Perhaps his most valuable services to historical literature were his laying down the lines of the great
Cambridge Modern History, and his collection of a library of 60,000 vols., which after his death was
purchased by an American millionaire and presented to Lord Morley of Blackburn, who placed it in the
University of Cambridge.
Adamnan, St. (625?-704).—Historian, born in Donegal, became Abbot of Iona in 679. Like other Irish
churchmen he was a statesman as well as an ecclesiastic, and appears to have been sent on various
political missions. In the great controversy on the subject of the holding of Easter, he sided with Rome
against the Irish Church. He left the earliest account we have of the state of Palestine in the early ages
of the Church; but of even more value is his Vita Sancti Columbœ, giving a minute account of the condition
and discipline of the church of Iona. He died 704.
