Saint Columbanus of Ghent was a holy man who lived in a cemetery attached to a monastery in Ghent, Belgium from 957 to 959.
Life of Saint Columbanus of Ghent
Resigned as an abbot and became a recluse in 957
Lived in the cemetery for two years, practicing penance
Died in 959 and was buried in the Blessed Virgin's crypt in Ghent
Invoked as a confessor in litanies recited during times of public calamity
February 2 is the commemoration of a tenth-century Irish recluse at Ghent in Belgium. It seems, to judge from the footnotes to Canon O’Hanlon’s entry for Saint Columban, that he has been confused with his more famous namesake, Saint Columban (Columbanus) of Bobbio. It also seems that the saint is commemorated on the day of his enclosure as a hermit, February 2 in the the year 957, rather than on the day of his death, February 15. Canon O’Hanlon relies on the efforts of the seventeenth-century hagiologist, Father John Colgan, to uncover what was known about the Belgian Saint Columban and does not hesitate to give the Scottish calendarist, Thomas Dempster, short shrift for his attempts to claim our saint for his own country:
ST. COLUMBAN, ABBOT AND RECLUSE, AT GHENT, BELGIUM.
[TENTH CENTURY.]
AS during his wanderings, the Trojan exile found the fame of his country extended, by the valour and toil of her chiefs, in far distant lands so, may the Irish pilgrim trace the labours of our saints, not alone on their own soil, but in the remote places of their adoption. At the 2nd of February, Colgan and the Bollandists have given St. Columban’s Acts, compiled from various sources and authorities. This saint, there can be little doubt, was a native of Ireland; and the Belgian writers agree on this matter Yet, Dempster, with his usual effrontery, tries to make him a Scotchman, and he also assumes Columban was a writer. He says, that this saint always lived in Scotland, and he refers to Molanus, who has not a single word of what Dempster pretended to quote from him. So much for the credibility of Dempster’s statements. Regarding the family and origin of Columban, we have no authentic accounts. He is supposed to have been an emigrant from Ireland, either about the time when Forannan, with his twelve companions, left it for Belgium; or, subsequently, in the year 946, when it has been supposed, Saints Cathroe and Maccallan abandoned their native island, for the shores of the Continent. Yet, it is thought to be still more probable, that our saint had been the responsible leader of a missionary band. Colgan remarks, that as the mission of the two saints, already named, took place, about A.D. 946, as our saint was called an abbot, and as he became a recluse A.D. 957, it seems probable, he was rather the leader of a new missionary band, than a member of that circle of disciples, who followed Saints Cathroe and Macallan. Columban is related to have fled away from worldly honours. Neither does Colgan conceive it probable, that our saint remained as a private individual, under the rule of those holy men, for eleven intervening years, during which Macallan and Cathroe successively ruled over Wasor Monastery.
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: “St Brigid of Kildare” by Fr. William Hart McNichols