I wrote my senior thesis at the University of Tennessee under Dr. Matthew Gillis in a course entitled “The Merovingian Game of Thrones”. We were tasked with selecting a historical figure of the Merovingian period, providing a biographical sketch of that figure, and meaningfully evaluating their character. My interest in Celtic studies led me to choose Columbanus, a Gaelic missionary who traveled from Ireland to evangelize in Merovingian Gaul.

Merovingian Meddling: The Hiberno-Frankish Mission of St. Columbanus

Sailing from Ireland, the sixth-century missionary and ascetic exile Columbanus plunged into an unseen, sword-crossed continent marred by bloodshed and constant upheaval. His years in Bangor Abbey had armed him with austere monastics and a penchant for doctrine that he brought ever with him into this new realm; he chastised kings, exhorted popes and built monasteries in Gaul and Italy, braving the cutthroat politics of the time in stalwart defense of his religious convictions. The following essay will present a holistic narrative of the life and works of Columbanus—with emphasis on his dealings with the Merovingian Franks—taking into account historical bias and possibilities, and ultimately derive the conclusion that he was centrally motivated by a genuine conviction to defend the virtues he encountered and embraced as an idealistic young man in Ireland, tracing his difficult decisions and open criticism of higher authorities as examples of this. Ultimately, Columbanus resented what he viewed as infractions against these convictions and, worse, their presence in the upper echelons of society. His apparent insolence toward authorities can be read, from his view, as unwavering righteousness.

Birth and early writings

Establishing clear specifics about Columbanus’s earliest origins proves difficult. He was likely born to a landowning family in Leinster—where the hagiographer Jonas of Bobbio places him in his Vita Sancti Columbani—with the name Colmán (the Gaelic form of Columba)¹; however, unlike the contemporary Hiberno-Scottish missionary Columba of Iona, he does not appear in early Irish genealogies.² Columbanus’s family’s status is implied by Jonas’s assertion that he from “boyhood . . . devote[d] himself to the learning of the liberal arts,” likely with local, non-monastic instructors; however, it is unclear whether Jonas is referring to spiritual or worldly aristocracy in ascribing “noble maturity” to him.³ Jonas attributes Columbanus’s original turn toward theological study from the less spiritually oriented education of his youth to a dramatic encounter with an anchoress, who chastised the young Irishman—plagued with the “fatal darts” of lust and described as “attractive to all”—and exhorted him to pursue a “superior” kind of exile: permanently leaving one’s native country in pursuit of holier purposes.⁴ In Jonas’s narrative, this encounter planted a will deep within Columbanus to pursue that ultimate exile, and he would continue to restlessly seek it until he had at last found it on the continent.

Thence, Columbanus left his family’s home and land—“presumably in his late teens or early twenties”⁵—against the “wailing” of his mother to seek out holy men to guide him on a path to ultimate self-exile.⁶ The Vita Sancti Columbani’s depiction of the protesting of Columbanus’s mother, genuine or not, may have been a narrative allusion by Jonas to the theologian Jerome’s letter to Heliodorus, which described a scene of parents prostrating and begging for their child to remain, but that child leaving anyway, for “to be cruel in this case is a kind of piety.”⁷ Indeed, for an attractive man of status to leave home against his mother’s wishes in the pursuit of spiritual devotion would doubtlessly accentuate Columbanus’s inveterate spirituality. Still, whether it was for or against his parents’ wishes, Columbanus would continuously seek out higher and more demanding ecclesiastical stations in the coming years, and thus his departure became the first of several demonstrations in the life of Columbanus of the missionary’s immovable commitment to his inner convictions.

