Adomnán's de Locis Sanctis and The Seventh-Century Near East

English Historical Review Vol. CXXIX No.
539
© Oxford University Press 2014. All rights reserved. doi:10.1093/ehr/ceu208
Adomnán’s De Locis Sanctis and the Seventh-

Century Near East
In a more uncritical age it used to be thought that the work entitled
‘On the Holy Places’, De locis sanctis (henceforth DLS),1 penned by
Adomnán, the well-known seventh-century abbot of Iona, was simply
what it purported to be: an account of the pilgrimage to the Near
East made by ‘a bishop of the Gaulish race’ named Arculf, which was
dictated by the latter to Adomnán ‘in a faithful and unimpeachable
narrative’ (Preface). Since Adomnán’s role was assumed to be merely
that of an amanuensis, pride of place was given to Arculf; thus
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Thomas Wright, in the 1848 edition of his Early Travels in Palestine,
discussed the DLS under the rubric of ‘The Travels of Bishop Arculf
in the Holy Land’, and the inaugural translation of the DLS by the
Palestine Pilgrims’ Texts Society bore the title of The Pilgrimage of
Arculfus in the Holy Land.2 Recently, however, Arculf ’s role in the
creation of the DLS has undergone a major revision. As a result of
the comprehensive work of Thomas O’Loughlin, we now know
that the composition of the DLS was a much more complex affair.
It is primarily, he argues, an exegetical exposition—an attempt by
Adomnán to solve, by recourse to geography, a number of problems
in the Scriptures.3
While O’Loughlin’s work has provided a much-needed elevation
of the role of Adomnán in the composition of the DLS, it has
substantially demoted that of Arculf. One might think that Arculf ’s
observations were surely still crucial for furnishing the raw material of
Adomnán’s text. However, the lack of biographical detail about Arculf,
and a number of alleged factual errors in his descriptions, have led
recent scholars to deny him even this role. Arculf ‘is confused on many
issues’, says O’Loughlin, ‘mistaken or ill-informed on other matters,
and, here and there, downright wrong’.4 Consequently, it is argued,
‘Adomnán probably never even met Arculf ’, nor indeed ‘any recently
1. We use the edition and translation by D. Meehan, occasionally with some minor adjustments
to the translation: Adamnan’s De Locis Sanctis, Scriptores Latini Hiberniae, iii (1958; repr. Dublin,
1983) (hereafter DLS, ed. Meehan).
2. Thomas Wright, Early Travels in Palestine (London, 1848), pp. 1–12; J.R. Macpherson, The
Pilgrimage of Arculfus in the Holy Land, Palestine Pilgrims’ Text Society, iii (1889).
3. T. O’Loughlin, ‘The Exegetical Purpose of Adomnán’s De Locis Sanctis’, Cambridge
Medieval Celtic Studies, xxiv (1993), pp. 37–53; id., ‘Res, tempus, locus, persona: Adomnán’s
Exegetical Method’, Innes Review, xlviii (1997), pp. 95–111; id., Adomnán and the Holy Places:
The Perceptions of an Insular Monk on the Locations of the Biblical Drama (London, 2007).
O’Loughlin has also argued that the DLS had other roles, including a liturgical role on Iona;
see his ‘De locis sanctis as a Liturgical Text’, in J.M. Wooding et al., eds., Adomnán of Iona:
Theologian, Lawmaker, Peacemaker (Dublin, 2010), pp. 181–92.
4. O’Loughlin, Adomnán and the Holy Places, p. 62.
EHR, CXXIX. 539 (August. 2014)

788 A d o m n á n ’ s D e L o c i s Sa n c t i s
returned pilgrim from the East’; it is even asked, ‘was there an Arculf?’5
The question is by no means an idle one. It would in many ways be
quite satisfying to see Arculf simply as a character whom Adomnán
invented to serve as a literary device.6 Certainly, Arculf ’s journey
performs a couple of crucial functions in the DLS: it offers a narrative
thread imparting coherence to the whole work and it stamps the details
with the authority of an expert witness, thus adding much weight to
Adomnán’s solutions and hypotheses. In addition, the many miracles
and anecdotes related by Arculf enliven and enrich the text. Fictional
characters are sometimes used for didactic purposes (the master and
pupil in Donatus’ Ars grammatica) and in works of rhetoric (the person
of Charlemagne in Alcuin’s Disputatio), and so it is not impossible that
Adomnán chose to use the figure of Arculf in this way.7 If so, this would
have been a clever ploy on the part of Adomnán and would raise the

status of the DLS still further, to the level of an exegetical novel.
However, there is one major objection to this theory, namely that
the DLS does seem to contain genuine information about the seventh-
century Near East. So how did it get there? The monastery of Iona,
where Adomnán was based, did have a reasonably well-stocked library,
but it is unlikely that it would have possessed any up-to-date works
on this region of the world, so distant from Iona.8 David Woods has
argued that ‘Adomnán’s knowledge of the East derives entirely from
literary sources’ and that a veritable ‘florilegium of sources’ made its
way, via a couple of intermediaries and a felicitous shipwreck, from
Constantinople to Iona.9 In a similar vein, O’Loughlin has suggested
that Adomnán drew on the mid-sixth-century work of Count
5. D. Woods, ‘Adomnán, Arculf and the True Cross’, Aram, xviii–xix (2006–7), p. 405;
F. Chatillon, ‘Arculfe a-t-il réellement existé?’, Revue du Moyen Âge latin, xxiii (1967), pp. 134–8.
6. See O’Loughlin’s discussion on this topic in Adomnán and the Holy Places, pp. 61–3.
7. T. Conley, Rhetoric in the European Tradition (Chicago, 1990), pp. 83–5. Charlemagne is of
course a historical figure, but he serves a purely literary function in Alcuin’s Disputatio. Note that
Alcuin also composed a grammar that included a dialogue between two boys, one a Frank and
one a Saxon, on the parts of speech (in J.-P. Migne, Patrologia Latina [217 vols., Paris, 1844–55],
vol. ci, cols. 854ff ).
8. For a reconstruction of its possible contents, see T. O’Loughlin, ‘The Library of Iona in
the Late Seventh Century: The Evidence from Adomnán’s De Locis Sanctis’, Ériu, xlv (1994),
pp. 33–52; Adomnán and the Holy Places, pp. 247–9; T.O. Clancy and G. Márkus, Iona: The Earliest
Poetry of a Celtic Monastery (Edinburgh, 1995), pp. 211–22. We also know that a geographical and
cosmological work was brought from Rome by Benedict Biscop and later given to King Aldfrith,
whom Adomnán knew: Bede, Historiam abbatum, I. 15, ed. C. Plummer, Venerabilis Baedae
Historiam ecclesiasticam gentis Anglorum, Historiam abbatum, Epistolam ad Ecgberctum, una
cum Historia abbatum auctore anonymo (2 vols., Oxford, 1896), pp. 379–80. It is thus possible
that more texts were available to Adomnán than we know about today, but it seems unwise to
postulate too many texts without direct evidence. For other manuscripts that may have travelled
from the Mediterranean region to Britain in this period, see D.N. Dumville, ‘The Importation of
Mediterranean Manuscripts into Theodore’s England’, in M. Lapidge, ed., Archbishop Theodore:
Commemorative Studies on His Life and Influence (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 96–119.
9. D. Woods, ‘Arculf ’s Luggage: the Sources for Adomnán’s De Locis Sanctis’, Ériu, lii (2002),
p. 49. T. O’Loughlin, ‘Palestine in the Aftermath of the Arab Conquest: the Earliest Latin
Account’, in R.N. Swanson, ed., The Holy Land, Holy Lands and Christian History (Woodbridge,
2000), p. 79, says that literary sources ‘provide the bulk of the information in the DLS’.

