Saint Columbanus of Luxeuil

But this initial apprenticeship in holy warfare was not enough for him. The wandering spirit of his race, the passion for pilgrimage and preaching, drew him beyond the seas. He heard incessantly ringing in his ears the voice that had said to Abraham: 'Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you.' This land was ours. The abbot tried in vain to hold him back. Columbanus, then thirty years old, left Bangor with twelve other monks, crossed Great Britain, and landed in Gaul. He found the Catholic faith standing, but Christian virtue and ecclesiastical discipline outraged or unknown, due to the fury of wars and the negligence of the bishops. For several years, he devoted himself to traveling through the country, preaching the Gospel there, and above all, setting the example of the humility and charity he taught to all. Arriving in the course of his apostolic wanderings in Burgundy, he was welcomed there by King Guntram. His eloquence enchanted the king an d his leude roi Gontran King of Burgundy who welcomed Columbanus upon his arrival in Gaul. s. Fearing to see him go further, Guntram offered him everything he wanted in order to keep him, and as the Irishman replied that he had not left his country to seek riches, but to follow Christ by carrying his cross, the king insisted and told him that there were in his states enough wild and solitary places where he could find the cross and win heaven, but that he must at no price leave Gaul nor think of converting other nations before having ensured the salvation of the Franks and the Burgundians.

Columbanus yielded to this desire and chose for his dwelling the old Roman castle o f Annegr Annegray Columbanus's first monastic establishment in Burgundy. ay. There, with his companions, he led the harshest of lives. He spent entire weeks there with no other food than the grass of the fields, the bark of trees, and the myrtle berries found in our fir woods; he received no provisions other than from the charity of neighbors. Often he would separate himself from his disciples to plunge alone into the woods, to live in community with the beasts. There, as later, in his long and intimate communion with the harsh and wild nature of these deserted places, nothing frightened him, and he frightened no one. Everything obeyed his voice. Birds would come to receive his caresses, and squirrels would descend from the tops of the fir trees to hide in the folds of his cowl. He had driven a bear from the cave that served as his cell; he had snatched from another a dead stag whose skin

Today a hamlet in the commune of Faneogney (Haute-Saône). Vies des Saints. — Tome XIII. 31 was to serve as footwear for his brothers. One day, as he wandered in the thickest part of the woods, carrying on his shoulder a volume of Holy Scripture, and reflecting on whether the ferocity of beasts that do not sin was not better than the rage of men who lose their souls, he saw twelve wolves coming toward him, surrounding him on the right and on the left. He remained motionless, reciting the verse: *Deus in adjutorium*. The wolves, after touching his garments with their muzzles, seeing him without fear, went on their way. He continued his own, and after a few steps, he heard a great noise of human voices, which he recognized as those of a band of Germanic brigands, of the Suebi nation, who were then ravaging that region. He did not see them; but he had to thank God for having preserved him from this double danger, in which one may see a double symbol of the constant struggle that monks had to wage in their laborious career against the wild forces of nature and the even wilder barbarity of men.

After a few years, the growing number of his disciples forced him to move elsewhere, and through the protection of one of the principal ministers of the Frankish king, Agnosid, married to a Burgundian woman of very noble race, he obtained from Guntram the site of another fortress, named Lu xeuil, Luxeuil Former Roman fortress that became a major monastic metropolis under Columbanus. where there had been thermal waters magnificently adorned by the Romans and where one could still see, in the neighboring forests, the idols that the Gauls had worshipped. It was upon the ruins of these two civilizations that the great monastic metropolis of Austrasia and Burgundy was established (590).

Luxeuil was situated on the borders of these two kingdoms, at the foot of the Vosges and to the north of that Sequania which the abbey of Condat had already, for more than a century, illuminated in the southern region. This entire region, which extended along the flanks of the Vosges and the Jura, so illustrious and so blessed under the name of Franche-Comté, offered at that time, over a length of sixty leagues and an average width of ten to fifteen, only parallel chains of inaccessible defiles, interspersed with impenetrable forests, bristling with immense pine groves that descended from the summit of the highest mountains and came to shade the course of the rapid and pure waters of the Doubs, the Dessoubre, and the Loue. The invasions of the barbarians, especially that of Attila, had reduced the Roman cities to ashes, annihilating all culture and all population. Vegetation and wild beasts had regained possession of this solitude, which it was reserved for the disciples of Columbanus and Benedict to transform into fields and pastures.

