a nobleman from Leinster, was advised to go on 'minor pilgrimage', to avoid family ties by leaving his province and becoming a monk at Bangor, in Ulster. But even this was not enough for his ascetic spirit: as a greater penance he decided to go on 'major pilgrimage'. In 590, with twelve companions, he left Ireland altogether, to become a perpetual pilgrim.
Columbanus, or Columba the Younger, was one of many Irish clerics who left Ireland for the sake of their souls in the early Middle Ages. He came to Gaul, founded several monasteries in Burgundy, notably Luxeuil, and after some disagreement with the royal family (he persisted in having no more awe for kings than he had at home), he left Gaul, to found another monastery at Bobbio in north Italy. The Church in Gaul was in a well-established position when he arrived, with hundreds of monasteries, particularly in the south, and a well-educated and powerful Gallo-Roman episcopate which kept those monasteries as firmly under control as possible. But Columbanus's asceticism, his determination to keep his own monasteries free from episcopal interference, and the model he presented of large rural monasteries, all seem to have appealed to the Frankish aristocracy. In the half-century after Columbanus' death large numbers of monasteries for both men and women were founded in northern Gaul, many of which drew their inspiration from Luxeuil.
Twenty-five years before Columbanus left northern Ireland, Columba, from a royal family of Ulster, had left in the opposite direction. With his followers he came to the island of Iona, off Mull, and there founded one of the most influential of Irish monasteries. The Anglo-Saxon historian Bede tells us that he even converted the Picts to Christianity. But Bede's contemporary Adomnán, successor of Columba as abbot of Iona, did not go so far. Columba did preach to Bridei, king of the Picts, but apparently not successfully, nor was this the main aim of his arduous journey to the north: he went to Bridei's court in order to plead for the safety of Irish monks who wanted to settle in the Orkneys. There were numerous monastic settlements made in Scotland during Columba's life, many under his patronage, but most of these monks were more interested in
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