For, as I have already said, we are attached to the chair of St.Peter; and although Rome is great and renowned, yet with us it is great and distinguished only on account of that apostolic chair.

Through the two Apostles of Christ you are almost celestial, and Rome is the head of the churches of the world."[183] In the year 613 St.Columbanus founded the world-famed Monastery of Bovium, or Bobbio,[184] in a magnificently romantic site on the Apennines.

Near his church was an oratory dedicated to the Mother of God, who, as we shall presently see, was as devoutly worshipped in ancient as in modern Erinn.
Agilulph, the Lombardian monarch, was ever a warm patron of the monks.
Clothaire had now ascended the French throne.

He earnestly pressed the saint to return to Luxeuil, but Columbanus excused himself on the plea of age and infirmities.

He did not fail, however, to send advice for the government of the monasteries which he had founded, where his rule had continued to be observed with the utmost fervour.
St.Columbanus died at Bobbio, on the 21st of November, 615, at the age of seventy-two years.