Disciples flocked around the Irish colonizer. Soon he counted several hundred in the three monasteries he had successively built and which he governed simultaneously. The noble Franks and Burgundians, dominated by the spectacle of these grandeurs of work and prayer, brought him their sons, lavished their donations upon him, and often came to ask him to cut their long hair, the sign of nobility and freedom, and to admit them themselves into the ranks of his army. Work and prayer had taken on, under the strong hand of Columbanus, proportions hitherto unheard of. The crowd of poor serfs and rich lords became so great that he was able to organize there that perpetual office, called Laus perennis, which already existed at A gaune, on the Laus perennis Perpetual praise organized by Columbanus at Luxeuil. other side of the Jura and Lake Geneva, and where day and night the voices of the monks, "as tireless as those of the angels," took turns to celebrate the praises of God with an endless canticle. All, rich and poor, were equally bound to the clearing work that Columbanus directed himself. With the impetuosity that was natural to him, he spared no weakness. He demanded that even the sick go to thresh the wheat on the threshing floor. An article of his Rule prescribes that the monk should go to bed so tired that he is already asleep while going to it, and to rise before having slept enough. It is at the price of this perpetual and excessive labor that half of our country and of ungrateful Europe was restored to cultivation and life.

Twenty years passed in this way, during which the reputation of Columbanus grew and spread far and wide. But his influence was not unchallenged. He displeased a portion of the Gallo-Frankish clergy, first by the Irish peculiarities of his costume and tonsure, perhaps also by the intemperate zeal with which he reminded bishops of their duties in his epistles, and more surely by his obstinacy in having Easter celebrated, according to the Irish custom, on the fourteenth day of the moon, when that day fell on a Sunday, instead of celebrating it with the whole Church on the Sunday after the fourteenth day. This pretension, at once meticulous and oppressive, troubled his whole life and weakened his authority, for he pushed his stubbornness on this point to the extent of trying more than once to bring the Holy See itself to his opinion.

It is doubtful, however, that this attitude did not shake the ascendancy that the virtues and holiness of Columbanus had won for him among the Gallo-Franks. But he soon regained it entirely in the conflict he engaged in, for the honor of Christian morals, against Queen Brunhilda and her grandson. T reine Brunehaut Queen of Austrasia and Burgundy, principal political opponent of Columbanus. he thirst to reign alone misled this queen to the point of determining her, she whose youth had been blameless, to encourage in her grandsons that polygamy which seems to have been the sad privilege of Germanic princes, and especially of the Merovingians. For fear of having a rival in credit and power near the young King Theuderic, she opposed with all h er migh Thierry King of Burgundy, grandson of Brunhilda, admonished by Columbanus for his morals. t his replacing his concubines with a legitimate queen, and when at last he determined to marry a Visigothic princess, Brunhilda, although herself the daughter of a Visigothic king, managed to disgust her grandson with her and to have her repudiated after a year. The Bishop of Vienne, Saint Desiderius, who had advised the king to marry, was beaten to death by assassins whom the queen mother had posted.

However, the young Theuderic had religious instincts. He rejoiced to possess in his kingdom such a holy man as Columbanus. He often went to visit him. The Irish zeal took advantage of this to reproach him for his disorders and to exhort him to seek the sweetness of a legitimate spouse, so that the royal race could come from an honorable queen, and not from a place of prostitution. The young king promised to amend himself: but Brunhilda easily turned him away from these good inspirations. Columbanus having come to see her at the manor of Bourcheresse, she presented to him the four sons that Theuderic already had by his concubines. "What do these children want with me?" said the monk. "They are the king's sons," said the queen; "strengthen them with your blessing." "No!" replied Columbanus, "they will not reign, for they come from a bad place." From that moment, Brunhilda swore a war to the death against him. She first had it forbidden for the religious of the monasteries governed by Columbanus to leave them, and for anyone at all to receive them or to provide them with the slightest help. Columbanus wanted to try to enlighten and bring back Theuderic. He went to find him at his royal villa of Époisses. Upon learning that the abbot had arrived, but did not want to enter the palace, the king had a sumptuously prepared meal brought to him. Columbanus refused to accept anything from the hand of the one who forbade the servants of God access to and the dwelling of other men, and under the blow of his curse all the vessels that contained the various dishes were miraculously broken. The king, frightened by this prodigy, and his grandmother, then came to ask his forgiveness, and promised to correct themselves. Columbanus, appeased, returned to his monastery, where he soon learned that Theuderic had fallen back into his habitual debaucheries. Then he wrote to the king a letter full of vehement reproaches, and which threatened him with an imminent excommunication.

