Review of Warren Bardsley “Against the Tide: The Story of Adomnan of Iona”

Book Review:    Warren Bardsley “Against the Tide: The Story of Adomnan of Iona”   Wild Goose Publications Glasgow ISBN : 9781905010240 Price : £8.99

Warren Bardsley, a retired Methodist minister from Lichfield and a member of the Iona community, has written a work of faction about Adomnan (pronounced Adovnaun), the ninth abbot of Iona. Faction is the merger of facts and fiction that is appropriate here as the reliable historical facts from the second half of the seventh century are scarce. This process has been carried out with sensitivity and imagination so the result is both accessible and believable.

As a historical biography it is interesting reconstruction but the the book also has a deeper contemporary angle. The author sees Adomnan's major work, The Law of Innocents, as particularly relevant for today. This law can be seen as a very early form of the Geneva convention and was widely influential in its time. The law was to protect non-combatants in warfare, originally just women but it expanded during the process of drafting to include children and clerics.

Legend has it that the foundation for this law was a traumatic experience in his early life that made Adomnan give a solemn promise to his mother that he would work to protect women during times of conflict.

As well as being Abbot of Iona and a scholar and writer he was also a persuasive politician and diplomat shown through his persuasion of clan chiefs and kings in Ireland and northern Britain to accept and implement his law.

This was the time, after the Synod of Whitby, when the Celtic church was under pressure to conform to the authority of Rome specifically in regard to the issues of the tonsure and the date of Easter. Bardsley's book also considers the diplomatic skills that Adomnan possessed as he worked with the tension of these strongly held convictions in his community and church.

But this book is not just a historical reconstruction of a time when the monasteries were major players in the political world. Throughout the author reflects on the contemporary parallels in the church and world of our time. As with all Iona Community based spirituality the principles of these ancient Celtic texts are linked to the contemporary political agenda. The book contains a liturgy used at Faslane Trident missile base citing Adomnan's law to condemn weapons of mass destruction.

Each chapter contains a reconstruction of Adomnan's life and a reflection relating the issues raised to the present. Some of the chapters also contained a short imaginary dialogue between contemporaries about Adomnan. These were less convincing and I thought added little to the book.

I recommend this book as an easy to read introduction to the complexities of life of the distant past with deep resonances for our contemporary age. The royalties from this book are going to the Iona communities “Growing Hope Appeal”.

(This review first appeared in the Spectrum journal in 2007)