Iona

As of June 2020, you can preview book prelims and Chapter 1 here: https://issuu.com/casematepub/docs/foster_jones2020

The uploaded text comprises the full author accepted manuscript version of this book's Contents and introductory chapter 'The concrete and non-concrete'. Informed by this research, the concrete St John's Cross replica was listed at Category A by Historic Environment Scotland in March 2020. Keep reading for more details!

As the back cover says: 'In 1970 a concrete replica of the St John’s Cross arrived in Iona sitting incongruously on the deck of a puffer delivering the island’s annual supply of coal. What is the story behind this intriguing replica? How does it relate to the world’s first ringed ‘Celtic cross’, an artistic and technical masterpiece, which has been at the heart of the Iona experience since the eighth century? What does it tell us about the authenticity and value of replicas?

In this fascinating book, Foster and Jones draw on extensive interdisciplinary research to reveal the composite biography of the St John’s Cross, its concrete replica, and its many other scale copies.  They show that replicas can acquire rich forms of authenticity and value, informed by social relations, craft practices, creativity, place and materiality. Thus, the book challenges traditional precepts that seek authenticity in qualities intrinsic to original historic objects. Replicas are shown to be important objects in their own right, with their own creative, human histories — biographies that people can connect with.  The story of the St John’s Cross celebrates how replicas can ‘work’ for us if we let them, particularly if clues are available about their makers’ passion, creativity and craft.'

The publisher details are @ https://www.oxbowbooks.com/oxbow/my-life-as-a-replica.html

There's a related blog here: https://ionaresearchgroup.arts.gla.ac.uk/index.php/2020/01/13/letting-the-st-johns-cross-iona-speak/

Book contents:
Introduction
The concrete and non-concrete (SF)

I. Crafting lives
1. Life as a replica (SF & SJ)
Replication and authenticity
Analogue replicas still matter
The St John’s Cross and its copies matter
The lives and voices of replicas
Capturing lives - objects, texts, images and people
Piecing it all together

2. Loving Iona (SF & SJ)
Island of crosses
Multiple communities
A ‘thick’ place

3. ‘Priceless monuments’ (SF)
Early antiquarian interest
New stewards, new horizons
‘History versus Mystery; Science and Art versus Faith’
Island voices
Dead or alive?

II. Creating and cultivating the cross
4. Formation and reformation (SF)
Salvation, wounds and resurrection
Fragmentation
Antiquarian rebirth, earliest copies
Silent witness
The Fallen Cross

5. Birth of the concrete replica: ‘I can’t think of anything more worthwhile doing’ (SF)
A slow conception
Fertile possibilities
‘Miraculous success’: an ‘authentic prototype’ for an ‘authentic replica’
Erecting the replica in situ
For the love of Iona
Material matters, first impressions
Celebrating the ‘virtually impossible’
MacLeod and the St John’s Cross
New life, new values

6. From out of the shadows (SF)
Transformer
Reunited
Place in the world
The Iona brand

7. Glorious revelation: contemporary significance, values and authenticity (SF & SJ)
‘Loaded objects’: meanings and relationships
Place and space
Material evidence of ‘pastness’
‘Glorious revelation’

III. Celebration in concrete, celebration of concrete
8. New life, new thinking (SF & SJ)
Rethinking authenticity and value
Heritage implications
Creating knowledge and understanding
Understanding social value and authenticity
Securing for the future
Engaging and experiencing
New lives, new stories

The primary objective of this thesis is to examine the unique character of Celtic Christianity in Ireland. The central point of this thesis is that which makes Celtic Christianity distinct from other Christianities is the Celtic culture of imagination and Druidic storytelling, catalyzed by the lack of definitive (written) ancient Celtic and early Celtic Christian history. This mystical history, made increasingly vibrant through extrapolation and imagination, has given Celtic Christianity a distinct and fluid spirit that has allowed it to adapt to its environment and remain relevant. The first chapter provides a background on the origins of Celtic culture, as well as the Celtic learned class and how they shaped culture through their shaping of Celtic oral history. This chapter also gives context to the Holy Woman Brigid and her pre-Christian identity, as well as an outline of the nativist and anti-nativist views of early Irish texts. The second chapter investigates the Christianization of Ireland, showing that the Christianization was a story more complex and fluid than just the story of Saint Patrick. The third chapter examines the evolution of the hagiography and traditions of Patrick and Brigid as they evolved in response to their historical contexts. These traditions, like tree rings, will serve as markers of the growth and evolution of Celtic Christianity in Ireland. Thus, in this work I will show how this imaginative and hazy history has led to the evolution and growth of a new strand of tree within the forest of Christianity. Though this tree shares commonalities with the other trees in the forest, it is in a different genus and so also has unique characteristics. This tree has lessons to teach due to the inspiring and adaptive spirit of imagination found within, which has kept the modern strand of Celtic Christianity relevant today.

