06 — Bobbio
The last act. Welcomed into Lombard Italy by King Agilulf, Columbanus founded in 614 the monastery of Bobbio in the Apennines south of Pavia — the house that would carry his name, hold his relics, and become one of the great libraries and scriptoria of the medieval West. In his final months he intervened in the Three Chapters schism that divided northern Italy from Rome, addressing to Pope Boniface IV a bold letter (his Epistula 5) urging the pope to clear his own name of any taint of heresy and restore unity. He died at Bobbio on 23 November 615. These files cover the Italian foundation and the Three Chapters letter, both sides.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (pre-Schism; Celtic; missionary to the Continent)
Italy presented Columbanus with a religious landscape unlike Gaul’s: a Lombard ruling house still partly Arian, a Catholic population, and a bitter schism — the Three Chapters — that had set much of the northern Italian church against Rome ever since the Second Council of Constantinople (553). Into this Columbanus stepped with characteristic boldness, founding his monastery under royal Lombard patronage and then, asked (it seems) by the Arian-sympathetic king to mediate, writing to the pope a letter that defends Roman orthodoxy against the schismatics’ suspicions while lecturing the pope on his duty to vindicate it. The letter is his last great utterance and one of the most studied, and like the Easter letters it must be read from both sides. This section covers the foundation and the controversy.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| Into Italy and the Lombards | The welcome by King Agilulf and Queen Theodelinda; the grant of Bobbio (614) and the foundation of the monastery; Columbanus’s last months and his death on 23 November 615. |
| The Three Chapters and Arianism | The Three Chapters schism and the Arianism of the Lombard court; Columbanus’s Epistula 5 to Pope Boniface IV, its bold counsel and its limits; the question of how well he understood the controversy — both sides. |
See Also
- The Journey Across Gaul — the wandering that ended at the Alps
- The Letters to the Popes — the Easter letters that the Italian correspondence continues
- Bobbio and the Cult — the monastery’s later greatness and the relics
- The Sermons, Letters, and Poems — Epistula 5 in the corpus
References
- Jonas of Bobbio. Life of Columbanus. Trans. Alexander O’Hara and Ian Wood. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2017.
- Columbanus. Epistula 5. In Sancti Columbani Opera, ed. and trans. G. S. M. Walker. Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1957.
- Wood, Ian. The Missionary Life. Harlow: Longman, 2001.
- O’Hara, Alexander, ed. Columbanus and the Peoples of Post-Roman Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.