Saint Columban

Saint Columban was an Irish monk, abbot, and missionary who, at the turn of the sixth and seventh centuries, preached the Gospel and founded monasteries in Gaul and in northern Italy. The most famous of them are Luxeuil and Bobbio. The Church commemorates him on November 23.

He was born in the province of Leinster in Ireland. Benedict XVI says that this was around the year 543, but the exact date is not known. He studied under Abbot Sinell at Cleenish, and at about the age of twenty he entered the monastery of Bangor, governed by Abbot Comgall. He spent many years there in prayer and study, and there he was ordained a priest.

He was about fifty when, following the Irish ideal of pilgrimage for Christ, he left the island with twelve companions. Around the year 590 they reached Gaul, and the king of the Franks gave them the ruins of the Roman fortress of Annegray. Their poor life, sustained by the work of their own hands, drew pilgrims, penitents, and young men asking to be admitted to the community. Soon a second monastery arose at Luxeuil, and then a third at Fontaine.

Columban spent almost twenty years at Luxeuil. There he wrote a rule for monks and a penitential book, through which private, repeated confession, with a penance set according to the gravity of the sin, spread on the Continent. These innovations, together with the Irish way of reckoning the date of Easter, set him at odds with the local bishops. He asked Popes Gregory the Great and Boniface IV that he might keep the Irish tradition. In a letter to the first of them, written around the year 600, he spoke of the Church “of all Europe.”

When he sharply rebuked King Theuderic II for adultery, he made enemies at court, and in 610 he was banished from Luxeuil together with the Irish monks. The ship on which they were being sent back to Ireland ran aground close to shore, and the monks traveled up the Rhine and settled in the region of Bregenz on Lake Constance to preach the Gospel to the Alemanni. When Columban moved on, his disciple Gall stayed behind, and from his hermitage the Abbey of Saint Gall later grew.

With most of his disciples Columban crossed the Alps into Italy, where the Lombard court received him kindly. The Church there was torn by Arianism and schism, so Columban wrote against the Arians and, in a letter to Pope Boniface IV, pleaded for the restoration of unity. In 612 or 613 he received from King Agilulf land at Bobbio, and there he founded his last monastery, which later became famous for its library. He died at Bobbio in 615; Benedict XVI gives November 23 as the day of his death.

Columban’s relics rest in the crypt of the abbey basilica at Bobbio. He has been venerated as a saint since the early Middle Ages, from a time when no formal process of canonization yet existed; his life was written as early as the seventh century by the monk Jonas of Bobbio. Benedict XVI devoted a catechesis to him on June 11, 2008, and called him one of the Fathers of Europe.