January 19, 608 - Martyr's Bay

The Isle of Iona, located just off the west coast of Scotland, has been a prominent location for religious activity since the 500s AD when St. Columba left Ireland to establish a monastery on the island. While this monastery thrived initially, Vikings murdered sixty-eight priests and destroyed the monastery on January 19, 608 AD in an attack now known as Martyr’s Bay. As a result, the remaining priests fled the region and established monasteries in Ireland, Belgium, France, and Switzerland. Pictured here is the inside of the church built in the 1200s (and reconstructed in 1899) on the original site of Columba’s monastery.