Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/216

 I O N I N are richly carved with Runic knots and various emblematic devices and fanciful scrolls. The original form of the name lona was Hy, Hii, or I, the Irish for island. By Adamnan in his Life of St Columba it is called loua insula, and the present name lona originated in some transcriber mistaking the u in loua for an n. It also received the name of Hu-colum-kill (Icolmkill), that is, the island of Columba of the Cell, while by the Highlanders it has been known as Innis nan Druidhneah, the island of the Druids. It was in the year 563 that Columba, after leaving the shores of Ireland, entered the creek of lona now&quot; known as Port-a-churraich, the port of the coracle, and, having satisfied himself of the suitability of the island for his purpose, founded there his famous monastery. The island was then inhabited by a Pictish population, but it has been disputed whether Columba obtained the grant of it from Conall, king of Dalriada, or from Brude, king of the Picts. Columba was buried in lona, but between 802 and 807 his remains were transferred from it to the church of St Patrick in the county Down, Ireland. For a long time the mona stery of lona held the supremacy among all the monasteries and churches founded by Columba and his disciples. It was several times plundered and burned by the Norsemen, and its inmates on more than one occasion put to death. The Western Isles having come into the possession of Scotland in 1072, the monastery ot lona was rebuilt and endowed by Queen Margaret. In 1092 they were, however, ceded to Magnus Barefoot of Norway, who after the re newal of the cession by Edgar in 1097 visited lona and allowed the people to retain their possessions. The diocese of the Isles, founded about 838, of which lona was the seat, was united by Magnus to the bishopric of Man, and made subject to the archbishopric of Drontheim in Norway. A new monastery as well as a nunnery was founded by the Benedictines in 1203, and the Benedictine order either absorbed or expelled the Celtic community. About 1507 the island again became the seat of the bishopric of the Isles. The monastery was demolished in accordance with the Act passed by the Convention of Estates in 1561. For many centuries it was much fre quented on account of its facilities for learning, and, as may be sup posed, became after the death of Columba a great resort of pilgrims, many of whom came in order to die on the island that their remains might be interred in its sacred soil ; while the remains of persons illustrious in rank or in piety were brought to it for burial from all parts of northern Europe. The site of the old monastery was about a quarter of a mile north from the present ruins. See, in addition to the article COLUMBA, and the old authorities therein cited, Montalembert s Monks of the Weft, vol. iii. ; The Cathedra/, or Abbey Church of lona, by Bishop Ewing, 180C; lona, by the Duke of Argyll, 1870; Skene s Celtic Scotland, vol. ii, 1877 ; and Sculptured Monuments in lona and the Wat Iliyli- lands, by James Drumraond, 1881. IONIA, in ancient geography, was the name given to a portion of the west coast of Asia Minor, adjoining the ^Egean Sea, and bounded by Lydia towards the east. Like the adjoining districts of ^Eolis on the north and Doris on the south, it was not a country or region marked out by any natural boundaries, but merely consisted of a strip of land near the coast, of comparatively small breadth, which, together with the adjacent islands, was occupied by Greeks of the Ionic race, and was thus permanently distinguished from the interior district, which was inhabited by the Lydians. According to the tradition universally received among the Greeks, the cities of Ionia were founded by emigrants from Greece on the other side of the ^Egean, and their settlement was connected with the legendary history of the Ionic race in Attica and other parts of European Greece, by the statement that the colonists were led by Neleus and Androclus, the two sons of Codrus, the last king of Athens. In accordance with this view a definite date was assigned to the Ionic migration, as it was called by later chronologers, who placed it one hundred and forty years after the Trojan war, or sixty years after the return of the Heraclidte into the Peloponnese. It is hardly necessary to remark that no reliance can be placed upon this chronological state ment ; and it is altogether improbable that the colonization of the whole of this important district took place at the same period. All analogy would lead us to suppose that the foundation of the different cities which ultimately constituted the Ionic League took place at different times, and was perhaps spread over a long period of time. It is, however, not improbable that the great Dorian invasion of the Peloponnese, which gave rise to such extensive changes in the population of European Greece, may have given the first impulse to the migration of a large part of the Ionian inhabitants to the opposite shores of the J^gean. Nor is there anything unlikely in the fact that a body so composed should have put themselves under the command of a leader or oekist from Athens, which was generally looked upon as the special representative of the Ionian race. 1 But Herodotus himself tells us (i. 146) that they were very far from being of unmixed Ionic descent, and comprised settlers from many different tribes and cities of Greece (a fact indicated also by the local traditions of the different cities), as well as by intermarriage with the native races whom they found in possession of the country. A striking proof of this was to be found in the fact that so late as the time of the historian several distinct dialects were spoken by the inhabitants of different cities within the limits of so restricted an area. Some modern critics have supposed that the population of this part of Asia was originally of Ionic race, and that the settlers from Greece found the country in the possession of a kindred people. But no trace is found in any ancient writers of such a fact, or of the distinction established by these modern scholars between the so-called Old lonians and New lonians. All that we know upon anything like historical evidence is that at the earliest period when we liear of any Greek population as existing on the east coasts of the ^Egean we find there a large group of cities, distinct in dialect and institutions from those to the north and south of them, and generally regarded both by themselves and their neighbours as derived by direct immigration from the people who bore the name of lonians in European Greece. Of the period of their settlement in Asia we have no trustworthy evidence ; but it appears to have been anterior to the rise of the Lydian monarchy, which gradu ally became their most formidable neighbour. The cities comprised under this name in historical times were twelve in number, an arrangement copied as it was supposed from the constitution of the Ionian cities in Greece, which had originally occupied the territory in the north of the Peloponnese subsequently held by the Achaians. These were (proceeding from south to north) Miletus, Myus, Priene, Ephesus, Colophon, Lebedus, Teo?, Erythra3, Clazomenaj, and Phocrea, together with the two important islands of Samos and Chios. Smyrna, which subsequently assumed so prominent a position among the cities of this part of Asia, was originally an ^Eolic colony, but was afterwards occupied by a band of lonians from Colophon, and became thenceforth an Ionian city, an event which had taken place before the time of Herodotus. But at what period it was admitted as a member of the Ionian League we have no information. The cities above enumerated unquestionably formed a kind of league or confederacy among themselves, of which their participation in the Pan-Ionic festival was the distin guishing characteristic. But, like the Amphictyonic League in Greece itself, this was rattier of a sacred than a political character ; every city, as usual among the Greeks, enjoyed absolute autonomy, and, though common interests often united them for a common political object, they never formed a real confederacy like that of the Achaians or Boeotians ; and the advice of Thales of Miletus to combine in a more intimate political union found no approval among them. The territory thus occupied was of small extent, not exceeding 90 geographical miles in direct length from north to south, with a breadth varying from 20 to 30 miles, but to this must be added the remarkable peninsular promon tory of Mimas, together with the two large islands. So 1 Concerning the Ionian race in Greece, the reader is referred to the article GREECE, vol. xi. p. 90.