t h e S e v e n t h - C e n t u ry N e a r E a s t 789
Marcellinus for his chapter on the foundation of Constantinople.10
Since none of these postulated sources has survived, it is impossible
to refute or confirm these conjectures; yet one cannot but wonder
whether this is really a more satisfactory solution than simply assuming
that Adomnán is telling us the truth, albeit playing up the role of Arculf
so as to enhance the value of his testimony and thereby augment the
standing of the DLS. This line has been taken by Rodney Aist, who
has recently led a counter-attack in favour of Arculf, asserting that
‘the pendulum has swung decidedly too far’ and that ‘the idea that
Arculf is a literary fiction should be laid to rest once and for all’, and
describing the DLS once more as ‘a seventh-century text that records
the eyewitness account of a certain Arculf ’.11
The DLS has thus tended to be viewed either as Adomnán’s
faithful transcription of the oral testimony of the pilgrim Arculf

or as a wholly literary work constructed by Adomnán on the basis
of written sources. Adherents of these divergent interpretations
have defended their positions by seeking to demonstrate that the
information in the DLS on the Near East is either true or false,
correct or incorrect. In this article, we argue that this is an outdated
and unhelpful approach to a medieval text. The point at issue
should not be the objective veracity of the information, but rather
its significance to the authors and their audience: why did they
select it, in what way did they present or adapt it, what purposes did
they intend it to serve, and how would readers have understood it?
Similarly, while most work on the text has tended to present the oral
and written sources as mutually exclusive—the DLS consists either
of Arculf ’s oral narrative or of Adomnán’s literary confection—we
prefer to regard the oral and written channels of transmission as
interdependent and often as complementary. This complementarity
is well illustrated by Adomnán’s treatment of Jericho, where, as we
shall demonstrate below, Arculf ’s oral testimony and Jerome’s written
report are carefully blended together, and it recurs in another text,
the Vita Columbae, where Adomnán explicitly states that he draws
on both types of sources.12 Accepting that literacy and orality are
interdependent rather than competing forces is, we believe, essential
10. O’Loughlin, ‘Library of Iona’, p. 50; this is based on an observation by Cassiodorus about
a geographical work by Marcellinus that included descriptions of Constantinople and Jerusalem.
11. R. Aist, review of O’Loughlin, Adomnán and the Holy Places, Bulletin of the Anglo-Israel
Archaeological Society, xxvi (2008), pp. 137, 139; id., ‘The Monument of the Miraculous Healing
in Post-Byzantine Jerusalem: A Reassessment of the North Gate Column of the Madaba Map’,
ibid., p. 42. N. Delierneux, ‘Arculfe, sanctus episcopus gente Gallus: une existence historique
discutable’, Revue belge de philologie et d’ histoire, lxxv (1997), pp. 918, 920–21, 934–6, postulates
several oral sources, but this seems to overly complicate the matter and does not really resolve the
difficulties in the text.
12. Adomnán, Vita Columbae, second preface, ed. A.O. Anderson and M.O. Anderson,
Adomnan’s Life of Columba (London, 1961), p. 184; M. Herbert, Iona, Kells and Derry: The
History and Hagiography of the Monastic Familia of Columba (Dublin, 1996), pp. 13–26.

to a full understanding of medieval literature, as has recently been
illustrated by a number of stimulating studies.13
If we cannot attribute the quirks and errors in the DLS to deliberate
misrepresentation on the part of its author, how then should we explain
them? It is our working hypothesis in this study that they are the result of
the tensions inherent in the interaction between Adomnán’s intentions,
the literary texts available to him at Iona,14 and the oral testimony of
a seventh-century traveller to the Near East, one Arculf.15 That such
a traveller could have reached northern Britain is perhaps not so far-
fetched as it might first appear, for, although northern Britain and
Ireland were peripheral in geographical terms, they were not isolated
intellectually, and information and individuals did make their way
between the Continent and these isles in both directions.16 Assuming
that Arculf can again be added to the ingredients from which the

DLS was composed, along with Adomnán’s own ideas and his written
sources, the oddities of this text can be explained as the consequence
of the disparity between these three components, and in particular the
disparity between what Adomnán wanted to write and what Arculf
could tell him. We will return to this point in the conclusion, but let
us first take a close look at some of the passages in this text that would
appear to provide information about events in the contemporary Near
East, but which have been called into question by recent scholarship.
One of the principal reasons why scholars have lately become suspicious
of the role of Arculf in the formation of the DLS is the realisation of
the substantial degree to which Adomnán drew on written authorities.
This should not have come as such a surprise, since Adomnán does refer
explicitly to a number of texts, including ‘the third book of the Jewish
13. Two interesting studies in this vein are M. Amodio, Writing the Oral Tradition: Oral Poetics
and Literate Culture in Medieval England (Notre Dame, IN, 2004), and E. Johnston, Literacy
and Identity in Early Medieval Ireland (Woodbridge, 2013), esp. pp. 157–76. For a comparative
perspective, see G. Schoeler, The Oral and the Written in Early Islam (London, 2006).
14. Or in Northumbria, according to D. Woods, ‘On the Circumstances of Adomnán’s
Composition of the De Locis Sanctis’, in Wooding et al., eds., Adomnán of Iona, pp. 193–204.
Delierneux, ‘Arculfe’, pp. 931–2, also suggests that Adomnán may have gathered information on
a visit to Northumbria.
15. We will continue to call this oral source Arculf, though it is indeed the case (as has
frequently been pointed out by modern scholars) that the name is an unusual one and it is odd
that Adomnán tells us so little about him and about how he came to meet him.
16. Irish ecclesiastics who travelled to the Continent, such as Columbanus (d. 615) and Fursa
(d. c.650), are well known, and Irish centres of learning and their links with both England and
the Continent are also attested to in the works of Bede and Aldhelm (see n. 80 below). Moreover,
some notable secular personages such as the Merovingian king Dagobert II spent time in exile
in Ireland, which would seem to hint at deeper Irish connections with Continental politics in
the second half of the seventh century; see Liber Historiae Francorum, ch. 43, ed. and tr. B.S.
Bachrach (Lawrence, KS, 1973), p. 101, and J.M. Picard, ‘Church and Politics in the Seventh
Century: The Irish Exile of King Dagobert II’, in id., ed. Ireland and Northern France, AD
600–850 (Dublin, 1991), pp. 27–52.

captivity’ (a clear allusion to Josephus), a poem of ‘the versifying presbyter’
Juvencus, ‘Greek books’ and ‘the commentaries of the holy Jerome’.17
And, in the section on Alexandria (II.28), he explicitly refers to ‘what we
learned by reading from the books of others’ and openly admits that ‘we
have abbreviated some excerpts from these writings and inserted them
in this description’. But it is true that Adomnán is often vague about his
sources, and the frequency of his mentions of Arculf (89 times)18 gives
the impression that this man is not far from being his sole informant.
The discovery that this impression is exaggerated has, therefore, led to
a sense of betrayal. Woods even accuses Adomnán of ‘lying’ and says,
of his account of Jericho in the DLS, that it ‘rests not on the testimony
of Arculf, but on the work of Jerome, despite his [Adomnán’s] specific
statement to the contrary’.19 A more careful examination of that account
reveals that this judgement is somewhat hasty, and it is worth comparing

