Jonas Of Bobbio And The Legacy Of Columbanus: Sanctity And Community In The Seventh Century (oxford Studies In Late Antiquity)

Jonas of Bobbio, writing in the mid seventh century, was not only a major Latin monastic author, but also an historical 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 exile Columbanus, soon after his death in 615. He became the archivist and personal assistant to successive Bobbio abbots, travelled to Rome to obtain the first papal privilege of immunity, and served as a missionary priest on the northern borderlands of the Frankish kingdom. He spent the rest of his life in Merovingian Gaul as abbot of the double monastic community of Marchiennes-Hamage, where he wrote his Life of Columbanus , one of the most influential works of early medieval hagiography. This book, the first major study devoted to Jonas of Bobbio, his corpus of three saints' Lives, and the Columbanian familia , explores the development of the Columbanian monastic network and its relationship to its founder. The Life of Columbanus was written following a period of crisis within the Columbanian familia and it was in response to this crisis that the Bobbio community in Lombard Italy commissioned Jonas to write the work. Alexander O'Hara presents the Life of Columbanus as a subtle and clever critique of the changes and crises that had taken place in the monastic communities since Columbanus's death. It also considers the life of Jonas as reflecting many of the changing political, cultural, and religious circumstances of the seventh century, and his writings as instrumental in shaping new concepts of sanctity and community. The result of the study is a unique perspective on the early medieval Age of Saints and the monastic and political worlds of Merovingian Gaul and Lombard Italy in the seventh century. 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. Cover 1 Series 3 Jonas of Bobbio and the Legacy of Columbanus Sanctity and Community in the Seventh Century 4 Copyright 5 Dedication 6 Contents 8 List of Figures, Tables, and Maps 10 Preface 12 Abbreviations 14 Introduction: Reading Jonas 18 1. Conflicting Visions of Community: The Legacy of Columbanus 55 2. New Rules: The Agrestius Affair and the Regula Benedicti 85 3. An Italian Monk in Merovingian Gaul 104 4. Stilo Texere Gesta: Jonas the Hagiographer 138 5. Jonas and Biblical Stylization 172 6. The Miracle Accounts 202 7. Sanctity and Community 247 Epilogue 278 Appendix: The Manuscripts of the Vita Columbani 284 Bibliography 292 Index 318 "Jonas of Bobbio's life mirrored many of the transformations of the seventh century, while his three saints' Lives provide a window into the early medieval Age of Saints and the monastic and political worlds of Merovingian Gaul and Lombard Italy"-- Provided by publisher