(Feature Photo: Inistioge St. Columbkille's Well in Ireland; Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

 

550 

Sometime in the sixth century an ivory diptych is made (an object with two flat plates which form a pair, often attached by a hinge, ancient world notebooks used these to protect the wax writing inside when you closed it) is made and is carved with an archangel: one of the great masterpieces of Byzantine art, the first panel (the second panel is lost) has an inscription that says “Receive these, and having learnt the cause…” and it would have continued on the other lost panel, the angel is holding a T-O globe, it is now held in the British Museum (Collections of the British Museum pg. 125)

 

556

RULERS & ROYALTY: Bruide Mac Maelchon becomes the first historical king of the Picts in Scotland (r. 556 - 584) (The Druids, pg. 85)

 

563 

RULERS & ROYALTY: Bruide Mac Maelchon is the first historical king of the Picts in Scotland 

Columba is exiled from Ireland to the small island of Iona (I-Shona, the Isle of the Saints) off the western coast of Scotland with twelve companions and founds a monastery (531 years after Jesus’ resurrection); This is part of the Dàl Raida settlement which has been made in Caledonia during the fourth century AD by Irish settlers (The Druids, pg. 84)

 

570 

Islam’s prophet Mohammed is born around this year

 

574

A convention is held in Druim Cett (County Derry) in Ireland, at which laws are passed to regulate Bardic schools, which shows they were firmly established at this point (Ireland is one of the very few countries where there are schools set up outside the purview of the ecclesiastic schools; Most schooling at this time is done within the church, so this makes Ireland very unique; These lay or Bardic schools have persisted from a much earlier time, when they were Druidic schools; At this time, they are still learning incantations, and are listed as poetic methods of divination to find a thief, achieve long life, or to punish anyone who refused to pay the poet, but in pagan times, these incantations had been used as a method of exerting a Druid's authority; Dallán Forgaill is ard-ollamh or chief bard of Ireland (flourished from 550-600 according to Encyclopedia Britannica) (The Druids, pg. 158) 

 

577

Waroc'h II becomes the king of the Bretons (r. 577-594), he will successfully unite Brittany (in France) against the attacks of the Franks (Germanic people); Some of his Champions shave their heads with the Druidic tonsure (Druids shave their heads just as the monks of the Catholic Church will later do, however more than just the priestly caste of the Celts shave their heads in this way; In other parts of the world, a tonsure is made as a distinctive mark of the warrior caste as well as the intellectual or priestly caste) (The Druids, pg. 81-82)