the two texts carefully in order to gain a better understanding of what
Adomnán is doing (bold font indicates words common to both sources):
DLS, Book II, Chapter 13:
Of the city of Jericho, which Joshua tore down after crossing the
Jordan and killing its king, our holy Arculf saw the site itself. Oza of
Bethel, of the tribe of Ephraim, raised another (city) in its place,
which our Saviour deigned to visit with his presence. Because of the
perfidy of its citizens it was captured and destroyed at the same time as
the Romans attacked and besieged Jerusalem. In its place a third (city) was
founded, which was also overthrown after a considerable interval of time,
and of which, as Arculf relates, some remains of ruins are (still) now shown.
Amazingly, after these three successive settlements have been destroyed on
the same site, there still remains the house of Rahab the harlot, who hid the
two spies whom Joshua son of Nun had sent across, concealing them in flax
straw in the garret of her house. The stone walls of it remain, but without a
roof. Indeed, crops and vineyards have reclaimed the site of the whole city,
which is bereft of human habitation, not even having a house of rest.20
Jerome, De situ et nominibus locorum Hebraecorum:
Jericho: City which Joshua tore down after crossing the Jordan and killing
its king. Oza of Bethel, of the tribe of Ephraim, raised another (city) in its
17. O’Loughlin, ‘Library of Iona’, pp. 35–6.
18. Id., Adomnán and the Holy Places, p. 52, specifies 86, but then includes only 76 references to
Arculf in the appendix, although for some of these he says that Arculf is mentioned ‘several times’.
The actual number of times that the name Arculf is recorded in Meehan’s edition is 89.
19. Woods, ‘Arculf ’s Luggage’, p. 26.
20. ‘Hiericho urbis, quam Iesus Iordane transmisso subuertit rege illius interfecto,
sanctus noster Arculfus conspexit locum, pro qua Oza de Bethel ex tribu Effraim aliam
exstruxit, quam noster Saluator sua praesentia uisitare dignatus est; quae eodem tempore
quo Hierusalem Romani obpugnantes obsedebant propter ciuium perfidiam capta et
distructa est; pro qua tertia condita est, quae post multa temporum interualla et ipsa subuersa
est, cuius nunc quaedam, ut Arculfus refert, ruinarum uestigia monstrantur. Mirum dictu, sola
domus Raab meretricis pos tres in eodem loco distructas ciuitates remansit, quae duos exploratores,
quos Iesu ben Nun transmisit, in solario eiusdem domus suae lini stipula abscondit; cuius lapidei
parietes sine culmine permanent. Locus uero totius urbis ab humana desertus habitatione nullam
domum habens commorationis segetes et uineta recipit’: Meehan, p. 84.

place, which our Lord and Saviour deigned to illuminate with his presence.
But this (city), because of the perfidy of the citizens, was captured and
destroyed at the time that Jerusalem was attacked by the Romans. In its
place a third settlement was built, which endures until today, and the
remains of both (older) cities are pointed out up to the present day.21
As we can see, Adomnán says that Arculf had seen the site of Jericho.
That Arculf visited Jericho is credible, since it was a popular destination
for pilgrims to the Near East both before and after this time.22 Adomnán
then launches into a brief overview of Jericho’s history; but, since this
history is not something to which Arculf can bear witness, Adomnán
turns to Jerome, who speaks of the different versions of Jericho: the
pre-Joshua city, the rebuilding by Oza of Bethel, and the rebuilding
after the Jewish revolt. In Jerome’s time this third incarnation of the

city was still standing, and so Adomnán reverts to Arculf to get a more
recent account, namely of the destruction of the third city, the ruins of
which Arculf witnessed directly. A terminus post quem for this account
is provided by a reference in a Syriac chronicle to the event that brought
about the city’s latest demise, the earthquake of the summer of 659
when ‘the greater part of Jericho collapsed, including all its churches’.23
The only noteworthy building to survive was Rahab’s house, and even
this was badly damaged, for it no longer had a roof, whereas during the
visit of the Piacenza pilgrim (c.570) it was being used as a guest-house
(sinodochium).24
In this example we can see how Adomnán blends what he can
learn about these sites from his written sources with a more current
description of the city and its sites obtained from someone who had
recently visited it. This then would suggest how Adomnán used his
available sources, combining the eye-witness account of Arculf with
recourse to an unacknowledged written source, in this case Jerome, for
historical information which Arculf could not have witnessed. Jerome
was evidently a trustworthy source in Adomnán’s view, since he used
this particular text, De situ et nominibus locorum hebraicorum, at least
seven times in the DLS, along with several other works of Jerome.25
This technique of using written sources alongside Arculf is not limited
to this one chapter, but can also be found elsewhere—such as in Book
21. ‘Iericho urbs quam Iordane transgresso subuertit Iesus rege illius interfecto pro
qua extruxit aliam Ozam de Bethel ex tribus Efraim, quam dominus noster atque salutator
sua praesentia illustrare dignatus est. Sed et haec eo tempore quo Ierusalem oppugnabatur
a Romanis propter perfidiam ciuium capta atque destructa est. Pro qua tertia aedificata est
ciuitas, quae hodieque permanet. Et ostenduntur utriusque urbis uestigia usque in praesentem
diem’; quoted in Eusebius, Onomasticon: The Place Names of Divine Scripture, Including the
Latin Edition of Jerome, ed. R.S. Notley and Z. Safrai (Leiden, 2005), p. 101.
22. See, for example, J. Wilkinson, Jerusalem Pilgrims before the Crusades (Warminster, 2002),
pp. 137 (Piacenza pilgrim, c.570), 214– 15 (Epiphanius, c.680), 241 (Willibald, c.720).
23. A. Palmer, The Seventh Century in the West-Syrian Chronicles (Liverpool, 1993), p. 30.
24. Wilkinson, Jerusalem Pilgrims, p. 137.
25. M. Gorman, ‘Adomnán’s De locis sanctis: The Diagrams and the Sources’, Revue bénédictine,
clx (2006), pp. 24–9.

793
t h e S e v e n t h - C e n t u ry N e a r E a s t
II, Chapters 14–15, concerning Galgal and the stones dropped there by
the Twelve Tribes of Israel after crossing the Jordan.26
II
The clearest indication of the dependence of the DLS on the account

of a traveller to the seventh-century Near East was long thought to have
been its awareness of aspects of the recently established Muslim Arab
polity in that region. Even this has, however, been challenged. It has
been asserted, for example, that the DLS and its author were unfamiliar
with the religious leanings of the new rulers. ‘Adomnán clearly knew
next to nothing about the religious situation in contemporary Palestine’,
says Woods, ‘to the extent that he does not seem to have realised that
the “Saracen” rulers were not in fact Christian’.27 This seems unlikely,

however, for in the course of his description of Damascus Adomnán
explicitly designates the Saracens as ‘unbelieving’ (increduli). What
Woods and other scholars appear to expect is some overt denunciation
on the part of Adomnán of the new rulers as infidels and the like.
O’Loughlin even demands direct political commentary:
His informant, Arculf, is said to visit Alexandria yet, while he notes
the structure of the harbour, does not mention [Caliph] Mu‘awiya’s
fortifications; he visits Crete but does not mention that Mu‘awiya had
overrun it in 672; visits Sicily but does not mention that Mu‘awiya raided
it; and spends months in Constantinople but does not mention the seven-
year siege mounted against it by Mu‘awiya.28
There are two obvious problems with this line of argument. In the first
place, Christian pilgrimage and exegetical texts were not the place for
such commentary. Their authors wished to celebrate the holy places
as they were in Jesus’ time and to elucidate their significance for all
Christians, not to sully them with tawdry current politics and certainly
not to admit to Christian defeats and weakness. When St Willibald
was travelling in the Near East in the 720s, the effects of Muslim Arab
rule would have been much more tangible, but his description makes
no allusion to this—not even to the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem or
the Umayyad mosque in Damascus. The only substantial reference to
‘Saracens’ is occasioned by the arrest of Willibald and his companions,29
which inevitably meant that they had to deal with the authorities, but
26. Ibid., p. 26; DLS, II.14–15, ed. Meehan, pp. 84–6; Jerome, De situ, in Eusebius,
Onomasticon, ed. Notley and Safrai, pp. 48, 64–5.
27. Woods, ‘Adomnán, Arculf and the True Cross’, p. 405; also alleged by O’Loughlin, ‘Palestine
in the Aftermath of the Arab Conquest’, p. 85. It is worth noting that many of the Arab elite at this
time were Christian and many members of the Umayyad clan, including Mu‘awiya, had Christian
spouses; see H. Lammens, Études sur le règne du calife Omaiyade Mo’ âwiya I (Paris, 1908), passim.
28. O’Loughlin, ‘Palestine in the Aftermath of the Arab Conquest’, p. 87.
29. Wilkinson, Jerusalem Pilgrims, pp. 236–7.

