Iona
A small island off the west coast of Scotland where Columba founded a monastery about 563. It became the head of a family of monasteries in Ireland and Britain and the starting point of the mission to Northumbria.
Bede describes Iona as a small island, with land for about five families by English reckoning, separated from Britain by a narrow strait. He says that the Picts gave it to Columba and that its monastery was for a long time the chief house of nearly all the monasteries of the northern Irish and of the Picts (Bede, Ecclesiastical History 3.3–4). The Annals of Ulster record Columba’s voyage to the island under 563 and say that it was granted to him by Conall son of Comgall (Annals of Ulster 563, 574). Bishop Aidan, who began the conversion of Northumbria from Lindisfarne, was sent out from here (Bede, Ecclesiastical History 3.3–4).
What happened here
- AD 563, estimated dateColumba Founds Iona
The Irish priest and abbot Columba crosses to Britain and founds a monastery on the island of Iona. From it he preaches among the Picts, and it becomes the mother house of a family of monasteries in Ireland and Britain.