Columbanus first sought out “a holy man named Sinilis”—identified with Sinall mac Mianiach, a scholarly, disciplinarian abbot of Claen Inis (Cleenish)—to commence his spiritual journey.⁸ His time with Sinilis and his education while younger indicate Columbanus’s early familiarity with biblical texts and a wide range of others, including classical works, apocrypha and theological treatises.⁹ Jonas writes that this was a highly productive period for him, asserting that Columbanus produced “many” works on singing and teaching, including a now-lost but “polished” work on the Psalms made during his adolescentia.¹⁰ Throughout this time, he also developed an intimate familiarity with Celtic liturgy that attested to his thorough Irish learning.¹¹ However, Columbanus soon¹² sought out monastic life as the next natural step in his journey of religious life and study, and his work with Sinilis came to an end. Continuing to seek out the ‘superior’ exile touted by the anchoress, he identified the natural next step as monkhood and set off to the stony coast of Northeastern Ireland to attain it.

Teacher at Bangor Abbey

The young Irishman was thus introduced to the inner echelons of Christian life in Ireland by Comgall, founder and abbot of the monastery at Bennchor (Bangor) in the Ulaid, a Gaelic confederal kingdom of the period. Columbanus’s traveling from his native Leinster to the Ulaid of northeastern Ireland may be explained by its prominent educators, including the bishop Uinnianus, whom Columbanus later cited.¹³ Here, known to his fellows as Columba the Younger,¹⁴ Columbanus became an integral member of the increasingly established Irish monastic community of scholarship and participated in the austere conditions and fasting of the Irish tradition. Wettinus’s ninth-century Vita Sancti Galli maintained that he was the magister of the monastic school and instructed young monks.¹⁵ Works convincingly attributed to him indicate his “familiarity with Rufinus’s Latin translation of Gregory of Nazianus’s Orationes, Virgil, the Gospel of Nicodemus, and Cassian’s Institutes, as well as Sulpicius Severus, Venantius Fortunatus, and Jerome.”¹⁶

It is likely that Columbanus first became interested in the calculation of Easter during his teaching at Bangor Abbey. When he later wrote “scathingly of the Victorian Easter cycle”, he insisted that “the Irish experts (nostris magistris et Hibernicis antiquis philosophis) . . . laughed at it.”¹⁷ He had abundant time and resources to do this; in addition to being surrounded by a cocktail of famed teachers, Jonas notes that Columbanus spent “many years” at Bangor’s abbey. When he inevitably felt the urge to go beyond monastic life in a mission abroad, Comgall viewed him as too “great a comfort” in the monastic life to lose.¹⁸ As Jonas would have it, though, Columbanus remained unwavering on the path to ascetic exile, never settling for the traditional repose of scholarship or monasticism. Narratively, this stems from Jonas’s description of Columbanus’s early encounter with the anchoress and her exhortation to Columbanus to seek exile as a solution to the lust and temptation of his younger life.

This sketch of Columbanus’s early life seems the natural interpretation of Jonas’s work and the general context of the period. However, an alternative theory has been suggested pertaining to Columbanus’s motives for taking up an ascetic, secluded lifestyle. Irish historian Dáibhí Ó Cróinín posits that the sudden departure of an attractive young man of status to a monastery was not entirely of his own will. Columbanus, he claims, could have had dynastic links to Cormac mac Diarmata, a regional ruler of the same period who was said to have granted Bangor “extensive properties”¹⁹; “that Columbanus placed himself under the rule of the chief Dál Fiatach monastery,” writes Ó Cróinín, “may be another reflection of that tightly knit world of Irish church and politics at the close of the sixth century, in which events in the political arena often had consequences in the religious sphere.”²⁰ Columbanus’s educated upbringing may indicate higher birth, and had he been viewed as a potential rival to Cormac’s ascendancy in Leinster, a monastic lifestyle may have been forced upon him. Further still, his permanent exile to the continent might have been merely an extension of this banishment. If Columbanus himself had been originally cast into a monastery as a political exile, it may serve as one explanation for his unflinching participation in the game of thrones some time later—Columbanus’s defiance of the Merovingians can be read as his doing what he was unable to in his native country when younger. Jonas’s description of Columbanus’s “noble maturity” may, in such a case, necessitate a more literal reading.

