I'OLITE (from Gk. he. ion, violet -I- Was, lithos, stone), CORDIERITE, ur INCH ROITE. A hy• drated masmesi llll 1-iron-aluminum silicate that crystallizes in the orthorhombie system. It is fonnd in various shades of blue, and is trans parent to translucent. lolite is found in Ita s aria, Hungary, Tuscany, Brazil, and in Ceylon, where crystals of an intense blue color. called saphir Wean, are found. In the United States dark-blue specimens occur at Baddam and Nor wich, Conn.. and elsewhere in New England. They have been cut as gems.
ION, l'On (Lat., from Gk."lire). A tragedy of Euripides, the chief interest of which consists in Creusa's attempt to poison Ion, who had been brought up in Apollo's temple at Delphi, and is given to Creusa and her husband as a son. When detected, Creusa is threatened with death at the hands of Ion, who is filially revealed to her as her son by Apollo. The date of the play is uncertain.
ION. See Dissocistuox; ONIZATION ELEC. TRO - I Ell I STRY. GENERAL; SOLUTION: ELEC TRICITY.
IONA, 1•5'net (01. M. IIG, 1, island, whence the oldest Latin form lona, corrupted in tran scription to lone). A celebrated island of the Ifebrides, in Irish ICOLII ILL. It is situated on the west coast of Scotland, a short distance from 111111 and Staffa, and forms part of Argyll shire. It is about three miles long. varying in breadth from a mile to a mile and a half, Its area is estimated at 2000 acres, of which rather more than a fourth part is under tillage. Tile soil in some parts is fertile, and yields oats, bar ley, and potatoes in abundance. Dunii. the high est point of the island, is 330 feet above the °ca level. about 250.
The history of the island begins in the year 563, when Saint Columba (q.v.) landed upon Iona with twelve disciples. flaying obtained a grant of the island from his kinsman, Conall, King of the Scots, and later from Bruide, King of the Picts, he built upon it a monastery, which was long regarded as the mother church of the Picts, and was venerated not only among the Scots of Britain and Ireland, but among the Angles of the north of England, who owed their conversion to the missionaries of Iona. From the end of the sixth to the end of the eighth century the monastery of Iona was scarcely sec ond to any monastery in the British Isles. The
island was several times invaded between the eighth and tenth centuries by the heathen Norse men, and the buildings were burned and the monks langhtered. Toward the close of the eleventh century the monastery was repaired by Saint Margaret, the wife of King .Malcolm Canmore, and was visited in 1097 by King ,Magnus the Barefooted, of Norway. It was now part of that kingdom, and so fell under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Bishop of Man and the Arch bishop of Trondhjem. In 1203 the bishops of the north of Ireland disputed the authority of the Manx bishop, pulled down a monastery which he had begun to build in the island, and placed the abbey under the rule of an Irish Abbot of Derry. The Scottish Church had long claimed jurisdiction in lona, and before the end of the thirteenth century the island fell under the rule of the Scottish King. Its abbey was now peopled by monks of Cluny, and a nun nery of Austin canonesses was planted on its shores. At the beginning of the sixteenth cen tury the island again became the seat of the bishopric of the isles. No remains of Saint Columba's monastery now exist. The most an cient ruins are.those of the Benedictine monas tery of 1203. Saint Oram's Chapel, now the oldest church in the island, may probably be of the latter part of the eleventh century. Saint Mary's Nunnery is, perhaps, a century later. The cathedral of Saint Mary's Church seems to have been built chiefly in the early part of the thirteenth century. It has a choir with a sa cristy on the north side and chapels on the south side: north and south transepts; a cen tral tower, about 75 feet high; and a nave. An inscription on one of the columns appears to show that it was the work of an Irish ecclesi astic who died in 1202. On the north of the cathedral are the chapter-house and other re mains of the conventual or monastic buildings. The 'Beilig, Oran,' or ancient burial-ground, is supposed to contain bodies of a number of Irish, Scotch, and Danish kings, hut no monuments of these princes now remain. Consult Fowler, .4 dam nani Vita. S. rolumbm (Oxford and Lon don, 1898).