St. Columba

St. Columbanus (Columban) was born about the year 543 in Leinster, Ireland. Drawn to religious life as a young man, he was formed in the great monastery of Bangor under St. Comgall, where he spent many years in study and asceticism and became a master of both Scripture and classical learning. Around 590, moved by the Irish ideal of "pilgrimage for Christ," he left Ireland with twelve companions for the continent of Europe, never to return. In the kingdom of Burgundy he founded the monasteries of Annegray, Luxeuil, and Fontaines, which drew crowds of Frankish vocations and became powerhouses of learning and missionary renewal in a Gaul grown spiritually weary. He wrote a monastic rule and penitential noted for their austerity, and his monks helped spread the Irish practice of frequent private confession. His fearlessness made him enemies: he clashed with Frankish bishops over the Irish dating of Easter, and his blunt rebuke of the immorality of King Theuderic II and the court of Queen Brunhilda led to his expulsion from Burgundy in 610. Unable to be shipped back to Ireland, Columbanus journeyed up the Rhine and across the Alps. His disciple St. Gall remained near Lake Constance, where the great abbey and city of Sankt Gallen later grew from his hermitage. Columbanus himself pressed on into Lombard Italy and in 614 founded his final monastery at Bobbio, in the Apennines, which became one of medieval Europe's greatest centers of learning. His surviving letters — including bold, affectionate appeals to the popes of his day — and his sermons reveal a spirit at once fiery and profoundly devoted to the unity of the Church. He died at Bobbio on November 23, 615, and his tomb is venerated in the crypt of the abbey basilica there. Venerated since long before formal canonization processes existed, Columbanus is remembered as one of the fathers of European monasticism; his followers founded scores of monasteries across France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. His optional memorial is kept on November 23. In 2002 the Vatican named him a patron of motorcyclists, a nod to his tireless travels across Europe.