already seen die. "Ah! let us live with you in this Gaul, where we now are, since we are destined
to live with each other in heaven, if we are found worthy to enter there." The letter is mixed with
rebukes of the bishops, calculations of Easter and an array of Scripture quotations. At the same
time he wrote several letters to Pope Gregory I., one of which only is preserved in the writings of
Columbanus. There is no record of the action of the Synod on this controversy, nor of any answer
of the Pope.
The conflict with the court of Burgundy is highly honorable to Columbanus, and resulted
in his banishment. He reproved by word and writing the tyranny of queen Brunehild (or Brunehauld)
and the profligacy of her grandson Theodoric (or Thierry II.); he refused to bless his illegitimate
children and even threatened to excommunicate the young king. He could not be silenced by flattery
and gifts, and was first sent as a prisoner to Besançon, and then expelled from the kingdom in
610.^111
But this persecution extended his usefulness. We find him next, with his Irish friends who
accompanied him, on the lake of Zurich, then in Bregenz (Bregentium) on the lake of Constance,
planting the seeds of Christianity in those charming regions of German Switzerland. His preaching
was accompanied by burning the heathen idols. Leaving his disciple St. Gall at Bregenz, he crossed
the Alps to Lombardy, and founded a famous monastery at Bobbio. He manfully fought there the
Arian heresy, but in a letter to Boniface IV. he defended the cause of Nestorius, as condemned by
the Fifth General Council of 553, and called upon the Pope to vindicate the church of Rome against
the charge of heresy. He speaks very boldly to the Pope, but acknowledges Rome to be "the head
of the churches of the whole world, excepting only the singular prerogative of the place of the
Lord’s resurrection" (Jerusalem).^112 He died in Bobbio, Nov. 21, 615. The poetry of grateful love
and superstitious faith has adorned his simple life with various miracles.
Columbanus was a man of considerable learning for his age. He seems to have had even
some knowledge of Greek and Hebrew. His chief works are his Regula Monastica, in ten short
chapters; seventeen Discourses; his Epistles to the Gallic Synod on the paschal controversy, to
Gregory I., and to Boniface IV.; and a few poems. The following characteristic specimen of his
ascetic view of life is from one of the discourses: "O mortal life! how many hast thou deceived,
seduced, and blinded! Thou fliest and art nothing; thou appearest and art but a shade; thou risest
and art but a vapor; thou fliest every day, and every day thou comest; thou fliest in coming, and
comest in flying, the same at the point of departure, different at the end; sweet to the foolish, bitter
to the wise. Those who love thee know thee not, and those only know thee who despise thee. What
art thou, then, O human life? Thou art the way of mortals, and not their life. Thou beginnest in sin
and endest in death. Thou art then the way of life and not life itself. Thou art only a road, and an
unequal road, long for some, short for others; wide for these, narrow for those; joyous for some,
sad for others, but for all equally rapid and without return. It is necessary, then, O miserable human
life! to fathom thee, to question thee, but not to trust in thee. We must traverse thee without dwelling
in thee—no one dwells upon a great road; we but march over it, to reach the country beyond."^113
Several of the disciples of Columbanus labored in eastern Helvetia and Rhaetia.
(^111) For a full account of this quarrel see Montalembert, II. 411 sqq.
(^112) "Roma orbis terrarum caput est ecclesiarum, salva loci Dominicae resurrectiois singulari praerogativa."
(^113) Montalembert, II. 436.