Nechtan mac Der-Ilei

Nechtan mac Der-Ilei or Nechtan mac Dargarto (Old Irish Nechtan mac Der-Ilei or Nechtan mac Dargarto) (before 686-732) was king of the Picts 706-724 and 728-729. He succeeded his brother Bridei in 706. He is associated with significant religious reforms in Pictland. He abdicated in 724 in favour of his nephew and became a monk. In 728 and 729 he fought in a four-sided war for the Pictish throne.

It has been argued that Nechtan son of Derile should be identified with the Nechtan son of Dargart mentioned in the Annals of Ulster in 710. Dargart is taken to be the Dargart mac Finguine who died in 686, a member of the Cenél Comgaill kindred of Dál Riata. On this basis, and because Bede mentions that the Picts allowed for matrilineal succession in exceptional cases, it is thought that Der-Ilei was Nechtan's mother.

Other brothers and half-brothers of Nechtan and Bridei would include Ciniod or Cináed, killed in 713, Talorgan son of Drest, a half-brother or foster-brother, held captive by Nechtan in the same year, and perhaps Congas son of Dar Gart who died in 712. A number of later figures, including the Talorgan son of Drest, king of Atholl, executed by drowning in 739, and the Talorgan son of Congus, defeated in 731 and likewise drowned in 734, and his unnamed brother, may be associated with Nechtan's family.

Bede claimed that relations between the Picts and Northumbria were peaceful in his time. However, the Annals of Ulster for 711 report a Pictish defeat at Northumbrian hands, "in Mag Manonn", presumably in the area around Stirling where the kingdom of Manau had once been, where Finnguine son of Deile Roith was killed. Nothing more is known of Finnguine, but as he bore Nechtan's paternal grandfather's name, it may be that he was a kinsman of the Pictish king.

Bede's Ecclesiastical History includes a letter from Abbot Ceolfrid of the twin monasteries of Monkwearmouth and Jarrow to Nechtan on the subject of the dating of Easter, sent around 710. Ceolfrid assumes his correspondent is an educated man, going some way to justifying Thomas Owen Clancy's description of Nechtan as a philosopher king. Nechtan was convinced by Ceolfrid, and the expulsion of clergy associated with Iona in 717 may be related to the controversy over Easter and the manner of tonsures; equally it may have been entirely unrelated. Often portrayed as a struggle between the so-called Celtic Church and Rome, it is evident that the majority of Irish clerics had long accepted the Roman method of calculating the date of Easter.

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