ADAIINAN, SAINT, a member of the early Irish church, to whom the world is deeply indebted for the information about that remarkable communitywhich he left to posterity. His name was properly Adam, of which Adamnan is a diminutive. It is one of the peculiarities of that early church that the genealogies of its eminent members have been preserved with a minuteness scarcely rivaled in the days of peerages. He was born in the co. of Donegal about the year 625. In the words of Dr. Reeves: "Ills father, Ronan, was sixth in descent from Conall Gulban, the head of one of the two great races of the northern Hy Neill, and in virtue of his birth claimed kin to St. Colomba and many of the sovereigns of Ireland. The father of Ronan was Tinne, from whom came the patronymic Uit Tinne, or grandson of Tinne, an appellativo which is occasionally found coupled with A.'s name. Ronnat, the mother of A., was descended from Enna, son of Niall, whose race, the Cilia Enna, possessed themselves of the tract lying between the chan nels of the Foyle and Swilly, which was called the Tir Enna, or land of Enna, and answers to the modern barony of Raphoe. He was, like many of the eminent Irish clergy, a states man as well as an ecclesiastic, and we hear of his being sent on missions from his own peo ple to Alfred, king of Northumbria. In the year 679, he was elected abbot of Iona. Ills rule over that community was not, however, destined to be peaceful and fortunate. The views held by the Irish church about the holding of Easter and the form of the tonsure are now pretty well known as a chapter in the history of the church. However little their
own importance might be, they are significant as the object of a bitter contest in which that church resisted the rules promulgated from Rome. In his intercourse with the Saxon church, A. had adopted the Romish or orthodox views, as they are termed, and endeavored to put them in practice in his own community. He was thwarted in this object, and it is said that mortification at the failure caused his death. He d. in the year 704, on the 23d of Sept.. which is the day of his translation in the calendar. He left behind him an account of the Holy Land, containing matters which lie says were communicated by Arculfus, a French ecclesiastic who had lived in Jerusalem. It is valuable as the earliest information we possess of Palestine in the early ages of Christianity. But far more valuable is his Vita Sancti Columba, his life of-St. Colomba, the converter of the Picts, and founder of Iona. Along with miracles and many other stories palpably incredible, this book reveals a great deal of distinct and minute matter concerning the remarkable body to which both the author and his hero belonged. The standard edition of the book is that of Dr. Beeves, edited in 1857 for the 13annatyne society of Edinburgh, and the Irish archt•logical society which (with an English trans.) forms the 6th vol. (1875) of Scottish Historians. Nearly all the information to be had about the early Scoto-Irish church is comprised in that volume.