Wandering around the Isle of Iona - Iona Abbey

Iona Abbey is probably one of the main reasons I wanted to come to the Isle of Iona. The Abbey is that place which gives it its spiritual feel..... And there certainly is a "feel" or  a "vibe" about the place..

You may remember my post on Lindisfarne - the Holy Isle - which had connections with Iona.
The monks connected with Lindisfarne were Aidan and Cuthbert, but the hero at Iona is St Columba, who features much earlier that Cuthbert, but strangely has some things in common.

The Welcome to Iona site on the internet describes Iona Abbey as follows...

Iona Abbey was founded by St Columba in 563, although little remains of the monastic buildings of this period. The Columban community survived several Viking attacks but around 1200 a community of Benedictine monks was founded on the site by Reginald, son of Somerled, the self-styled ‘king of the Isles’. The abbey remained an important place of worship and pilgrimage until the Reformation in 1560, after which monastic life came to an end and it largely fell into disuse. The abbey experienced a short-lived resurgence when Charles I reintroduced bishops to the Scottish Church and made Iona the seat of the Bishop of the Isles. However, by the end of the 17th century bishops had once again been abolished and the abbey continued to decline once more. New life was give to the abbey buildings when the process of restoration was begun in the early 20th century under the Iona Cathedral Trust. This was continued from 1938 by the Iona Community, an ecumenical order who continue the tradition of Iona Abbey as a place worship. The abbey is now cared for by Historic Scotland and can be visited all year.

Iona Abbey

Information about St Columba

I followed the audio guide around the Abbey and each point had a signpost with information about that place. I took pics of most of them followed by a pic of what it was referring to.
Hope it's not too much information if I include them in this post!

 This is the Hill of the Abbott, where apparently St Columba used to spend time writing... I climbed up to the top of that hill and the view was lovely.

Hill of the Abbott

View from the Hill

All the places in the Abbey were connected with the pilgrimage and what pilgrims were supposed to do.

Street of the Dead

Street of the Dead

St Columba's Shrine

St Columba's Shrine

The Great Church

 Love the text in the bottom right corner of this poster... Croziers drawn at Dawn!
The Irish Columbans were a bit disgruntled at the wealth of the Iona mob who were capitalising on the pilgrims visiting because of St Columba, so they attacked!!! Notice it says the Bishop Derry was among the disgruntled attackers!!!!! Nothing like a good Catholic spat!!!!

The Great Church

Inside The Great Church

Contemporary statue of St Columba

Apparently, only his feet were left on this image, so they reworked a contemporary statue of Columba around that!

Found a place to light a candle for you all.

Placing Iona in its maritime position

There were heaps more but I think that gives you a bit of an overview.

Once again I had an audio guide, which I loved. And at each of these stations mentioned above, it gave a very full picture and description of the Abbey in its historical position.

So that tour was very full and took me a good couple of hours.  I loved the feel of the place.... it felt quite a lot like Lindisfarne. And even now as I look out my window across the water and see Iona, I can sense a presence of something bigger than ourselves.  Some people call it the seat of Christianity but there seems to be a bit of competition between Ireland and Iona for who was the most important.
Whatever about that, it certainly does have a spiritual feel and as we all know, God moves in mysterious ways and it doesn't really matter who was the most important.

So, that's another item crossed off my bucket list. And I am so lucky that I am completing all these journeys with beautiful sunshine and warmth.

How blessed and lucky am I.