Departure to Iona and Ireland

When the Synod of Whitby ended with King Oswiu’s ruling for the Roman reckoning of Pascha, Colmán would not conform. Rather than keep a feast he believed his fathers had received aright, he resigned the see of Lindisfarne and withdrew — first to Iona, then to Ireland — taking with him the Irish brethren, some thirty English monks, and a portion of the bones of St. Aidan, the first bishop. This file follows that principled departure as Bede records it, the men left behind in Northumbria (Eata over the brethren, Tuda as the new bishop), and the striking fact that Bede, Colmán’s opponent on the question, records the whole withdrawal with respect.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (pre-Schism; Celtic; defender of the Celtic Pascha)

The Refusal to Conform

The Synod of Whitby in 664 did not end in a compromise. King Oswiu, having heard both sides and being told that the keys of the kingdom of heaven had been given to Peter, ruled that his church would keep Easter and the tonsure after the manner of Rome, lest he offend the keeper of those keys (Bede, HE III.25; trans. Colgrave & Mynors 1969; on the ruling, see Oswiu’s Decision). For most of those present the matter was thereby settled, and the Northumbrian church conformed. Colmán did not. Bede records, immediately after the king’s decision, that when Colmán saw his teaching rejected and his observance set aside, “he took those who wished to follow him, that is, those who would not accept the catholic Easter and the tonsure in the form of a crown — for there was no small dispute about this also — and went back to Scotia [Ireland], to consult with his own people about what he should do” (Bede, HE III.26; trans. Colgrave & Mynors 1969). The decision to withdraw rather than conform is the hinge of this file and of Colmán’s whole later reputation.

It is important to see the decision precisely. Colmán was not deposed; he was not excommunicated; nothing in the sources suggests that he was expelled. He had been overruled by the king who had summoned the synod, but he could, like the rest of the Lindisfarne community, have remained in his see and adopted the Roman observance — which is in fact what the community he left behind would do, in stages, over the following generation (Bede, HE III.26, IV.27–28; Mayr-Harting 1991, 110–113; on the later reconciliation, see St. Cuthbert of Lindisfarne). Colmán chose instead to lay down the bishopric. He would not keep, as bishop of Lindisfarne, an Easter he believed his fathers at Iona had received aright in unbroken succession from the elders, and ultimately from the Apostle John (Bede, HE III.25; Corning 2006, 19–48; on the substance of his case, see The Two Easters). The withdrawal is therefore best read not as defeat accepted but as conscience preserved: a man surrendering office rather than acting against what he held to be the tradition committed to him.

That conscientious reading is the one the sources themselves invite, and it is worth stressing that it was a costly choice. The see of Lindisfarne was the senior bishopric of the most powerful kingdom in Britain, the seat from which Aidan and Finan had directed a mission of a generation’s standing; to resign it was to give up the leadership of the whole Ionan enterprise in Northumbria (Bede, HE III.3, III.25–26; Mayr-Harting 1991, 96–113). Colmán gave it up rather than divide his conscience from his office. The dispute that drove him out was not a dispute of faith — both parties confessed one creed and held one communion in the single undivided Church of the seventh century — but of the calendar and the tonsure; yet for Colmán those customs were the visible token of fidelity to the fathers who had sent him, and he would not be the bishop who abandoned them (Corning 2006, 1–18; Charles-Edwards 2000, 391–415; on the undivided Church, see The Pre-Schism Church).

Those Who Went With Him

Colmán did not depart alone. Bede records that he took with him those who chose to follow — and they were of two kinds. First were the Irish (Scotti) of his own nation, the monks who had come from Iona or from Ireland to serve the Lindisfarne mission and who shared without question both his observance and his decision (Bede, HE III.26, IV.4; trans. Colgrave & Mynors 1969). With them, more remarkably, went a body of English monks — Northumbrians and other Angles who had been trained at Lindisfarne under the Irish discipline and who preferred to follow their teacher into exile rather than remain under the new order. Bede gives their number, in the later chapter that recounts the Irish settlement, as about thirty: when Colmán came to found his monastery in Ireland, he “had brought with him about thirty men of the English nation” alongside the Irish (Bede, HE IV.4; trans. Colgrave & Mynors 1969).

