Alexander O'Hara
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780190857967
- eISBN:
- 9780190857998
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190857967.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, World History: BCE to 500CE
From 550 to 750 monastic culture became more firmly entrenched in Western Europe. The role of monasteries and their relationship to the social world around them was transformed during this period as ...
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From 550 to 750 monastic culture became more firmly entrenched in Western Europe. The role of monasteries and their relationship to the social world around them was transformed during this period as monastic institutions became more integrated in social and political power networks. These collected essays focus on one of the central figures in this process, the Irish ascetic exile and monastic founder Columbanus (c. 550–615), his travels on the Continent, and the monastic network he and his Frankish disciples established in Merovingian Gaul and Lombard Italy. The post-Roman kingdoms through which Columbanus traveled and in which he established his monastic foundations were made up of many different peoples. As an outsider and immigrant, how did Columbanus and his communities interact with these peoples? How did they negotiate differences, and what emerged from these encounters? This volume aims to explore further the strands of this vibrant contact.Less
From 550 to 750 monastic culture became more firmly entrenched in Western Europe. The role of monasteries and their relationship to the social world around them was transformed during this period as monastic institutions became more integrated in social and political power networks. These collected essays focus on one of the central figures in this process, the Irish ascetic exile and monastic founder Columbanus (c. 550–615), his travels on the Continent, and the monastic network he and his Frankish disciples established in Merovingian Gaul and Lombard Italy. The post-Roman kingdoms through which Columbanus traveled and in which he established his monastic foundations were made up of many different peoples. As an outsider and immigrant, how did Columbanus and his communities interact with these peoples? How did they negotiate differences, and what emerged from these encounters? This volume aims to explore further the strands of this vibrant contact.
Alexander O'Hara
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- June 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780190858001
- eISBN:
- 9780190858032
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190858001.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, European History: BCE to 500CE, Prose and Writers: Classical, Early, and Medieval
Jonas of Bobbio, writing in the mid-seventh century, was not only a major Latin monastic author but also a historic figure in his own right. Born in the ancient Roman town of Susa in the foothills of ...
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Jonas of Bobbio, writing in the mid-seventh century, was not only a major Latin monastic author but also a historic figure in his own right. Born in the ancient Roman town of Susa in the foothills of the Italian Alps, he became a monk of Bobbio, the monastery founded by the Irish abbot Columbanus, soon after the saint’s death. He became archivist and personal assistant to successive Bobbio abbots, traveled to Rome to obtain the first papal privilege of immunity, and served as a missionary on the northern borderlands of the Frankish kingdom, where he wrote his Vita Columbani, one of the most influential works of early medieval hagiography. As abbot of a community in the far north of the Frankish kingdom, Jonas was part of an extensive monastic network that stretched from the English Channel to the Italian Apennines. By the time of Jonas’s death toward the end of the seventh century, the monastic landscape of this region had been transformed. This was the result of a socioreligious revolution, initiated by Columbanus (d. 615) and continued by his Frankish disciples in the decades after his death. Columbanus established a cluster of monasteries in the Vosges forests of Burgundy in the last decade of the sixth century, chief among them Luxeuil. During the seventh century, Luxeuil, its abbots, and the Merovingian royal court in Paris spearheaded an unprecedented monastic movement in Merovingian Gaul that would transform the interrelationship between religious and secular authorities in the Early Middle Ages.Less
Jonas of Bobbio, writing in the mid-seventh century, was not only a major Latin monastic author but also a historic figure in his own right. Born in the ancient Roman town of Susa in the foothills of the Italian Alps, he became a monk of Bobbio, the monastery founded by the Irish abbot Columbanus, soon after the saint’s death. He became archivist and personal assistant to successive Bobbio abbots, traveled to Rome to obtain the first papal privilege of immunity, and served as a missionary on the northern borderlands of the Frankish kingdom, where he wrote his Vita Columbani, one of the most influential works of early medieval hagiography. As abbot of a community in the far north of the Frankish kingdom, Jonas was part of an extensive monastic network that stretched from the English Channel to the Italian Apennines. By the time of Jonas’s death toward the end of the seventh century, the monastic landscape of this region had been transformed. This was the result of a socioreligious revolution, initiated by Columbanus (d. 615) and continued by his Frankish disciples in the decades after his death. Columbanus established a cluster of monasteries in the Vosges forests of Burgundy in the last decade of the sixth century, chief among them Luxeuil. During the seventh century, Luxeuil, its abbots, and the Merovingian royal court in Paris spearheaded an unprecedented monastic movement in Merovingian Gaul that would transform the interrelationship between religious and secular authorities in the Early Middle Ages.
Alexander O'Hara
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780190857967
- eISBN:
- 9780190857998
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190857967.003.0013
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, World History: BCE to 500CE
Columbanus is one of the most important figures in Christianization on the Continent in the late sixth and early seventh centuries. His foundations have been well studied, but one of his disciples, ...
