Iona, Kells, and Derry: the history and hagiography of the monastic familia of Columba (review)

Reviews 149 Herbert, M., Iona, Kells, and Derry: the history and hagiography of the monastic familia of Columba, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1988; cloth; pp. xiv, 327; 2 genealogical tables, 5 maps; R. R. P. AUS$115.00 "This is why I love Deny,/ because of its tranquillity and brightness,/ for it is full of fair angels/ from one end to the other'. So St Columba is said to have praised his monastery in one of several poetic gems set into his twelfth-century Irish Life, which is fuUy edited and translated into English for thefirsttime in Part HI of this book. By the twelfth century Derry, as we learn in the historical Part I, was strong in the Irish church reform movement, but strong too in the inheritance of Columba's monastic federation. At a reforming church council complete with papal legate its abbot was accorded a status like that of a bishop. Following the career of Columba from Derry via Kells and many other places to Iona in the Irish Life is in effect a journey into the past. ' ... as regards spacious, well-grassed KeUs,/ what clerics will inhabit itJ what warriors wiU abandon it? ... It is clerics who are in its midst,/ who sing the praises of the Lord's son,/ its warriors will depart from its threshold,/ a time wiU come when it wiU be secure'. Tenth-century Kells was deeply enmeshed with secular society. Here the revealing source is the Irish Life of St Adomnan. The most cogendy and effectively argued part of the book is a demonstration in its Uterary Part II of how political concerns of the mid-tenth century are addressed via episodes associated with Adomnan, seventh-century author of the Latin Life of St Columba and, more importantly, of a highly influential law intended for the reform of Irish society. Close involvement with a violent and unstable society had its dangers: mention is made of seventeen incidents offireand/or violence suffered by KeUs before 1150, mostiy not at the hands of Vikings. 'Outstanding was the band of youths in Iona,/ thrice fifty under monastic rule,/ with their currachs across the sea,/ thrice twenty men were voyaging'. Outstanding is the book's treatment of learning in seventh-century Iona, very carefully exploring the sources of Adomnan's Life of St Columba. This is a book from which the reader may draw conclusions which are not always spelled out in the text. The author tells us that she has deliberately refrained from discussing the implications of her findings about Columba's monastic federation for the current debate about the nature of the early Irish church. A reviewer may venture further. From its beginning in the novel context of the Irish colony in what was to become Scodand, Iona and other monasteries ultimately under its abbot were special. The power of its abbot, who was a priest not a bishop, described by Bede as an unusual arrangement, was so in relation not only to the English church but also to the Irish church, where it proved influential but remained unusual and recognised as such through to the twelfth-century reform of the Irish church. 150 Reviews Iona, Kells, and Derry provides a useful view of early Irish church history in microcosm. It wiU merit a place on student reading lists over the long run for its translation of the Irish Life of Columba and over the short run for its bibUography. Lynette Olson Department of History University of Sydney Ianziti, G., Humanistic historiography under the Sforzas: politics and propaganda infifteenth-centuryMilan, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1988; cloth; pp. xvii, 254; R. R. P. AUSS69.95. Dr. Ianziti presents a carefully articulated and closely argued case for the significance in the development of humanistic historiography of the historical writings of Lodrisio Crivelli and Giovanni Simonetta. Functionaries of the Sforza regime, they contributed in turn to a Milanese chancery project to produce a version of recent history which could legitimize Francesco Sforza's seizure of power and lend credence to histitleto rule. Since he lacked any legal or dynastic claim, there remained only his virtus and his actions. Supposedly he intervened to save Milan from chaos and to...