November 27 is the feastday of a saint into whose interesting life and career I hope to do much more research – Virgil of Salzburg. Behind this classical name lies an eighth-century Irishman, Fearghal, whose love of learning threatened to lead him into trouble, especially with his contemporary, Saint Boniface, who, like Virgil, laboured among the Germans. Below is a paper from the American Ecclesiastical Review on the life of Saint Virgil, not only a great Irish missionary, but also a great Irish scholar.

ST. VIRGIL THE GEOMETER, BISHOP OF SALZBURG AND APOSTLE OF CARANTANIA

SOME time ago an item of news made the rounds of the Catholic press that must have cheered the heart of every missionary. Catholic Ireland, it said, has begun to take an active share in the evangelization of China. On St. Patrick’s Day the Chinese Missionary Society of Maynooth, one of the youngest of our missionary organizations, sent forth its first band of apostles to the Far East. Their destination is the Province of Hupe on the Yangtzekiang. Others will follow soon, for the Mission Seminary is filled to overflowing with students.

On reading this welcome news my thoughts turned back to the glorious days of the ancient Irish Church, when Ireland’s sons went over the seas in shiploads to bring Christianity and civilization -to every country of Europe; when Columkille converted the Pict, Columbanus and Gall preached to the Alamannian and the Lombard, and Kilian laid down his life in defence of the faith in the Thuringian Forest. What a pity that, with but a few exceptions, these Irish heroes of Christianity found no contemporary biographers to tell the world of their deeds and sufferings. Of many of them we know hardly more than their names; with others legend and folklore have been so busy that it is no easy task to separate the chaff from the wheat in the accounts that have come down to us. In this paper we shall attempt to sketch the career of one of the last great Irish missionaries of the early Middle Ages St. Virgil of Salzburg. His so-called biography was written four hundred years after his death and is of no historical value. For our knowledge of him we are indebted to occasional notices in various contemporary sources.

I.”THE PILGRIMAGE OF THE LORD.”

About the early life of Virgil, or Fergil, as he was called in his native land, we know nothing at all. When we first hear of him, he was abbot of Aghaboe in the present Queen’s County, Ireland. His superior knowledge of mathematics had gained for him the surname of the Geometer. About 743 he left his monastery to spend the rest of his days on the Continent as a voluntary exile “for the love of Christ “. The fame of St. Fursy’s tomb and of the great Irish monastery that had sprung up round it drew him to Peronne in Western Gaul. At Quierzy on the Oise he met the Neustrian Mayor of the Palace, Pippin the Short, who had just returned from his successful expedition against his rebellious brother-in-law, Duke Odilo of Bavaria, The Prince became greatly attached to the learned monk and kept him in his palace for two years. Then he sent him to Odilo, who after a short period of imprisonment had been permitted to resume the government of his dukedom. Of Virgil’s companions two are known to us by name : Tuti, or Dobda, an Irish Bishop, called the Greek, and Sidonius, who was probably also an Irishman.

2. CONFLICT WITH ST. BONIFACE.

Several years before Virgil’s arrival St. Boniface had organized and reformed the Bavarian Church. He had divided the country into four dioceses, viz., Passau, Ratisbon, Freising, and Salzburg, and appointed able and God-fearing men to preside over them. A synod, which met in Ratisbon in 740, crowned the work of reform and ushered in a long period of bloom for the Church in Bavaria. Amongst the clergy there were, however, still some whose unclerical conduct or lack of theological training was a constant source of annoyance to Boniface and of disedification to the faithful. It was an unlettered priest who occasioned the famous controversy between Boniface and Virgil which was attended with such unpleasant consequences for both. Owing to his ignorance of Latin he had baptized with the words: “Baptizo te in nomine patria et filia et Spiritus Sancti” (” I baptize thee in the name fatherland and daughter and of the Holy Ghost”). Boniface, always scrupulous, and still more so as he advanced in years, decided that baptisms administered in this manner were not valid, and ordered rebaptism. Virgil and his friend Sidonius, whom he appears to have charged with this task, questioned his ruling and sought from Pope Zachary a clear decision in the matter. The Pontiff pronounced in favor of the Irishmen. “If the person who baptized,” he wrote to Boniface on I July, 746, ” had no intention to introduce either error or heresy, but merely from ignorance of the Roman tongue made use of such words, we cannot agree with you that on this account the baptisms must be repeated. Therefore, if the report that has reached us is true, you must not in future issue such orders, but zealously hold to what the Fathers teach.” Boniface submitted, but the friction between him and Virgil did not end here.

