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Death and the Afterlife in Jonas of Bobbio’s Vita Columbani*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Alexander O’Hara*
Affiliation:
University of St Andrews

Extract

In the seventh century Christians in the Latin West turned with a novel concern to the issues of death and the afterlife. This is a period that has been characterized as marking the ‘rise of the other world’, a development that was rooted in a belief in the imminence of Doomsday and an increasing preoccupation with sinfulness. This shift to a more metaphysical mentality can be noticed in a number of areas ranging from changes in burial and liturgical practices to literary works and the rise in power of the monasteries as intercessory places of prayer.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2009

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Footnotes

*

I am grateful to Professor Sarah Foot for her helpful comments at the conference and in the subsequent revising of the article for publication.

References

1 Brown, Peter, The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity A.D. 200–1000, 2nd edn (Oxford, 2003), 26062 Google Scholar; idem, ‘Gloriosas obitus: The End of the Ancient Other World’, in Klingshirn, William E. and Vessey, Mark, eds, The Limits of Ancient Christianity: Essays on Late Antique Thought and Culture in Honor of Markus, R. A. (Ann Arbor, MI, 1999), 289314.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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3 Bobbio, Jonasy of, Vita Columbani abbatis et discipulorumque eius, in Ionae Vitae Sanctorum, ed. Krusch, B., MGH, Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum (Hanover and Leipzig, 1905), 144294 Google Scholar. On the Vita, see now Diem, Albrecht, ‘Monks, Kings and the Transformation of Sanctity: Jonas of Bobbio and the End of the Holy Man’, Speculum 82 (2007), 52159 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Clare Stancliffe, Jonas, ’s Life of Columbanus and his Disciples’, in Carey, John et al., eds, Studies in Irish Hagiography: Saints and Sinners (Dublin, 2001), 189220 Google Scholar; and Adalbert de Vogüé’s introduction to his French trans., Vie de Saint Colomban et de ses disciples (Bellefontaine, 1988).

4 Diem, , ‘Monks, Kings and the Transformation of Sanctity’, 52127, 55659.Google Scholar

5 On this process see, for example, Jong, Mayke de, ‘Carolingian Monasticism: The Power of Prayer’, in McKitterick, Rosamond, ed., The New Cambridge Medieval History, 2: c. 700-c. 800 (Cambridge, 1995), 62253.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 On Gregory’s apocalypticism and its influence on his thought, see Markus, R. A., Gregory the Great and His World (Cambridge, 1997), 5167.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Gregory the Great, Dialogues, 4.36.12, trans. Odo Zimmermann, J. (Washington, DC, 1959), 236.Google Scholar

8 On Columbanus, see the saint’s own writings in Sancii Columbani Opera, ed. and trans. G. S. M. Walker, Scriptores Latini Hiberniae 2 (Dublin, 1960), with introduction; Bullough, Donald, ‘The career of Columbanus’, in Lapidge, M., ed., Columbanus: Studies on the Latin Writings (Woodbridge, 1997), 128 Google Scholar. On the impact of Columbanian monasticism, see the articles in Clarke, H. B. and Brennan, M., eds, Columbanus and Merovingian Monasticism (Oxford, 1981)Google Scholar; and Prinz, F., Frühes Mönchtum im Prankenreich: Kultur und Gesellschaft in Gallien, den Rheinlanden und Bayern am Beispiel der monastischen Entwicklung (4. bis 8. Jahrhundert) (Munich and Vienna, 1965), 12151.Google Scholar

9 Columbanus, Instructio 6.1 (Sancti Columbani Opera, 87).

10 Ibid. 4.1 (Sancti Columbani Opera, 79).

11 See now Stancliffe, Clare, ‘Columbanus and the Gallic Bishops’, in Constable, G. and Rouche, M., eds, Auctoritas: Mélanges offerts au Professeur Olivier Guillot (Paris, 2006), 20515.Google Scholar