Brunhilda had no trouble stirring up the principal leudes of Theuderic's court against this unaccustomed audacity; she even undertook to persuade the bishops to intervene in order to blame the Rule of the new institute. Excited by everything he heard said around him, Theuderic resolved to take the offensive, presented himself at Luxeuil, and demanded an account from the abbot as to why he was departing from the customs of the country and why the interior of the convent was not open to all Christians and even to women, for it was still one of Brunhilda's grievances against Columbanus that he had forbidden her, although queen, to cross the threshold of his monastery. The young king penetrated in person as far as the refectory, saying that one must let everyone enter everywhere or else renounce all royal gifts. Columbanus, with his accustomed audacity, said to the king: "If you want to violate the rigor of our Rules, we have no need of your gifts; and if you come here to destroy our monastery, know that your kingdom will be destroyed with all your race."

The king was afraid and went out; but he soon resumed: "You perhaps hope that I will procure for you the crown of martyrdom; but I am not foolish enough for that: only, since it pleases you to live outside of any relationship with seculars, you have only to go back the way you came, and all the way to your own country." All the lords of the royal retinue cried out that they also did not want to tolerate in their country people who isolated themselves from everyone in this way. Columbanus said that he would not leave his monastery unless he were dragged out by force. So they took him and led him to Besançon to await the king's further orders (610). After which, a sort of blockade was established around Luxeuil to prevent anyone from leaving. Columbanus, surrounded at Besançon by the respect of all, and enjoying his freedom within the city, took advantage of it one morning to climb the summit of the rock where the citadel is situated today, and which the Doubs encircles with its winding waves. From this height, he casts his gaze on the road that leads to Luxeuil: he seems to be looking for the obstacles that could prevent his return. His mind is made up: he descends, leaves the city, and heads toward Luxeuil. At the news of his return, Theuderic and Brunhilda send a count with a cohort of soldiers to lead him back into exile. Then took place this scene, so often repeated over twelve centuries, and still in our own days, between the persecutors and the victims. The ministers of the royal will found him in the choir, chanting the office with his entire community. "Man of God," they said to him, "we ask you to obey the orders of the king and our own, and to go away to where you came from." — "No," replied Columbanus, "after having left my homeland once for the service of Jesus Christ, I do not think my Creator wants me to return there." At these words, the count withdrew, leaving to the most ferocious of his soldiers the task of accomplishing the rest. Tamed by the firmness of the abbot who repeated that he would only yield to force, they knelt before him and begged him, weeping, to forgive them and not to reduce them to a violence that was imposed upon them under pain of death. At this thought of a danger that was no longer personal to him, the intrepid Irishman yielded and left the sanctuary he had founded, which he had inhabited for twenty years, and which he was never to see again. His religious surrounded him, groaning as if they were walking at his funeral. He consoled them by telling them that this persecution, far from being a ruin for them, would only serve to multiply "the monastic people." Everyone wanted to follow him into his exile; but a royal order forbade this consolation to the monks who were not of Irish or British origin. Brunhilda was quite willing to get rid of these islanders, as bold and independent as their leader, but she did not want to ruin the great establishment of which Burgundy was already proud. The Saint, accompanied by his Irish brothers, took the road of exile.

They made him pass a second time through Besançon, then to Autun, to Avallon, along the Cure and the Yonne to Auxerre, and from there to Nevers, where he was embarked on the Loire. He marked each of his stages with miraculous healings or other wonders which, nevertheless, did not mitigate the grudges he had excited. On the road to Avallon, he met a squire of King Theuderic who tried to pierce him with his lance. At Nevers, at the moment of embarking, a coarse satellite of the escort of the proscribed took an oar and struck Lua, one of the most pious among the companions of Columbanus, to make him enter the boat faster. The Saint cried out: "Cruel man, by what right do you come to aggravate my pain? By what right do you dare to strike the weary members of Christ? Remember that divine vengeance will reach you right here where your fury has reached the servant of God." And indeed, on the return, the wretch fell into the water and drowned at the very spot where he had struck Lua.