About this time Bishop John of Salzburg died. Without consulting either the Pope or his Legate, Odilo appointed Virgil to succeed him, making him at the same time abbot of St. Peter’s monastery in that town. Virgil took upon himself the administration of the vacant see, but for some reason or other deferred his episcopal consecration indefinitely. The purely episcopal functions were performed by his friend Dobdagrec. Such arrangements were frequently found in Ireland in those days and in Continental districts where Irish influence was paramount When Boniface, who was by no means inclined to give up his rights over the Bavarian Church, contested his position, Virgil replied that he held it with the sanction of the Pope. Zachary flatly denied this: he did not even know, he said, whether to call Virgil a priest or not. We may suppose that Virgil acted in good faith, and that he was misled by Odilo into believing that the matter had been arranged with the Holy See.

Virgil’s uncanonical position in Salzburg was only one of the charges that Boniface lodged against him in Rome; another was that he strove to poison the mind of Odilo against him; a third, that he was a teacher of heresy. What truth there was in the second accusation, we have no means of determining.

In regard to the third, we have no first-hand information as to Virgil’s supposed heretical teachings, but only the Pope’s answer to Boniface’s report. According to this, he taught that “there was another world, and other men beneath the earth, and sun, and moon.” From these words it is not altogether clear what Virgil’s doctrine was, or where his error lay. A glance at the cosmographical ideas current at the time may throw some light on this much-mooted question.

The earth, anciently believed to be a flat surface, was already known to the educated Greeks and Romans to be a globe. On the question of antipodes, or inhabitants on the other side of the globe, opinion was divided. Those who believed in their existence maintained that they were a race of men wholly independent of us and separated from us by an impassable barrier of heat and water. Called upon to express their views on these matters, the Christian doctors left the question of the sphericity of the earth open, but emphatically rejected the doctrine of antipodes as repugnant to the scriptural teaching on the unity of the human race, the universality of original sin, and the redemption of all men by Christ.

In the eighth century the great mass of the uneducated and no doubt the vast majority of the educated also, regarded the earth as a plane; but neither the doctrine of the sphericity of the earth nor the supposed existence of dwellers under the earth was entirely forgotten. Being a great scholar, Virgil must have been acquainted with Martianus Capella, Bede, and Isidore of Seville, perhaps also with Pliny and Macrobius. In Bede, Pliny or Macrobius he found scientific proofs for the sphericity of the earth, and in Isidore he read of the “unknown regions beyond the ocean” and of the races of men “fabled” to dwell there. In his lectures to the monks of St. Peter’s, in his conversations with his friends, perhaps even from the pulpit, he may have given expression to these views without the necessary explanations. If he had merely spoken of another world beneath our earth with another sun and moon or the same sun and moon that illumine ours, his doctrine might have aroused astonishment and even contradiction, but neither Boniface nor any other bishop would have branded it as heretical ; for these are questions that can in no way be a matter of faith; but if he spoke of other men beneath the earth, of antipodes, he was universally understood to mean, even if he did not expressly say so, a race of men not descended from Adam and not redeemed by Christ, and Boniface was perfectly justified in denouncing him to the Pope.

Zachary pronounced no immediate sentence in the case. He was evidently not fully convinced of Virgil’s guilt. “In regard to the said Virgil’s sinful and perverse doctrine,” he wrote to Boniface on 1 May, 748, “which he has taught against God and his own soul if it be proved that he holds that there is another world, and other men beneath the earth, and sun and moon summon a council, expel him from the Church, and degrade him from the priesthood.” He also wrote to Duke Odilo, requesting him to send Virgil to Rome to be examined. To Virgil and Sidonius the latter had evidently again identified himself with his countryman he sent a letter of reprimand and a summons to appear before him. Boniface himself he admonished “not to give way to anger in dealing with the erring, but rather to reprove, convict, and rebuke them in all patience that they may the more surely return from error to the path of truth”.

