Andreas F. Borchert, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE, via Wikimedia Commons
Adomnan surveyed the scene of bloody carnage. Dead bodies from the war were strewn so thickly that he could have walked across the field without stepping on the ground. It was not just the carnage that filled him with grief, but the loss of innocent lives: the women who had been raped and then butchered with their children and with the unarmed clergy. Distraught and tearful he left the scene, vowing to see justice done for the innocents of war.
In AD 697 ninety-one leaders converged on Birr in Ireland. Among them were fifty kings from among the Irish, Scots and Picts, and many bishops and abbots. They had come to support a legal document called Cáin Adomnáin, or Law of Adomnán, which was also known as the Lex Innocentium, or Law of Innocents. This document has been hailed as the ‘Geneva Convention’ of the early Middle Ages, and had been instigated by Adomnan, the ninth abbot of Iona since Columba, to protect non-combatants in war. It would play a key part in the process of justice and human rights within the context of war, setting a precedent that others would follow and develop.
Not much is known about the early life of Adomnan, or Eunan, in Ireland, but he was a relative of Columba, and probably in about AD 640 he joined the community at Iona on the West coast of Scotland, rising eventually to be its abbot between AD 679 and 704. The year 697 was a busy one for Adomnan, for not only did he pull together the leaders to act as guarantors of his document in support of the innocents, but he was also engaged in writing his Life of St Columba as the monks on Iona celebrated the centenary of the death of their founder. This book has inspired countless people over the centuries, although sceptics have accused him of exaggeration because of the many extraordinary miracles attributed to Columba. His style is very much influenced by the fourth century biographies of the Life of St Martin of Tours by Sulpicius Severus of France, and by the Life of St Anthony, written by Athanasius of Alexandria. Not so well known is Adomnan’s book On Holy Places, which describes the famous Christian pilgrimage centres in Rome, Israel, Egypt and Constantinople, based on the eyewitness travel report of a Frankish bishop called Arculf, who also visited Iona.