the most famous of his companions. But Queen Margaret died in
A.D. 1092, and therefore any building which she erected must date very
nearly five hundred years after Columba's death; that is to say, the
most ancient building which exists upon Iona must be separated in age
from Columba's time by as many centuries as those which now separate us
from Edward III. But St. Odhrain's Chapel has this great interest--that
in all probability it marks the site of the still humbler church of wood
and wattles in which Columba worshipped."[194] Shortly afterwards the
island passed into the possession of Magnus Barefoot, King of Norway,
and in 1099 the old order culminated in the death of Abbot Duncan, the
last of the old abbots. Under the bishopric of Man and the Isles, the
monastery became subject to the Bishop of Drontheim till 1156, when
Somerled won it, and once more restored the connection between Iona and
Ireland by placing the monastery under the care of the Abbot of Derry.
In 1164 the community was represented by the priest, the lector, the
head of the Culdees, and the Disertach or the head of the disert for the
reception of pilgrims.[195] Somerled appears to have rebuilt the ruined
monastery on a larger scale, and about 1203 the Lord of the Isles
(Reginald) adopted the policy of the Scottish kings, and founded at Iona
a monastery of Benedictine monks (Tyronenses), and at the same time a
nunnery for Benedictine nuns, of which Beatrice, sister of Reginald, was
first prioress. It is of this Benedictine monastery and nunnery that the
present ruins are the remains, and they were formerly connected by a
causeway which extended from the nunnery to the monastery. After a
struggle, the Culdees seem to have conformed to the new order of
Benedictines, and the head of the Culdees was represented by the Prior
of Iona, whom we afterwards find in the monastery. Iona was suffragan to
the Bishop of Man and the Isles till 1431, when the Abbot of Iona made
obedience to the Bishop of Dunkeld. In 1498, the Isles were made
suffragan to St. Andrews; in 1506 they passed back to the care of the
Bishop of the Isles; and from that date till the Reformation the abbey
church became the cathedral church of the diocese. In 1648 Charles I.
granted the island to Archibald, Marquis of Argyll,[196] and it still
belongs to his descendant, the Duke of Argyll. The diocese contained
forty-four parishes.

Surrounding the Chapel of St. Oran is a very ancient churchy