even then he does not explain their presence there or pass comment on
their religion.
In the second place, Adomnán was writing before the Arab invasion
of Europe. This event invoked much consternation in the West. Thus
Bede glosses a reference to Ishmael in the Book of Genesis (16:12) with
the angry observation that ‘the Saracens hold the whole breadth of
Africa in their sway, and they also hold the greater part of Asia and some
part of Europe, hateful and hostile to all’.30 But in 680 the Arabs had
as yet achieved no lasting conquest of north-west Africa and had not
launched any raids at all on Spain. A traveller from northern Europe
might not, therefore, have felt particularly hostile towards the Arabs.
Moreover, even in the Near East, their rule would not have been much
in evidence. A Syrian author of an anti-Jewish treatise, writing circa
670, evidently still felt strong allegiance to Byzantine rule. He speaks

of ‘our empire’ and ‘our emperor’, and his calendar is still regulated by
tax cycles and the regnal years of the emperor. The author is aware that
‘others’ hold Jerusalem, but asserts that ‘as long as the head and the
empire remain firm, all the body will renew itself with ease’, and he
proclaims Damascus to be ‘the illustrious city beloved of Christ’.31 To
us, this seems optimistic or even delusionary, given that, in July 661,
Mu‘awiya had been recognised by all of the Muslims as their sole ruler
and Damascus had become the Muslim capital. Yet this latter event,
though of momentous import for the future, might not have appeared
so significant at the time. Breakaway kingdoms were a common enough
phenomenon in the late Roman Empire, appearing and disappearing
at a quite rapid rate. The Vandals had been ejected from Africa after
a century of occupation and the Persians had been forced to evacuate
Egypt and the Levant after holding them for two decades. In Damascus
itself, as the same Syrian writer noted, Christians still predominated,
their churches had not been harmed and the city walls remained intact.
Byzantine coinage was still in circulation and still bore the imprint of
the Cross; the language of the administration was still principally Greek;
and archaeological and literary sources make it clear that churches were
still being built, repaired and equipped with new mosaics.32
Bearing these two points in mind, let us look at the three occasions in
the DLS where reference is made to the Arab rulers. The first occasion
concerns the city of Damascus, which now serves as the ‘Saracen’
capital:
30. Bede, On Genesis, tr. C.B. Kendall (Liverpool, 2008), p. 279, and see p. 26 (introduction).
31. For this point and the references see R.G. Hoyland, Seeing Islam as Others Saw It (Princeton,
1997), pp. 85–7 (Tropaia kata Ioudaiōn en Damaskō).
32. This topic has been much debated over the past decade or so and a consensus has emerged
that the Arab conquests were far from being as disruptive as was previously thought. For a useful
summary of the latest research from an archaeologist’s perspective, see A. Walmsley, ‘Economic
Development and the Nature of Settlement in the Towns and Countryside in Syria–Palestine,
c.565–800’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, lxi (2007), pp. 319–52.

The great royal city of Damascus, as Arculf relates, who lodged for some
days in it, is situated on a broad plain, surrounded by an ample circuit of
walls, and fortified moreover by several towers, with several olive orchards
in the territory surrounding the walls. Four great rivers, which flow through
it, make it pleasingly fertile. There the king of the Saracens reigns, having
acquired his empire (Saracinorum rex adeptus eius principatum regnat).
There, too, a great church has been founded in honour of the holy John the
Baptist. The unbelieving Saracens have also constructed a kind of church
(quaedam eclesia) in this same city, which they frequent (II.28).33
It is implied in this passage that ‘Saracen’ rule is not of long duration,
their empire having only recently been ‘acquired’, and this fits well
with the documentary evidence (coins, papyri and inscriptions), which
reveals no indications of an Arab ruler prior to Mu‘awiya. Previously, the
new Arab polity had been based in faraway Medina, in west Arabia, and

it was in any case more focused on conquest than on administration. It
was Mu‘awiya who established the capital in Damascus and began the
business of putting in place a functioning Muslim empire. Adomnán’s
account of Damascus also accords with Muslim sources which state that
the Arabs had a place of prayer in Damascus. When they first captured
the city, they made an agreement with its inhabitants to take the eastern
half of the church of John the Baptist (which may have meant the
courtyard area rather than the interior of the church) in order to use it
as a mosque. Mu‘awiya ‘wanted to use more of the church of John [the
Baptist] for the mosque in Damascus, but the Christians refused this
and so he refrained’.34
A second reference to Arab rule occurs in the DLS in the course of
a story that had been related to Arculf by some ‘Christian residents of
Jerusalem’ concerning ‘a sacred cloth [sudarium] of the Lord’ (I.9). It had
apparently been removed from the sepulchre immediately after Christ’s
resurrection by a certain believing Jew,35 and it had been handed down
for generations, first within this person’s family and then by unbelieving
Jews, who nevertheless treated it with respect. However, the believing
Jews (Iudaei credentes) began to argue with the unbelieving Jews (cum
infidelibus Iudaeis) over the ownership of the cloth. The two factions
(Iudaei Christiani ... increduli Iudaei) appealed to ‘Mu‘awiya, king of
the Saracens’, who commanded a fire to be made and, calling upon
33. DLS, ed. Meehan, pp. 96–8.

34. Al-Baladhuri, Futuḥ al-buldan, ed. M.J. de Goeje, Liber expugnationis regionum (Leiden,
1866), i. 131. Most recently, see N. Khalek, Damascus after the Muslim Conquest (Oxford, 2011),
esp. ch. 3.
35. O’Loughlin, ‘Palestine in the Aftermath of the Arab Conquest’, p. 85 (and Adomnán and
the Holy Places, pp. 171–3), suggests that Adomnán means by this a Judaean, i.e. a native of the
region, rather than a Jew, and that he therefore needs to add ‘believing’ and ‘unbelieving’ in order
to specify whether the native is a Christian or a Jew. This is possible, but he may also be alluding,
even if unwittingly, to the widespread story that some Jews remained true to the original teachings
of Jesus and/or were Judaeo-Christians: S. Pines, ‘Notes on Islam and on Arabic Christianity and
Judaeo-Christianity’, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam, iv (1984), pp. 135–52.

‘Christ the saviour of the world’, cast the cloth into the flames whence
it floated upwards, then descended and landed among the Christians.
The use of the widespread narrative motifs of worthy and unworthy
inheritors and trial by fire suggests that one should approach this
account with caution, but the setting itself is not so implausible. Firstly,
Mu‘awiya’s presence in Jerusalem is not unexpected: it was in Jerusalem
in 658 that he and ‘Amr ibn al-’As, the governor of Egypt, signed a
pact allying them against ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib, their rival in the east.36
There, too, Mu‘awiya was proclaimed caliph and received the oath of
allegiance,37 whereupon, according to an apparently contemporary
Syriac chronicle, he proceeded to make a tour of the Christian holy
sites of the city, visiting Golgotha, Gethsemane and the tomb of
Mary—perhaps to reassure his overwhelmingly Christian subjects
and the many Christian Arabs in his army and court that he was not

ill-disposed towards their religion.38 Coins were minted in his time
stamped with the mint name ‘Aelia, Palestine’, and it was perhaps he
who initiated construction of the administrative headquarters adjacent
to the Temple Mount on the south and south-west, where six large
buildings have so far been unearthed, including the caliph’s own palace
(aulē tou amiralmoumnin).39 Evidently, Jerusalem was not only a cultic
centre, but was also intended to be a capital of Muslim Palestine.40
Secondly, the involvement of Mu‘awiya in the settlement of non-
Muslim disputes is not out of place. The same Syriac chronicle records
that ‘the bishops of the Jacobite Christians, Theodore and Sabokht,
came to Damascus and held an inquiry into the faith with the Maronite
Christians in the presence of Mu‘awiya’.41 He was not present as an
expert in Christian doctrine, but because he represented temporal
power; there were many examples of an Arab figure performing such a
role both before and after the Arab conquests. For example, a papyrus
from Petra, dated 574, mentions a dispute between two clerics that
was referred to the Arab phylarch Abu Qarib.42 Almost immediately
after the capture of Nisibis in 639, its Muslim conqueror was called
upon to adjudicate between Cyriacus, metropolitan of that city, and
36 Ibn Sa’d, Kitab al-Ṭabaqat, ed. E. Sachau et al., Biographien Muhammeds, seiner Gefährten
und der späteren Träger des Islams (9 vols., Leiden, 1904–40), vol. iv, pt. ii, p. 2 (bi-bayt al-maqdis);
Nasr ibn Muzahim, Waq’at Ṣiffin, ed. A.M. Harun (Cairo, 1962), p. 217.
37. Al-Tabari, Ta’rikh al-rusul wa-l-muluk, ed. M.J. de Goeje et al., Annales quos scripsit Abu
Djafar Mohammed ibn Djarir at-Tabari (15 vols., Leiden, 1879–1901), ii. 4.
38. Palmer, The Seventh Century in the West-Syrian Chronicles, p. 31.
39. M. Küchler, ‘Moschee und Kalifenpaläste Jerusalems nach den Aphrodito-Papyri’,
Zeitschrift der deutschen Palästina-Vereins, cvii (1991), pp. 120–43.
40. We say ‘a capital’ rather than ‘the capital’, since before the foundation of Ramla, c.715,
it is difficult to be certain which city served as the regional capital. There are coins minted in
Jerusalem, Diospolis (Lod) and Yubna, and papyri from the 680s excavated at Nessana refer to a
governor in Gaza.
41. Palmer, The Seventh Century in the West-Syrian Chronicles, p. 30.
42. A. Arjava et al., eds., The Petra Papyri, IV (Amman, 2011), pp. 90 and 112 (no. 83, ll. 165
and 488).

