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686 x 704
FROM ENGLISH CHRONICLERS 45
BEDE, HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA, V, 15 ;
VOL. I, PP. 315-317. J
Hoiv at the instance of Adamnan very many of the churches
of the Scots received the catholic Easter ; and how he wrote a
book about the holy places.
And at this time 2 the chief part of the Scots in Ireland,
and some part also of the Britons in Britain, 3 received, God
granting it, the rational and ecclesiastical time of the ob-
servance of Easter.
For when Adamnan, priest and abbot of the monks who
were in the island of lona, 4 had been sent as a legation by
his nation and had come to Aldfrid, king of the Angles ; and
staying for some time in that province saw the canonical
rites of the church, and also was wisely exhorted by very
many who were better trained not to presume with his extremely
few followers, placed in an uttermost corner of the
world, to live contrarily to the universal custom of the church,
either in the observance of Easter or in any other decrees
whatsoever, he changed his mind ; so that he very gladly
preferred the things which he had seen and heard in the
churches of the Angles to the custom of himself and his. For
he was a good man and wise, and very notably trained in the
knowledge of the Scriptures.
And when he had returned home he endeavoured to lead
his [monks] who were in lona or who were subject to that
monastery to this path of truth which he had learned and
which he had adopted with his whole heart, but could not.
He sailed to Ireland, and by preaching to them, and with
temperate exhortation declaring to them the lawful time of
Easter, he brought over very many of them to catholic unity,
1 Not in A.S. Vers.
2 The previous chapter describes a vision which had been seen " recently,"
V, 14, i, 315. The last date given is of the consecration of Wilbrord in 696 ;
V, 11, i, 303.
3 I.e. the Cumbrians of Strathclyde ; v. H. & S., ii, 6-7.
4 Adamnan was abbot of lona from 679 to 704. He visited Aldfrid
(cf. supra, s.a. 685, note) twice ; first (probably in 686) after the battle of
Nechtansmere, to obtain the release of sixty Irish prisoners taken by Bert in
684 (Tigh., s.a. 687 ; Ann. of Ulst., s.a. 686 ;) and secondly two years later.
Ad., V.S.C.. 185, 186. Bede speaks of him as if he were a civic legate, (V, 15 ;
V, 21,) suggesting that he speaks of Adamnan's first visit ; but if Adamnan
at the end of De Locis Sanctis (in Migne, 88, 814) means by " ecclesiastical
anxiety " the Easter controversy, his manner of expression might suggest
that the work was written after his conversion to the Roman Easter, and
therefore presented to Aldfrid on Adamnan's second visit. Cf. Plummer,
Bede, ii, 303.