Dúnchad of Iona

Saint Dúnchad mac Cinn Fáelad, also called Donatus, was the eleventh abbot of Iona and reposed in 717. He is commemorated on 24 March, and in Donegal on 25 May. He is regarded as patron of Killclocair, in the archdiocese centred at Armagh, and of sailors.

He was the son of Cenn Fáelad and the grandson of Máel Coba, of the Cenél Conaill. Most of the abbots of Iona came from minor branches of this kindred, but Dúnchad came from the ruling line: he was the grandson of one High King of Ireland and the nephew of two others, Cellach and Conall. One source says he descended from Conall Gulban.

He is first heard of as abbot of Killochuir, on the south-⁠eastern coast of Ulster (perhaps Killough, County Down). Later he became abbot of Iona, but the sources differ on the dates. The Annals of Ulster first mention him in that office in the year 707, while another source places him as abbot from 710 until his death. Conamail is said to have been abbot of Iona between 704 and 710, and Dúnchad may have been his coadjutor or may have been elected in opposition to him. In the same way, Dorbbéne in 713 and Fáelchú in 716 may have been elected in opposition to Dúnchad. It has also been suggested that some of these men were coadjutors, priors or even bishops at Iona.

Dorbbéne became abbot in 713 but died five months later, on 25 October 713. Leslie Toke suggests that Dorbbéne may have been a coadjutor to Dúnchad, a prior or even a bishop. Thomas Owen Clancy thinks that this interruption of Dúnchad's abbacy may reflect tensions between factions of monks at Iona who disagreed about the dating of Easter.

In Dúnchad's time the community of Iona accepted Roman usages: the tonsure and the calculation of Easter, and according to some sources also the rule of Saint Benedict. The final agreement took place at the urging of Saint Ecgberht of Northumbria, a priest educated in Ireland, who successfully persuaded the monks to give up the Celtic Easter and tonsure. For Bede the Venerable this was the final sign of unity within diversity, the main theme of his Ecclesiastical History of the English People.

When Dúnchad died in 717, Fáelchú took his place. In that same year King Nechtan mac Derile, the Gaelic ruler of the Picts, is said to have expelled the clergy of Iona from Pictland. The saint is remembered chiefly in Ireland and Scotland.