his detractors. And in the 650s both parties in a dispute between the
43
Persian and East Arabian Christians and their patriarch, Isho’yahb III
(649–59), appealed to ‘the local governors and also to the governor of
that time who was over the local governors’.44 With the support of
such a temporal ruler came power over one’s community. Thus the
West Syrian patriarch Severus bar Mashqa (668–80) acted harshly in
his execution of church affairs, ‘for he was a severe man and he had the
support of the king of the Arabs’; his predecessor Theodore ‘bequeathed
his estate to Mu‘awiya, so that out of fear of that man all the Jacobites
would be obedient to him’.45
However, Mu‘awiya’s alleged use of the words ‘Christ, the saviour of
the world, who suffered for the human race’, in Adomnán’s account, is
not particularly plausible.46 It is true that, as was noted by Jacob, bishop
of Edessa (684–8), a contemporary of Adomnán, the Muslims ‘confess

firmly that he [Jesus] is the true Messiah who was to come and who was
foretold by the prophets’,47 but in the Qur’an the term ‘messiah’ does
not have the redemptive significance assigned to it by Christianity. One
could therefore, with Woods and O’Loughlin, assume that Adomnán
is simply mistaken or misled. Or one could accept the theory recently
advanced by some Islamicists that there was no distinct faith of Islam
at this time, but only a loose monotheism that embraced all those,
including Christians and Jews, who accepted the reality of the One
God and the Day of Judgement.48 However, it seems unlikely that the
reality of this incident was what concerned Adomnán. He was trying
to recount a miracle: how God prevented the sacred cloth from being
burned by the fire and directed it away from the unbelieving Jews to
land among the Christians. Is it not appropriate for this scenario that
the king of the Saracens, who had earlier been labelled as ‘unbelievers’,
should be made to recognise Jesus as ‘the saviour of the world’? It was a
very common Christian literary device to portray unbelievers, and even
demons, as acknowledging—whether openly or secretly—the power
and truth of Jesus. And it was a device that Muslims too adopted for
their own purposes; for example, the Byzantine emperor Heraclius is
depicted by numerous Muslim authors as endorsing Muhammad as a
true prophet sent by God.49
43. Hoyland, Seeing Islam, p. 200 (Chronicle of Khuzistan); another source says Cyriacus was
hated because of ‘his excessive love of money and desire to hoard it’: ibid., p. 200, n. 98.
44. Ibid., p. 178.
45. Ibid., p. 182, n. 32.
46. Pointed out by O’Loughlin, ‘Palestine in the Aftermath of the Arab Conquest’, pp. 86–7.
47. Hoyland, Seeing Islam, p. 166.
48. The key work here is F. Donner, Muhammad and the Believers (Cambridge, MA, 2010),
but see the review of this work by P. Crone, ‘Among the Believers’, Tablet: A New Read on Jewish
Life, 10 Aug. 2010, available at http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/42023/
among-the-believers.
49. L.I. Conrad, ‘Heraclius in Early Islamic Kerygma’, in G.J. Reinink and B.H. Stolte, eds.,
The Reign of Heraclius (610–41): Crisis and Confrontation (Leuven, 2002), pp. 113–56.

The final occasion on which the DLS refers to the Arabs concerns
their ‘house of prayer’ in Jerusalem:
In that famous place where once was built the magnificent Temple, near
the eastern wall, the Saracens have made a quadrangular house of prayer
(orationis domum), which they constructed, in a rough fashion, from raised
boards and large beams over some remains of ruins. This they frequent and,
as it is said, this building can accommodate at least 3000 people (I.1).
This apparently eye-witness account has been seized upon by numerous
writers on early Islamic Jerusalem, for it would seem to be prime
evidence for the importance of Jerusalem to the early Muslims and
reliable testimony for the earliest stage of the Aqsa mosque, which lies at
the southern end of the Temple Mount. It is unfortunately very difficult
to chart exactly the activities of the Muslims on the Temple Mount in

the aftermath of their capture of Jerusalem, but there are a surprising
number of seventh-century sources that agree that the Muslims erected
some sort of place of prayer there and that they did this quite soon after
the Arab conquests, the work apparently beginning while Sophronius,
patriarch of Jerusalem (c.634–9), was still alive.50
There is good reason, therefore, to accept the testimony of the DLS.
That does not mean, however, that it is free of problems. Its description
of the manner of construction is slightly odd, as has recently been
pointed out by Woods.51 It says that the building was put together ‘from
raised boards and large beams’ (subrectis tabulis et magnis trabibus).
The implication is that the structure was made from wood, which is
curious, since the tradition in that region would have been to employ
stone for sacred edifices and especially for one that was meant to be
able to ‘accommodate 3000 people’.52 One possibility is that Arculf
or Adomnán was seeking to denigrate the quality of the structure, in
keeping with the accompanying words ‘in a rough fashion’ (vili opere).
But one might suggest that what was meant here was marble slabs:
tabula does also mean ‘slab’, and one seventh-century text refers to a
‘skilled marble-worker’ as being employed on this project.53 It is also
possible that Adomnán simply assumed that a wooden building was
meant, since that was the norm of the time in northern Britain and
Ireland.54
50. Hoyland, Seeing Islam, pp. 63 (pseudo-John Moschus), 101 (Anastasius of Sinai), 127
(Sebeos), 311 (Rabbi Simon ben Yohai).
51. Woods, ‘Arculf ’s Luggage’, p. 41. He suggests that there is an original Greek text underlying
Adomnán’s description and that tabula represents a mistranslation of the Greek word stylos.
52. Although wood was used for decorative purposes (particularly carved wooden panels) and
also at certain points in buildings in order to absorb movement in the event of an earthquake.
For the use of wooden beams, possibly taken from pre-Islamic structures, see P. Reuven, ‘Wooden
Beams from Herod’s Temple Mount: Do They Still Exist?’, Biblical Archaeology Review, xxxix
(2013), pp. 40–47.
53. Hoyland, Seeing Islam, p. 63.
54. See most recently T. Ó Carragáin, Churches in Early Medieval Ireland: Architecture, Ritual
and Memory (New Haven, 2010), pp. 15–47.

