In France I discovered how an Irishman helped inspire the idea of a European Union after World War ll.
I was in Luxeuil when the local Lord Mayor raised a plaque to Robert Schumann, the French Foreign Minister who was ‘Father of the European Union’. In 1950 he invited heads of states from across Europe to join him in Luxeuil for a celebration. From Ireland came John A. Costello, Sean McBride and Eamonn De Valera. From Rome came a Monsignor Angelo Roncalli, later Pope John XXIII.
The celebration was in honour of an Irishman whom Schumann praised as ‘the patron saint of all those who seek to construct a united Europe.’
That man was Columban who in 591 had set out from Bangor with twelve companions. On his twenty-three year long trek across Europe he set up centres of learning and recovery on a continent devastated by three centuries of barbarian destruction. Luxeuil was one of the first of those centres and the one in which he spent most time.
From Luxeuil, in a letter to quarreling French bishops, he called for unity saying, ‘We are all joint members of one body, whether Franks or Briton or Irish or whatever our race be.’ It was this, and Columban’s continued efforts to work with people of different European countries that inspired Schumann to invite leaders from across Europe to gather in Luxeuil to celebrate his legacy. The meeting led to the founding of a Coal and Steel Community in 1951 and finally to the European Union in 1993.
Schumann was convinced that the Union should be more than economic but a true ‘unity in diversity’ based on a common Christian heritage.
The statues of Columban around Luxeuil show not a pious pilgrim but a determined man set on completing his task.
He was a Leinster man who had studied at Cleenish, on Lough Erne, before joining the great monastery at Bangor where he spent twenty years as one of its leading scholars.
Maybe because he left few traces of his life in Ireland that he is almost forgotten here. Myschall in Co Carlow claims him and a ’Columban Trail’ now follows his steps to Bangor and across Europe to Bobbio in Italy where he died.
As I followed him across Europe I discovered his name survives not only in churches and abbeys but on libraries, museums, streets, shops and even beer.
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