St. Columban

Columban was the most renowned of the Irish monks who carried the Gospel back to a Europe unsettled by the collapse of Rome. Trained in the strict monastic discipline of Bangor in Ireland, he set out around the year 590 with twelve companions as a "pilgrim for Christ," crossing to Gaul and founding monasteries at Annegray, Luxeuil, and Fontaines in the Vosges, which became seedbeds of learning and prayer for the whole region.

His zeal made him enemies. He rebuked the Frankish court of Burgundy for its corruption and clashed with the local bishops over the Irish way of reckoning Easter, refusing to abandon the customs of his homeland. Driven into exile, he traveled up the Rhine, preached among the Alemanni around Lake Constance, and finally crossed the Alps into Italy, where he founded the great abbey of Bobbio.

Columban wrote a monastic Rule, penitential handbooks, sermons, and poems, and his foundations spread a network of monasteries across Europe that preserved the faith and the written word through dark centuries. He died at Bobbio in 615, having taught that the Christian life is a pilgrimage whose only homeland is heaven.