We do not know whether Virgil went to Rome or not; nor is there any trace of a Bavarian council having been summoned to decide his case. The war that broke out between the Franks and the Bavarians after the death of Odilo in the summer of 748 and ended in the defeat of the latter, probably made the holding of a synod impossible. It has been suggested that Pippin interfered in favor of his former protege, and prevented further action against him by his fellow bishops. I am inclined to believe that Boniface followed the advice of the Pope and in a friendly conference gave Virgil the opportunity of clearing himself entirely from the imputation of heresy. At all events, what we know of Virgil’s subsequent career precludes even the possibility of his having been deposed from his office or subjected to any ecclesiastical penalty.

3. EPISCOPAL LABORS.

At the urgent request of the clergy and laity of Salzburg Virgil received episcopal consecration on 15 June, 767. All our sources agree that he ruled his diocese with wisdom and energy. Immediately after his consecration he began the erection of a cathedral church. It was finished in 774 and dedicated to St. Rupert, the Apostle of Bavaria, whose relics he had removed to it from their former resting-place in St. Peter’s monastery. An incident which occurred in 767 shows that he had completely broken with the views of his native land on the episcopal office, and that he had become a “Continental bishop” in the full sense of the word. A certain nobleman, named Gunther, had erected a monastery at Otting near the present town of Waging and requested Virgil to help him to find monks for it and to consecrate the monastery church. Virgil promised to do so, but only on condition that the new foundation should be subject to his jurisdiction. Virgil did not, it seems, found any monasteries himself, several, however, such as Tegernsee, Kremsmunster and Chiemsee, owed their erection to his initiative. He was, on the other hand, a great church builder, as his epitaph testifies :

Interim et erexit pulchro molimine multa
Templa, loco quaedam nunc quae cernuntur in isto.

Virgil also took an active part in the ecclesiastical life of Bavaria. In 774 he was present at the important synod held at Dingolfing in Lower Bavaria. The acts of the synod are still preserved. They show how zealously the bishops watched over the spiritual and temporal welfare of their flocks. They insist on the strict observance of Sunday, on discipline in the monasteries, and on the rights as well as the duties of serfs and slaves. To restrain duelling, they decreed that a peaceful settlement must be attempted before an appeal to arms was permitted. It was at this synod, too, that the bishops and abbots of Bavaria formed a union, or confraternity, of prayer, the members of which pledged themselves to assist each other by prayers and good works in life and by Masses after death.

4. APOSTLE OF CARANTANIA.

Endowed with a full share of the missionary zeal of his countrymen, Virgil also turned his attention to the pagan nations settled on the borders of his diocese. About the middle of the eighth century Borut, the ruler of the Carantanian Slavs, sought the aid of the Bavarians against the fierce Avars, who had been harassing and pillaging his lands for years. Duke Odilo acceded to the request, but Borut had to acknowledge his overlordship and send his son Gorazd and his nephew Cheitmar as hostages to Bavaria. Here the princes were instructed in the Christian religion and received baptism. Borut was succeeded by Gorazd, who thus became the first Christian ruler of the Alpine Slavs. His premature death prevented him, however, from doing anything for the spread of the Christian faith amongst his subjects. His successor Cheitmar requested Virgil, to whom he was bound by ties of devoted friendship, to preach the Gospel to the Carantanians. Unable to do so himself, Virgil sent his countryman Modestus with a number of priests and clerics in his stead.

For ten years Modestus labored untiringly amongst the rude peasants and shepherds of the Carinthian and Styrian mountains. In spite of the difficulties and dangers with which he had to cope, he succeeded in establishing Christianity firmly in the land. Christian communities sprang up in various parts, and with Virgil’s aid half a dozen churches, rough wooden structures, but sufficient for the needs of the faithful, could be erected. After the death of Modestus in 760 the infant Slavish Church was threatened with utter ruin. The pagans took up arms against the Bavarians, fired the churches and expelled the missionaries. Still Virgil did not lose heart. As soon as the insurrection was quelled, he dispatched a fresh band of apostles to take up the abandoned work. The ruined churches were rebuilt, the scattered Christians returned to their homes, and better days began to dawn for the mission. Virgil did not live to see the full fruits of his efforts for the conversion of the Slavs. Still it was he who had prepared the soil and sown the seed and sent the laborers, and therefore he has been justly styled the “apostle of the Carantanians “. He had also planned the evangelization of the Avars, who dwelt farther to the east; but as no favorable opening presented itself, he desisted from the attempt.