The second surprising feature of the DLS’s account of this ‘Saracen’
place of prayer is its positioning: it is the first building described in
the work, coming after a note about the walls and gates of the city
and about a market that was held there in September. Why place a
non-Christian monument in such a prime position in the text? It has
been argued that Adomnán did not realise that the Saracens were not
Christian, for he would not otherwise have used the term ‘house of
prayer’ (domus orationis), which is a very Christian term (cf. Matthew
21.13), but, as we have seen, Adomnán does elsewhere explicitly designate
the Saracens as ‘unbelieving’ (increduli), even though this comment is
made in the context of them building a church (eclesia) in Damascus.
We might plausibly read into Adomnán’s words implied disapproval:
he has just noted that after the September market has finished the rains
come to wash away the rubbish created by the market traders and their

animals. This goes to show, he says, the favour that Jerusalem enjoys
‘in the sight of the eternal Father’, who, therefore, ‘does not allow it
to remain soiled for long, but quickly cleanses it out of reverence for
his only begotten son, who has the honoured places of His holy cross
and resurrection within the compass of its walls’. It may well be that
Adomnán was hinting here that God will do the same to this Saracen
structure, by not permitting it to sully for much longer this otherwise
largely Christian city.
It nevertheless remains puzzling why Adomnán gives such primacy
in the DLS to the Temple Mount. Even if he had thought that the
Saracens were Christian—and certainly there were plenty of ‘barbarian’
peoples who adhered to suspect versions of Christianity, such as the
Vandals to Arianism, while many others probably retained aspects of
their former pagan cults—it would not explain why the Temple Mount
was the first building to merit consideration, as opposed to Christian
monuments such as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The Temple is
of course important in the New Testament, not least for Jesus’ prophecy,
delivered to his disciples as he walked out of the Temple, that ‘not one
stone of it will be left upon another’ (Matthew 24.2). And, precisely
on account of this prophecy, the Saracen construction work would
have been a startling development. To our eyes it seems surprising that
Adomnán passes no comment at all on it, but perhaps to him it spoke
clearly enough for itself.
III
What has been viewed as the most problematic material in the DLS
occurs in the third and final book. This deals principally with the city
of Constantinople, to which Arculf travels after leaving Alexandria
(stopping off in Crete along the way), and concludes with a brief notice
about Mount Vulcan, a few miles distant from Sicily. It therefore places
the reader in a new geographical context, for the previous two books
principally feature sites recorded in the Bible and fit in reasonably well
with the itineraries of earlier pilgrims to the Holy Land. Furthermore,
the third book includes a number of lengthy miracle accounts associated
with saints and relics, which are closer in style to Adomnán’s Vita
Columbae than to the first two books of the DLS.55 In the third book
we also leave behind the sources that we know Adomnán was using for
his other books, such as the Bible, Jerome, Josephus and Eucherius.
Moreover, it has been stated that the third book contains substantial
errors, which are proof, argues Woods, that Adomnán never heard a
first-hand account of Constantinople.56 And indeed, at first glance,
there do seem to be manifest discrepancies—such as the appearance
in the section on Constantinople of a lengthy narrative concerning
the wonders worked by Saint George in Diospolis in Palestine (III.4).
However, it is worth examining whether Adomnán gives his reader any

hint as to his reasons for presenting the material as he does, as well as
considering whether this might result from the attempt of a theologian
to interpret and shape information recently received from the region.
Book III offers several avenues for exploration in this vein, but we will
focus on two topics here. The first is the description of the True Cross
and the organisation of Book III, and the second is the miracles related
to Saint George and their possible sources.
There has been considerable speculation as to why Adomnán
included a book devoted chiefly to Constantinople, which was not
on the standard pilgrim route. Woods has proposed that Adomnán’s
motives were political, and that the book was intended ‘as a response
to the English emphasis on their loyalty to Rome and to the Roman
method of calculating Easter’.57 In short, he wished to show ‘that there
was more to the world than Rome’.58 The controversy over the dating
of Easter and Adomnán’s stance on it have long been subjects of debate
among historians,59 but, since Adomnán does not mention this topic
directly in the DLS, it is impossible to determine whether it influenced
his decision to include Constantinople in his work. O’Loughlin has
argued that the contents of the third book were included by Adomnán
simply because he ‘had the information available and did not want it
to perish’.60 More recently, however, O’Loughlin, followed by Nathalie
Delierneux, has explained Book III as an interpretation of Luke (e.g.
55. The miracles in Book II of the Vita Columbae make a particularly good comparison in
terms of narrative structure. For examples, see such miracles as ‘the pestiferous cloud and the
healing of many people’, ‘Columba and the man with the blessed stake’ and ‘Libran of the reed-
plot’: Adomnán, Vita Columbae, II.4, II.37, II.39, ed. Anderson and Anderson, pp. 330–6, 410–16,
420–34.
56. Woods, ‘Arculf ’s Luggage’, p. 29.
57. Woods, ‘Adomnán, Arculf and the True Cross’, p. 404.
58. Ibid.
59. For the most recent discussion of Adomnán’s role in the Easter dating controversy, see
C. Stancliffe, ‘Charity with Peace: Adomnán and the Easter Question’, in Wooding et al., eds.,
Adomnán of Iona, pp. 51–68.
60. O’Loughlin, ‘Exegetical Purpose’, p. 53.

24:27) and Acts (e.g. 1:8) in which the Christian message of Jesus
spreads from Jerusalem to the surrounding ‘Old Testament’ areas and
finally to the wider world in a three-stage movement.61 This template
does match the tripartite division of the DLS quite well, and would
provide a logic for the inclusion of the third book as representing the
third stage, whereby the Christian message reached areas outside the
Holy Land through saints and relics, since they did not have the benefit
of the actual presence of Christ and the apostles.62
While this might provide an overarching reason for the inclusion of
a book on Constantinople and other distant lands in the DLS, there
was also a more concrete reason for the incorporation of the imperial
capital into Adomnán’s work—that is, that it housed one of the greatest
relics of Christendom, the True Cross. This provides an important link
between Jerusalem, the subject of Book I, and Constantinople, the

subject of Book III. Adomnán tells his readers that this sacred object is
kept in a ‘very celebrated round stone church’ within the city, very likely
the Hagia Sophia, and he describes a three-day festival during which
the emperor, his soldiers, the women of the court and the city, and the
bishop and clergy all gather to venerate this object (III.3). However,
from certain similarities in his portrayal of this Constantinopolitan
church to the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem (both round stone edifices
that ‘rise up from the foundations in three walls’) Woods has claimed
that this is in fact a misunderstood reference to an event that took
place earlier in the century in the Holy City. Without realising it,
maintains Woods, Adomnán has preserved an account of the liturgical
celebrations accompanying Emperor Heraclius’ triumphal restoration
of the True Cross to Jerusalem in 630.63 It is difficult to disprove this,
since, though ingenious, it is conjecture, but we do know from two
contemporary sources that the True Cross was subsequently removed
from Jerusalem to Constantinople in the 630s,64 and so would have
been there at the time of Arculf ’s sojourn in the Middle East.
The True Cross is a key aspect of the narrative in Book III. The
first chapter gives a brief description of Constantinople, ‘assuredly the
metropolis of the Roman Empire’, and, as with Jerusalem, refers to
its walls and towers. This is followed by a chapter on the manner of
its foundation, relating how, when construction was about to start,
the workmen’s tools disappeared, only to be found later in a different
location. Constantine took this as a sign from God to establish his city at
61. O’Loughlin, Adomnán and the Holy Places, p. 156; Delierneux, ‘Arculfe’, pp. 935–6.
62. Delierneux, ‘Arculfe’, pp. 935–6.
63. Woods, ‘Adomnán, Arculf and the True Cross’, pp. 410–11. The Cross had been taken to
Iraq by Persian forces when they captured Jerusalem in 614, but was returned by them after their
defeat at the hands of Heraclius in 628. See Theophilus of Edessa’s Chronicle, tr. R.G. Hoyland
(Liverpool, 2011), pp. 83–5.
64. For references and discussion see Theophilus of Edessa’s Chronicle, tr. Hoyland, pp. 106–8;
H. Klein, ‘Constantine, Helena and the Cult of the True Cross in Constantinople’, in J. Durand
and B. Flusin, eds., Byzance et les reliques de Christ (Paris, 2004), pp. 31–59.