As Ó Cróinín contends, however, “there is no explicit reference by Jonas to Columbanus being of royal origin,” and such a conclusion is only historical conjecture.²¹ Still, regardless of which chronology correctly reflects Columbanus’s earliest background, the monk’s commitment to his work and beliefs remains steadfastly in its historical place. Ninth-century catalogs do indeed ascribe Jonas’s description of a pre-mission work on Psalms to Columbanus,²² and the missionary’s future travels in and beyond Gaul would demonstrate a passion for matters of even the minutiae of theological doctrine. The notion of Columbanus as a political exile is only a point of hypothesis and will repeatedly contrast with the deeds and themes to be presented regarding the nature of his ecclesiastical life.

Journey to and first deeds in Gaul

Columbanus was an accomplished monk and teacher with written works by the time he gave in to “the call to ‘peregrinate’ in the spirit of Abraham”²³; Jonas’s assertion that he departed for the continent at twenty years old is either a miscalculation, miswriting, early confusion with Columba of Iona—who departed for Scotland when Columbanus was at about that age²⁴—or perhaps even merely a modern misunderstanding of what Jonas meant to describe his ‘age in religion’. Altogether, it is more likely that he was in his forties when he set sail. With him were several companions who would accompany him until his ultimate expulsion from Luxeuil, the names of some of which were provided by Jonas’s later chapters chronicling their fates; the rest appear chiefly in “Irish ‘tradition.’”²⁵

Upon crossing the channel, Columbanus landed in southeast Brittany on “territory to the west of Nantes,” possibly at the Mor Bihan Gwened (“Gulf of Morbihan”), in 590–591.²⁶ His motives to arrive here may relate to the British ecclesiastic Gildas, for whom he had great respect and who may have settled in the region and become associated therewith in the 540s; this intention to visit Brittany in particular may also explain his several British companions.²⁷ “It may be significant,” reiterate O’Hara and Wood, “that he [Columbanus] stayed in a region that was later thought to include the final resting place of Gildas, St-Gildas de Rhuys.”²⁸ The missionary’s coming to the peninsula, therefore, may have been defined by context; so too may have his departure from it. Indeed, the region in which he landed would later be named Broërec, or ‘land of Waroch’, after the preeminent Breton ruler there upon Columbanus’s arrival, and Columbanus’s movement from Brittany to the Vosges coincided with a campaign against this ruler by Ebrachar, a general of King Guntram.²⁹ Jonas, however, remains ambiguous on the cause for their movement, simply noting that “finally, they decide to set foot on the fields of Gaul.”³⁰

Not long after they began their travels in Gaul, Columbanus attracted the attention of the Frankish kings. He was first approached by an invitation of Sigibert, who Jonas claims, after Columbanus appeared before him in his court, “began to request that Columbanus remain within Gallic territory and that he should not abandon them by going on to other peoples.”³¹ Columbanus obliged, but continued to demonstrate a desire to pursue the ascetic aspect of self-exile, seeking out a remote area—specifically “a ruined castrum at Annegray”³²—for his monastic community in 591–592. If one was to read Columbanus as a political exile from the Ulaid, one would imagine him to seek some form of leadership or political capital in this new community, portrayed by Jonas as saintliness through an affinity for people; however, Jonas instead reflects Columbanus’s sanctity through his hermitage. The Vita Columbani explains that he often retreated to a wolf-hemmed cave “more or less seven miles away from Annegray” to be in solitude.³³ His retreat from society thus forms a continual pattern of asceticism in Columbanus’s life, reflected in his background and monastic rules. Though the extremity of his hermitage from Annegray as depicted by Jonas is noteworthy—and the idea that he banished a bear from his cave to claim it is clearly exaggeration—there is no scholarly doubt on that Columbanus often preferred solitude to prolonged company.

