Note (return) — Chapter III
Reading edition
In 793 it is on record that the Vikings first sacked Iona, originally the centre of Columban Christianity but then Romanised, and they repeated these raids on its shrine again and again within the next fifteen years. Constantine thereupon removed its clergy to Dunkeld, "and there set up in his own kingdom an ecclesiastical capital for Scots and Picts alike,"1 as a step towards the political union of his realm, which Norse sea-power had completely severed from the original home of the Scots in Ulster.