Illaunloughan Island Monastery

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Illaunloughan Island Monastery was an early Christian monastery in present-day Ireland ( County Kerry ), located on the small island of Illaunloughan Island ( Irish Oileán Locháin , German "Locháns Island" ) in the Portmagee Channel between Valentia Island and the Iveragh Peninsula near the port city of Portmagee .

history

In the martyrology of Óengus of Tallaght (written around 830), two saints with the name Lochán are mentioned, one of which is probably connected with the monastic settlement of the Iroschottic Church on the small island. Extensive archaeological excavations took place there from 1992 to 1995, which resulted in the description of two phases of monastic life. The first phase of settlement took place from the 7th to the 8th century. The foundations of a wooden oratory, three round huts and burials of male people east of the oratory and under a later stone reliquary can be assigned to this period. The second phase lasted from the 8th to the 9th century. The new building of a stone oratory, the reliquary and a stone beehive hut could be assigned to her. The execution of the hut and the oratory are related to the surviving structures of the monastery on Skellig Michael . The weathered lower parts of these three structures are still preserved today. In the reliquary, human bones translocated in two stone cists could be excavated. These were transferred here from previous burials. In addition, burials were excavated which could be dated from the High Middle Ages to the 19th century and which had never disrupted the area of ​​the reliquary. This is how strong the local tradition was in the minds of the population. Monastic life on Illaungloughan Island is believed to have ceased after the 9th century. Due to a lack of written sources, archaeologists suspect the reason for the remote settlement to be a pilgrimage station on the way to the Skellig Michael monastery. Even today, the excursion boats leave from the opposite port of Portmagee to this outermost outpost of Christianity in Ireland.

literature

  • Jenny White Marshall, Claire Walsh: Illaunloughan Island. An early medieval monastery in County Kerry. Bray 2005.

Web links

Coordinates: 51 ° 53 ′  N , 10 ° 22 ′  W