St. Columbanus (543? – 615)

A flaming red-haired Irish abbot from Leinster, he set out to continental Europe to teach the strict Irish style of monasticism among the Franks. In his youth Columbanus was blessed with great teachers and studied with some of the greatest of the Irish saints. He became known for his miracle-working cures, for his wilderness adventures and particularly for an amazing rapport with animals. Many stories tell of his experiences in the deep forests of the Vosges and the Swiss Alps where he encountered wolves, bears, birds, rabbits and many other denizens of the primeval European wilderness. His first monastery was built in the Vosges Mountains near the present Swiss-German border. While traveling, he asked his monks to sing special hymns which hastened their journey and framed a natural theology. Like many in the Celtic Church, he taught that personal holiness and the qualities in prayer intimately shape creation as well as the response of the animals to humans. He built his monasteries on places of previous pagan worship so that a respect and a religious continuity were demonstrated to the local culture. His understanding of the monastery was as a place for community service and a center for learning, healing, popular education and social care. He vigorously insisted that the Irish Church had maintained the pure Christian tradition from ancient times. He is considered the greatest of the Irish missionaries to the European continent.

Attitudes Toward the World

The man to whom a little is not enough, he will not benefit from more.
He who tramples upon the world, tramples upon himself.

~ Writings of Columbanus. Quoted in Celtic Christianity, William Parker Marsh and Christopher Bamford. Steiner Books, 1987, p. 122.

The Monks’ Rowing Hymn

Ho, the driven keel passes along the stream,
the divide in the forests. Of twin-horned Rhine,
And it glides as if anointed upon the flood.

Ho, my men! Let ringing echo the sound of our Ho!
The winds raise their blasts, the dread rain works its woe,
But men’s ready strength conquers and routs the storm.

Ho, my men! Let ringing echo sound our Ho!
For the clouds yield to endurance, and the storm yields,
Effort tames them all, unwearied toil conquers all things.

Ho, my men! Let ringing echo sound our Ho!
Thus the hated foe deals as he wearies our hearts,
And by ill temptation shakes the inward hearts with rage.
Let your mind, my men, recalling Christ, sound Ho!

~ Quoted in Jakob Streit, Sun and Cross, Floris Books, Edinburgh, 1984, pg. 186.

The World is but a Road

A road to life art thou, not life itself. And as there is no man who makes his dwelling in the road, but walks there: and those who fare along the road have their dwelling in the fatherland. So thou art naught, O mortal life, naught but a road, a fleeting ghost, an emptiness, a cloud uncertain and frail, a shadow and a dream.

~ Writings of Columbanus. Quoted in Celtic Christianity, William Parker Marsh and Christopher Bamford. Trans Helen Waddell. Steiner Books, 1987, p. 121-2.

Know the Creator through the Creation

If you want to understand the Creator, seek to understand created things.

~ Quoted in David Adam, The Wisdom of the Celts, Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, MI, 1997, pg. 13.

Encounters with Wild Animals

Columbanus was walking alone through the forest as night began to fall. He carried only a small satchel and somehow began to reflect on what he would chose if he had a choice between suffering death at the hands of thieves and robbers, or being devoured by savage wild beasts. After some reflection, he concluded that he would prefer to suffer the ferocity of wild beasts because that was not sin on their parts. Just as he came to this conclusion, he heard a pack of wolves running through the dense forest. They quickly spotted him and came right toward him and soon stood about him on the right and left sides, and he could only stand motionless in their midst, saying, “O God, look to my help, and make haste to help me!”
The wolves put their muzzles on his clothes, sniffed him, and while he stood unshaken, ready to face death, if need be, they abruptly turned and left him here and continued on their forest ranging.

~ Vita St. Columbae, C.15, as retold by Helen Waddell, Beasts and Saints, Constable & Co., Toronto, 1934.
The bear cave

On another occasion, he left the monastery and wandered deep into the forest solitudes, where he came upon a great rock outcropping, its flanks broken into small cliffs and its crest broken into jagged points of rock, untrodden by man. And there up the side of the rock he spied a secret hollow cave. He came up closer to examine the hiding place, and found inside the cave of a bear’s den, and the bear himself inside. He gently told the bear it was better for him to leave, and the bear did, never to return to that place. And this was about seven miles from the Abbey of Annegrey in the Vosges mountains.

~ Vita St. Columbae, C.15, as retold by Helen Waddell, Beasts and Saints, Constable & Co., Toronto, 1934.
Friend of woodland creatures

Bishop Chamnoald from the Cathedral of Lyons who studied for some time with St. Columbanus relates that we should not marvel at the way the birds and beasts responded to this man of God. He often told those in the city that when Columbanus walked into the forest to fast or pray, how he would call the creatures of the wild, birds or beasts to him, and how they would come quickly at his call. Then he would stroke them with his hand and caress them; and the wild things and the birds would leap and frisk about him for sheer happiness, jumping up on him as young dogs jump on their masters. Even the usually fearful little squirrels would come down from the tree-tops at his call, and the saint would take the creature in his hand and let it scamper up onto his shoulder, and it would play running in and out of the folds on his cowl; and this the bishop said he had often seen with his own eyes.

~ “The Life of Saint Columban,” by the Monk Jonas, in Migne, Patrilogiae Latinae cursus completus, Vol. 87, cols. 1014-1016, quoted in Dana Munro, “The Life of Saint Columban,” Llanerch Publishers, The Original Sources of European History, Phila, 1895, Nr. 30, p. 52.