Arrived at Orléans, he sends two of his brothers into the city to procure provisions; but they will neither sell nor give them anything so as not to contravene the royal prohibitions. They were treated as people outlawed, outside the king's peace, and whom it was forbidden by Salic law to welcome, under penalty of incurring the fine, then enormous, of six hundred denarii. Even the churches were closed to them by order of the king. But while retracing their steps, they meet a Syrian woman, who asks them where they come from, and having learned, offers them hospitality and gives them everything they needed. "I too," she said, "am like you a foreigner, and I come from the distant sun of the Orient." She had a blind husband to whom Columbanus restored sight. The people of Orléans were moved by this; but one dared only to show one's veneration for the proscribed in secret.

Passing in front of the city of Tours, Columbanus asks to be allowed to go and pray at the tomb of the great Saint Martin, always equally venerated by the Celts, the Romans, and the Franks. But his savage guards order the sailors to row hard and pass in the middle of the river. However, an invisible force stops the boat: it directs itself toward the port. He goes ashore and spends the night near the holy tomb. The Bishop of Tours comes to find him and takes him to dine at his home. At the table, he is asked why he is going to return to his country. He replies: "This dog of Theuderic has driven me away from my brothers." Then a guest, who was one of the leudes or faithful of the king, said in a low voice: "Is it not better to feed people with milk than with wormwood?" — "I see," replied Columbanus, "that you want to keep your oath to King Theuderic. Well! go tell your friend and your lord that within three years he and his children will be annihilated, and that his whole race will be extirpated by God." — "Why speak thus, servant of God?" said the leude. "I could not keep silent," replied the Saint, "what the Lord charges me to say."

Arrived at Nantes, and on the eve of leaving the soil of Gaul, his thought turns toward Luxeuil, and he begins to write a letter where his heart pours itself out entirely. He prescribes the dispositions most proper, according to him, to guarantee the destinies of his dear community of Luxeuil, through the purity of elections and internal harmony. He recommends to his religious confidence, strength of soul, patience, but above all peace and union. The bishop and the count of Nantes pressed for his departure; but the Irish ship on which the effects and companions of Columbanus were embarked, and which he was to join in a rowboat, having presented itself at the mouth of the Loire, was rejected by the waves and remained three days high and dry on the beach. Then the captain had the monks and everything that belonged to them unloaded, and continued his route. Columbanus was left with the freedom to go where he wanted.

He headed toward the court of the King of Soissons and Neustria, Clotaire II. This son of Fredegund, faithful t o his mothe Clotaire II King of Neustria and later sole King of the Franks, protector of Columbanus after his exile. r's hatred for Brunhilda and her offspring, gave the most eager welcome to the victim of his enemy, tried to keep him with him, received with good grace the remonstrances that the indomitable apostle, always faithful to his profession as a censor, addressed to him regarding the disorders of his court, and promised to amend himself. He consulted him on the dispute that had just broken out between the two brothers Theuderic and Theudebert, who were Théodebert King of Austrasia, temporary protector of Columbanus against his brother Theuderic. both asking him for help. Columbanus advised him not to get involved in anything, because in three years their two kingdoms would fall into his power. He then asked for an escort to lead him to Theudebert, King of Metz or Austrasia, whose states he wanted to cross to go to Italy. Passing through Paris, Meaux, and Champagne, he saw the chiefs of the Frankish nobility bring him their children, and he blessed several of them, destined to inherit his spirit and to propagate his work. Theudebert, at war with his brother Theuderic, gave the proscribed the same welcome as Clotaire II, but did not succeed any better in keeping him.

At the court of the King of Austrasia, he was not far from Burgundy, and he had the consolation of seeing several of his brothers from Luxeuil again, who escaped to join him. At their head, and encouraged by the promises and eager protection of Theodebert, he wished to try to preach the faith to the nations still pagan, subject to Austrasian rule, who inhabited the regions near the Rhine. This was always his ambition, his inclination, and his favorite work. After sixty years of labor devoted to the reform of kings and peoples already Christian, he began the second phase of his life, that of preaching to the infidels.

He therefore embarked on the Rhine, below Mainz, traveled up this river and its tributaries as far as Lake Zurich, stayed for some time at Tuggen and Arbon, finding here and there some traces of the Christianity that Roman or Frankish rule had sown there, and finally settled at Bregenz, on Lake Constance, amidst the ruins of an ancie Bregentz Mission site of Columbanus on the shores of Lake Constance. nt Roman city.

