A Source Book for Ancient Church History - Mirrors

§ 98. The State Church in the Germanic Kingdoms 641hands, confirmed it with an oath, that after the death of Dagobert,Neustria and Burgundy, by an established ordinance, should fallto Chlodoveus; but Austrasia, because in population and extentit was equal to those lands, should belong in its entire extent toSigibert.(h) Jonas, Vita Columbani, chs. 9, 12, 17, 32, 33, 59, 60. (MSL,87:1016.)Columbanus (543-615) was the most active and successfulof the Irish missionary monks laboring on the continent ofEurope. In 585 Columbanus left Ireland to preach in thewilder parts of Gaul, and in 590 or 591 founded Luxeuil,which became the parent monastery of a considerable groupof monastic houses. He came into conflict with the Frankishclergy on account of the Celtic mode of fixing the date ofEaster [see Epistle of Columbanus among the Epistles ofGregory the Great, to whom it is addressed, Bk. IX, Ep. 127,PNF, ser. II, vol. XIII, p. 38; two other epistles on thesubject in MSL, vol. 80], his monastic rule [MSL, 80:209],and his condemnatory attitude toward the dissoluteness of lifeprevalent in Gaul among the clergy, as well as in the court.Banished from Burgundy in 610 partly for political reasons, heworked for a time in the vicinity of Lake Constance. In 612,leaving his disciple Gallus [see Vita S. Galli, by WalafridStrabo, MSL, 114; English translation by C. W. Bispham,Philadelphia, 1908], he went to Italy and, having foundedBobbio, died in 615. Gallus (ob. circa 640) subsequentlyfounded the great monastery of St. Gall in Switzerland,near Lake Constance. The Celtic monks on the continentabandoned their Celtic peculiarities in the ninth century andadopted the Benedictine rule.[586]Jonas, the author of the life of Columbanus, was a monkat Bobbio. His life of Columbanus was written about 640;