Colum Cille in the Irish kingdom of Dal Riata in Scotland, or Aidain at Lindisfarne in Northumbria.

 

“Now”, the Lord had said, “Get thee out of thy country and from thy kindred and from thy father's house unto a land that I will show thee.”

 

The words of Abraham, from the Old Testament, and they would echo in the minds of Irish monks. At their heart, a simple concept, in the Latin potior peregrinatio, a lifelong pilgrimage for Christ. And it would bring some of those Irish clergy here to the lands at the heart of the old Roman Empire.

 

The monks arriving in northern Italy in 613 had already established monasteries in Gaul. Their zeal persuaded the powerful king of the Lombards to offer them land at Bobbio, in the Apennines. These Irish churchmen brought their own version of Christianity. They were told to avoid earthly temptation and Church power. “Fear women and bishops”, their leader said. 

 

He was austere and querulous and a fierce disciplinarian. His name was Columbanus. It meant ''dove''- But this reforming Irish monk railed against the abuse of power, sparing neither clergy nor princes from his censure. Columbanus even had the temerity to confront the Pope. It was a complex dispute about the dating of Easter. 

 

To Columbanus, it wasn't simply spiritual pedantics, he felt he was standing up for something he truly believed in. And when the Gallic bishops summoned him to account for himself, he simply refused to go. He saw them as an elite, ministering only to the chosen few.