5. VIRGIL’S LIBER VITAE. His DEATH.

After his conflict with St. Boniface, Virgil to all appearance gave up his speculations in cosmography; his restless mind, however, was busy in another direction. He took the liveliest interest in the preservation of the historical traditions of the Bavarian Church. He gathered the materials for a life of St. Rupert and encouraged his episcopal colleague, Aribo of Freising, to write the life of St. Corbinian. But the most important historical document which we owe to him is the Salzburg Liber Vitae (Book of Life). It was begun in the year of his death, and contains the names of all persons, clerical and lay, living and dead, who were in spiritual communion with the monks of St. Peter’s monastery in Salzburg, and for whom commemoration was to be made at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Among the thousand names entered on the lists are those of all the Abbots of Iona (Hy) from 597, the year of the death of St. Columkille, to 767. Among the living potentates we find the name of the Pictish King Cinadhon. A letter is still extant in which a certain Abbot Adalbert recommends a deceased monk to the prayers of Virgil and his associates.

Virgil died 27 November, 784. Alcuin celebrated his virtues and learning in a poem which is still preserved. On 5 April, 1167, the Cathedral of St. Rupert in Salzburg was destroyed by fire. In 1181 some workmen, while clearing away the debris, discovered Virgil’s tomb with an image of the saint bearing the inscription :

Virgilius templum construxit scemate pulchro.

Numerous miracles ascribed to his intercession led to the introduction of his cause in Rome and his canonization by Gregory IX in 1233. His feast is celebrated on the 27th of November. This is all that authentic history tells us of Virgil, the scholar, bishop, apostle, and saint. Only total ignorance of the facts, or the wish at all costs to cast an aspersion on the papacy, can make of him, as has been frequently done, a “martyr of science and a victim of Roman intolerance “.

GEORGE METLAKE.

American Ecclesiastical Review, Vol LXIII, (1920) 13-21.

November 21 is the feast of Saint Columbanus and to mark the occasion below is a paper by Archbishop John Healy, one of a series on Irish monastic schools, which appeared in the Irish Ecclesiastical Record in the closing decades of the nineteenth century:

The School of Bangor – St. Columbanus.

ST. COLUMBANUS was the great glory of the school of Bangor. He is one of the most striking figures of his age; his influence has been even felt down to our own times. The libraries which contain manuscripts written by his monks are ransacked for these literary treasures, and the greatest scholars of France and Germany study the Celtic glosses which the monks of Columbanus jotted down on the margins or between the leaves of their manuscripts. Hence we think it right to call special attention to the literary labours of Columbanus, because he is at once the highest representative of Celtic culture and Celtic monasticism.

We need not dwell at length on the facts of his life, striking and interesting as his marvellous career undoubtedly is. His life, published by Surius, was written by an Italian monk of Bobbio, called Jonas, at the request of his ecclesiastical superiors, and, though full enough in details regarding his life on the Continent, it is meagre as to facts of his youth in Ireland. It is, however, so far as it goes, authentic, for the informants of Jonas, were the members of his own community of Bobbio, who were companions of the saint, and eye-witnesses of what they relate.

Columbanus, or Columba, was the Latin name given to the saint, probably on account of the sweetness of his disposition. For although in the cause of God he was impetuous, and sometimes even headstrong, we are told that to his companions and associates he was ever gracious and quiet as the dove. We know for certain that he was a native of West Leinster, and born about the year 543, if not earlier, for he was at least 72 years at his death in 615. In his boyhood he gave himself up with great zeal and success to the study of grammar, and of the other liberal arts then taught in our Irish schools, including geometry, arithmetic, dialectics, astronomy, rhetoric, and music. He was a handsome youth, too, well-shaped and prepossessing in appearance, fair and blue-eyed like most of the nobles of the Scots. This was to him a source of great danger, for at least one young maiden strove to win the affections of the handsome scholar, and wean his heart from God. Old Jonas, the writer of the life, shudders at the thought of the danger to which Columbanus was exposed, and the devilish snares that were laid for his innocence. The youth himself was fully sensible of his danger, and sought the counsel of a holy virgin who lived in a hermitage hard by. At first he spoke with hesitation and humility, but afterwards with confidence and courage, which showed that he was a youth of high spirit, and therefore all the more in danger. “What need,” replied the virgin, “to seek my counsel. I myself have fled the world, and for fifteen years have remained shut up in this cell. Remember the warning examples of David, Samson, and Solomon, who were led astray by the love of women. There is no security for you except in flight.” The youth was greatly terrified by this solemn warning, and bidding farewell to his parents, resolved to leave home and retire for his soul’s sake to some religious house where he would be secure. His mother, with tears, besought him to stay; she even threw herself on the threshold before him, but the boy, declaring that whoever loved his father or mother more than Christ, is unworthy of him, stepped aside, and left his home and his parents, whom he never saw again.

