Fís Adamnáin

Fís Adamnáin. Irish title for The Vision of Adamnán, a narrative description of the Christian afterlife that survives in three separate texts. Although attributed to the 7th-century Adamnán, tenth abbot of Iona, the oldest surviving text in the Book of the Dun Cow [Lebor na hUidre] is not earlier than the 10th century. On the midsummer feast of St John the Baptist, Adamnán's soul goes forth from his body (see SHAMANISM) and he is brought to heaven and hell. Guided by a guardian angel, Adamnán's soul crosses a wall of fire that surrounds the afterlife, but is not harmed by it. The Lord of Heaven, who lies beyond the human power to describe, is constantly praised by chanting angels and archangels. Between heaven and hell is a dark and dismal land where there is no punishment. The vision of hell includes descriptions of punishments suffered by those guilty of particular sins. Beyond hell lies a wall of fire, seven times more horrible, inhabited only by demons until the Last Judgement. Many commentators have noted the influence of the apocryphal Book of Enoch as well as an anticipation of Dante's Divina Commedia. Whitley Stokes provides text and translation in the hard-to-find Fís Adamnáin (Simla, India, 1870); cf. Ernst Windish, Irische Texte, ser. i (Leipzig, 1880), 165–96; Joseph Vendryes, Revue Celtique, 33 (1912), 349 ff.; summary translation, Myles Dillon, Early Irish Literature (Chicago, 1948), 133–9. See also Charles S. Boswell, An Irish Precursor of Dante (London, 1908); St John Seymour, ‘The Vision of Adamnán’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 37(C) (1927), 304–12.