Though Jonas makes no mention of it, it is almost certain that Columbanus was playing the Merovingian game of thrones as early as his works at Annegray. Indeed, “Annegray, Luxeuil and Fontaines would not have been possible had it not been for the intervention of the Agilolfing officials of the Vosges, and it is doubtful whether Columbanus, despite what Jonas would have us believe, could have secured the grant of land, resources and support of Childebert II solely on the merit of his reputation.”³⁴ What clear indications survive of his politicking indicate Columbanus’s resolute pursuit of his goals, unwavering in his monasticism; surely his very ability to settle at Annegray is an early indication of this will.

Columbanus in Luxeuil

Soon, the demands upon Columbanus’s wilderness community at Annegray became too great, and he was forced “to seek an alternative site: he found it in the substantial Roman ruins and spa waters of Luxeuil, some eight miles to the south-west,” which he viewed as having greater potential for the construction of a large monastery.³⁵ Thus, around 593, Luxeuil Abbey came to be. Jonas describes a veritable influx of new monks; “crowds of people from all over were attracted there by his fame and they desired to dedicate themselves to the religious life,” such that Luxeuil grew fast beyond even this new site and required a new one nearby at Fontaine. So began the most well-documented and prolific years in Columbanus’s life; not long after his arrival, he codified his Regulae, firmly bound to the Irish tradition he espoused at Bangor Abbey.

“After he had settled the community of monks in these places,” Jonas continues, “he divided his time between them, and filled with the Holy Spirit he set down a Rule which they were to follow.”³⁶ As aforementioned, these monastics at Luxeuil more firmly resembled the Celtic tradition as opposed to any continental one; private confession and penance, both frequent, were the chief means of absolution.³⁷ “The fact that Columbanus was himself an Irishman,” confirms Bar-Ilan University medievalist Yaniv Fox, “and that the nucleus of Luxovian monks was at least in part Irish is undeniable. The regular observances of Luxeuil have also been shown to reflect the harshness of the Irish monastic teachers, as opposed to the ‘Mediterranean moderation’ so characteristic of the rules of Augustine and Benedict.”³⁸ Columbanus’s “seemingly successful resistance to [the Burgundian hierarchy’s] pressures on him to abandon ‘Irish’ ways have, however, been taken as evidence that for many years he enjoyed the active support of King Theuderic II or of his grandmother Brunechildis,” in the assessment of the late medievalist Donald Bullough.³⁹ As stated, though, there were still pressures—Jonas makes no mention of it directly, but Columbanus’s leanings quickly came under scrutiny in East Francia.

Columbanus’s calculation of Easter was of particular interest, as he continued the Irish tradition of an 84-year cycle against the local churches’ use of Victorius of Aquitaine’s tables; he wrote directly to Pope Gregory I on the matter, rebuking Gallic church leaders and insisting on the correctness of his Easter calculations.⁴⁰ Here, as elsewhere, he demonstrated a confidence in convictions far outgoing what was expected of him; the arguments he wrote to the papacy were evidently quite voluntary, demonstrating his personal will to sour his own reputation in Gaul in pursuit of what he felt was right. Altogether, he wrote a three-book work to be sent to Rome on the issue of Easter calculations as well as letters and pamphlets discussing the subject.⁴¹ This prolific interest in doctrinal debate is the paramount contradiction of the hypothesis of Columbanus as a politically exiled monk, as his passion for theological disputes and minutiae would seem to match the Jonasian account of his pursuit of ascetic self-exile rather than portraying Columbanus as a charming nobleman forced to take the cloth.

