05 — Conflict and Exile
The break with Burgundy. Columbanus’s independence — his Irish Easter, his exemption-claiming monasteries, and above all his refusal to compromise the moral discipline of the court — set him against both the Frankish episcopate and Queen Brunhild, regent for her great-grandson Theuderic II. About 610 he was condemned and ordered deported back to Ireland; the long, frustrated journey across Gaul toward the coast, and then the turn eastward toward the Rhine and the Alps, makes up the dramatic middle of his career. These files cover the clash and the wandering.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (pre-Schism; Celtic; missionary to the Continent)
The expulsion is, in Jonas’s telling, the moral centre of the Life: the holy abbot standing against a corrupt court, refusing to bless the king’s bastard sons, rebuking the king’s concubinage, and earning the implacable enmity of the formidable old queen — a confrontation Jonas shapes in the colours of the prophets against the kings, and of John the Baptist against Herod. Behind the hagiographical drama lie real causes: the episcopate’s resentment of the independent Irish monasteries and their alien Easter, and the political logic of a court that could not tolerate so uncontrollable a holy man. This section follows the rupture and the deportation that failed.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| The Frankish Bishops and Queen Brunhild | The convergence of causes: the Gallic bishops’ hostility over Easter and jurisdiction; the moral clash with Theuderic II and Brunhild over the king’s illegitimate sons and irregular unions; the condemnation and the order of expulsion (c. 610). |
| The Journey Across Gaul | The attempted deportation to Ireland; the journey under guard to Nantes; the failed embarkation (the ship that would not sail, in Jonas); the turn eastward through Neustria and Austrasia toward the Rhine, Bregenz, and finally the Alps and Italy. |
See Also
- Annegray, Luxeuil, Fontaines — the court favour that preceded the rupture
- The Letters to the Popes — the Easter difference that fed the episcopal hostility
- Into Italy and the Lombards — where the journey ended
- The Life by Jonas of Bobbio — the source for the whole episode and its shaping
References
- Jonas of Bobbio. Life of Columbanus. Trans. Alexander O’Hara and Ian Wood. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2017.
- Wood, Ian. The Missionary Life. Harlow: Longman, 2001.
- O’Hara, Alexander. Jonas of Bobbio and the Legacy of Columbanus. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.