He went straight to Cluaninis, in Lough Erne, whose hundred islets in those days were the homes of holy men, who gave themselves up to prayer, penance, and sacred study. An old man named Sinell, was at that time famous for holiness and learning, and so Columbanus placed himself under his care, and made great progress both in profane learning, and especially in the study of the Sacred Scriptures.

At this time the fame of Bangor was great throughout the land: so Columbanus leaving his master Sinell of Lough Erne, came to Comgall, and prostrating himself before the Abbot begged to be admitted amongst his monks. The request was granted at once, and Columbanus, as we are expressly informed, spent many years in that great monastery by the sea, going through all the literary and religious exercises of the community with much fervour and exactness. This was the spring-time of his life, in which he sowed the seeds of that spiritual harvest, which France and Italy afterwards reaped in such abundance. His rule was the rule of Bangor. His learning was the learning of Bangor, His spirit was the spirit of Bangor.

When fully trained in knowledge and piety, Columbanus sought his Abbot Comgall, and begged leave to go, like so many of his countrymen, on a pilgrimage for Christ. It was the impulse of the Celtic mind from the beginning- it is so still-the Irish are a nation of Apostles. It is not a mere love of change or foreign travel, or tedium of home, the pilgrimage, or peregrinatio, was essentially undertaken to spread the Gospel of Christ. The holy Abbot Comgall gladly assented. He gave him his leave and his blessing, and Columbanus, taking with him twelve companions, prepared to cross the sea. Money they had none: they needed none. The only treasure they took with them was their books slung over their shoulders in leathern satchels, and so, with their staves in their hands, and courage in their hearts, they set out from their native country never to return. At first they went to England, and traversing that country, where it seems, too, they were joined by some associates, they found means to cross the channel and came to Gaul, about the year 575.

Gaul at that time was in a deplorable state. The country was nearly depopulated by a century of cruel wars; and although the Kings of the Franks were nominally Christians, and their people Catholics, yet partly from the disturbances of the times, and partly from the negligence of the prelates, vice and crime were everywhere triumphant. The apostolic man with his companions at once set about preaching the Gospel in these half-Christian towns and villages. Poor, half-naked, hungry, their lives were a sermon; but moreover, Columbanus was gifted with great eloquence, and a sweet persuasive manner that no one could resist. They were everywhere received as men of God, and the fame of their holiness and miracles even came to the court of Sigebert, King of Austrasia, of which Metz was the capital. He pressed them to stay in his dominions, but they would not. They went their way southward through a wild and desert country, preaching and teaching, healing and converting, until they came to the Court of Gontran, grandson of Clovis, at that time King of Burgundy-one of the three kingdoms into which the great monarchy of Clovis had come to be subdivided.

Gontran received the missionaries with a warm welcome, and at first established them at a place called Annegray, where there was an old Roman castle in the modern department of the Haute-Saone. The King offered them both food and money, but these things they declined, and such was their extreme poverty, that they were often forced to live for weeks together on the herbs of the field, on the berries, and even the bark of the trees. Columbanus used from time to time bury himself alone in the depths of the forest, heedless of hunger, which stared him in the face, and of the wild beasts that roamed around him, trusting altogether to the good providence of God. He became even the prince of the wild animals. The birds would pick the crumbs from his feet; the squirrels would hide themselves under his cowl; the hungry wolves harmed him not; he slept in the cave where a bear had its den. Once a week a boy would bring him a little bread or vegetables: he needed nothing else. He had no companion. The Bible transcribed, no doubt, at Bangor with his own hand, was his only study and his highest solace. Thus for weeks, and even months, he led a life, like John the Baptist, in the wilderness, wholly divine.

