Ebook: Studies on the Language and Style of Columba the Younger (Columbanus)

The Irish monk who, in the last quarter of the sixth century, landed in Gaul with a number of companions and founded there in quick succession three monasteries in Annegray, Luxeuil and Fontaines, was then banished from Gaul and reached Northern Italy via Switzerland where he founded in Bobbio his last and most celebrated monastery, is best known by a name which he himself never used: Columbanus. In the five letters of his which have been preserved, he calls himself Columba, 'Dove', and a number of word-plays on the meaning of this name prove that this in fact is what he was called.