Island of the Inner Hebrides with long ecclesiastical and political connections to the medieval Kingdom of Mann and the Isles.

Manx antiquarian writers repeatedly used the monuments of Iona when comparing the material culture of Mann with that of the western islands. A note in the first volume of the Manx Society observed that the single-masted ship shown on medieval Manx royal seals had parallels on the monuments of the Lords of the Isles at Iona, including the tomb of Lachlan MacKinnon dated 1489.

Iona also appears in discussion of the medieval diocese of Sodor and Man. A nineteenth-century account described the bishopric as embracing Mann and the Southern Isles during the period of Norwegian rule. After political control of Mann and the Hebrides separated in the later fourteenth century, the same source states that the clergy and people of Mann and those of Iona and the Western Isles chose separate bishops.

The Manx Society account dated this division to around 1380, when England controlled Mann while Scotland held the Hebrides. It associated the western bishopric thereafter with the title Bishop of the Isles, while the Manx see retained the title Sodor and Man.

These explanations reflect nineteenth-century reconstruction of a complicated medieval ecclesiastical history, but the surviving comparison shows how closely Iona and Mann were understood within the same western maritime world.