Naiton. In other words, the whole of the Columban monks were expelled from his kingdom;^[353] and there is reason to think that Faelchu had been at the head of one of these dependent monasteries in the territories of the northern Picts.^[354] It is possible that the monks of the monasteries recently established among the southern Picts by Adamnan may have conformed; but those of the older foundations, such as Abernethy and Cillrigmonadh, or St. Andrews, were probably driven out; and thus with the expulsion of the family of Iona terminated the primacy of its monastery over the monasteries and churches in the extensive districts of the east and north of Scotland which formed at that time the kingdom of the Picts.