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Hoyland, Robert G., and Sarah Waidler, “Adomnán’s De locis sanctis and the seventh-century Near East”, The English Historical Review 129:539 (August, 2014): 787–807.

  • journal article
Citation details
Contributors
Article
“Adomnán’s De locis sanctis and the seventh-century Near East”
Periodical
Volume
129
Pages
787–807
BibTeX
Description
Abstract (cited)
De locis sanctis is a seventh-century description of Palestine and other regions in the Near East written by Adomnán, the ninth abbot of Iona. Adomnán claimed that he obtained much of his information from a Gaulish bishop called Arculf who had travelled around the east Mediterranean lands. This meant that for a long time scholars categorised De locis sanctis as a pilgrimage account. In recent years this view has been challenged, and it has been argued that Adomnán wrote the text principally on the basis of literary sources; this has led to a downgrading or even denial of the role of Arculf. This article looks afresh at this debate and reassesses the text in three ways. Firstly, it illustrates the ways in which Adomnán blended the written and oral sources at his disposal. Secondly, it re-examines the references in the work to the Arabs and Islam from an Islamicist’s perspective, and considers what might have been their significance to Adomnán. Finally, the article reconsiders the motives behind the structure and purpose of the problematic Book III of De locis sanctis. Rather than seeing De locis sanctis as either a pilgrim’s testimony or a work created solely by Adomnán in his library, this article presents the text as a complex narrative shaped by Adomnán on the basis of written and oral sources, the latter provided by a recent traveller to the Near East.
(source: Publisher)
Subjects and topics
Sources
Texts
History, society and culture
Agents
AdomnánAdomnán
(fl. c.628–704)
Adomnán mac Rónáin was abbot of Iona (r. 679–704) and author of the Latin Life of St Columba and an account of the holy places of the Near East (De locis sanctis). He is credited with the proclamation of the Lex innocentium or Cáin Adomnáin at the Synod of Birr.
See more ArculfArculf
Entry reserved for but not yet available from the subject index.

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web page identifiers
Contributors
C. A., Dennis Groenewegen
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June 2017, last updated: January 2020
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