This is an Author's Original of an article published by Edinburgh University Press in The Innes Review, Volume 69 Issue 1 (2018), Pages 1-48, ISSN 0020-157x (Available Online May 2018). The Version of Record is available online at: https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3366/inr.2018.0158

This article studies the subject matter, details, and vocabulary of the Irish chronicle record relating to northern Britain from A.D. 660 to 800 in order to establish its sources. It rejects theories that the record from 660 to 740 preserves Applecross, Northern British or Pictish chronicles, arguing that an ‘Iona Chronicle’ accounts for nearly all items for northern Britain, and some, but not all, for Ireland. ‘The Iona Chronicle’ was a contemporary text whose style and interests gradually evolved over the period. After 740 the more limited evidence indicates that Iona and somewhere in southern Pictland probably provided written notices of events, but that the record's final form was produced in Ireland. The combination of common features and regional variation reflects the existence of more multiple ‘centres of recording’ which provided written notices of events to the ‘centres of chronicling’ at Iona and later Ireland, where the surviving chronicle text was produced.

The 'Life of St Columba' offers an account of events in the life of the sixth century saint who founded an influential monastic community with strong connections to the peoples of Ireland and Scotland. The text’s relationship to the categories of ‘Celtic Christianity’ and ‘Celtic spirituality’ is critically examined. It is deemed justifiable to locate the Life within these categories because it manifests features of other religious texts produced by Celtic peoples in the early Middle Ages. Whether it can be legitimately accommodated within popular versions of Celtic spirituality/Christianity depends on whether the assessment is conducted from academic or spiritual practice perspectives.

Comments about succession to the Iona abbacy rarely go beyond the observation that most of the early abbots – but not all – belonged to the Cenél Conaill, the kindred of Iona’s founder, Saint Columba. This point privileges the role of eligibility criteria in the succession process at the expense of agency. This paper concerns itself with the specific mechanism that mediated the Iona abbacy: the central question is not ‘who’ could succeed, but rather ‘how’ they succeeded. It will be suggested that abbatial authority was passed from one abbot to the next via designations, whereby the reigning abbot appointed his own successor.

Une quarantaine d'années après la conquête de Jérusalem par ‘Umar et une quinzaine d'années avant la construction du Dôme du Rocher par ‛Abd al-Malik, Arculfe, évêque des Gaules, fit un pèlerinage en Terre Sainte.  Il relata ses aventures à Adomnán, abbé d'Iona, qui écrivit par la suite un tract, De locis sanctis, où il cite abondamment Arculfe comme expert des lieux saints.  Le but d'Adomnán était de mieux connaître la topographie des lieux saints pour pouvoir mieux comprendre les sacra pagina.  Ce même motif poussa Bède le Vénérable, quelques décennies plus tard, à écrire son propre De locis sanctis, dans lequel il incorpore les informations d'Adomnán avec celles d'autres auteurs.
Ces deux textes De locis sanctis sont intéressants à plusieurs titres.  D'abord, ils conservent les impressions d'un chrétien occidental (et sans doute, jusqu'à un certain point, les impressions de ses interlocuteurs chrétiens orientaux) présent au Proche Orient à un moment clef de son histoire, peu après la conquête arabe, moment pour lequel les sources nous font cruellement défaut.  Si la description des lieux saints reste le but principal d'Arculfe, quelques passages ouvrent des perspectives intéressantes sur les interactions entre juifs, chrétiens et musulmans de Jérusalem lors du califat de Mu‘âwiya (661-680).  Deuxièmement, dans ces textes sont imbriqués plusieurs niveaux de "passages".  D'abord le déplacement d'un homme, Arculfe, qui fait le pèlerinage en Terre Sainte, séjourne neuf mois à Jérusalem, parle avec les habitants, surtout chrétiens;  puis (deuxième niveau) l'entretien entre Arculfe et Adomnán;  ensuite (troisième niveau), la composition par Adomnán de son texte et enfin (quatrième niveau), la réécriture de ce texte par Bède.  A chacun de ces niveaux, il y a un filtrage des informations et des témoignages pour les rendre aptes à être compris dans un système de pensée précis.  Au bout de cette chaîne de "passages", nous notons par exemple que le calife Mu‘âwiya s'est transformé en le bon roi chrétien Mavias, protecteur des chrétiens hiérosolymites face à leurs rivaux juifs.

