Hiberno-Scottish mission
The Hiberno-Scottish mission was a series of expeditions in the 6th and 7th centuries by Gaelic missionaries originating from Ireland that spread Celtic Christianity in Scotland, Wales, England and Merovingian France.
Catholic sources claim it functioned under the authority of the Holy See,[1] while Protestant historians highlight conflicts between Celtic and Roman clergy.
[8] Adamnan says of Columba:He could not pass the space even of a single hour without applying himself either to prayer, or reading, or writing, or else to some manual labor.
[9]In 563, Columba sailed to Scotland with about 200 other missionaries hoping to spread Celtic Christianity among the largely pagan Picts.
[8] The lord of the island of Mull, a Gael of Dál Riada, was a relative of Columba and granted the missionaries ownership of Iona, where they established a Bible school.
[2] Bede writes that Columba converted the Picts to the word of God,[7] suggesting that Bible teaching was the central means of conversion.
Students routinely studied for 18 years before ordination, an indicator of the depth of theological learning required by the Celtic Church.
[13] Neander writes:The abbot of the most distinguished British monastery, at Bangor, Deynoch by name, whose opinion in ecclesiastical affairs had the most weight with his countrymen, when urged by Augustin to submit in all things to the ordinances of the Roman Church, gave him the following remarkable answer: “We are all ready to listen to the church of God, to the pope at Rome, and to every pious Christian, that so we may show to each, according to his station, perfect love, and uphold him by word and deed.
[12] Dunod asserted his independence from Augustine on the grounds that they adhered to what their holy fathers held before them, who were the friends of God and the followers of the apostles.
[21] From Northumbria, Aidan's mission spread throughout the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and similar Bible schools were established in Bernicia, Deira, Mercia and East Anglia.
[25][26] During the 7th century, the disciples of Columbanus and other Gaelic missionaries founded several monasteries in what are now France, Germany, Belgium, and Switzerland.
There were monastic foundations in Anglo-Saxon England, the first in about 630 at "Cnobheresburgh", an unknown place in East Anglia but possibly Burgh Castle mentioned by Bede.
The profile of Iona declined, and from 698 until the reign of Charlemagne in the 770s, the Hiberno-Scottish efforts in the Frankish Empire were continued by the Anglo-Saxon mission – see Germanic Christianity.
[28] The book states that the Norse found Irish priests, with bells and crosiers, at Iceland at the time of their arrival.
About 1072, three monks, Marianus, Iohannus, and Candidus, took up their abode at the little Church of Weih-St-Peter at Regensburg (called Ratisbon in older literature).
In consequence of the Protestant Reformation in Scotland many Scottish Benedictines left their country and took refuge in the Schottenklöster of Germany during the 16th century.
But the forced secularization of monasteries in 1803 put an end to the Scottish abbeys of Erfurt and Würzburg, leaving St. James's at Ratisbon as the only surviving Schottenkloster in Germany.
