ABSTRACT
The monastery of Bobbio was founded around 613 by the Irish Abbot Columbanus when the Lombard King Agilulf granted him land and a church dedicated to St. Peter at Bobbio, a locality on the river Trebbia in the Apennine mountains (province of Piacenza) and, like Columbanus’s earlier foundation Luxeuil, an old Roman settlement. With his followers, Columbanus had travelled to Italy via Alemannia and had earlier founded the Burgundian monasteries of Annegray, Luxeuil, and Fontaines (like Bobbio with royal support). Columbanus died at Bobbio in 615 and was buried there and the monastery soon became known as the monastery of St. Columbanus. The centre quickly grew in status and wealth, enjoying stable royal patronage by the Lombard royal house as well as the Carolingian rulers. In 628, Bobbio obtained an exemption by Pope Honorius I (625–638), as the first monastery in history (as far as we know), which placed it under the jurisdiction of the Holy See rather than the local bishop. From the 10th century onwards Bobbio’s landed properties were continuously threatened by local bishops and magnates resulting in its slow but steady loss of status and wealth in subsequent centuries.
