Rome and the Celtic Churches

Columbanus’s letters reveal an ecclesiology that modern readers find hard to classify, because it does not map onto later confessional categories. He honours the Roman Church as the head of the churches and the see of Peter, professes that “we are all … disciples of Peter,” and appeals to the pope as judge — yet he insists, just as firmly, on his church’s right to its own ancient custom against Roman and Gallic usage, and resists the jurisdiction of the Frankish bishops. This file sets out that ecclesiology and shows, even-handedly, how it has been read across the traditions.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (pre-Schism; Celtic; missionary to the Continent)

“We Are All Disciples of Peter”

The phrase most often quoted to summarize Columbanus’s view of Rome comes from his letter to Gregory the Great’s successor: he tells the pope that the Irish are bound to the chair of Peter, for “though Rome is great and renowned, it is only through that chair that she is great and famous among us,” and that all the western Irish are, with him, “disciples of Saints Peter and Paul” — devoted to the apostolic see (Columbanus, Epistula 5, to Boniface IV; trans. Walker 1957; cf. Epistula 1). The honour is real and unfeigned: Columbanus regards Rome as the see of Peter, the touchstone of catholic communion, the proper court of appeal in a dispute, and he professes the orthodox faith of Rome as his own.

But the same letters set hard limits to what that honour entails in practice. Columbanus does not concede that communion with Peter’s see requires conformity to Roman custom. He keeps the Irish Easter against Roman usage; he asks only to be left in peace to follow the tradition of his elders; he tells the pope plainly when he thinks Rome is in error (on the computus, and on tolerating lax bishops); and he resists the claim of the Gallic bishops to bring his monasteries under their jurisdiction (Columbanus, Epistulae 1–5; Walker 1957; Stancliffe 2018). The honour due to Rome is, for Columbanus, the honour of the apostolic see as guardian and arbiter of the faith — and the faith, he is certain, the Irish hold whole and entire. Custom is another matter, and in custom his church answers to its own tradition (Charles-Edwards 2000; Stancliffe 2018).

Faith and Custom

The hinge of the whole ecclesiology is this distinction between faith and custom. For Columbanus the unity that the Church must preserve is the unity of faith; diversity of custom — including the date of Easter — does not break that unity and ought not to be coerced. He can therefore be at once perfectly orthodox, perfectly within the communion of the catholic Church, in full reverence toward Rome, and yet immovable on the Irish Easter, because in his mind nothing essential is at stake in the calendar (Columbanus, Epistula 2; Walker 1957; Charles-Edwards 2000). This is why he is so indignant at being called a heretic for a difference of computus: to confuse a matter of custom with a matter of faith is, to him, the real error (Columbanus, Epistula 2; Walker 1957).

This conception has a notable resonance with the ancient principle, dear to the Christian East, that the Church’s unity is a unity of faith and sacraments which can comfortably contain a real diversity of local usage — the principle by which the second-century churches kept different Paschal dates without breaking communion until the Quartodeciman crisis, and by which St. Irenaeus rebuked Pope Victor for threatening to excommunicate over a calendar (the parallel is frequently drawn; see The Celtic Church and Rome). Columbanus stands, on this reading, in an old and broad tradition of “unity in faith, diversity in custom” that predates the later hardening of both Roman and other positions.

Both Sides of the Reading

How to read the balance is genuinely contested, and METHODOLOGY §4 requires both sides be set out without polemic.

Read in a Roman Catholic key, Columbanus is a witness to the early and unquestioned primacy of the Roman see: he calls Rome the head of the churches, appeals to the pope as judge, professes devotion to Peter’s chair, and seeks papal vindication — so that, for all his attachment to Irish custom, he shows a Celtic Christianity firmly inside the Roman communion and acknowledging Roman authority. On this reading the Easter difference is a passing matter of discipline within a church that recognized the pope’s primacy, and Columbanus’s submission-in-principle is the salient fact (this is broadly the emphasis of older Catholic scholarship; the texts that support it are real — Epistula 5’s praise of Peter’s chair, the appeals themselves).

Read in an Orthodox or Celtic-independent key, Columbanus is a witness to a church that honoured Rome as the first see and the arbiter of the faith but did not regard the pope as a universal ordinary whose customs bound every church: he kept his Easter against Rome, reproved the pope, and treated the unity of the Church as a unity of faith compatible with local diversity — a model of primacy-as-honour-and-appeal rather than primacy-as-jurisdiction, closer to the conciliar and patristic understanding than to the later developed papal claims (this is broadly the emphasis of Orthodox and some Celtic-revival treatment; the texts that support it are equally real — the refusal to yield the Irish custom, the reproofs, the faith/custom distinction).

The responsible scholarly position, held by Stancliffe and Charles-Edwards among others, is that neither later category fits cleanly, and that to force Columbanus into the later Roman-Catholic-versus-Orthodox debate is anachronistic. He honoured Rome more warmly than some Orthodox readings allow and obeyed it less than some Catholic readings assume; he held together a reverence and an independence that the later schism would pull apart, but which in his own pre-Schism world coexisted without contradiction (Stancliffe 2018; Charles-Edwards 2000). That coexistence — honour to the first see, fidelity to one’s own tradition, unity in faith across diversity of custom — is precisely what makes him so instructive a figure for the question of how East and West once held together (see The Celtic Church and Rome; Orthodoxy: Orthodox vs Catholic).

The Bishops and the Question of Jurisdiction

One further dimension of the ecclesiology is practical and bears on the conflict that drove him out. Columbanus resisted not only Roman custom but the jurisdiction of the Gallic bishops over his monasteries. In the Irish system from which he came, monasteries were great centres of authority and abbots often outranked bishops in practical power; the diocesan structure that governed Frankish church life was foreign to him, and he expected his houses to be governed by their rule and their abbot, not absorbed into the episcopal order of the dioceses in which they happened to lie (Charles-Edwards 2000; Wood 2001). This monastic independence — a structural feature of Irish Christianity as much as a personal trait — was a chief cause of the bishops’ hostility, and it converged with the Easter difference to make the rupture (see The Frankish Bishops and Queen Brunhild). It is part of the same ecclesiology: a church ordered around the monastery and answerable, in its customs and its governance, to its own tradition, while holding the one catholic faith and honouring the apostolic see.

References

Columbanus. Epistulae 1–5. In Sancti Columbani Opera, ed. and trans. G. S. M. Walker. Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1957. (Epistula 5’s “disciples of Peter” and the praise of Peter’s chair; the faith/custom distinction; the refusal to yield the Irish Easter.)
Charles-Edwards, T. M. Early Christian Ireland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. (Irish ecclesiology, the abbot–bishop relation, and the “unity in faith, diversity in custom” principle.)
Stancliffe, Clare. “Columbanus’s Letters to the Popes.” In Columbanus and the Peoples of Post-Roman Europe, ed. Alexander O’Hara. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. (The both-sides reading; the warning against anachronism.)
Wood, Ian. The Missionary Life. Harlow: Longman, 2001. (The jurisdictional conflict with the Gallic episcopate.)