Saint Columbán of Luxeuil
The twenty-first of November in the Holy Orthodox Church is the feast-day of Saint Columbán, the great Gælic missionary saint of the Continent in the sixth and early seventh centuries. Columbán was a famously strict ascetic in the Celtic mould, and among his disciples there may be counted a number of Franks, but also the famously holy daughters of Anna King of the East Angles. As such, he forms a distinct bridge between the Roman and the Celtic traditions in the Western præ-Schismatic Church.
Saint Columbán [or Columbanus] was born around the year 543 in the kingdom of Meath, in what is now Leinster, Ireland. His mother had præmonitions, gifted to her from the Divine, that he would attain to great scholarly heights and cultivate a singularly keen intellect and a holy spirit. When she gave birth, it was to a robust, strong, quick-witted boy with a thick thatch of bright red hair. He was given the best of educations by his parents, who had means, and was instructed in a liberal course of grammar, rhetoric, gæometry and the study of the Scriptures. Young Columbán grew up to be not only intelligent but also most prepossessing in form and face; and as such he was popular with the girls of Leinster who sought after him in a particularly sæcular way. Columbán, who was of a somewhat different bent of mind although he struggled with that temptation, sought refuge with a holy anchoress. The Irish anchoress, who had been fighting her own lusts for twelve years, sternly warning him of what befell Samson and David and Solomon, advised him to flee the world and all its temptations.
Saint Columbán informed his mother of his intention to become a hermit or a monk, but she tried everything to get him to change his mind – gentle persuasion, threats, guilt-trips – and even lay across the threshold of the door to prevent his leaving. Yet Columbán insisted upon going, crossing the threshold and so dying to the world. He took up residence first with Abbot Sinell of Cleenish, and there also the tonsure. At Cleenish, Columbán occupied himself in honing his scholarly pursuits, and authored a commentary on the Psalms.
Eventually he was commended by the monastery of Cleenish to the care of Saint Comgall, the abbot of Bangor, who was known for his idiosyncratically strict ascetic rule of common life – a rule which Saint Columbán appreciated and would emulate in his later years. Saint Columbán asked to be taken in as Saint Comgall’s spiritual son, and the elder abbot agreed. The two got on very well together, and Columbán stayed at Bangor until he reached the age of forty.
When he had reached his fortieth year, Saint Comgall blessed Columbán, understanding and approving his desire to go forth into the Continent and spread the Gospel and strengthen the people in the observance of a life following Christ. With twelve disciples Columbán set forth for Gaul, and he made his way there first by ship and subsequently on foot. His disciples were given cause to marvel at the saint’s love of the lands and living things among which they travelled, for indeed Columbán loved all creatures and all created things with the compassion of a Saint Gregory. He always took care to tread quietly and without presumption. ‘The man to whom a little is not enough, he will not benefit from more,’ the Gælic ascetic said. ‘He who tramples upon the world, tramples upon himself.’
Saint Columbán was given a warm and hospitable welcome by Gondram, the King of the Franks. But he made his way among the Burgundians – an East Teutonic people related to the Goths and Vandals who had made their home in what is now Bourgogne in eastern France. Although they had lost their political independence from the Franks several decades before with the execution of their last king Godmar in 534, they were still very much a proud and distinct people at this time. Columbán had been given leave to establish a monastery in a disused Roman fortress in what is now La Voivre in the Vosges Mountains. He and his twelve monastic disciples set up a rule of life there that was strict and demanding in its asceticism, but which was also open and hospitable to travellers and responsive to local sensibilities. Columbán earned the respect of the Burgundians by respecting the places they held sacred, and they observed in particular the reverence with which he treated the mountains and rivers, and the special closeness he had with wild animals.
This form of asceticism rendered Columbán’s mission quite popular and attractive. The Burgundians came to Columbán for advice, for blessings and for healings, and the saint was all too happy to oblige. The monastery grew, and soon there was not enough space at La Voivre to house them all. And so Saint Columbán asked for, and was granted, permission to consecrate another house under his rule at Luxeuil-les-Bains, eight miles away. The abbey that Columbán founded here was placed among a wrack of an old Roman city that had been ravaged by the Huns and left to moulder in gloom, but which still contained thermal baths and an old pagan cult centre. Columbán’s new abbey there brought life and joy back to the place. This one too grew crowded, and Saint Columbán planted a third monastery in nearby Fontaine-lès-Luxeuil.
Saint Columbán spent twenty years in Francia, tending his three monasteries in Bourgogne with great care and devotion to the health of his spiritual children. He unfortunately got into a dispute with the local bishops about his keeping the Celtic date for Pascha, stubbornly refused to change the tradition he had been taught, and even appealed three times to the Pope to attain his blessing to observe Pascha according to the Celtic custom. If the Bishop of Rome ever answered these missives, his replies are no longer extant.
