The main tourist attraction in Bobbio, in northern Italy, is its Gobbo or ‘hunchback’ bridge over the rushing Trebbia River. There is a legend that it was built overnight by demons in exchange for the soul of the first person to cross so it is known as ‘the Devil’s Bridge’. Maybe for that reason the townspeople put an image of their patron on the middle arch. He is Columban, the Irishman.
His basilica still dominates the town whose surroundings were described by Earnest Hemingway as ‘the most beautiful in the world’. The town itself got the title ‘most beautiful village in Italy’ in 2019 but when Columban arrived there in 615 scenery was the least of his concerns.
He had got as far as Milan after a 23-year cross-Europe journey during which he had set up centres that were already becoming famous across the continent. The King of Lombardy, though not a Catholic, offered him land if he would stay in his territory. Columban opted for Bobbio, for its remoteness and obscurity.
Today his abbey, rebuilt between 1456 and 1530, is a testimony to his success. Nearby a museum recalls the days when Bobbio was ‘one of the principal centre of religious culture in medieval Italy’.
When I was there the Irish Ambassador to the Holy See, Frances Collins, was launching an exhibition, ‘Ireland and the Birth of Europe’. She said, ‘The monastery which Columban founded here in Bobbio was to become a great seat of learning in medieval Europe, possessing one of the largest libraries which existed in the Middle Ages.’
Columban’s tomb is in the crypt of the Abbey and a relic was taken from there to the Provincial Capital, Piacenza, for Columban’s Day 2024. The ritual may seem a bit outdated but in a message to the celebration Pope Francis insisted that the Columban heritage is still as revolutionary today, ‘immersed as we are in practical materialism and a type of neo-paganism’.
What did ‘restoring European civilisation’ mean to Columban? The memory of his picture on the central arch facing the rushing Trebbia River comes to mind.
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