ABSTRACT
Columbanus was born in Leinster and died in Bobbio. He is the earliest Irish Latin author known by name. He was a scholar, peregrinus (see peregrinatio), and abbot. Columbanus can be approached by way of his own writings (imperfectly preserved) and by the earliest hagiographical account of him by Jonas of Bobbio. All of his extant writings, with one exception (the hymn Precamur patrem, preserved in the Antiphonary of Bangor, a manuscript that was written in Bangor before 600 and came to Bobbio a century later) originated after his departure from Ireland in around 590. Jonas, the author of his hagiographical account, wrote a generation after Columbanus’s death. He had no personal knowledge of Columbanus; his account of the years in Ireland and in Italy is exceedingly brief. Jonas appears to have drawn the bulk of his information from monks in the Burgundian monasteries.