Clash with nobility and expulsion from Luxeuil

Eventually, Columbanus’s commitment to his ideals and his strict beliefs on spiritual matters truly ensnared him in the sprawling webs of Frankish politics. The inextricable interwovenness of Frankish church and state necessitated a certain flexibility among bishops and abbots: a willingness to adapt to political circumstances and rulers. However, Columbanus indisputably failed to bend in this respect. Jonas describes that the Burgundian king Theuderic II—a grandson of Sigibert who ruled with his grandmother, Brunhild (also Brunechildis)—met often with Columbanus in prayer. However, in a turn of events also quoted in Fredegar’s Chronicon,⁴¹ the Vita Sancti Columbani describes that Columbanus soon “began to criticize him for his adulterous relations with his concubines,” and allegedly managed to successfully convince him to abandon them for “the comforts of a lawful wife.”⁴³ Once more, Columbanus demonstrated a commitment to his intrinsic ideals, even at his own social and political expense. That expense soon came—Brunhild was reportedly furious at this transgression, for she “dreaded that her own authority and standing would be destroyed if the king got rid of his concubines and a queen ruled at court.”⁴⁴ Theuderic’s adultery thus continued.

The Vita records that Brunhild then endeavored to legitimize Theuderic’s adulterous relationships by seeking the baptism of the sons born from them by Columbanus. Columbanus, as fit his pattern of resoluteness, declined this request, boldly claiming that she should have known that “these boys will never become kings, because they have come out of whore-houses.”⁴⁵ Of all of Columbanus’s statements, this one best epitomizes the missionary’s unwavering confidence. Both Merovingian and Irish leaders practiced polygamy at this time, and thus Columbanus was not condemning only Theuderic’s relationship but the nature of royal relationships in the nobility of both Gaul and his native country—his decades of meditation and writing altogether culminated in defiance the contemporary political systems. While one could easily detect the insolence of Columbanus—which had, in his time at Luxeuil, fast “aroused deep antagonisms in at least part of the Burgundian nobility”⁴⁶—this stemmed from what he surely believed was an adamant commitment to righteousness. He held fast to it, audaciously threatening Theuderic with excommunication should his misdeeds continue.

Columbanus’s threat of excommunication was apparently more symbolic than actual—the missionary came from a land in which abbots held power comparable or superior to bishops and thus surely felt his position to be of considerable spiritual capital. In Merovingian Gaul, however, bishops were the chief bearers of theological authority, and for an abbot to excommunicate a king would have certainly been a breach in the national hierarchy. The emptiness of the threat, therefore, was a likely contributor to Theuderic’s rising hostility for Columbanus. Not only did Columbanus promise to spiritually disown the nominal monarch of Burgundy, but the threat carried little weight: it was purely an expression of Columbanus’s disapproval of the king’s actions and lifestyle. Once more, no immediate political motivation appears to explain Columbanus’s actions—again, it would seem that he takes actions that would knowingly lead to his harm. However, his defiance of the king nonetheless appears brazen and intentional, presenting another manifestation of his stubborn resolution.

Soon after, Theuderic came to Luxeuil “under [Brunhild’s] compulsion” to confront Columbanus about the growing divide between the missionary’s community and the surrounding lands.⁴⁷ According to Jonas, particular animosity arose around the issue of commoners’ lack of access to the Luxeuil monastery—though Frankish female monastic communities certainly shared that closure, as may have males’—and Theuderic vowed to withdraw his royal support if the practice continued.⁴⁸ “‘If you try to violate what has up till now been strictly forbidden under the discipline of our Rule’,” Columbanus replies in the Vita, “‘I no longer want to be sustained by any of your gifts or support, and if you have come here for this reason, so that you might destroy the communities of the servants of God and dishonour the regular discipline, your kingdom will soon be completely destroyed and all the royal offspring annihilated.’”⁴⁹ Jonas considers this a prophecy which “later events proved the truth of,” as the Neustrian King Chlothar II would go on to destroy Theuderic’s family in 613, Chlothar having later supported Columbanus during his exile.⁵⁰

