Adamnan was born in County Donegal and was Abbot of Raphoe, which he may have founded. He became ninth abbot of the monastic community of Iona, in 679. He visited Aldfrith, King of Northumbria, who had studied on Iona and who persuaded Adamnan to agree to the Roman view in the controversy over the date of Easter, though Adamnan's monks were not won over. He was prominent at the Synod of Tara in 697 and won acceptance for his 'law of the innocents' which protected non-combatants in war. Cain Adamnain contains a draft of this law. He also ensured that a law exempting women from military service was passed. His greatest work was Vita Sancti Columbae, the life of St Columba, and he also wrote De Locis Sanctis, an account of Bishop Arculf's pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Fis Adamnain, which appears in a twelfth-century manuscript, is now regarded as a much later work and wrongly attributed to him. His feast day is on the 23rd of September

Born:	c.624
Died:	704