- TURY.CLUB
- Tourist Objects
- Great Britain
- Orkney Islands
- Iona Abbey
Iona Abbey is a Benedictine monastery located on the Isle of Iona, Scotland. This religious and historical monument is the very first monastery built in Scotland by Saint Columba in 563. Many famous public figures of medieval Ireland, Scotland, Norway and France are buried in the monastery cemetery.
In 563, the Irish monk Columba, along with 12 companions, arrived on the island of Iona, where he founded a monastery, which became the main missionary for the spread of Catholicism among the Scottish peoples of the Picts and Scotts. The monastery faced its first crisis in 806, when the island was invaded by the Vikings, who killed 68 monks and took possession of the monastery's property. Many monks fled to Ireland and the European continent after the Viking raid, where they created new monasteries in Belgium, France and Switzerland. In 825, some monks returned to the island. They restored the abbey, but after a while the monastery was again attacked by Vikings and burned. From the 9th century, the island was under the control of the King of Norway until 1164, when the island passed to the Irish. In 1203, the restoration of the abbey by the Benedictines began on the site of the old one that had burned down. In the middle of the 13th century, nuns arrived on the island and founded a convent in the south of the island. The monastery was rebuilt in the 15th century and fell into disrepair in the 17th century after the Reformation began in Scotland. The monastery was closed at that time. At the end of the 19th century, when the Catholic hierarchy was restored in Great Britain, the Catholic Church in Scotland began to restore the monastery as an important monument to the presence of Catholicism in the British Isles. In 1938, a group of enthusiasts founded the Iona Abbey Society, which began to study the abbey and restore the historical monument. Currently, there is a museum on the territory of the monastery.
