of Rome could have said; and that he was not unacquainted with Hebrew. He interprets his own name in the three languages, and says, 'I am called in Hebrew, Jonah; in Greek, Peristera; and in Latin, Columba.'[1] He not only knew these languages, but shows an acquaintance with Latin and Greek literature; and altogether his writings give us an entirely different idea of the progress that learning had made from that which we should have at first imagined. This school of Bangor seems to have been very jealous of the school of Iona. On one occasion the jealousy brought on actual warfare. At other times, however, the rivalry was of a healthier kind.
Columbanus was born in the year 543. He was therefore twenty-two years younger than his namesake of Iona. Of his early life in Ireland we have but little knowledge, except that he studied at several schools before he became a disciple of Comgal at Bangor. It was not until after his fortieth year that he began his missionary labours. First, he passed over to England, and from thence he made his way to France. His idea had been to have gone farther, and to have spent his energies in the evangelization of the heathen tribes beyond; but he found that there was no necessity to seek farther than the nominal Christians of Gaul, who seem to have gained little more than a new superstition from their conversion, while they retained all the cruelty and treachery of barbarism.
At the invitation of Guntram, King of Burgundy, he settled in that country. He was absolutely fearless in his denunciations of sin, and like another
- ↑ Adamnan gives the same explanation in his Life of Columba of Iona.
