86 FOURTH PEKIOD. A.D. 590 TO 1049.
Columbanus drew up a monastic rule, which in all essential points resembles the more famous rule of St. Benedict, but is shorter and more severe. It divides the time of the monks be tween ascetic exercises and useful agricultural labor, and enjoins absolute obedience on severe penalties. It was afterwards super seded by the Benedictine rule, which had the advantage of the papal sanction and patronage.1
The life of Columbanus in France was embittered and his authority weakened by his controversy with the French clergy and the court of Burgundy. He adhered tenaciously to the Irish usage of computing Easter, the Irish tonsure and costume. Besides, his extreme severity of life was a standing rebuke of the worldly priesthood and dissolute court. He was summoned before a synod in 602 or 603, and defended himself in a letter with great freedom and eloquence, and with a singular mixture of humility and pride. He calls himself (like St. Patrick) " Columbanus, a sinner," but speaks with an air of authority. He pleads that he is not the originator of those ritual differences, that he came to France, a poor stranger, for the cause of Christ, and asks nothing but to be permitted to live in silence in the depth of the forests near the bones of his seventeen brethren, whom he had already seen die. " Ah ! let us live with you in this Gaul, where we now are, since we are destined to live with each other in heaven, if we are found worthy to enter there." The letter is mixed with rebukes of the bishops, calculations of Easter and an array of Scripture quotations. At the same time he wrote several letters to Pope Gregory I., one of which only is preserved in the writings of Columbanus. There is no record of the action of the Synod on this controversy, nor of any answer of the Pope.
1 There is a considerable difference between his Regula Monastica, in ten chapters, and his Regula Ccenobialis Fratrum, sive Liber de quotidianis Pcenitentiis Monachorum, in fifteen chapters. The latter is unreasonably rigorous, and im poses corporal punishments for the slightest offences, even speaking at table, or coughing at chanting. Ebrard (/. c., p. 148 sqq.) contends that the Regula Cosnobialis, which is found only in two codices, is of later origin. Comp. Hertel, L c.
\ 23. COLUMBANUS AND THE IRISH MISSIONARIES. 87
The conflict with the court of Burgundy is highly honorable to Coluiiibaiius, and resulted in his banishment. He reproved by word and writing the tyranny of queen Brunehild (or Brunehauld) and the profligacy of her grandson Theodoric (or Thierry II.); he refused to bless his illegitimate children and even threat ened to excommunicate the young king. He could not be silenced by flattery and gifts, and was first sent as a prisoner to Besanoon, and then expelled from the kingdom in 610.1
But this persecution extended his usefulness. We find him next, with his Irish friends who accompanied him, on the lake of Zurich, then in Brcgenz (Bregentium) on the lake of Con stance, planting the seeds of Christianity in those charming regions of German Switzerland. His preaching was accompanied by burning the heathen idols. Leaving his disciple St. Gall at Bregcn/, he crossed the Alps to Lombardy, and founded a famous monastery at Bobbio. He manfully fought there the Arian heresy, but in a letter to Boniface IV. he defended the cause of Nestorius, as condemned by the Fifth General Council of 553, and called upon the Pope to vindicate the church of Rome against the charge of heresy. He speaks very boldly to the Pope, but acknowledges Home to be " the head of the churches of the whole world, excepting only the singular prerogative of the place of the Lord's resurrection" (Jerusalem).2 He died in Bobbio, Xov. 21, G15. The poetry of grateful love and superstitious faith has adorned his simple life with various miracles.
Columbanus was a man of considerable learning for his age. He seems to have had even some knowledge of Greek and He brew. His chief works arc his Regula Monastica, in ten short chapters; seventeen Discourses; his Epistles to the Gallic Synod on the paschal controversy, to Gregory I., and to Boniface IV.; and a few poems. The following characteristic specimen of his ascetic view of life is from one of the discourses : " O mortal
1 For a full account of this quarrel see Montalembert, IT. 411 sqq.
2 " Roma orbis tcrrarum caput est ecdesiarum, salva loci Dominica: rcmrrcdionis sinyulari prcerogativa."