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Iona’s archetype? A concrete replica of the Cross of St John speaks
The Isle of Iona, located off the south-western coast of Mull in the Inner Hebrides, has been described by the poet Robert Crawford (b. 1959) as a place where ‘spirit, imagination, and physical exertion mingle’. Iona’s assemblage of early medieval carved stones and grave slabs constitute a special part of the island’s magic, forming a collection of early medieval art for which there are few parallels in the rest of Europe. The importance of one cross in particular – the 8th-century Cross of St John – has only recently been realised, in part because of a study of its concrete replica, as Current Archaeology's Chris Catling reveals.
The Isle of Iona is one of the most atmospheric and authentic early Christian sites in western Europe. It was here that St Columba (AD 521-597) founded a monastery in AD 563 that served as the base for a growing network of religious settlements that spread Christian culture across Pictland and as far to the south-east as the island of Lindisfarne. That early monastery suffered repeated Viking raids, starting c.AD 794, and most of the monks moved back to the monastery at Kells in Ireland in AD 804, taking the relics of St Columba with them, along with the renowned Book of Kells which had been partially completed by that date in the island’s scriptorium. Even so, a monastic presence continue
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