- Chapter Thirty-Six -
Belfast).116 It was apparently some years later that he formed a plan to travel to Gaul
so as to live as a peregrinus, far from homeland and kin. III By then his linguistic habits
were well formed. He can profitably be compared with another monastic exile of the
previous century, the Briton Faustus of Riez.^118 They have the same grammatical
correctness and the same ability to vary their style according to genre or context. The
best example is the way they can write in a grand style at the beginning of a letter,
whereas, once the substance of the matter in hand has been reached, the style becomes
far less elevated.1^19 The reason is straightforward: at the beginning of the letter what
is at issue is the relationship of two men, the writer and his correspondent. The more
the writer perceives, or chooses to be seen to perceive, himself as inferior in rank to
his correspondent, the more elevated is the style. Such elevation of style in these two
monastic writers is, at one and the same time, a recognition of the claims of high rank
in the correspondent and an expression of monastic humility in the writer. In
Columbanus's case, much more than in Faustus's, the elevation is achieved through
unusual vocabulary rather than through elaborate syntax: there are Greek words such
as theoria 'contemplation', calques instead of Greek words, when the latter had
been fully assimilated, such as speculator for 'bishop' (rendering the literal sense of
episcopus, 'overseer'), rare or even unique Latin words such as castalitas 'chastity'
(from castus as if via "casta/is, or by analogy with such words as liberalitas). And then,
once the perception of relative status has been fully conveyed and the writer gets down
to issues rather than personalities, the style immediately comes down to earth. The
appropriate virtues sought by the writer are now clarity and persuasiveness, not a
flattering sensitivity to high rank.
Such linguistic expressions of social hierarchy are not surprising either in Faustus's
Gaul where the British monk corresponded with senatorial aristocrats such as
Ruricius, men whose support for the ideals of Lerins was crucial, or in Columbanus's
Gaul where the Irish monk needed to kindle the enthusiasm of Burgundian
and Frankish nobles. Similar phenomena were, however, also found in Ireland and
in the Irish-settled districts of Britain; for Ireland, more even than Gaul, was a land of
minute distinctions of rank, especially among the learned. There were, broadly
speaking, two societies living intermingled, one sometimes called the aes trebtha 'the
116 Jonas, Vita Columbani, c. 3 (ed. B. Krusch, MGH Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in
usum scholarum; Hanover, 1905), 157-8.
117peractis itaque annorum multorum in monasterio circulis, ibid., c. 4 (ed. Krusch, 159).
118 A. Loyen, Sidoine Apollinaire et l'esprit precieux en Gaule aux derniers jours de l'empire
(Paris, 1943), 124-9, distinguishes between practical letters and 'lettres d'art'. The letters
of Faustus and Columbanus fall principally into the first class, but the introductions and
conclusions are often closer to the second.
II9 e.g. Columbanus, Ep. 1.1-2 (introductory high style) (ed. G.S.M. Walker, Sancti Colum-
bani Opera (Scriptores Latin Hiberniae, II; Dublin, 1957), p. 3), whereas c. 3 begins the
straightforward discussion of the issues and the style relaxes (in spite of calcenteris in the
first sentence), Fausti Reiensis ... Opera, ed. A. Engelbrecht (CSEL xxi; Vienna, 1891), ep.
8 to Ruricius (pp. 208-II); on Faustus's Latin see the introd., p. xxxiii.
120 C6ir Anmann, ed. W. Stokes, Irische Texte, III.2 (Leipzig, 1897), § 149; Tdin B6 Cuailnge
Recension, ed. C. O'Rahilly (Dublin, 1976), line 2045, contrasts the des trebtha with one
category within the des dana, the magicians, des cumachta.