IONA or ICOLMKILL, island, Inner Hebrides, Argyllshire, Scotland, 61 m. S. of Staffa and 14 m. W. of the Ross of 1,Lull, from which it is separated by the shallow Sound of Iona. Pop. (1931) 141. It is about 31 m. long and 12 m. broad; its area being some 2,200 acres, of which about one-third is under cul tivation, oats, potatoes and barley being grown. In the rest of the island grassy hollows, yielding pasturage for a few hundred cattle and sheep and some horses, alternate with rocky eleva tions, which culminate on the northern coast in Duni (332 ft.), from the base of which a stretch of white shell sand, partly cov ered with grass, stretches to the sea. To the south-west the island is fringed with precipitous cliffs. There is a ferry to the Ross of Mull. The inhabitants depend partly on agriculture and partly on fishing. Near the S.E. point is a marble quarry.
The original form of the name Iona was Hy, Hii or I, the Irish for Island. By Adamnan in his Life of St. Columba it is called Loud imula, and the present name Iona is said to have originated in some transcriber mistaking the u in Ioua for n. It also received the name of Hii-colum-kill (Icolmkill), that is, "the island of Columba of the Cell," while by the Highlanders it has been known as Innis nan Druidhneah ("the island of the Druids"). This last name seems to imply that Iona was a sacred spot before St. Columba landed there in 563 and laid the founda tions of his monastery. After this date it developed into the most famous centre of Celtic Christianity, the mother community of numerous monastic houses, whence missionaries were despatched for the conversion of Scotland and northern England, and to which for centuries students flocked from all parts of the north. After St. Columba's death his relics rested here until they were removed to Ireland early in the 9th century. Pilgrims came to die in the island, in order that they might lie in its holy ground; and from all parts of northern Europe the bodies of the illustrious dead were brought here for burial. Several times the monastery was plundered and burnt and the monks massacred by the heathen Norse sea-rovers, attracted by the wealth of the foundation. Late in the nth century the desecrated monastery was restored by Queen Margaret, wife of Malcolm Canmore, king of Scotland; and in 1203 a new monastery and a nunnery were founded by Benedictine monks who either expelled or absorbed the Celtic community. In 838 the Western Isles, then under the rule of
the kings of Man, were erected into a bishopric of which Iona was the seat. When in 1o98 Magnus III., "Barefoot," king of Norway, ousted the jarls of Orkney from the isles, he united the see of the Isles (Sudreyar, "the southern islands," Lat. Sodorenses insulae) with that of Man, and placed both under the jurisdiction of the archbishopric of Trondhjem. About 1507 the island again became the seat of the bishopric of the Isles ; but with the victory of the Protestant party in Scotland its ancient religious glory was finally eclipsed, and in 1561 the monastic buildings were dis mantled by order of the Convention of Estates. (For the politi cal fortunes of Iona see HEBRIDES.) The cathedral church of St. Mary dates from the 13th century; a great portion of the walls with the tower are still standing. The choir and nave have been roofed, and the cathedral has in other respects been restored, the ruins having been conveyed in 1899 to a body of trustees by the eighth duke of Argyll. The remains of the conventual buildings still extant, to judge by the portion of a Norman arcade, are of earlier date than the cathedral. The small chapel of St. Oran, or Odhrain, the oldest building on Iona, which was built by Queen Margaret on the supposed site of Co lumba's cell, was in process of restoration in 1927. Of the nunnery only the chancel and nave of the Norman chapel remain, the last prioress, Anna (d. being buried within its walls. The cemetery, called in Gaelic Reilig Oiran ("the burial-place of kings"), is said to contain the remains of forty-eight Scottish, four Irish and eight Danish and Norwegian monarchs, but most of the monumental stones were thrown into the sea at the time of the Reformation. Those that remain have been restored and enclosed. The finest, those of Maclean and St. Martin, are still almost perfect, and are richly carved.