During his stay at Bregenz, our Saint went to see King Theodebert again, one does not know on what occasion, who was still at war with his brother, the King of Burgundy. Enlightened by a premonition and inspired by the gratitude he owed this young prince, he advised him to yield and take refuge in the bosom of the Church by becoming a monk, instead of risking both his kingdom and his salvation. Columbanus's advice made the king and all the Franks surrounding him laugh: "Never," they said, "has it been heard that a Merovingian king became a monk of his own free will." — "Well then!" said Columbanus amidst their execrations, "since he does not wish to be one by right, he will be one by force." Having said this, the Saint returned to his cell on the shores of Lake Constance. Soon he learned there that his persecutor Theuderic had again invaded the states of his protector Theodebert, routed him, and pursued him to the gates of Cologne (612). The decisive battle was fought in the fields of Tolbiac, where Theodebert was defeated and captured: Theuderic sent him to the implacable Brunhilda, who had his head shaved, then had him clothed in the monastic habit, and shortly thereafter put to death.

Forced to leave Bregenz, Columbanus kept only one disciple with him, Attala, and continued his journey across the Alps. It is the image and memory of this journey that inspired the beginning of one of the instructions addressed to his monks, where the tireless traveler compares life to a journey: "O mortal life! how many have you deceived, seduced, blinded! You flee and you are nothing; you appear and you are but a shadow; you rise and you are but smoke; you flee every day and every day you come; you flee while coming and you come while fleeing, similar to the starting point, different at the end; sweet to the foolish, bitter to the wise: those who love you do not know you, and only those who despise you truly know you. What are you then, O human life? You are the way of mortals and not their life; you begin in sin and you end in death. You are therefore the way of life and not life itself. You are but a path, and an uneven one at that, long for some, short for others; wide for these, narrow for those; joyful for a few, sad for others, but for all equally rapid and without return. It is necessary, therefore, O miserable human life! to probe you, to question you, but not to trust you. One must pass through you without lingering. No one dwells on a high road: one must only walk upon it, in order to reach the homeland." The King of the Lombards, Agilulf, received the venerable exile with respect and confidence; and Columbanus, having barely arrived in Milan, immediately began to write against the Arians, for this fatal heresy still dominated among the Lombards; those who had not remained pagan, especially the nobles, remained prey to Arianism. The Irish Apostle thus found new fuel for his missionary zeal, and was able to devote himself to it successfully without renouncing his love of solitude. Agilulf gifted him a territory by the name Bobbio Abbey founded by Columbanus in the Apennines, a center of scholarship and orthodoxy. of Bobbio, located in a remote gorge of the Apennines, between Genoa and Milan, not far from those famous banks of the Trebbia, where Hannibal had camped and defeated the Romans. There was an old church there dedicated to Saint Peter; Columbanus took it upon himself to restore it and to add a monastery to it. Despite his age, he wished to share in the work of the laborers, and bent his old shoulders under the weight of enormous fir beams that seemed impossible to transport across the precipices and steep paths of these mountains. This Abbey of Bobbio was his last stage. He made it the citadel of orthodoxy against the Arians, and lit there a hearth of science and teaching that made it for a long time the beacon of northern Italy.

While the tireless missionary was thus restarting his career as a preacher and monastic founder in Italy, everything had changed face among those Franks to whom he had dedicated half his life: King Theuderic had died suddenly at twenty-six years of age. Brunhilda and the four sons of Theuderic were delivered to Clotaire. He had the two eldest slaughtered, and showed himself the worthy son of Fredegund by the atrocious torture he inflicted upon Brunhilda. Clotaire II, having become by all these crimes the sole King of the Franks and master of Austrasia and Burgundy as well as Neustria, remembered the prediction that Columbanus had made to him and desired to see again the Saint who had prophesied so well. He therefore charged Eustasius, who had replaced him as abbot at Luxeuil, to go and fetch his spiritual father and to lead with him a deputation of nobles intended to serve as a guarantee of the king's good intentions. Columbanus received Eustasius with happiness and kept him for some time with him to thoroughly imbue him with the spirit of the Rule that he needed to make prevail over "the monastic people" at Luxeuil. But he refused to answer Clotaire's call; he limited himself to writing him a letter full of salutary advice, and to recommending to him his dear Abbey of Luxeuil, which the king indeed showered with gifts and favors.