the place where the tools were rediscovered. This account demonstrates
to the reader beyond any doubt that the city was sacred: even its site
had been determined by divine providence. A similar point is made at
the beginning of Book I in relation to Jerusalem, the position of which,
says Adomnán, is ‘arranged by God, its founder’, so that the rain cleans
its streets in what he terms a ‘baptism’ (I.1).65 Just as the Holy Sepulchre
is the first church to be depicted in Book I, so the church enshrining the
True Cross is the first church to be considered in Book III. Moreover, as
noted above, there are similarities between the descriptions of the two
buildings. Although Woods ascribes this to Adomnán mistaking the
Church of the Holy Sepulchre for the church in Constantinople,66 one
could plausibly make the case that Adomnán purposely characterised
them in similar terms in order to emphasise their shared sanctity. The
accounts of the cities and their holiest churches mirror each other in

their positions at the beginning of their respective books and in the
details of their depiction, which is surely an indication of Adomnán’s
guiding hand. He next introduces the True Cross, which intimately
links these two buildings, both of which had served, at different times,
as the guardians of this most holy relic.
These reasons may help to explain why Adomnán focused on
Constantinople rather than on Rome, which Arculf did also visit—as we
know from a cursory allusion by Adomnán (III.5)—but which he chose
not to speak about at all. Constantinople was the new Christian city;
unlike Rome, it had never been pagan and it now provided sanctuary
for the object on which the living Christ had been crucified. It therefore
suited perfectly Adomnán’s aim of illustrating the spread of Christ’s
message. Interestingly, two of the other chapters of Book III feature
saintly persons who originated in the Holy Land, namely Saint George
and the Virgin Mary. The final chapter, on the other hand, appears, with
its dramatic account of Mount Vulcan shaking, blazing and smoking, to
serve the theological purpose of representing Hell, and closes the DLS
(III.6) with an image that is the physical antithesis of the city of Heaven,
Jerusalem, with which the work opened.67 That so much of Book III
depends upon connections with the Holy Land is surely not an accident,
but rather evidence of Adomnán’s deliberate crafting of the material that
was available to him on Constantinople. As for the provenance of the
raw material, such as the existence of the Holy Cross in the imperial
capital, it seems simpler to assume that he is telling the truth when he
says that he has acquired it from a traveller named Arculf rather than to
posit a raft of unknown and unattested sources.
Adomnán’s account of the miracles of Saint George occurs in the
fourth chapter of Book III and constitutes one of the longest pieces
65. R. Aist, ‘Adomnán, Arculf and the Source Material of De locis sanctis’, in Wooding et al.,
eds. Adomnán of Iona, pp. 174–80; O’Loughlin, Adomnán and the Holy Places, pp. 116–18.
66. Woods, ‘Adomnán, Arculf and the True Cross’, pp. 406–13.
67. O’Loughlin, Adomnán and the Holy Places, p. 139.

of text in the DLS. Adomnán first notes that Arculf ‘learned about
this in the city of Constantinople from certain well-informed citizens’
before recounting two examples of miracles at great length (III.4). The
first concerns an unbeliever who rides on horseback into a church in
Diospolis in which there is a column bearing a painted image of the
saint.68 He contemptuously stabs at it with his lance, but this, together
with his fingers, enters and becomes stuck in the column, and the man’s
horse dies under him—all of which induces him to repent, whereupon
he is released from his predicament. Adomnán further reports that the
prints of the man’s fingers remain impressed upon the column and that
Arculf put his own hands into them. The second narrative recounts
how a man about to depart on a military campaign pledges his horse to
Saint George in return for the saint protecting him from harm. When
the man returns home safely, he attempts to present the saint with a

lesser monetary gift, but his horse is immobilised until he relinquishes
it to the saint as promised, together with a substantial sum of money.
Both of these miracles, though placed amid the section on
Constantinople, are supposed to have occurred in Diospolis in Palestine,
apparently marring the otherwise neat geographical arrangement of the
DLS. If Arculf had visited Diospolis while he was in the Holy Land,
why not relate the miracles in that section? Again, it is worth thinking
about Adomnán’s organising principles for Book III. In the first place,
there is an emphasis in this book on saints and relics, a category into
which George clearly fits.69 This effectively means that the description
of Diospolis has to be delayed until Arculf reaches Constantinople
before it is communicated to Adomnán’s audience. On a literary level,
Saint George also represents a clear connection between the new city of
Constantinople and the Holy Land, as his main cult site is in Palestine
but his fame has spread to Constantinople. Indeed, by Adomnán’s time
George was celebrated as far afield as Gaul and Iran.70 In the second
place, there is the matter of the source of the information. The question
as to who attests to the veracity of any given report is a crucial one
throughout the DLS.71 Usually it is Arculf who fulfils that function, but
the miracles of Saint George could not be witnessed by Arculf, as they
68. Domus, but presumably with the sense of church, domus orationis; though see Woods,
‘Arculf ’s Luggage’, pp. 35–7. Diospolis is modern Lod, ancient Lydda.
69. O’Loughlin, Adomnán and the Holy Places, p. 156; Delierneux, ‘Arculfe’, p. 935.
70. Gregory of Tours, Glory of the Martyrs, ch. 100, tr. R. van Dam (Liverpool, 1988), pp. 123–
4; P. Fouracre and R.A. Gerberding, eds., Late Merovingian France: History and Hagiography,
640–720 (Manchester, 1996), p. 131 (anonymous Life of Bathild); Hoyland, Seeing Islam, p. 90,
n. 117 (Chronicle of Khuzistan). Interestingly, William of Tyre says that the emperor Justinian
(527–65) built the church of Saint George at Diospolis, which would then have made his name
known in the capital by the mid-sixth century, although it is not certain where William got this
information: A History of Deeds Done Beyond the Sea, ed. and tr. E.A. Babcock and A.C. Krey (2
vols., New York, 1943), i. 332.
71. A point made clear by T. O’Loughlin, ‘Adomnán and Arculf: The Case of an Expert
Witness’, Journal of Medieval Latin, vii (1997), pp. 127–46, and id., Adomnán and the Holy Places,
pp. 55–61.

took place before his visit to the Near East, and thus other witnesses
are needed. In this case it is certain ‘well-informed’ residents of
Constantinople, and Adomnán affirms this at the beginning of each of
the miracles and each time emphasises the reliability of the informants,
making it clear that this was for him an important criterion.
The same occurs in the case of the miracles associated with the
sudarium and Mu‘awiya’s judgement. Here the account is provided by
‘very many of the faithful of Jerusalem’ (I.9), and Arculf steps in, as he
does with regard to Saint George’s column, to authenticate the object,
for ‘he saw it with his own eyes’. The same format is applied in Chapter
5 of Book III: ‘well-informed witnesses in the city of Constantinople’
relate to Arculf ‘a true story about an icon of the holy Mary’ that exudes
‘wondrous oil’, and, once the tale is told, Arculf confirms that he saw
the oil flowing ‘with his own eyes’. Except for these three occasions

(George, the sudarium, and the icon of Mary), all other information
in the DLS derives, according to Adomnán, from Arculf ’s eyewitness
testimony or from literary sources. In the case of the sudarium and
the icon of Mary, the witnesses and the object are in the same locale
and thus it is clear in which book it should appear. In the case of the
miracles of Saint George, however, the physical evidence of the miracle
is in Palestine, while those who provide the accompanying narrative
are in Constantinople. Arculf can see and touch George’s column,
but without the account of the saint’s miracles to give a contextual
background his experience does not make sense. The story told by the
citizens of Constantinople is, therefore, the more important element,
and for that reason it is presented in the context of what Arculf learned
in Constantinople as opposed to what he saw in Palestine.
It has been proposed that the material on Saint George in the DLS
is drawn from a literary source,72 but, though individual reports of the
supernatural deeds worked at George’s shrine and by his relics circulated
already in the sixth century, the extant collections of his miracles do
not pre-date the tenth century. From this period a Coptic collection
of miracles of Saint George, possibly based on a Greek original, has
survived which contains references to a column and people pledging
gifts to the martyr, but the resemblance is limited to shared motifs
and there is no evidence for textual dependence.73 There is greater
similarity in an account given by a mid-seventh-century Christian
chronicle from southwest Iran, which tells how, during the Persian
occupation of Palestine (610–28), a Persian commander attempted
to enter the church of George at Diospolis, but his horse was held
fast at the threshold, and the commander, awestruck, pledged a silver
72. O’Loughlin, ‘Library of Iona’, p. 50; Woods, ‘Arculf ’s Luggage’, pp. 32–3.
73. E.A. Wallis Budge, ed. and tr., The Martyrdom and Miracles of Saint George of Cappadocia
(London, 1888), pp. 44–82, 241–74; miracle no. 2 involves a pillar or column of the saint, and nos.
4–6 and 8 deal with pledges of money or goods to his shrine.

