Sunday May 25th. 2008

Feast of St. Columba, June 9th.

The story of an amazing Scottish– Irish Columban monastery founded in Ratisborn, Germany, in the 11th century,

from an article written by the late Abbot of Fort Augustus, Rt. Rev. Mark Dilworth

Pope Benedict had a long association with Regensburg (formerly known as Ratisbon) and especially with its ancient Scottish Benedictine monastery of St. James. The town received universal attention when Pope Benedict chose to put the scallop pilgrim shell of St. James on his coat-of-arms. He said later that he did this because of the spirituals links he had with the old Scottish monastery.

The Irish monks of St, Columba were responsible for spreading the Christian faith in Anglo-Saxon England and also on the continent in the Frankish Empire. They were all Gaelic-speaking and had to learn the language of the country where they were missionaries.

The following amazing story of Irish-Scottish monasticism in Europe is told by the late Rt. Rev. Mark Dilworth O.S.B., Abbot of Fort August, and a very learned historian.

Monastic life began in Fort Augustus in 1878. It was a fresh start, but not something completely new, for the history of this monastic community in fact went back to the end of the 11th century. It was the custom among Celtic monks of Ireland and north-west Scotland to go on pilgrimage to the continent of Europe, settling in different places and preaching the gospel to the local population. Gradually, in the 11th century, their activities were concentrated in what is now south Germany, Bavaria, and they adopted the community-based Benedictine Rule in place of their former more individual Celtic rules.

In 1075 an Irish monk named Marianus settled in Regensburg (Ratisbon), on the banks of the Danube in Bavaria. Other monks gathered round him and a community was formed. Then about 1110 they founded the monastery of St James of the Scots in the same town, and this rapidly became the head of a group of ten monasteries of Scottish monks, Gaelic-speaking and mainly from Ireland. Their acknowledged head was the abbot of St James in Ratisbon.

This is one of the strangest episodes in the whole history of monasticism, for although the monasteries were on German soil, the monks all came from islands in the west of Ireland. Perhaps, stranger still, they retained the name of Scot, although in their homeland the name had ceased to mean someone from Ireland and had come to mean a native of Scotland. These monasteries flourished for a couple of centuries, recruiting all the time from their homeland, until the difficulties began to take their toll.

By the end of the 15th century they were a mere remnant of what they had been, and by a singular coincidence of history, an important group of traders from Scotland (the present-day Scotland) had settled in the town of Ratisbon and even gained the privilege of citizenship. These Scots began to claim that the abbey of St James of the Scots belonged of right to their nation and had been wrongfully taken over by Irish monks! They won their case, and monks from Scotland came out to take over those monasteries.

In Scotland itself the Reformation brought about a change of religion in the year 1560. The monastic communities in Scotland gradually died out but some monks and other Catholic Scots entered the Scots monasteries in Germany. The thin stream of recruits never dried up. These Scots monasteries had a distinguished history in the 17th and 18th centuries, taking a prominent part in the cultural and academic life of south Germany and sending missionary priests back to Scotland to sustain their Church in their homeland. The anti-religious ethos on the Continent in the Napoleonic era put an end to monastic life in much of Europe.                       >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>