Bobbio Abbey

Monastery in Italy

Bobbio Abbey (Italian: Abbazia di San Colombano) is a monastery founded by Irish Saint Columbanus in 614, around which later grew up the town of Bobbio, in the province of Piacenza, Emilia Romagna, Italy. It is dedicated to Saint Columbanus. It was famous as a centre of resistance to Arianism and as one of the greatest libraries in the Middle Ages. The abbey was dissolved under the French administration in 1803, although many of the buildings remain in other uses.

The abbey was founded soon after the Lombard invasion of Italy in 568. The Lombard king Agilulf married the devout Roman Catholic Theodelinda in 590, and under the influence of the Irish missionary Columbanus and his wife, Agilulf converted to Christianity. Upon the conversion of Agigulf and his Lombard followers, the king granted Columbanus a ruined church and wasted lands known as Ebovium, which prior to the Lombard seizure, had been property of the papacy. Columbanus particularly wanted this secluded place, for while enthusiastic for the conversion of the Lombards, he preferred eremitic solitude for his monks and himself. Next to this little church, dedicated to Saint Peter, a monastery was soon built. The abbey at its foundation followed the Rule of St Columbanus, based on the monastic practices of Celtic Christianity.

Columbanus was buried on 23 November 615, but was followed by successors of high calibre in Attala (d. 627) and Bertulf (d. 640), who steered the new monastery through the threats from militant Arianism under King Rotharis (636–652). on the left bank of the river Trebbia. The medieval village started to grow around the large monastery area. Over time, the cultural and political importance of the Abbey grew; in 1153 Frederick Barbarossa confirmed by two charters various rights and possessions. The diocese was made a suffragan of the metropolitan of Milan. Peter Aldus, its first bishop, had been abbot of Bobbio since 999, and his episcopal successors for a long time lived in the abbey, where many of them had been monks. From 1133 Bobbio was a suffragan see of the archdiocese of Genoa. From time to time disputes arose between the bishop and the monks, and in 1199 Pope Innocent III issued two bulls, restoring the abbey in spirituals and temporals, and empowering the bishop to depose an abbot if within a certain time he did not obey.

Saint Columbanus' abbey and church were taken from the Benedictines by the French occupying forces in 1803, when the abbey was suppressed.

The current Basilica of San Colombano was built during 1456–1530 in a Renaissance style. The Basilica has a Latin cross layout with a nave and two aisles, a transept and a rectangular apse. It includes a 9th century baptismal font. The nave fresco decoration was completed in the 16th century by Bernardino Lanzani. The 15th century crypt houses the sarcophagus of St. Columbanus, by Giovanni dei Patriarchi (1480),

The bell tower (late 9th century) and the smaller apse are from the original Romanesque edifice. shows that at that period every branch of knowledge, divine and human, was represented in this library. The catalogue lists more than 600 volumes. Many of the books have been lost, the rest have long since been dispersed and are still reckoned among the chief treasures of the later collections which possess them. In 1616 Cardinal Federico Borromeo took for the Ambrosian Library of Milan eighty six volumes, including the famous "Bobbio Orosius", the "Antiphonary of Bangor", and the Bobbio Jerome, a palimpsest of Ulfilas' Gothic version of the Bible. Twenty six volumes were given, in 1618, to Pope Paul V for the Vatican Library. Many others were sent to Turin, where, besides those in the Royal Archives, there were seventy one in the University Library until the disastrous fire of 26 January 1904. Gerbert of Aurillac (afterwards Pope Sylvester II) became abbot of Bobbio in 982, and with the aid of the numerous ancient treatises he found there, composed his celebrated work on geometry.