Corpus of Electronic Texts Edition
Letters of Columbanus (Author: [unknown])

Letter 3

LETTER III

To the holy lord and apostolic Father in Christ, Pope N ..., Columba the sinner sends Greeting in Christ.

1

For long now my spirit desires the consolation of a visit to each occupant of the apostolic chair, prelates most dear to all the faithful and fathers most reverend by the meed of apostolic honour, but up till now, through the various clashes of this age and the turbulent treasons of the tribes that lie between, as though I were shut in upon a vessel of the sea, I have not been able to satisfy my wishes, opposed by the really ungentle and uncrossable swell, which you best know, of a sea that is not so much material as intellectual. Thus once and again Satan hindered the bearers of our letters once written to Pope Gregory of blessed memory and annexed to this, which are forwarded by our poverty to be presented to you and discussed, not so much in a proud, devilish presumption (as

p.25

their words show) as in needful proof of the true calculation of our region's rite and observance, when the same terms are not measured by the books of our province and the book of your Frankish friends, which is not accepted by our people because of two passages in the master, as in the letters of our littleness to the aforesaid blessed pope, so far as we were able, though arrogantly, we have tried to the best of our ability to show. So lest, if I were to repeat the same in writing also to yourself, I should rather engender boredom than disclose to you, as I ought to prove it, the true nature of both authorities; with the proper courtesies of greeting I only pour out my prayers to you (by our Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit and by the unity of the mutual faith that is between us, by which we believe with the heart and confess with the tongue that our one Father Who is in heaven, of Whom are all things’’

(cf. Matt. 6. 9)

, and our one Redeemer, the Son of God, through Whom are all things’’

(cf. Rom. 11. 36)

, and the one Holy Spirit, in Whom are all things’’

(cf. Rom. 11. 36)

, is one God in Trinity and Trinity in unity, each Person being fully Lord, and all three Persons being one Lord) that you would grant to us pilgrims in our travail the godly consolation of your judgement, thus confirming, if it is not contrary to the faith, the tradition of our predecessors, so that by your approval we may in our pilgrimage maintain the rite of Easter as we have received it from generations gone before. For it is admitted that we are in our native land, while we accept no rules of your Frankish friends, but dwelling in seclusion, harming no one, we abide with the rules of our predecessors, to defend which, whether it be to you apostolic fathers, as I have said, or to your brethren our neighbours and our fathers in Christ, we have written those letters which this note commends to you, so that, since we seek in good time the favourable vote of your authority, while we cannot do justice to the merits of the case, as our opponents indulge in more rage than reason, we may with a judgement live amongst your friends in the peace of church unity, even as the holy fathers taught, Polycarp, I mean, and Pope Anicetus, without offence to the faith, nay, abiding in entire charity—each preserving what he had received and abiding in the condition in which he had been called’’

(cf. 1 Cor. 7. 20)

.

2

Farewell, Pope most dear in Christ, mindful of us both in your holy prayers beside the ashes of the saints, and in your most godly decisions following the hundred and fifty authorities of the Council of Constantinople, who decreed that churches of God planted in pagan nations should live by their own laws’’

(cf. Constant. I, can. 2)

, as they had been instructed by their fathers.

p.27