The Columbanian Network: Elite Identities and Christian Communities

The period c. 550 c. 750 was one in which monastic culture became more firmly entrenched in Western Europe. The role of monasteries and their relationship to the social world around them were transformed during this period as monastic institutions became more integrated in social and political power networks. This project focuses on one of the central actors in this process, the Irish ascetic exile and monastic founder, Columbanus (c. 550 615), and the monastic network he and his Frankish disciples founded in Merovingian Gaul and Lombard Italy. Columbanus left Ireland in 590 in order to pursue an ideal of ascetic exilea commitment to live the rest of his life in religious exile. This ideal of alienation informed every aspect of Columbanus`s exile on the Continent, his organization of his communities, and his relations with the Frankish elite. The language of exile was the language of separation as Columbanus attempted to shape his communities as sacred spaces apart from society with clear boundaries and rules of access. For reasons still insufficiently understood, this discourse appealed to the Frankish elite who increasingly sought to invest in the Church as a means of accruing spiritual benefits and to enhance their prestige and status. The boundaries that Columbanus established to mark off his communities and which derived from the rhetoric of ascetic exile inadvertently led to new ways of community-building based on Christian discourse. Monastic ideals began to influence the court culture of Chlothar II and Dagobert I while courtiers began to establish monasteries and to adopt a specific set of terms borrowed from Columbanian monastic discourse. This project aims to investigate further the dynamics of this vibrant interaction between monastic and elite networks during this formational period and to address questions that are still insufficiently understood such as: How did Columbanian ascetic discourse feed into aristocratic self-representation and the formation of a Neustrian Frankish identity in the wake of the consolidation of the Frankish kingdoms under Chlothar II? In which ways did this new elite try to distinguish itself from the Gallo-Roman elite and to claim precedence over other Frankish groups? How did Christian discourse come to increasingly influence the social and political frameworks of the post-Roman world and what was the role of outsiders such as Columbanus in shaping this?

The convergence of Christian ideology and the exercise of secular power in early medieval Europe arose from a radical re-imagining of the economics of salvation in the seventh century. An increased interest in eschatology, especially in the ability of prayer to offset the burden of sin and affect salvation in the afterlife, led the Christian laity to seek intercessors who were radically different. The monastic movement had been a fringe movement since its beginnings in the Egyptian and Syrian deserts of the fourth century when Christianity had been adopted as the official religion of the Roman Empire. There had been monastic pioneers like Antony of Egypt, Martin of Tours, Benedict of Nursia, and others scattered throughout the East and West, but monasteries remained largely peripheral to elite identity and the exercise of secular power. This changed in the seventh century in the West. Following the travels of the Irish holy man and ascetic exile, Columbanus, who founded five monasteries in modern-day France, Austria, and Italy before his death in 615, a revolution in monastic foundation occurred as Frankish kings and nobles vied amongst themselves in building and endowing monasteries. Within a century of Columbanus death, more than one hundred monasteries had been founded that had been modelled on and inspired by the saints principal monastery of Luxeuil in Burgundy. As an outsider and immigrant, he had to operate through established networks of power in securing support and patronage for his monastic projects. He worked in dialogue with kings, who were responsible alongside bishops for upholding the Christian faith in their realms. Only through this cooperation with kings could he establish monasteries in rural areas that were independent from the control of the episcopate, where Christian praxis was not as firmly established as in the cities, and where there had been a tradition of pre-Christian ritual sites and healing springs. The sites he chose to establish his monasteries were similar in profile, which indicates that he followed a strategy of foundation. His charisma and authority as a holy man won followers from different ethnic backgrounds. These cultural encounters were not without difficulties as Columbanus struggled to reconcile his Irish traditions with those of his host societies. Something new emerged from this. Columbanus working together with Frankish elites involved the barbarian elites in the process of monastic foundation and it provided a model of foundation that bypassed the episcopally-controlled Church. This allowed his foundations to be more independent. Out of this symbiosis, monastic ideology and norms began to play ever more prominent a role in Frankish elite identity and the ways in which Frankish kings thought about their exercise of power. Monasteries became more central to society as they grew into dynamic centres of liturgical specialisation and prayer, craft production, education and learning, fine art, and rural development, all of which would influence and shape the development of European civilization from the seventh century onwards. While Columbanus was one of many holy men who became prominent in Late Antiquity, his ascetic exile through Europe served as a catalyst for a wider monastic movement that had lasting impact in his host countries. In the divided Europe of his day Columbanus was a powerful voice of unity urging political and ecclesiastical leaders to work together in Christian charity and as a migrant was one of the first to express the idea of a united European identity grounded in the Christian faith.