While Columbanus chastised and spurned the Burgundian royals, however, his own monastic communities were developing dissensions. For reasons unrecorded, “divisions had appeared in the [Luxeuil] community . . . so that Columbanus could no longer count on the obedience of all its members.”⁵¹ The strictness of his rules or their incongruity with other monastic practices in Burgundy were perhaps contributing factors, though, as aforementioned, no cause has been ultimately ascertained. Jonas, of course, attributes it to Brunhild, who he once more depicts as unvirtuous; according to Jonas, she urged “the nobles, courtiers, all the leading men, to stir the mind of the king against the man of God. She also set about soliciting the bishops to cast doubt on Columbanus’s religious way of life and to slander the validity of his Rule.”⁵² Jonas apparently identifies Brunhild—blamed for Theuderic’s infidelities and difficulties with Columbanus, as well as the general reason for the nobility’s discontent with his practices—as Jonas’s chief enemy among the Merovingians, labeling her “a second Jezebel.”⁵³ She embodied the Burgundian hostility to Columbanus, pressing against his already divided monastery.

In this context—presiding over a disunited community, surrounded by hostile nobles and keeping faith in ideals little-shared by his contemporaries—Columbanus was first removed by the nobleman Baudulf to Besançon on the orders of Theuderic and Brundhild. Theuderic did not intend to kill Columbanus, exclaiming to him at his final confrontation at Luxeuil “you hope that I will make a martyr out of you, but I am not so crazy as to commit such a crime.”⁵⁴ Theuderic may have been speaking a truth reflected through Jonas here. As Columbanus often delivered sermons on martyrdom and it was a prominent aspect of his theology, it is quite possible that he wished—or, at least, publicly expressed a willingness—to be martyred himself. This could be interpreted as an extension of his resolute and continually appearing sense of morality. Still, as it has before, it was interpreted as senseless insolence toward the Frankish hierarchy. Jonas recounts that Baudulf then led “him into exile to the town of Besançon until royal judgement decreed what should be done with him.”⁵⁵

Next came an event which, though thoroughly personal, Jonas “inevitably treats as miraculous” rather than see Columbanus’s aims and abilities in.⁵⁶ While in Besançon, Columbanus learned that the local prison was “full of condemned men awaiting the death penalty.”⁵⁷ Once more, he was presented with an opportunity to sacrifice his political standing for his convictions’ sakes—in addition to, perhaps, seeing an opportunity to satisfy them while spiting his aristocratic opponents. Together with “his assistant, Domoalis,” he broke the shackles of the prisoners so long as they were willing to do penance.⁵⁸ Columbanus then returned to Luxeuil; Jonas explained that no guards kept watch over Columbanus, “lest they become accomplices in his persecution.”⁵⁹ This chain of events attracted the final enmity of Theuderic and Brunhild, who ordered Columbanus expelled from Luxeuil and returned to Ireland.

In Jonas’s account, the soldiers tasked to expel Columbanus—under the command of “Count Bertechar,” Theuderic’s chamberlain—arrived at Luxeuil soon afterward, but were “caught between two different fears, with terror urging them on from every side.”⁶⁰ While they had been commissioned to carry out Columbanus’s removal by Theuderic and Brunhild, they also apparently took no pleasure in removing him by Luxeuil. “The officials and soldiers given the task seem to have been upset by Columbanus’s courageous obstinacy and the enormity of the deed itself,”⁶¹ and, in Jonas’s words, “threw themselves on their knees and tearfully beg[ged] him to absolve them of blame for this criminal offence: they were only following the king’s orders.”⁶² This reluctance appears to be truthful, as it would not advantage Jonas to portray the soldiers in any positive light unless they had, indeed, been hesitant—however, it is certainly possible that it was apocryphal, and it was only Jonas’s way of conveying that the common man enjoyed a love for Columbanus. Either way, the soldiers’ pause was not enough, and, according to Jonas, Columbanus soon agreed to leave “seeing how he would endanger others if he were to satisfy his own strict standards.”⁶³ This, too, may be only a eulogizing interpretation of the event, and may reflect Jonas’s way of reconciling Columbanus’s characteristic stubbornness with his departure from the monastery. Regardless, Jonas ensures that he references the ‘strict standards’ which characterized Columbanus’s life and works. The sum of Columbanus’s time in Burgundy seems to cast final doubts on notions of his being a political exile; if he was, he certainly grew to wield an unmatched care about theological matters, entrenching himself in his spiritual viewpoints and risking life and limb to keep in line with his convictions.