Meanwhile the number of disciples in the monastery at the old rained castle of Annegray daily increased, and it became necessary to seek a more suitable site for a larger community. Here too the Burgundian King Gontran proved himself the generous patron of Columbanus and his monks. There was at the foot of the Vosges mountains, where warm medicinal springs pour out a healing stream, an old Roman settlement called Leuxeil. But it was now a desert. The broken walls of the ancient villas were covered with shrubs and weeds. The woods had extended from the slopes of the mountain down to the valleys covering all the country round. There was no population, no tillage, no arable land; it was all a savage forest, filled with wolves, bears, foxes, and wild cats. Not a promising site for a monastic settlement, but such a place exactly as Columba and his companions desired. They wanted solitude, they loved labour, and they would have plenty of both. In a few years a marvellous change came over the scene. The woods were cleared, the lands were tilled, fields of waving corn rewarded the labour of the monks, and smiling vineyards gave them wine for the sick and for the holy Sacrifice. The noblest youths of the Franks begged to be admitted to the brotherhood, and gladly took their share in the daily round of prayer, penance, and ceaseless toil. They worked so long that they fell asleep from fatigue when walking home. They slept so little that it was a new penance to tear themselves from the mats on which they lay. But the blessing of God was upon them; they grew in numbers, and in holiness, and in happiness, not the happiness of men who love this world, but the happiness of those who truly serve God.

But now a sore trial was nigh. God wished to purify his servants by suffering, and to extend to other lands the sphere of their usefulness. The first trial came from the secular clergy. Those Irish monks were men of virtue and austerity, but they were also in many respects very peculiar. They had a liturgy of their own somewhat different from that in use around them; they had a queer tonsure, like Simon Magus, it was said, in front from ear to ear, instead of the orthodox and customary crown. Worst of all, it sometimes happened that they celebrated Easter on Palm Sunday, so that they were singing their alleluias when all the churches of the Franks were in the mourning of Passion time. Remonstrance was useless; they adhered tenaciously to their country’s usages; nothing could convince them that what St. Patrick and the saints of Ireland had handed down to them could by any possibility be wrong. They only wanted to be let alone. They did not desire to impose their usages on others. Why should others impose their usages on them? They had a right to be allowed to live in peace in their wilderness, for they injured no man, and they prayed for all. Thus it was that Columbanus reasoned, or rather remonstrated, with a synod of French bishops that objected to his practices. His letters to them and to Pope Gregory the Great on the subject of this Paschal question are still extant, and he cannot be justified in some of the expressions which he uses. He tells the bishops in effect in one place that they would be better employed in enforcing canonical discipline amongst their own clergy, than in discussing the Paschal question with him and his monks. Yet here and there he speaks not only with force and freedom, but also with true humility and genuine eloquence. He implores the prelates in the most solemn language to let him and his brethren live in peace and charity in the heart of their silent woods, beside the bones of their seventeen brothers who were dead. “Surely it is better for you,” he says, “to comfort than to disturb us, poor old men, strangers, too, in your midst. Let us rather love one another in the charity of Christ, striving to fulfil his precepts, and thereby secure a place in the assembly of the just made perfect in heaven.” Language of this character, used, too, in justification of practices harmless in themselves, but not in accordance with the prevalent discipline of the Church at the time, was by no means well calculated to beget affection towards the strangers in the minds of the Frankish clergy. Other troubles, too, soon arose.

