In the spring of 612 AD war broke out between Austrasia and Burgundy. The Austrasian army was first defeated at Toul and then annihilated at Tolbiac. King Theudebert fled across the Rhine but was captured for his brother Theuderich by Count Bertechar. By order of his mother Brunhilde he was committed to a monastery and beheaded shortly afterwards. The death of Theudebert meant that Theuderich was now King of Austrasia and its German provinces as well as Burgundy and, as the Queen mother set up her court at Metz, Columbanus decided that it was time for him to move on.
Among others, Gall was not anxious to go and the resultant separation of the two great saints of Ireland was not effected without acrimony. When Gall threw himself at Columbanus’s feet, saying that he was not able for the journey, Columbanus replied, “Brother, I know that now it seems a heavy burden for you to suffer further fatigue for my sake, nevertheless this I enjoin in you before I go so that so long as I live in the body you do not dare to celebrate Communion.” This seems to us today as cruel a stricture from Columbanus as that dealt to his mother so many years before, but it underlines that singleness of purpose which was for Columbanus the stamp of his greatness, for we know that at heart he was really a tender and kind man. His personal feelings, however, were not allowed to stand in the way of his duty to God.
And so, although by now more than 70 years of age, Columbanus crossed the snow-covered Alps by the St Gothard’s Pass and made his way to the court of the Lombard king, Agilulph, whose queen, Theodelinda, had become famous throughout Europe for her beauty and intelligence. At this time the Lombards, including King Agilulph, were Arians although Queen Theodelinda, was a devout Christian. It is thought that due to her influence the Arian King received Columbanus and his companions with great kindness and consideration and they were able to begin a new mission among the half Christian population of Lombardy.
A place of settlement was, therefore, the first prerequisite and a man named Jucundus reminded the king that there was a suitable place at Bobbio, a ruined church once dedicated to St Peter. This was a fertile and salubrious district near the Trebbia. There, by the grace of God, was built in the Valley of the Appenines a monastery whose name will never be forgotten by those who follow the Way of the Lord – Bobbio the Beautiful. The Bobbio missal preserves a specimen of the liturgy in use in the early Irish Church and is of obvious Bangor origin.
The holy Columbanus lived but one year after the foundation of Bobbio, but the life of the great man was complete for the Bangor Rule had been given to Europe and the world and Bangor had indeed become a Light to the Gentiles and a city set on a hill. During his last days Columbanus’s thoughts returned to Gall, the only survivor of that band who had accompanied him from Bangor, a constant and faithful companion over half of Europe whom he had silenced because his obedience had not been to death. On his deathbed, therefore, the great man ordered that the staff on which he head been leaning while travelling through the great mountain ranges of Europe should be taken to Gall as a symbol of forgiveness.
And so the saint died, to the great grief of his companions, on the eleventh day before the Kalends of December, which is to say, Sunday 23 November, in the year of our Lord 615, probably in the seventy-third year of his age. He was buried beneath the High Altar of that place. Some time afterwards his remains were enclosed in a stone coffin and are still preserved in the old monastic church at Bobbio, where I have visited him regularly; firstly with the Farset Youth Project, when we made a video on The Steps of Columbanus with Cardinal Tomas O Fiaich and Archbishop Robin Eames, and also with my friends Edmund and Kathleen Irvine, the parents of young Edmund (Ed: i.e. Eddie Irvine, formerly the Formula 1 racing driver). Later they called to see the Bangor Antiphonary in the Ambrosian Library in Milan.
It is surely not too much to say that Ireland never sent a greater son than Columbanus to do the work of God in foreign lands. For centuries his influence remained dominant in France and northern Italy. His character was certainly not faultless. He was consumed with a ruthless zeal in the service of his master, Jesus, which was at once the secret of his immense power and the source of his mistakes. It is a measure of his strength of character, however, that when Queen Brunhilde, his constant enemy, was captured by the army of Neustria under Clothair and cruelly done to death following utter public humiliation Columbanus refused a personal invitation from King Clothair to return to Luxeuil from Bobbio.
G.S.M. Walker in his edition of the “Works of St Columbanus” writes of him, “A character so complex and so contrary, humble and haughty, harsh and tender, pedantic and impetuous by turns, had as its guiding and unifying pattern the ambition of sainthood. All his activities were subordinate to this one end and with the self-sacrifice that can seem so close to self-assertion he worked out his sole salvation by the wondrous pathway that he knew. He was a missionary through circumstance, a monk by vocation, a contemplative, too frequently driven to action by the world, a pilgrim on the road to Paradise.”
To be continued
© Pretani Associates 2014