While the Latin Benedictine monks worked their way up from the South towards the heart of
France, Keltic missionaries carried their independent Christianity from the West to the North of
France, the banks of the Rhine, Switzerland and Lombardy; but they were counteracted by Roman
missionaries, who at last secured the control over France and Germany as well as over the British
Isles.
St. Columbanus^107 is the pioneer of the Irish missionaries to the Continent. His life has been
written with great minuteness by Jonas, a monk of his monastery at Bobbio. He was born in Leinster,
a.d. 543, in which year St. Benedict, his celebrated monastic predecessor, died at Monte Casino,
and was trained in the monastery of Bangor, on the coast of Down, under the direction of St.
Comgall. Filled with missionary zeal, he left his native land with twelve companions, and crossed
over the sea to Gaul in 590,^108 or in 585,^109 several years before Augustin landed in England. He
found the country desolated by war; Christian virtue and discipline were almost extinct. He travelled
for several years, preaching and giving an example of humility and charity. He lived for whole
weeks without other food than herbs and wild berries. He liked best the solitude of the woods and
eaves, where even the animals obeyed his voice and received his caresses. In Burgundy he was
kindly received by King Gontran, one of the grandsons of Clovis; refused the offer of wealth, and
chose a quiet retreat in the Vosges mountains, first in a ruined Roman fort at Annegray, and
afterwards at Luxeuil (Luxovium). Here he established a celebrated monastery on the confines of
Burgundy and Austrasia. A similar institution he founded at Fontaines. Several hundred disciples
gathered around him. Luxeuil became the monastic capital of Gaul, a nursery of bishops and saints,
and the mother of similar institutions.
Columbanus drew up a monastic rule, which in all essential points resembles the more
famous rule of St. Benedict, but is shorter and more severe. It divides the time of the monks between
ascetic exercises and useful agricultural labor, and enjoins absolute obedience on severe penalties.
It was afterwards superseded by the Benedictine rule, which had the advantage of the papal sanction
and patronage.^110
The life of Columbanus in France was embittered and his authority weakened by his
controversy with the French clergy and the court of Burgundy. He adhered tenaciously to the Irish
usage of computing Easter, the Irish tonsure and costume. Besides, his extreme severity of life was
a standing rebuke of the worldly priesthood and dissolute court. He was summoned before a synod
in 602 or 603, and defended himself in a letter with great freedom and eloquence, and with a singular
mixture of humility and pride. He calls himself (like St. Patrick) "Columbanus, a sinner," but speaks
with an air of authority. He pleads that he is not the originator of those ritual differences, that he
came to France, a poor stranger, for the cause of Christ, and asks nothing but to be permitted to
live in silence in the depth of the forests near the bones of his seventeen brethren, whom he had
(^107) Also called Columba the younger, to distinguish him from the Scotch Columba. There is a second St. Columbanus,
an abbot of St. Trudo (St. Troud) in France, and a poet, who died about the middle of the ninth century.
(^108) The date assigned by Hertel, l.c., and Meyer von Knonau, in "Allg. Deutsche Biographie," IV. 424 (1876).
(^109) The date according to the Bollandists and Smith’s Dict. of Chr. Biogr. Ebrard puts the emigration of Columbanus to
Gaul in the year 594.
(^110) There is a considerable difference between his Regula Monastica, in ten chapters, and his Regula Coenobialis Fratrum,
sive, Liber de quotidianis Poenitentiis Monachorum, in fifteen chapters. The latter is unreasonably rigorous, and imposes
corporal punishments for the slightest offences, even speaking at table, or coughing at chanting. Ebrard (l.c., p. 148 sqq.)
contends that the Regula Coenobialis, which is found only in two codices, is of later origin. Comp. Hertel, l.c.