Gontran, the steady friend of Columbanus, died childless in 593, and was succeeded in Burgundy by his nephew Childebert II., already King of Austrasia, the son of the infamous Queen Brunehaut. He too died three years later, leaving his kingdoms to his young sons Theodebert, who got Austrasia, and Thierry, who took Burgundy. Brunehaut, their grandmother, the daughter of the Arian King of the Visi-Goths of Spain, was in her youth handsome, generous, and pious. But her heart was soured by the murder of her sister, the Queen of Neustria; she gave her whole soul to the demon of vengeance, and she wished for power to compass her vengeance. So she took the guardianship of the young princes into her own hands (596), and in order to secure her own power she encouraged the princes to indulge in every debauchery. This was especially the case after she was driven by the nobles from Austrasia and forced to take refuge in Burgundy, where she had the young Thierry at her own bad disposal. A lawful queen might dispossess the wicked Brunehaut from the place of influence which she held over the king, and so she encouraged him in the pursuit of unlawful love, in order to secure her own power. Leuxeil was in Burgundy, and King Thierry, pious after the fashion of the Merovignians, sometimes visited Columbanus and his monks. The latter was no respecter of persons, and on these occasions he rebuked the king with apostolic zeal and courage for keeping concubines at his palace instead of a lawful queen. The king took the rebuke patiently, and promised amendment; but Brunehaut was more dangerous to touch. On one occasion when Columbanus was at Bourcheresse she brought the four children of Thierry to be blessed by the saint. “What would you have me do?” he said. “To bless the king’s children,” answered Brunehaut. “They will never reign,” he cried out, “they are the offspring of iniquity.” The woman retired wrathful and humiliated, plotting revenge. All the neighbouring people, even the religious houses, were forbidden to hold any communication with Columbanus and his monks, or to yield them any succour. But Columbanus, so far from yielding, wrote a reproachful letter to the king, in which he even threatened excommunication if he persisted in his evil courses. Here no doubt was the height of insolence-a foreign monk to threaten to excommunicate a king of the Franks. It was intolerable. Yet when Columbanus came to the royal villa at Epoisses to remonstrate with the king, he was hospitably received. He however indignantly refused to accept the hospitality of the persecutor of his poor monks, and under his withering curse the vessels containing the repast were broken to pieces. On this occasion both Thierry and Brunehaut, in terror of their lives, asked pardon, which was readily granted. But the truce only lasted for a short time. Thierry relapsed again into his crimes, and again Columbanus threatened excommunication. This time both Thierry and the queen came to Leuxeil in person, but Columbanus strictly adhering to the Irish rule excluding women from the cloister, forbade them to cross the threshold of his monastery. The king persisted, and made his way to the refectory, “Know then,” said the intrepid monk, “that as you have broken our rules we will have none of your gifts, and, moreover, God will destroy your kingdom and your race.” “I won’t make you a martyr,” said Thierry ; “I am not such a fool: but since you and your monks will have nothing to do with us, you must leave this place and go home to your own country whence you came.” This was about the year 610.

For the present, however, he was only made a prisoner, and conducted to Bensancon, where he was kept under surveillance, until one day, looking with longing to his beloved Leuxeil, and seeing no one at hand to prevent him, he descended the steep cliff which overhangs the river Doubs, and returned to his monastery. When the king heard of his return, he sent imperative orders to have him and all his companions from Ireland and Britain forcibly removed from the monastery, and conveyed home to their own country. The soldiers presented themselves at Leuxeil when the holy man was in the choir with his monks. They told him their orders, and begged him to come voluntarily with them-they were unwilling to resort to force. At first he refused; but lest the soldiers might be punished for not resorting to that violence which they were unwilling to make use of, he finally yielded. He called his Irish brethren around them: “Let us go,” he said, “my brothers, in the name of God.” It was hard to leave the scene of their labours, their sorrows, and their joys; hard to leave behind them the graves of the seventeen brethren with whom they had hoped to rest in peace. But go they must; the soldiers would not for a moment leave them. It was a brief and sad leave-taking. Wails of sorrow were heard everywhere for the loss of their beloved father; brother was torn from brother, friend from friend, never to meet again in this world. Thus it was that Columbanus and his Irish companions left that dear monastery of Leuxeil, and were conducted by the soldiers to Nevers. There, still guarded by the soldiers, they embarked in a boat that conveyed them down the Loire to its mouth, where they would find a ship to convey them back again to Ireland.

But it was not the will of Providence that Columbanus and his companions, when driven from Leuxeil, should return to Ireland: other work was before them to do. Accordingly, when they came to the mouth of the Loire, their baggage, such as it was, was put on board, and most of the monks embarked. But the sea rose mountains high, and the ship which Columbanus intended to rejoin when under weigh, was forced to return to port. A three days’ calm succeeded, and the captain, fearing to provoke a new storm, caused the monks and their baggage to be put on shore, for he feared to take them with him. Thus left to themselves, Columbanus and his companions went to Soissons to Clotaire, King of Neustria, by whom he was received with every kindness and hospitality. The king cordially hated Brunehaut and her grandson-his mother, Fredegonda, had murdered Brunehaut’s sister- and he was anxious to keep Columbanus in his own kingdom, but the latter would not stay. He pushed on, with his companions, to Metz, the capital of Austrasia, where Theodebert, the brother of Thierry, then reigned. Here he was joined by several of his old monks from Leuxeil, who preferred to follow their father in his wanderings, to remaining behind in the kingdom of his persecutor.