As for Columbanus, he ended as he had begun, by seeking a solitude even more confined than that of the monastery he had just founded at Bobbio. He had found on the opposite bank of the Trebbia, and in the side of an immense rock, a cavern that he had transformed into a chapel dedicated to the Blessed Virgin: it is there that he spent his final days in fasting and prayer, returning to the monastery only for Sundays and feast days. His death occurred on November 21, 615.

Saint Columbanus is depicted: 1° blessing wild animals; on his chest is figured a sun; 2° at the moment he drove a bear from its cave and established himself there; 3° standing, holding a cross and a crozier; on his chest is represented a sun; 4° making water flow from a rock.

## CULT AND RELICS. — HIS WRITINGS.

After his death, the chapel where he had spent his final days was long venerated and frequented by afflicted souls, and three centuries later, the monastery annals reported that those who entered it sad and dejected left it rejoicing and comforted by the sweet protection of Mary and Columbanus. The Saint was buried in Bobbio, where his body was preserved until recent times, enclosed in a stone chest on the main altar of an underground crypt, along with those of his successors Saint Bertulf and Saint Attala, if one is to believe trustworthy authors. The small town of Lominé, in the diocese of Vannes, also possesses some relics of the Saint, which it honors as its patron.

There remain to us from Saint Columbanus: 1° seven pieces of verse, which offer interest only as a specimen of the poetry of those times; 2° sixteen Instructions to his monks; they are remarkable in several respects. One finds there a great knowledge of Holy Scripture, a particular unction, a beauty of imagery, and an elegance of style of which the 6th and 7th centuries would perhaps offer few examples. Sometimes the antithesis is carried to the point of abuse: it was the defect of the time. These precious remains should make us regret what has been lost; 3° Letters; 4° his Rule and his Penitential, a complete treatise on monastic life. The Rule is divided into ten chapters: the first treats of obedience; the second, of silence; the third, of food suitable for a monk; the fourth, of poverty and disinterestedness; the fifth, of the contempt one must have for vanity; the sixth, of chastity; the seventh, of the order of the psalms; the eighth, of discretion; the ninth, of mortification; the tenth, of the perfection of a monk. Under these diverse titles, the Saint gathers all the advice that can form the good religious. He posits, and with reason, obedience as the foundation of monastic virtue; without famous Palimpsests from which Cardinal Mai extracted Cicero's *De Republica*. — The monastery was only suppressed under French rule, in 1509; the church still subsists and serves as a parish.

indeed, without obedience, the religious spirit disappears. Everything must rest upon the two great precepts of the love of God and the love of neighbor, which are like the columns of the spiritual edifice. Time must be shared between prayer and work; not a single instant must be left to idleness: the Saint follows to the letter the precept of Saint Jerome: "Always do something, so that the demon may always find you occupied." The divine offices were of a length that would appear excessive today, but which the fervor of these heavenly men easily supported. Moreover, it was in proportion to the solemnity of the feast, and even to the season. The shortest Matins contain twenty-four psalms and eight antiphons; the longest, seventy-five psalms and twenty-five antiphons; the medium ones, thirty-six psalms and twelve antiphons. From the nativity of Saint John the Baptist until the calends of November, the Matins of Saturday and Sunday must contain the entire psalter. It was the same for the whole winter, and on holidays one recited the medium Matins. In the spring, one diminished each week by three psalms the Matins of Saturday and Sunday and those of the weekdays, until the former were brought back to thirty-six, and the latter to twenty-four psalms; a phase that lasted for the weekdays until the autumn equinox. The reason for this difference was undoubtedly taken from the work of the season. As for the day office, which must be interrupted by bodily labor, it consisted of three psalms for each hour, followed by prayers for sinners, for all Christendom, for priests and all orders of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, for benefactors, for peace between kings, and for enemies. At the end of each psalm, one knelt. Besides the choir prayers, each religious also had private ones to say in his cell.

