Jonas of Bobbio

Jonas of Bobbio (also called Jonas of Susa) was a Columbanian monk and one of the leading Latin authors of hagiography of the 7th century. He is known above all for the Life of Saint Columbanus, which he wrote between 640 and 643.

He was born about 600 at Susa in Piedmont. In 618 he entered the monastery founded by Saint Columbanus at Bobbio and, being a man of letters, became archivist and secretary to the abbots Attala and Bertulf. In 628, when the bishop of Tortona tried to bring Bobbio under his own diocese, he accompanied Bertulf to Rome to persuade Pope Honorius I to place the monastery directly under the Holy See. On his return he went to Gaul; his life of Saint Eustace of Luxeuil shows he knew him personally. Saint Amand asked his help in the mission among the pagans of present-⁠day Belgium and northern France, and on that occasion he wrote the life of Saint Vedast, first Frankish bishop of Arras. In 639 he returned briefly to Bobbio and, to fulfil a promise to the monks there, wrote the Life of Saint Columbanus, based on the testimony of those who had known him, among them the saint's companions. Almost all other accounts of the Irish missionaries in Gaul have been lost, which gives his work great value.

In 659 Queen-⁠Regent Bathilde sent him as abbot to a monastery at Chalon-⁠sur-⁠Saône. On the way he stayed some days at the monastery of Réôme and wrote, at the monks' request, the life of their founder, John of Réôme. He also wrote the lives of the abbots Attala and Bertulf of Bobbio and of the abbess Burgundofara (Fara) of Évoriac. The year of his repose is known only uncertainly (after 659, perhaps around 665). He is commemorated in the Western Church on 28 May (by the Bollandists) and on 28 June, in Dempster's Scottish Menology.