Columbanus now resolved to preach the Gospel to the pagan populations on the right bank of the Rhine and its tributary streams. So embarking at Mayence, after many toils and dangers, they came as far as Lake Zurich, in Switzerland, and finally established themselves at Bregentz, on the Lake of Constance, where they fixed their headquarters. The tribes inhabiting these wild and beautiful regions-the Suevi and Alemanni-were idolaters, though nominal subjects of the Austrasian kingdom. Woden was their God, and they worshipped him with dark mysterious rites, under the shadow of sacred oaks, far in the depths of the forest. Discretion was not a gift of Columbanus, so he not only preached the Gospel amongst them, but, axe in hand, he had the courage to cut down their sacred trees; he burned their rude temples, and cast their fantastic idols into the lake. It was not wise; the people became enraged, and the missionaries were forced to fly. After struggling for three years to convert this savage people, Columbanus, perceiving that the work was not destined to be accomplished by him, crossed the snow-covered Alps by the pass of St. Gothard, though now more than seventy years of age, and after incredible toil, succeeded, with a few of his old companions, in making his way to the Court of the Lombard King Agilulph, whose Queen was Theodelinda, famous for beauty, for genius, and for virtue.

At this time the Lombards were Arians, and Agilulph himself was an Arian, although Queen Theodelinda was a devout Catholic. Mainly we may assume through her influence the Arian monarch received the broken down old man and his companions with the utmost kindness, and Columbanus had an ample field for the exercise of his missionary zeal amongst the rude half-Christian population. But first of all it was necessary to have a permanent home -and nowhere could he find rest except in solitude. Just at this time a certain Jucundus reminded the King that there was at a place called Bobbio a ruined church once dedicated to St. Peter; that the place round about was fertile and well watered with streams, abounding in every kind of fish. It was near the Trebbia, almost at the very spot where Hannibal first felt the rigours of that fierce winter in the snows of the Appenines, so graphically described by Livy. The King gladly gave the place to Columbanus, and the energetic old man set about repairing the ruined church and building his monastery with all that unquenchable ardour that cleared the forests of Leuxeil, and crossed the snows of the Alps. His labours were regarded by his followers as miraculous. The fir trees, cut down in the valleys of the Appenines, which his monks were unable to carry down the steep and rugged ways, when the old man himself came and took a share of the burden were found to be no weight. So, speedily and joyfully, with the visible aid of heaven, they completed the task, and built in the valley of the Appenines a monastery, whose name will never be forgotten by saints or scholars. Whilst it was building, Clotaire, King of Neustria, now monarch of all the Franks according to the prediction of Columbanus, sent a solemn embassy to Bobbio, and invited him in most courteous language to return again to France to dwell with his companions where he pleased. He declined, however, the tempting offer of the king. France had cast him out; he had now found a home; he was too old to become a wanderer any more.

The holy old man lived but one year after he had founded Bobbio. His merits were full; the work of his life was complete; he had given his rule to the new house; he left behind him some of his old companions to complete his work, and now he was ready to die. To the great grief of the brotherhood, Columbanus passed away to his reward on the eleventh day before the Kalends of December, in the year 615, probably in the seventy-third year of his age. He was buried beneath the high altar, and long afterwards the holy remains were enclosed in a stone coffin, and are still preserved in the old monastic Church of Bobbio.

It is not too much to say that Ireland never sent a greater son than Columbanus to do the work of God in foreign lands. He brought forth much fruit and his fruit has remained. For centuries his influence was dominant in France and in Northern Italy, and even in our own days, his spirit speaketh from his urn. His deeds have been described by many eloquent tongues and pens, and his writings have been carefully studied to ascertain the secret of his extraordinary influence over his own and subsequent ages. His character was not indeed faultless, but he was consumed with a restless untiring zeal in the service of his Master, which was at once the secret of his power and the source of his mistakes. He was too ardent in character, and almost too zealous in the cause of God. In this respect he is not unlike St. Jerome, but we forget their faults in our admiration for their virtues and their labours. A man more holy, more chaste, more self-denying, a man with loftier aims and purer heart than Columbanus, was never born in the Island of Saints.

JOHN HEALY.

The Irish Ecclesiastical Record, Vol. VI, (1885), 209-219.

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