ILLUSTRATED TALK BY
Enzo Farinella
Columbanus, and his companions, founded monastic schools in France, Switzerland, Austria, Germany and Italy, countries in which his memory is celebrated to the present day. He was perhaps the greatest and the best known of the dozens of Irish monks who, between the 6th and the 11th centuries, used their vocation to voluntary exile to bring Christian culture and classical learning to a European continent which had lost much of the structure of its civilisation through the collapse of the Roman Empire and the invasions of barbaric tribes from the north and east. Robert Schumann, of musical fame, described him as the patron saint of those who wished to build a united Europe. Enzo Farinella, former Cultural attache at the Italian Embassy in Dublin and correspondent of the Italian official news agency ANSA, has written a detailed account of the travels and achievements of these medieval Irish monks in his book Sulle Strade del Mondo – On the Pathways of the World.
8.00pm, Thursday 7th April 2016
THE COMMUNITY CENTRE, MOUNT MERRION