medieval-atlas/the-church/331

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Early Christianity The pilgrimage of Columba to Iona in 563 extended Irish church discipline and fervour to Scotland. Columba had a number ofsmaller monasteries on Tiree beside Lochawe, and an important one on Hinba (unidentified). He also founded Durrow in Offaly County in Ireland. In 633 Iona monks's went to Lindisfarne, whence Christianity spread through much of England. When Lindisfarne chose in 663 to follow the practices of 'St Peter' and reject those of Columba, the dissenters returned to Iona and thence to Inishbofin and Mayo in western Ireland and from these places new missions to Frisia and elsewhere on the Continent emerged. But there were other, less well recorded Irish pilgrimages, of St Maelrubha to Applecross, of St Moluag to Lismore and of St Donnan to Eigg, the last a hermitage (probably like the remains on Eileach an Naoimh) but later an anchoritical monastery. The spread of Christianity from Ireland can be measured by the monasteries these men founded. Another measure may be the distribution of simple incised crosses on stones often in graveyards, which seem to mark Christian burials in areas influenced by Irish Christianity. The concentration in mid-Argyll and the Inner Hebrides is to be expected, but there is no literary evidence of Irish influence to lead us to expect those in Galloway and Man. The scattered far northern examples fit with the tradition of Irish peregrinating monks who left their traces in names like Pabbay (Priest's Isle). Such Norse names must have ousted any earlier Gaelic name. The complementary distribution-map for names containing cill 'church' or t1

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