George MacLeod is best known as the founder of the Iona Community. In this article, however, I discuss the practice of his open-air preaching. To do this I draw upon performance studies and argue that MacLeod's open-air preaching was an event of performance and counter performance.

Iona was a major European intellectual and artistic centre during the seventh to ninth centuries,with outstanding illustrated manuscripts, sculpture and religious writings produced there, despite its
apparently peripheral location ‘at the ends of the earth’. Recent theological discourse has emphasised the leading role of Iona, and particularly its ninth abbot, Adomnán, in developing the metaphor
of the earthly monastery as a mirror of heavenly Jerusalem, allowing us to suggest a new appreciation of the innovative monastic layout at Iona and its influence on other monasteries in northern Britain. The authors contend that the unique paved roadway and the schematic layout
of the early church, shrine chapel and free-standing crosses were intended to evoke Jerusalem, and that the journey to the sacred heart of the site mirrored a pilgrim’s journey to the tomb of Christ.
The key to this transformative understanding is Charles Thomas’s 1956–63 campaign of excavations on Iona, which this article is publishing for the first time. These excavations were influential in
the history of early Christian archaeology in Britain as they helped to form many of Thomas’s ideas, later expressed in a series of influential books. They also revealed important new information on the layout and function of the monastic complex, and produced some unique metalwork and glass artefacts that considerably expand our knowledge of activities on the site. This article collates this new information with a re-assessment of the evidence from a large series of other excavations on Iona, and relates the results to recent explorations at other Insular monastic sites.
Keywords: early monasticism; coenobitic monastery; Christianity; archaeology; ecclesiastical studies; Charles
Thomas

A historical novel written in the tradition of 'magical realism' about the Irish tribal society of the 6th century, between pre-Christian traditions and Christianity as a new religion. It focuses on the life and work of the Northern Irish Saint Columcille ('Dove of the Church').

Quel che la filosofia rappresentò per Boezio durante la sua prigionia e che per Adamnán incarnò l’attività di agiografo, per Dante dopo la fine della sua carriera politica venne espressa dalle Rime, dal Convivio, in parte dal De vulgari eloquentia e da ultimo dalla Commedia.
La “stravaganza” di questi autori era la concezione della letteratura come consolatio classicamente intesa, ma arricchita della stringente necessità di costituire una coscienza ed un’appartenenza di cittadinanza al più lato concetto di Umanesimo.
Ciò che dal punto di vista storico accomuna i due autori, e che al contempo esemplifica e condensa un’attività da far «tremare le vene e i polsi» (Inf. I, 90), viene compendiato in «Willkür, Beliebigkeit und Chaos» [arbitrio, qualunquismo e caos] (Marcel Reich-Ranicki). I tre sostantivi si applicano alla rappresentazione che gli autori avevano della situazione intorno a loro e del clima di disumanità che vi scorgevano.

This article studies the record found in the Irish chronicles relating to northern Britain in the period from A.D. 700 to 1100. It considers the changing interests of the chronicles over time, in particular ethnic groups and ecclesiastical establishments, as well as the overall number of chronicle items in particular periods, and seeks to explain these patterns. The analysis show that the number of items for northern Britain in the ninth and early tenth century is lower than for the preceding and following periods. By studying the evidence of multiple chronicles, it is shown that this is not a result of later transmission, or even that the flow of news from northern Britain to Ireland changed over time. Rather, when the evidence of what subjects are recorded is considered, it is concluded that it was the level of interest that Irish chroniclers had in the affairs of northern Britain that had changed, as a result of the Scandinavian impact on Britain and Ireland.

The book it is part of very affordable and is good value. See Links/URL and More Info - to buy online or get an order form, and to access the Scottish Society for Northern Studies website.