t h e S e v e n t h - C e n t u ry N e a r E a s t805
replica of the shrine should he escape his predicament. This motif of 74
immobilisation, which is present in the second of the DLS miracles,

also occurs in a story recounted by Gregory of Tours about George’s
relics in Gaul. In this account, they were being transported along with
relics of other saints in the territory of Limoges, but at one place the
reliquary containing George’s remains could not be moved until some
snippets from the fastenings around the relics had been presented to
the cleric who presided over the local oratory.75 This is not to suggest
that Adomnán was making direct use of either of these two sources,
but rather indicates that many such accounts of wonders connected
with George were already in circulation by the late seventh century—
Gregory says that ‘I know many miracle stories about the martyr
George’76—and so it is not surprising that they would have been picked
up by a traveller to the site of George’s shrine or to the territories in

which he had lived in Asia Minor.
In sum, therefore, it would seem that the information in Book III of
the DLS, especially regarding the True Cross and Saint George, need
not be the consequence of misunderstandings and faulty copying of
lost sources, but may instead reflect information actually learned in
Constantinople by a traveller and subsequently reshaped to suit the
concerns and objectives of the author of the DLS. At the very least one
can say that the third book does fit within the wider aims and themes
of the DLS and Adomnán’s approach to his subject matter.
IV
The intention of this article has not been to argue that the DLS can
be used as a reliable source for the seventh-century Near East or that
Arculf should be reinstated as the principal inspiration of the DLS.
O’Loughlin’s work has conclusively demonstrated that we must
regard Adomnán as the text’s author and instigator, with his own aims
and agenda. However, the analysis presented here does suggest that
Adomnán benefited from knowledge of the seventh-century Near East.
There are two ways of explaining his access to this knowledge: either
that Adomnán had at his disposal a medley of written sources, as Woods
and O’Loughlin have proposed, or that he received information from
a traveller to the Near East, as Adomnán himself states. The former
solution is not impossible, but, given the paucity of source materials
circulating in seventh-century north-west Europe, it seems a little
optimistic to assume that Adomnán had a number of unknown ones
74. G. Greatrex and S. Lieu, The Roman Eastern Frontier and the Persian Wars: A Narrative
Sourcebook (Abingdon, 2002), pp. 235–6 (translation of part of the Chronicle of Khuzistan).
75. Gregory of Tours, Glory of the Martyrs, ch. 100, tr. van Dam, pp. 123–4. For a discussion of
this and other general motifs shared between the miracles presented in Book III of the DLS and
those in the works of Gregory of Tours, see Delierneux, ‘Arculfe’, pp. 921, 925.
76. Gregory of Tours, Glory of the Martyrs, ch. 100, tr. van Dam, p. 123.

in his possession. Moreover, Woods’s contention that translation from
Greek literary texts into Latin best explains the many errors in the DLS is
dubious. Travelogues are frequently riddled with mistakes, for travellers
in a foreign land, where everything is unfamiliar, often misunderstand
what they are told (particularly if they do not know the local language)
and some details will inevitably be lost or corrupted in the process of
being recounted, explained, remembered, transcribed and retold.77 In
the case of pre-modern pilgrims, a considerable time had often elapsed
before they were able to set down or dictate their memories, allowing
further opportunities for information to be forgotten or refashioned.
If we accept Adomnán’s word that he incorporated information from
Arculf into the DLS, we must then accept that this traveller had been
able to journey to an area where he could meet the abbot of Iona. This
would imply that relations existed between northern Britain and/or

Ireland and the Continent, with further contacts spanning out towards
the Mediterranean and the Near East.78 Travel from Ireland to the
Continent would appear to have been fairly commonplace in the late
sixth and seventh centuries, with communities such as Bobbio, Luxeuil
and Péronne—all of which had been founded by Irishmen—attracting
scholars and providing services to pilgrims from Ireland.79 In the other
direction, there are examples such as Agilbert, who was said to have
been originally from Gaul, and who studied the scriptures in Ireland for
many years before becoming a bishop first in Wessex and then later in
Paris during the second half of the seventh century.80 Although Ireland
and Britain may have been considered to be on the very outskirts of
the world in geographical terms, this was perhaps not so much the case
with respect to learning and scholarship. Our examples are limited, and
so too are our sources, but it does seem possible that networks existed
which might have brought travellers such as Arculf to visit the north.
77. To take a random example from a relevant modern publication: the Lonely Planet guide, by
M. Kohn et al., to Israel and the Palestinian Territories (5th edn., London, 2007) characterises the
ruined early eighth-century Umayyad palace at Minya as ‘the most ancient Muslim prayer site in
Israel’ (p. 254), whereas this honour goes to the mosque of ‘Umar I (634–44) on the Temple Mount
(al-masjid al-aqṣa). On the same page the toponym Tabgha is labelled ‘an Arabic translation of
the Greek hepta pega’, whereas it is simply a loose and/or corrupt phonetic rendering into Arabic
of the Greek hepta pegōn.
78. Adomnán never specifies that he met Arculf on Iona, nor is this information provided by
Bede. This has led to the suggestion that he could have met Arculf in Ireland or elsewhere, though
Bede states that Arculf was cast onto the west coast of Britain by a tempest. See Bede’s Ecclesiastical
History of the English People, V. 15, ed. and tr. B. Colgrave and R.A.B. Mynors (Oxford, 1969),
p. 506, n. 1; O’Loughlin, Adomnán and the Holy Places, pp. 51–2.
79. K. Hughes, ‘The Changing Theory and Practice of Irish Pilgrimage’, Journal of Ecclesiastical
History, xi (1960), p. 144.
80. Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, III. 7, ed. and tr. Colgrave and Mynors, pp. 234–6. Both
Bede and Aldhelm record several Englishmen going to Ireland in order to study and Ireland as
a scholarly destination does not seem to be considered to be unusual in these cases: ibid., III. 4,
III. 25, III. 27, IV. 4, pp. 224, 296, 312–14, 346–8; Aldhelm, ‘Letter to Wihtfrith’ and ‘Letter to
Heahfrith’, tr. M. Lapidge and M. Herren, Aldhelm: the Prose Works (Cambridge, 1979), pp. 154,
161, 163.

Finally, this study proposes that the inaccuracies in the DLS
were not the result of Adomnán’s deliberate misrepresentations and
lack of understanding, but a consequence of the interplay between
what Adomnán’s principal oral informant could tell him and what
Adomnán wanted to write about—or, in other words, between a
traveller’s recollections and a theologian’s interrogations. Thus the
text is a combination of the material that befits a travel narrative,
such as crocodiles, volcanoes, mountain salt and camels, and the
minutiae appropriate to an academic study, such as the distinction
between monumentum and sepulchrum, the reconciliation of apparent
contradictions in the Scripture, and the relationship between tombs—
which feature very prominently in the DLS—and the place of a saint’s
resurrection.81 In general, it was Adomnán who decided both the
content and the format of the work, while Arculf ’s role was to bear

witness to the place or object in question. Yet Adomnán was dependent
on Arculf for much of the raw information that he required, since he
had limited alternative sources at his disposal. The tension between
these two was responsible for at least some of the quirks in the DLS, but
it is also what makes the text so special and distinctive.
St Cross College, Oxford RO B E RT G . H OY L A N D
Trinity Hall, Cambridge S A R A H WA I D L E R
81. O’Loughlin has written about these and many other theological and exegetical issues in a
number of stimulating writings. See, for example, ‘Adomnán and Arculf ’, p. 140 (on sepulchrum
and monumentum), and Adomnán and the Holy Places, chs. 5 (exegesis) and 6 (theology, with
pp. 125–33 looking at the link between tombs and resurrection).

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English Historical Review Vol. CXXIX No.

Adomnán’s De Locis Sanctis and the Seventh-

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The clearest indication of the dependence of the DLS on the account

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33. DLS, ed. Meehan, pp. 96–8.

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immobilisation, which is present in the second of the DLS miracles,

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St Cross College, Oxford RO B E RT G . H OY L A N D

Trinity Hall, Cambridge S A R A H WA I D L E R

EHR, CXXIX. 539 (August. 2014)

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