‘Emigrants’ and ‘Exiles’: migration in the early Irish and Scottish church

Abstract

A central theme in both Irish and Scottish migration studies is the distinction between voluntary and forced migration, which is highlighted in the titles of major books in the field by the contrasting terms ‘emigrants’, or ‘adventurers’, and ‘exiles’.1 However, it has received relatively little attention with regard to the medieval period.2 Migration was central to the process by which the early Irish Church established itself in Scotland, most notably on Iona, in the sixth century. This article is concerned mainly with migration between Ireland and Scotland as evidenced by Adomnán's Life of Columba – ‘a source of the first importance for the early history of Ireland and Scotland’.3 In particular it is concerned with how the distinction between ‘emigrants’ and ‘exiles’ was understood, in both secular and sacred contexts, and it finds that in the early medieval period, c.300–800, as distinct from later periods, Irish migrants to Scotland and Irish and Scottish migrants further afield were thought of less as ‘exiles’ than as ‘emigrants’ or ‘adventurers’