Columba’s Passing
Archived: 14 November 2026
Abstract
Year FrameThe annalistic material does not present 597 CE as a continuous story. In the Four Masters, the year appears as a formal heading followed by brief notices; in Inisfallen, the same year is likewise reduced to short entries; and in Ulster and Tigernach the notices are arranged under year headings that sometimes disagree by a year or more. The secure point is that the surviving texts preserve a cluster of notices placed by their compilers under 597 or its immediate equivalents, not a coordinated narrative of one political season.The same cluster also shows that the annalists did not always