12 See Jonas, Vita Columbani 2.9 (Ionae Vitae Sanctorum, ed. Krusch, 246–51).

13 It would appear that not long after the Council, perhaps within the year, the Columbanian observances or Rule were modified by the introduction of elements of the Rule of St Benedict. This perhaps meant an easing of some of the more draconian practices which included beatings and incarceration for the disobedient. The Rule ‘for beginners’ was certainly more appealing to those aristocratic monks and nuns who now largely constituted the Columbanian communities: see Stancliffe, , ‘Jonas’s Life of Columbanus ’, 211.Google Scholar

14 Jonas, Vita Columbani 2.22 (Ionae Vitae Sanctorum, ed. Krusch, 277–78).

15 Ibid. 2.19 (273–74).

16 Ibid. (274).

17 Ibid. (275).

18 Ibid. 1.30 (223–24). Besides this, there is only one account in the whole of the first book which deals with a miraculous death, but this is not so much concerned with the dying monk as with providing yet another example of Columbanus’s spiritual power. The power of the saint’s prayer is so great that it prevents one of his Irish monks (somewhat confusingly also named Columbanus) from dying a natural death until the monk, annoyed at being detained on earth, tells his abbot to allow him to die in peace. Jonas does not then even describe the death of the Irish monk or mention anything about his soul’s journey to heaven: ibid. 1.17(183–85).

19 See, for example, the case of Leudeberta who was warned of her impending death while she was asleep. She was instructed that in no way should she deviate from the teachings of her abbess as she was about to die: ibid. 2.18 (271).

20 Seen in the cases of the Luxeuil monks who left the monastery without the consent of their abbot: ibid. 2.1 (231–32); and the supporters of Agrestius: ibid. 2.10 (254).

21 See the case of Domma: ibid. 2.16 (266–68).

22 Ibid. 2.22 (277–79).

23 Ibid. 2.13 (263).

24 Ibid. (264).

25 Ibid. 2.12 (260–62). Eboriac appears to have been a double monastic foundation having both a male and a female community. On female religious communities in Merovingian Gaul: McNamara, Jo Ann, ‘A Legacy of Miracles: Hagiography and Nunneries in Merovingian Gaul’, in Kirshner, J. and Wemple, S. F., eds, Women of the Medieval World (Oxford, 1985), 3652 Google Scholar; Wemple, Suzanne F., Women in Frankish Society: Marriage and the Cloister 500 to 900 (Philadelphia, PA, 1981)Google Scholar; and now Rudge, Lindsay, Texts and Contexts: Women’s Dedicated Life from Caesarius to Benedict (unpublished Ph. D. thesis, University of St Andrews 2007).Google Scholar

26 Jonas, Vita Columbani, 2.12 (Ionae Vitae Sanctorum, ed. Krusch, 261).

27 Ibid.

28 Ibid. 2.10 (253–54).

29 Ibid. (253).

30 Ibid. (254).

31 Ibid.

32 Ibid. (256–57).

33 Ibid. (257).

34 Ibid. 2.12(261).

35 Ibid. 2.6(238–40).

36 Ibid. (239–40).

37 See, for example, ibid. 2.11 (257).

38 Brown, , Rise of Western Christendom, 261.Google Scholar

39 The authenticity of the Dialogues has been queried but not disproved. It is still considered a genuine Gregorian work by most scholars. On doubts as to its authenticity, see, however, Clark, Francis, The Pseudo-Gregorian Dialogues, 2 vols (Leiden, 1987)Google Scholar; Dunn, Marilyn, ‘Gregory the Great, the Vision of Fursey, and the Origins of Purgatory’, Peritia 14 (2000), 23854.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

40 Dialogues 4.43.1-2 (trans. Zimmerman, 251).

41 Vogüé, Adalbert de, ‘La mort dans les monastères: Jonas de Bobbio et les Dialogues de Grégoire le Grand’, in Mémorial Dont Jean Gribomont (1920–1086), Studia Ephemeridis ‘Augustinianum’ 27 (Rome, 1988), 593619.Google Scholar