The figure of thirty English monks deserves a flag. It is Bede’s number, given in a single notice and not corroborated by any independent source, and it is the kind of round figure that medieval narrative readily supplies [Disputed: the number of English monks who withdrew with Colmán is given only by Bede as "about thirty" (*HE* IV.4); no other source confirms or refines it, and the "about" (Latin *quasi*) is Bede's own hedge — the figure is therefore a single-source estimate, not a documented count (cf. Charles-Edwards 2000, 312–315; Mayr-Harting 1991, 110)]. What matters more than the exact count is the fact it attests: that the Ionan discipline at Lindisfarne had so formed a body of English monks that a substantial number of them chose loyalty to Colmán and his tradition over conformity and home. The withdrawal was not merely the departure of foreign clergy but the secession of part of the native community Aidan’s mission had raised up (Bede, HE IV.4; Mayr-Harting 1991, 110–113; Charles-Edwards 2000, 312–318).

The presence of these English brethren also shapes the later Irish story, for it is precisely the mixed character of Colmán’s company — Irish and English together — that will produce the quarrel and the double foundation recorded at HE IV.4 (see Inishbofin and Mayo of the Saxons). For the moment the point is that Colmán’s withdrawal carried with it a living fragment of the Lindisfarne community of both nations, bound to him not by birth but by the discipline and observance they had shared.

The Relics of Aidan

The most telling detail of the departure is what Colmán carried with him besides his monks. Bede records that when Colmán returned to his own land he “took away with him a part of the bones of the most reverend father Aidan, and left part of them in the church over which he had presided, ordering them to be buried in the sacristy” (Bede, HE III.26; trans. Colgrave & Mynors 1969). Aidan had been the first bishop of Lindisfarne, the founder of the Northumbrian mission, and the figure to whom Bede himself attributes a holiness he openly admires; his relics were the most precious possession of the church Colmán was leaving (Bede, HE III.5, III.14–17, III.26; Mayr-Harting 1991, 96–102; on Aidan, see St. Aidan of Lindisfarne).

The gesture is eloquent. By dividing the relics — carrying part to Iona and Ireland, leaving part at Lindisfarne — Colmán enacted in the most concrete way possible his understanding of what was happening. He was not founding a rival church or repudiating Lindisfarne; he was carrying the tradition of Aidan with him into exile while leaving Aidan’s body to sanctify the place he surrendered (Bede, HE III.26; Stancliffe 2014, 53–55). The bones of the founder were the charter of the mission’s holiness, and Colmán’s claim — implicit but unmistakable — was that the observance he refused to abandon was Aidan’s observance, that in keeping the Insular Easter he kept faith with the saint whose relics he bore (Bede, HE III.25–26; Corning 2006, 19–48). Bede records the act without comment, but he cannot have missed its meaning, and that he records it at all is part of the respect his account extends to the departing bishop.

The precise itinerary and chronology of the withdrawal are less secure than its main outline. Bede says only that Colmán went first to consult his own people and ultimately settled in Ireland; the natural reading, and the one most scholars adopt, is that he travelled by way of Iona — the mother-house from which the Lindisfarne mission had come and where its discipline was kept — before passing to Ireland and founding his island monastery there (Bede, HE III.26, IV.4; Charles-Edwards 2000, 312–318; Mayr-Harting 1991, 110) [Disputed: that Colmán went first to Iona and then to Ireland is the standard reconstruction (Charles-Edwards 2000, 312–318), but Bede (*HE* III.26) names only the return to "Scotia/Ireland" and does not narrate a stop at Iona; the stage at Iona is inferred from the Columban affiliation of Lindisfarne and from the logic of the journey rather than stated in the source] [Disputed: the exact dates of the withdrawal and of the subsequent Irish foundations are not given by Bede; they are placed in the years after 664 on the basis of the Irish annals' notices of Colmán and of Mayo, whose synchronization with Bede's chronology is only approximate (cf. *Annals of Ulster*, sub annis 667–668 and 675/676; Charles-Edwards 2000, 312–318)]. What the sources establish firmly is the sequence of decision: refusal at Whitby, resignation of the see, and departure with monks and relics for Iona and Ireland.

Eata and Tuda: The Men Left Behind

Colmán’s withdrawal left two offices to be filled, and Bede records the arrangements with care, because they show that the Lindisfarne community was not dissolved but reordered. For the internal governance of the monastery, Bede tells us, Colmán himself — or the arrangement made at his departure — set Eata over the brethren who remained: “He left in his church a few of the brethren, and Eata… one of Aidan’s twelve English boys, was made abbot of the brethren who remained” (Bede, HE III.26; trans. Colgrave & Mynors 1969; cf. IV.27). Eata was an Englishman, and pointedly one of the very first generation of native monks — among the twelve English boys whom Aidan had taken and trained at the founding of the mission — so that the man set over Lindisfarne after Colmán’s departure was himself a fruit of Aidan’s Ionan discipline (Bede, HE III.26, IV.27; Mayr-Harting 1991, 110–113). The continuity of the community through Eata is part of Bede’s point: the holiness of Lindisfarne did not depart with Colmán, and it was an Aidan-trained Englishman who carried it forward into conformity (Bede, HE III.26, IV.27–28; on the later community, see St. Cuthbert of Lindisfarne).

