This volume is the result of a conference held in Vienna in the run-up to the 1,400th anniversary of Columbanus’ death in 615. This controversial Irish perigrinus, who founded the monasteries of Annegray, Luxeuil and Fontaine in Merovingian Gaul and Bobbio in Lombard Italy, has long fascinated scholars, not least because of his vivid portrayal in Jonas of Bobbio's Vita Columbani. Despite the weight of previous scholarship on his career, writings and Life, the contributions to the volume show that there is still plenty of scope for new interpretations of the existing evidence and for measured speculation as to how the continuing gaps in our knowledge might be filled. By arranging the contributions roughly according to Columbanus’ slow progress from Ireland to Italy via Brittany, Francia and Alamannia, the reader is given a sense of his journey through and interaction with what the editor calls a new ‘world of gentes’ rather than of empire (p. 6).

The book opens with Damian Bracken's study on Columbanus’ use of the language of concord in his letters, which he relates to earlier and contemporary rhetorical traditions. Bracken draws particular attention to Columbanus’ emphasis on unity in diversity, an idea convenient, of course, for one with a reputation for divergence. In a contribution on the political background to his Irish career, Dáibhí Ó Cróinín carefully constructs a hypothesis that Columbanus was a member of the prominent Uí Bairrche dynasty in Leinster and that his entry into the faraway monastery of Bangor was connected to the contemporary withdrawal of the Uí Bairrche ruler, Cormac mac Diarmata, to the same monastery. If Columbanus was of royal stock, it must be said, Jonas's silence on the subject would provide a rare example of a hagiographer under- rather than over-stating the pedigree of their saint. Elva Johnston then looks at the role of women in shaping Columbanus’ career and how the social position of women in Ireland might have influenced his interactions with female figures – particularly powerful queens – on the Continent. Unsurprisingly, the famous relationship with Brunhild features prominently, Johnston making the necessary allowance for Jonas's hostile portrayal of her as a ‘second Jezebel’. Columbanus’ time in Ireland is again the focus of Alex Woolf's paper, who offers a different hypothesis to Ó Cróinín concerning Columbanus’ choice of Bangor. Woolf suggests that Uinnianus of Moville, an authority cited by Columbanus, may have been what attracted him to the area. In this context, Woolf suggests that Sinilis, Columbanus’ teacher prior to entering Bangor, may be identifiable with Sinell, Uinnianus’ successor as bishop of Moville, rather than Mo Sinu moccu Min, a later abbot of Bangor (as argued by Ó Cróinín).

Leaving Ireland behind, Ian Wood next examines the circumstances surrounding Columbanus’ arrival on the Continent, arguing that it was near the Golfe de Morbihan in south-east Britanny that he landed in 590/591. Piling hypothesis upon hypothesis, as he freely admits, Wood speculates that it was the – much later attested – association between Gildas and Morbihan that attracted Columbanus to the region and that military conflict between the Bretons and Franks at the time may have precipitated his move to Burgundy. In the following article Clare Stancliffe painstakingly collects evidence for lost correspondence between Columbanus and Pope Gregory, thereby reconstructing a fuller picture of their relationship. This, she argues, speaks against Columbanus’ reputation for confrontation and controversy and points to his role as one of Gregory's key informants on the wayward practices of the Gaulish bishops. Changing the focus briefly to the period after Columbanus’ death, Andreas Fischer's contribution seeks to understand Jonas's special concern with the charge of heresy made against Abbot Eustasius of Luxeuil and the Colombanian movement when depicting Agrestius’ rebellion against the abbot in the 620s. Some fifteen years later, Jonas felt compelled to mention and refute these charges, which may, among other things, have brought into question the contemporary role of Columbanian monasteries in missionary activity at a time when orthodoxy very much mattered.

The missionary activity connected with Columbanus and his successors is the subject of the next article, by Herwig Wolfram. Regarding the aborted mission to the Slavs, Wolfram endorses the advice given by an angel to Columbanus in the Vita, arguing that at the time it would have been ‘thoroughly impossible to convert the still fragmented Slav societies’ (p. 167). The next two papers concentrate on the famous beer-cask miracle performed by Columbanus during his short period in and around Bregenz. Bernhard Maier looks at the scarce independent evidence for contemporary pagan ritual practice among the Alemanni before arguing persuasively that Columbanus blowing on the cask should be interpreted as an example of ritual exsufflation and that the identification of Woden with Mercury went back to the latter's appearances in the Vita Martini. Maier concludes that Jonas's depiction of the pagans realising that the devil was present in the casket amounts to ‘the oldest example of interpretatio Christiana in the Germanic-speaking world’ (p. 184), as it equates their god with the devil and is a negative reflection of the Christian idea of divine presence in the wine of the eucharist. Francesco Borri treats of the beer-miracle in the context of other references to Woden in seventh- and eighth-century sources, arguing that an increased interest in the god was part of a ‘barbarian turn’ in contemporary historiography, with the ruling elites now ‘proud to boast of their barbarian heritage’ (p. 195). In the following two papers, Yaniv Fox and Philipp Dörler also discuss Columbanus’ time in Alemannia but are more concerned with his alleged disciple Gallus. The historicity of the hagiographical Gallus hangs by a very thin thread, and both authors have to battle with the almost complete irreconcilability of the Lives of Gallus and Columbanus, with Fox's approach to the Gallus legend somewhat more sceptical.

In the next article, Stefano Gasparri documents the close relationship between Bobbio and the Lombard court from its foundation onwards and contrasts this royal patronage with the paucity of evidence for private donations. To close, Albrecht Diem provides a translation of the Regula cuiusdam patris, which he dates cautiously to between 615 and 635. Diem builds a plausible argument that this Rule, the product of a Columbanian milieu, was written for ‘a group of dissenters against the abbots of Luxeuil and Bobbio’ (p. 287), and speculates that it might even be attributable to the arch-rebel Agretius.

While this book cannot be said to change substantially our understanding of Columbanus, it certainly advances the state of knowledge with some fine examples of careful revision and probing. It is thus a welcome addition to the scholarship on a fascinating historical and hagiographical figure.