After Luxeuil

Columbanus’s expulsion from Luxeuil, no matter how much he resented it, seemed to bring an end to his Merovingian odyssey. He traveled westward under guard to Nantes and was “put in the charge of the city’s count and bishop until a boat destined for Ireland could be found.”⁶⁴ During this time, he wrote a letter to Burgundian monks which, in the opinion of Bullough, “beautifully reveals his own firmness of purpose in the face of disappointments . . . and his genuine affection for those who shared his notion of the monastic life.”⁶⁵ Indeed, Columbanus’s Epistulae of the period were rich with unusual vocabulary and elements of style; in them are found “antithesis, homoeoteleuton, isocolon and chiasmus . . . tricolon . . . word-play . . . climax . . . and, finally, the use of sententiae . . . Columbanus’s easy familiarity with the techniques of rhetorical writing is thus everywhere apparent.”⁶⁶ His extensive monastic education had equipped him with authorial acumen he applied with fervor. Cambridge Latinist Neil Wright describes him as “a writer who looks both forward and back”, and a medieval author set apart by “the great frequency with which he uses [rhetorical] patterns and his readiness to experiment by combining them or by interweaving further words.”⁶⁷ He wielded this art frequently, and it is credited with the persuasive power he apparently held in writing. This letter would soon likely define his acceptance on the continent once more—it would prove to undoubtedly be persuasive, as opposition to his presence and work in Francia was soon to dissipate.

Still, Columbanus was set to be banished. When the boat meant to convey him abroad was found, it set sail for Columbanus’s native country in reluctant violation of his vows for permanent ascetic exile. However, Jonas recounts that a “huge wave came and forced the ship to return to shore, and having driven it on to dry land, left it there.”⁶⁸ It lay on the beach for three days until the captain was said to have realized the beaching was a divine consequence of his transporting Columbanus, and he removed Columbanus’s belongings from the ship—then and only then, Jonas says, the ocean retrieved the ship from the beach and carried it to sea. The staying of the vessel on the beach for three days was, perhaps, an allusion to Columbanus’s own letters; in his Epistulae, he writes, “if I am cast into the sea like Jonah, who himself is also called Columba in Hebrew, pray that someone may take the place of the whale to bring me back in safe concealment by a happy voyage, to restore your Jonah to the land he longs for”—just as Jonah stayed in the belly of the whale for three days, so Columbanus remained on the beach for the same period.⁶⁹

After Columbanus’s time in Nantes elapsed and his homeward voyage had failed, the missionary soon found that he had no adversaries. The escort which had brought him to Nantes had surely returned to Burgundy, and he had aroused no significant opposition in Brittany—in fact, he had obtained several Breton companions there. His letter written from Nantes, too, likely proved helpful to his cause on the continent, and thence he would encounter little opposition in his travels. Thus, he began a search for a new home in mainland Europe, resolute in pursuing the continuation of his ascetic exile. He was welcomed at the court of Chlothar II—King of Neustria and son of Chilperic I and Fredegund—where “his complaints against Theuderic and Brundechildis were sympathetically listened to.”⁷⁰ Indeed, the fulfillment of Columbanus’s prophecy of Theuderic’s family’s demise would soon come at Clothar’s hands. However, Columbanus would not be in Gaul to see it—he had now determined to go to southward, where “he could preach the faith to pagans.”⁷¹