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Columbanus is one of the most important figures in Christianization on the Continent in the late sixth and early seventh centuries. His foundations have been well studied, but one of his disciples, Gallus, is rarely discussed in this context. Though well known as the founder of the hermitage at the Steinach, Gallus is never considered an important part of the Columbanian monasteries. This chapter focuses on Gallus’s role in Columbanian monasticism and investigates the relationship between him and the Columbanian community. Why did the the Vita Vetustissima link Gallus with Columbanus? How did Gallus manage to settle in the Lake Constance region and to found a long-lasting community at the river Steinach? What role did Gallus’s foundation and its cooperation with the policymakers play in the implementation of Frankish or Alemannic power and influence in the Lake Constance region?Less
Columbanus is one of the most important figures in Christianization on the Continent in the late sixth and early seventh centuries. His foundations have been well studied, but one of his disciples, Gallus, is rarely discussed in this context. Though well known as the founder of the hermitage at the Steinach, Gallus is never considered an important part of the Columbanian monasteries. This chapter focuses on Gallus’s role in Columbanian monasticism and investigates the relationship between him and the Columbanian community. Why did the the Vita Vetustissima link Gallus with Columbanus? How did Gallus manage to settle in the Lake Constance region and to found a long-lasting community at the river Steinach? What role did Gallus’s foundation and its cooperation with the policymakers play in the implementation of Frankish or Alemannic power and influence in the Lake Constance region?
Alexander O'Hara
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- June 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780190858001
- eISBN:
- 9780190858032
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190858001.003.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, European History: BCE to 500CE, Prose and Writers: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This chapter introduces this book’s main issues and questions. How were hagiographic texts used in the discourse of creating or recreating monastic identities? Was there a change in the social ...
More
This chapter introduces this book’s main issues and questions. How were hagiographic texts used in the discourse of creating or recreating monastic identities? Was there a change in the social function of monasteries, and how did this come about? What was innovative about Jonas’s Vita Columbani, and how did he seek to establish new concepts of sanctity based on the community rather than on the individual holy man? It broaches these questions while framing the principal characters and subjects of the book—the life and works of Jonas of Bobbio, Columbanus, and the Columbanian monastic network—within the wider context of the religious and cultural developments of Late Antiquity. It also provides a historiographical introduction to previous scholarship on Jonas and an overview of Jonas’s three saints’ Lives.Less
This chapter introduces this book’s main issues and questions. How were hagiographic texts used in the discourse of creating or recreating monastic identities? Was there a change in the social function of monasteries, and how did this come about? What was innovative about Jonas’s Vita Columbani, and how did he seek to establish new concepts of sanctity based on the community rather than on the individual holy man? It broaches these questions while framing the principal characters and subjects of the book—the life and works of Jonas of Bobbio, Columbanus, and the Columbanian monastic network—within the wider context of the religious and cultural developments of Late Antiquity. It also provides a historiographical introduction to previous scholarship on Jonas and an overview of Jonas’s three saints’ Lives.
Alexander O'Hara
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- June 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780190858001
- eISBN:
- 9780190858032
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190858001.003.0002
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, European History: BCE to 500CE, Prose and Writers: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This chapter approaches Columbanus’s writings and monastic philosophy as a source for Jonas. Jonas remained silent on some issues that were important to Columbanus—calculating the date of Easter, ...
More
This chapter approaches Columbanus’s writings and monastic philosophy as a source for Jonas. Jonas remained silent on some issues that were important to Columbanus—calculating the date of Easter, tensions in the early community, the Three Chapters Schism—which reveal key aspects of Jonas’s work. Columbanus’s writings illustrate his monastic philosophy and how it was shaped by his experience of ascetic exile (peregrinatio). It explores whether the Regula Columbani, mentioned by Jonas, referred to the rules written by Columbanus or to a more general process linked to the founding of monasteries by Frankish aristocrats. Could the unsystematic Rules of Columbanus have been programmatic texts for the monastic network developing in Merovingian Gaul during the seventh century? Or did the Vita Columbani function as the normative text for this network? The chapter argues that Columbanus’s rules had a normative function and that the VC was not written to regulate the monastic life.Less
This chapter approaches Columbanus’s writings and monastic philosophy as a source for Jonas. Jonas remained silent on some issues that were important to Columbanus—calculating the date of Easter, tensions in the early community, the Three Chapters Schism—which reveal key aspects of Jonas’s work. Columbanus’s writings illustrate his monastic philosophy and how it was shaped by his experience of ascetic exile (peregrinatio). It explores whether the Regula Columbani, mentioned by Jonas, referred to the rules written by Columbanus or to a more general process linked to the founding of monasteries by Frankish aristocrats. Could the unsystematic Rules of Columbanus have been programmatic texts for the monastic network developing in Merovingian Gaul during the seventh century? Or did the Vita Columbani function as the normative text for this network? The chapter argues that Columbanus’s rules had a normative function and that the VC was not written to regulate the monastic life.