The episcopal office Colmán laid down passed to Tuda. Bede records that “Tuda… succeeded Colmán as bishop”; Tuda was an Irishman by formation but one who had been brought up among the southern Irish, and so already kept the catholic Easter and wore the coronal tonsure, which made him acceptable under the new dispensation while remaining a man of the Irish tradition (Bede, HE III.26; trans. Colgrave & Mynors 1969; Mayr-Harting 1991, 110). Tuda’s episcopate was brief: Bede reports that he died soon after, in the great plague that swept Britain in 664, the same pestilence that carried off so many in that year of eclipse and mortality (Bede, HE III.27; Charles-Edwards 2000, 312–315) [Disputed: Bede dates Tuda's death to the plague that struck in 664 (*HE* III.27), which on his own chronology follows hard upon the synod; the Irish annals notice the great mortality of these years under adjacent annal-years, so the precise interval between Colmán's withdrawal and Tuda's death is only approximately fixed (cf. *Annals of Ulster*, sub annis 664–668)]. The brevity of Tuda’s tenure meant that the real continuity of the Lindisfarne house ran through Eata and the monastic community rather than through the bishopric, and it was within that community, a generation later, that Cuthbert would complete the reconciliation of Lindisfarne to the Roman use (Bede, HE IV.27–28; Mayr-Harting 1991, 110–113).

An Opponent’s Respect

The final thing to be said about Bede’s account of the withdrawal is the spirit in which he gives it. Bede was a partisan of the Roman observance; his whole History is built to vindicate the catholic Easter and the unity it expressed, and he regarded the Insular reckoning Colmán defended as an error, however venerable (Bede, HE III.25, V.21–22; Mayr-Harting 1991, 107–113; on Bede’s partisanship, see Bede as the Narrator). Yet his account of the man who lost the argument and walked away is free of triumph or contempt. He records Colmán’s departure plainly, notes the monks and the relics he took, praises in the very same chapter the frugality and sanctity of the community Colmán had led, and lets the dignity of the withdrawal stand (Bede, HE III.26; trans. Colgrave & Mynors 1969; Stancliffe 2014, 53–57).

This is a measure both of the real holiness Bede perceived in the Ionan community and of his own honesty as a historian: he will not pretend that the men he thought mistaken on Easter were anything less than holy, and he sets down Colmán’s principled exit without diminishing it (Bede, HE III.26; Mayr-Harting 1991, 110–113; Stancliffe 2014, 53–57). The fuller examination of this generosity — how Bede frames the defeated Colmán, and what his rhetoric is doing — belongs to its own place and is reserved for the study of Bede’s portrait of the loser (see Honor for the Defeated; What Was Really at Stake). What the present file establishes is the bare and dignified fact: overruled but unbroken, Colmán resigned his see, gathered his monks and the bones of Aidan, and went home — and even his opponent could not tell the story without honour.

References

Bede. The Ecclesiastical History of the English People (Historia Ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum). Ed. and trans. Bertram Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors. Oxford Medieval Texts. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969. (Cited by book.chapter: the synod and Oswiu’s ruling, III.25; the withdrawal, the division of Aidan’s relics, Eata set over the brethren, and Tuda’s succession, III.26; the plague and Tuda’s death, III.27; the thirty English monks and the Irish foundations, IV.4; Eata and Cuthbert and the later community, IV.27–28; the recapitulation of the paschal question, V.21–22.)
The Annals of Ulster (to A.D. 1131). Ed. and trans. Seán Mac Airt and Gearóid Mac Niocaill. Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1983. (Cited by annal-year; the great mortality of the 660s, and notices of Colmán and the Irish foundations.)
Mayr-Harting, Henry. The Coming of Christianity to Anglo-Saxon England. 3rd ed. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991. (Lindisfarne under the Irish bishops, the withdrawal, Eata and the continuity of the community, esp. 96–113.)
Charles-Edwards, T. M. Early Christian Ireland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. (The Columban familia, the chronology of the withdrawal and the Irish foundations, esp. 312–318, 391–415.)
Corning, Caitlin. The Celtic and Roman Traditions: Conflict and Consensus in the Early Medieval Church. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. (The two traditions within one Church and the substance of the paschal dispute, esp. 1–48.)
Stancliffe, Clare. “Bede and the Britons.” In Bede and the Future, ed. Peter Darby and Faith Wallis, 47–67. Farnham: Ashgate, 2014. (Bede’s treatment of the Insular churches and of the defeated Ionan party.)