Obedience was principally recommended by the holy founder. According to him, the religious must obey even in what is most repugnant to his will: he must, like the divine Master, obey unto death. He is forbidden to do anything, to undertake anything without the counsel of the abbot. It is in this abnegation of his own will that Columbanus makes Christian mortification consist above all; without it, the mortification of the senses would be but a deception. However, the latter is not neglected. Silence must be kept continually: one can only break it for reasons of necessity and utility. Food consists of herbs, vegetables, flour mixed with water, and a little bread. However, it had to be proportioned to the work. Ale was the only drink. This was the name given to a kind of beer made with barley or fruit, and very much in use at that time. Wine was almost unknown among the monks, except for the holy sacrifice, for some cases of illness, or for the use of strangers. One had to eat every day in order to preserve the strength necessary for work. The meal was taken towards evening. Work occupied the time that was not given to exercises of piety. It consisted mainly in the clearing of land for cultivation. The monks plowed, harvested, threshed grain: the monasteries were vast schools of agriculture. When Columbanus came to Luxeuil, the soil was covered with brambles and thorns; it is he who created the beautiful countryside that one admires today around this city.

It was also a rule at Luxeuil, as in all the monasteries of that time, that there should be a library at the service of the monks; the Rule of Saint Columbanus even fixes the time that one must devote each day to reading. It was through this that science and the taste for letters were maintained in the monasteries. The Rule of Saint Denot, a century and a half older, already required that one choose as abbots only men versed in letters. Often bodily labors were suspended to copy manuscripts. Everyone knows to what point of elegance the art of writing was carried in those times. The nuns themselves occupied themselves with copying books. Certain women's monasteries, and in particular those of Eika, in Belgium, of Bischoffsheim, in Germany, etc., had brought to a marvelous perfection the talent of copying and illuminating manuscripts. Without these assiduous, persevering labors, without this care to perpetuate the works of antiquity, even the names most dear to literature would not have reached us. Everything would have fallen into the night of ignorance and barbarism.

The Saint particularly recommends chastity to his religious; he forbids women from entering his monastery. This was in part the cause of the persecutions he experienced. In 856, we still find this prohibition in force at Luxeuil. In his *Penitential*, Columbanus inflicts grave punishments on those who have violated their vow of chastity. He also pursues with vigor greed in monks. "It is," he says, "a leprosy for them, since not only possession, but the mere desire for the superfluous is forbidden to them." Detachment from earthly goods is in his eyes the first degree of perfection, as the second consists in the extirpation of vices, and the third in the perfect love of God and neighbor, and consequently in the taste for heavenly things, which must succeed the taste for the goods of the earth.

As human nature is always disposed to relaxation, in order to maintain the effectiveness of his wise rules, Columbanus established a penitential code, whose provisions would appear today exaggerated or ridiculous, but which were in keeping with the Rule itself and the customs of the time, and for fear that contact with the world might be for his monks an occasion of dissipation or scandal, entry into the interior of the monastery was forbidden to laypeople: the prohibition was not even lifted for King Theuderic.

Such were the means that Saint Columbanus employed to maintain in his monasteries the fervor that he himself had inspired there. His soul must have experienced great joy in seeing so many generous disciples rival each other in ardor on the paths of Good. As long as he lived, he had the consolation of enjoying this beautiful spectacle. Moreover, his Rule has at all times been considered a true code of monastic perfection. During his lifetime, he saw it established in several monasteries; and a greater number still adopted it after his death. Towards the middle of the following century, it was absorbed by that of Saint Benedict, with which it had more than one trait of resemblance.

The care for piety did not make Columbanus neglect the study of letters. A man of letters himself and very learned for his time, he took particular care to make Luxeuil a school, a center of studies, whose action could spread far and wide.

Holy Scripture and the Fathers made up the principal, or rather the only object of the monks' studies. This was, says the learned Mabillon, the only theology of those times. Skilled and learned masters explained, commented on these inexhaustible sources of instruction and light. The humanities and the liberal arts, geometry, rhetoric, poetics, mathematics, grammar, etc., were not, however, excluded from the monasteries, but all these sciences had to converge toward the main goal: Holy Scripture and the Fathers. Wars sometimes suspended these studies; but they resumed immediately with peace. The reading of profane authors was tolerated, but only of those who were pure of all obscenity.

Among the works of Saint Columbanus that are lost, one counts: 1° a Commentary on the Psalms; 2° his writings against the Arians; 3° two Letters addressed, one to King Theuderic and the other to King Clotaire; 4° letters and writings on Easter and on the Three Chapters.

The complete works of Saint Columbanus are found in volume LXXX of the Patrologia Latina.

The Monks of the West, by de Montalembert. — Cf. Surius, Mabillon, Dom Elvet, Dom Cellier and Hélyot.