On his way south, he passed through Austrasia, where he met Chagneric—adviser to Theudebert II and later the chamberlain to Dagobert I—as well as the nobleman Authari, whose sons he consecrated. Ultimately, Columbanus arrived upon King Theudebert II himself at Metz. Several of his former companions at Luxeuil had gathered at his court, and Theudebert granted them land at what Jonas describes as “a town, situated within Germania, though close to the river Rhine, called Bregenz, which had long ago been destroyed”—the former Celtic settlement of Brigantion.⁷² Here, too, he could once more be found “withdrawn to a cave in the wilderness.”⁷³ At this point, though he had hoped to continue on eastward to proselytize to the Wends, he received a holy vision from “an angel of the Lord” directing him to Italy.⁷⁴

When Columbanus arrived on the peninsula, he was warmly received by Agilulf (also Agilolf), King of the Lombards. Jonas records that “Agilulf gave him the choice of settling within Italy wherever he wished,” though he minimizes the great role the King played in the process; Jonas “does not mention, for example, the royal charter of foundation of 613 by which Agilulf donated the land around Bobbio to a radius of 4 square miles and half a salt well, which the community had to share with Sundrarit, a Lombard warlord, who also held land in the area. Jonas certainly knew of this charter as he was the archivist at Bobbio, and would have been responsible for preserving these documents.”⁷⁵ Regardless, the monastic community was soon established, and—shortly after composing “an excellent and learned little work” refuting “the deceits of the Arians”—Columbanus passed away thereat on the 23^rd of November, 615.⁷⁶

Sanctity and legacy

Among the most politically interesting turns in Columbanian monastics happened after the missionary’s death; “as conspicuous foci of political and financial power,” the monasteries he established “were soon drawn into the struggles of rival factions, and were ultimately wrested from familial control. Some came under the influence of new, upwardly mobile families, while others were slowly brought under closer royal supervision, at the expense of the founding group.”⁷⁷ Successive families used the fame of Columbanus and his tradition after his death to leverage prestige from their monastic patronages, and his saintliness thereby became a form of theo-political capital in the coming centuries. Even in death, Columbanus could note escape from the snare of Frankish politics.

Indeed, the Vita Columbani and its spread soon sealed the sacred legend of Columbanus into Frankish lore. Commissioned by Bertulf, the third abbot of Bobbio and composed by Jonas, a monk who entered Bobbio less than a generation after Columbanus’s death, the Vita contained descriptions of some one hundred and twenty-one miracles, mostly non-healing “punishment miracles” during his lifetime meant “to be intimidating,” reflecting the rule-driven nature of Columbanus’s beliefs.⁷⁸ Though the number of miracles pales next to the one hundred and ninety-one in the Vita Columbae on Columba of Iona, the biography was compellingly written by someone close to the saint himself; Jonas’s “close contacts with many of the people who knew Columbanus personally and his literary talents made him the obvious candidate to write the Vita Columbani.”⁷⁹ It spread quickly throughout the Columbanian monastic network and then to pious aristocrats, reframing what the Franks had once surely seen as insolence as unbending resolve.

Jonas’s hagiographical portrayal of Columbanus may serve as the ultimate evidential support for the notion of a man bound by genuine personal conviction. Though the miracles ascribed to Columbanus include some healings, he was chiefly illuminated as an inveterate ascetic, unbreakably roped to what he held was virtuous and harshly condemning those who were not. Hagiographical methods certainly existed for portraying him otherwise, should he have been more socially or politically savvy: a love for people or general philanthropy could have been central to the Vita Columbani. Even what is left unsaid—for example, the details of his death, which might indicate that Columbanus was away in hermitage when he died—speaks to the missionary’s asceticism. It was this written and unwritten legacy of principle and discipline which made the Vita such an established work and which evoked the memories of Columbanus in the monastic communities to which it spread. Columbanus’s legacy was one of rules and rigorous regulation of the self—something of which he would, no doubt, be proud.