Bobbio

Bobbio Sven Meeder Abstract The monastery of Bobbio was founded around 613 by the Irish Abbot Columbanus when the Lombard King Agilulf granted him land and a church dedicated to St. Peter at Bobbio, a locality on the river Trebbia in the Apennine mountains (province of Piacenza) and, like Columbanus’s earlier foundation Luxeuil, an old Roman settlement. With his followers, Columbanus had travelled to Italy via Alemannia and had earlier founded the Burgundian monasteries of Annegray, Luxeuil, and Fontaines (like Bobbio with royal support). Columbanus died at Bobbio in 615 and was buried there and the monastery soon became known as the monastery of St. Columbanus. The centre quickly grew in status and wealth, enjoying stable royal patronage by the Lombard royal house as well as the Carolingian rulers. In 628, Bobbio obtained an exemption by Pope Honorius I (625–638), as the first monastery in history (as far as we know), which placed it under the jurisdiction of the Holy See rather than the local bishop. From the 10th century onwards Bobbio’s landed properties were continuously threatened by local bishops and magnates resulting in its slow but steady loss of status and wealth in subsequent centuries. Keywords: Monachism; Monastery; Lombardy; Columbanus; manuscripts The monastery of Bobbio was founded around 613 by the Irish Abbot Columbanus when the Lombard King Agilulf granted him land and a church dedicated to St. Peter at Bobbio, a locality on the river Trebbia in the Apennine mountains (province of Piacenza) and, like Columbanus’s earlier foundation Luxeuil, an old Roman settlement. With his followers, Columbanus had travelled to Italy via Alemannia and had earlier founded the Burgundian monasteries of Annegray, Luxeuil, and Fontaines (like Bobbio with royal support). Columbanus died at Bobbio in 615 and was buried there and the monastery soon became known as the monastery of St. Columbanus. The complex Life of Columbanus was written by the Bobbio monk Jonas of Susa in 642/643 and addressed to the communities of Luxeuil and Bobbio. In addition to the founder’s life, it also describes the events at Bobbio and Luxeuil under Columbanus’s immediate successors. Like in Luxeuil, opposition against the harsh lifestyle imposed by Columbanus grew after his death under the abbacies of the Burgundian Athala and the Frankish Bertulf, probably leading to a change in the monastic rule in later decades: a papal bull from 643 mentions the rules of both Benedict and Columbanus. The centre quickly grew in status and wealth, enjoying stable royal patronage by the Lombard DOI: 10.4324/9780415791182-RMEO133-1 2 Bobbio kingdom. In 628, Bobbio obtained an exemption by Pope Honorius I (625–638), as the first monastery in history (as far as we know), which placed it under the jurisdiction of the Holy See rather than the local bishop. Within a year of Charlemagne’s conquest of Pavia in 774, the new Carolingian ruler made a substantial grant to the monastery and Bobbio would continue to enjoy royal patronage, although the majority of its landed wealth had been obtained during the Lombard period. The monastic library appears to have been well stocked; a book list dated to the second half of the 9th century (now lost but published in the 18th century) lists over 650 items. Among the library’s books were a large number of very early manuscripts (4th-, 5th-, and 6th-century), some preserving Arian works or texts in the gothic language, that were palimpsested in the 7th and 8th centuries, some written over with insular script. It suggests a wide intellectual network in addition to an active scriptorium. Under Abbot Agilulf (c. 883–896) the monastery began producing splendidly illuminated manuscripts. Some 200 of Bobbio’s manuscripts are now preserved in libraries in Turin, Milan, and the Vatican. The famous Milan glosses (Milan, Bibl. Ambrosiana MS C. 301 inf.), preserving the richest extant body of Old Irish glosses, provenances from Bobbio. Evidence for Bobbio’s connection to Ireland and Irishmen on the Continent is otherwise patchy: some of its extant manuscript copies preserve insular or Irish script or content (such as the Antiphonary of Bangor); the Irish scholar Dungal (fl. 811–828) retired to Bobbio and took his books with him; and the Irishman Donatus of Fiesole donated a church in Piacenza to Bobbio in 850, a gift that was to benefit Irish pilgrims passing through the area. The Breve memorationis by Abbot Wala, Charlemagne’s cousin and former abbot of Corbie, provides unique information about the monastery’s organisation and finances. The Miracula Sancti Columbani illustrates how in the 10th century onwards Bobbio’s landed properties were continuously threatened by local bishops and magnates and how the community took recourse to pleas to the emperor, forged papal letters, and a ritual procession of Columbanus’s remains to Pavia via contested estates. In 1014 the diocese of Bobbio was founded, with assistance from Emperor Henry II, initially with its bishops simultaneously acting as abbots. It could not halt Bobbio’s slow but steady loss of status and wealth. A 1461 book catalogue lists fewer than 250 items. The extant basilica was built in the 15th and 16th centuries. The monastery was dissolved in 1803. See also: Columbanus; Luxeuil; Lombards; Italy; Monasticism and Nuns References and further reading Destefanis, Eleonora (2002) Il monastero di Bobbio in età altomedievale, Florence. Dubreucq, Alain and Zironi, Alessandro eds. (2015) Miracula sancti Columbani: La reliquia e il giudizio regio, Florence. Richter, Michael (2008) Bobbio in the Early Middle Ages: The Abiding Legacy of Columbanus, Dublin: Four Courts Press. Wood, Ian (1998) ‘Jonas, the Merovingians, and Pope Honorius: Diplomata and the Vita Columbani’, in Murray, Alexander Callander ed., After Rome’s Fall: Narrators and Sources of Early Medieval History: Essays Presented to Walter Goffart, Toronto, pp. 99–118. Zironi, Alessandro (2004) Il monastero longobardo di Bobbio: Crocevia di uomini, manoscritti e culture, Spoleto: Fondazione Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo. DOI: 10.4324/9780415791182-RMEO133-1