He also crossed wires with the Frankish royals, and particularly with Brunhilda, the grandmother and guardian of the young king Theuderic II. Saint Columbán objected when, with his grandmother’s connivance, Theuderic II took a mistress whom he refused to marry, Brunhilda being jealous of her own power within the Frankish court. Saint Columbán bitterly denounced the young king’s living arrangements, his treatment of the woman and his grandmother’s connivances – earning him the enmity of Brunhilda. Theuderic confronted Saint Columbán and had him arrested, tortured and thrown into the dungeons at Besançon when he refused to leave off criticising his sexual morality. By the grace and intervention of God, the saint was set free from his Frankish captors and went back to his Burgundian monasteries. When Theuderic discovered he had escaped, he and his cruel grandmother returned to Luxeuil with soldiers in tow, and threatened to burn his refuge to the ground and all within unless he left Francia. Only those who had come with him from Ireland were allowed to accompany him in his exile.
Columbán was loved, however, by the common Burgundians, and on two of them at least he made a significant impression: Saint Felix the Burgundian who would later witness to Christ among the East Angles; and Saint Fara, the abbess who would tutor the East Anglian noble girls Æþelburg and Sǽþrýð, who became nuns and abbesses under the Rule of Columbán. Saint Columbán’s disciples Felix and Fara belonged to perhaps the last generation of Burgundian subjects of Francia who managed to hold onto their East Teutonic language – which was pushed to extinction under Frankish repression by the year 600.
Saint Columbán visited the tomb of Saint Martin the Merciful on the way to the coast, and paid his reverences to the holy bishop. While there, he prophesied that within three years the wicked Frankish king Theuderic and his children would perish. (Theuderic would indeed die of dysentery on campaign against his enemy Clotaire within three years of this prophecy.) The Irish monks were to be transported back to their island by sea from Nevers. But a sudden storm blew up as the captain was trying to leave, that prevented his departure. The captain was convinced that Saint Columbán and his Irish disciples were the cause of the storm, and refused to transport him across the English Channel lest he fall under the wrath of God.
Columbán was therefore compelled to cross Gaul again, and this time he made his way east toward the Rhine, and with his small band of Irish monks in tow he rowed upstream, singing songs with them as they went to keep their spirits up. They reached the lands of the Swabians and preached in the towns of Bregenz and Tuggen, now in Switzerland. Here Columbán left his dissenting disciple Saint Gall, not without some rancor, who is still venerated among the Catholics of Switzerland. And then the holy man proceeded into the Kingdom of the Lombards to the south, who were at that time still deep in the throes of the hæretical teachings of Arius. Saint Columbán worked to convert Agilulf, the king of the Lombards, with the help of his Bavarian wife Theodelinde (who was a Nicene Christian). While working in Milan Saint Columbán wrote at least one influential treatise against the Arian hæresy, by which the residents of northern Italy were converted to Nicene Christianity. Columbán was later given by Agilulf a tract of land at Bobbio on which to build a monastery, and here the saint again restored a ruined church and built it up again into a thriving centre of worship and scholarship. As his death grew near, Saint Columbán again took up an eremitical existence and retreated to a cave overlooking the river Trebbia, where he had erected a small oratory dedicated to the Theotokos. He reposed in the Lord on the twenty-first of November in the year 615. Among his last acts was to send his crozier to Saint Gall by way of forgiveness, apology and repentance for their earlier quarrel.
Saint Columbán is noteworthy for several reasons. First, he was the missionary saint par excellence on the Continent, and his missionary style was quite careful to adapt to local sensibilities when the situation called for it: including to rededicate old pagan cult centres to Christ and to encourage the natural veneration of the Burgundians among whom he lived and preached. His example would inspire later missionaries from the British Isles: such saints as Willibrord, Willehad, Boniface, Swiðberht, Wihtberht, the three holy children of Richard of Wessex. Saint Columbán was also quite close to the natural world and easily formed bonds with wild animals, a characteristic broadly shared among the early Celtic saints. His reverence for Christ and his ascetic life of prayer and self-control had a remarkably œcological tinge. And he also was not afraid to prick the consciences of the wealthy and powerful, even those among the nobility and royalty who behaved themselves with overbearing pride and lust.
Saint Columbán did have some personality flaws – he could be stubborn, stiff-necked and overly free with his tongue. And he was occasionally given to wrath, even with his own disciples like Saint Gall. But of his passion for remaining faithful to Christ and for living a Christlike life, there can be no doubt whatsoever. A champion of right doctrine who did intellectual battle among the Arians, and a preacher of righteousness who would not brook the appetites of the rich and powerful, Saint Columbán deserves veneration in both East and West. Venerable Columbán, wonderworker and wise father of monks, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!
Rome was shocked by the severity of your Rule, O Father Columbán,
But never daunted, you did not waver in your condemnation of spiritual and moral laxity.
Standing firmly in the tradition of the fathers of the Thebaïd,
You are a tower of strength to us sinners,
Wherefore O Saint, entreat Christ our God that He will grant mercy to our souls!
Abbaye Saint-Colomban, Luxeuil-les-Bains, France
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