COMMON LAWespecially against the bishop of Rome. He also had
brought with him the Irish system of penance and has
left his own penitential.
In 610, he fell out with the Burgundian royal court,
especially with Queen Brunhilde, by his criticism of
the moral laxity of the king. He was told to return to
Ireland, but in any case to leave the kingdom. It was
specifically ruled that he was not allowed to take any
of his Frankish monks with him (Jonas I. 20). This is
the most plausible context for his writing of two
monastic rules, whereas previously he would have
ruled by his personal authority, and perhaps also his
penitential. After his departure, dissent seems to have
surfaced at Luxeuil over the harsh style of life.
Attempts to ship Columbanus back to Ireland failed
miraculously, and this is the reason why he ended up
in Northern Italy after a brief spell in the area of Lake
Constance. It would appear that he had a sufficient
group of non-Frankish monks with him to establish a
viable community. This would mean that recruits from
Ireland had joined him after his departure. There is no
other evidence of his continued contacts with Ireland
after his departure. One of his Irish companions on the
way to Italy, with whom he fell out, was Gallus, who
in 612 stayed behind in the Alps (the monastery named
after him was established in 720).
In the Lombard kingdom, Columbanus quickly
received the protection of King Agilulf, who encour-
aged him to preach against Arianism, the heretical
variety of Christianity that was observed by a great
number of Lombards. A treatise that he wrote on this
topic has not been preserved. There was more reli-
gious strife in Italy (the “Three Chapters” controversy).
Columbanus wrote again to the pope and demanded
that he settle that issue. These two works can be firmly
placed into his last years.
It was under royal protection (much like earlier on
in Burgundy) that Columbanus established around 613
the monastery of Bobbio (in the Appennines south of
Pavia, diocese of Piacenza), centered around a preex-
isting, then ruined, church dedicated to St. Peter. A
charter by King Agilulf for this foundation is not pre-
served in the original but would appear to be, in
essence, reliable. Bobbio was the first royal Lombard
monastic foundation; it was to enjoy royal favour over
the next centuries There Columbanus died, barely two
years later. He was well-remembered and honored in
Italy, more so than in his native country. Bobbio
became the most important monastery in northern
Italy. From this monastery a considerable number of
manuscripts have been preserved that contain material
in Old Irish and were written in Irish script. The his-
torical context of this phenomenon is as yet unclear.
Bobbio was also the first monastery in the West to
receive a papal exemption (in 628), harking back to
Columbanus’s refusal to bow to episcopal supervision.
To this day, Bobbio is called in Italy “the Monte
Cassino of the north.”
MICHAEL RICHTERReferences and Further Reading
Krusch, B., ed. Jonae Vitae sanctorum Columbani, Vedastis,
Iohannis. Hannover, Leipzig, 1905.
M. Lapidge, ed. Columbanus. Studies on the Latin writings.
Woodbridge, 1997.
Richter, M. Ireland and Her Neighbours in the Seventh Century.
Dublin and New York, 1999.
Walker, G. S. M., ed. Sancti Columbani Opera. Dublin, 1957.
Reprint 1970.
See alsoClassical Influence; Hiberno-LatinCOMMON LAW
The Common Law is the body of legal rules that was
developed by the royal courts in England from the last
quarter of the twelfth century onward, and applied by
them within England on a nationwide basis. No author-
itative written summary of these rules was compiled,
though many of them were embodied in the written
judgments of the courts, and they were also summa-
rized and discussed in medieval legal treatises. The
Common Law was so called to distinguish its rules
from rules of purely local application. The term Com-
mon Law is also used to refer in a general way to the
legal institutions that are or were characteristic of
English law. In the later Middle Ages, these include
the use of courts of a particular general type; the ini-
tiation of civil litigation by writs of a limited range of
standard types issued by the king’s chancery; the ini-
tiation of most criminal proceedings through indict-
ment at the king’s suit; the use of jury trial for fact
finding in civil and criminal proceedings; and the exist-
ence of a bifurcated lay legal profession with a recog-
nized professional expertise but no connection with
the law faculties of the universities.
During the first half-century of English invasion and
settlement in Ireland there is comparatively little evi-
dence about the legal customs followed in those parts
of Ireland that were controlled by the new settlers. The
settlers seem to have made use of some of the charac-
teristic remedies of the early English Common Law
and some of its characteristic modes of proof. There
is also evidence for the introduction of some of the
characteristic institutions of English land law, such the
widow’s right to dower. During King John’s visit to
Ireland in 1210, he drew up a charter that is known
from later references to have established the general
principle that the English Common Law was to be
applied in the courts of the lordship of Ireland. Soon
afterward the king sent a register of writs, containing