Friends of Columbanus, Bangor

St Columbanus: The Strangford Connection

Newtownards floodgates on the edge of Strangford Lough

Canon Andrew Totten OBE (honorary research fellow, Durham University) delivers a lecture entitled St Columbanus: The Strangford Connection. 
After researching the pilgrimage on which Columbanus embarked from Ulster to continental Europe in 590AD, he presents conclusions which challenge the status quo and which put Strangford on the map.

St Columbanus was a hugely influential Irish saint, whose medieval journeys have inspired the making of a modern pilgrimage trail from Leinster to Ulster and from France to Italy. His voyage from Ulster to France in 590AD saw books carried from the ‘island of saints and scholars’ to continental Europe for the first time.

But from where exactly did Columbanus set sail? Columbanus is firmly associated with Bangor, given his years spent as a monk at its abbey. However, dusting off the original Latin manuscripts and surveying evidence from archaeology and geography, Andrew Totten makes the case that the shores of Strangford Lough provide the missing link in the saint’s story.

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