To the Borders of Christendom 

In the year 591, a band of Irish monks crossed the sea to the continent on a mission to bring the Christian faith to the pagans. Saint Columbanus was their leader. Amongst the disciples who chose to leave their homeland to accompany him, was a cleric called Ceallach. 

A Hermit’s Cell in the Wilderness 

After an epic sea journey, wanderings and hardship, Columbanus and Ceallach founded monasteries in eastern France and in southern Germany. But they fell out, and Ceallach founded his own hermit’s cell in the wilderness. That place is called St Gall today – a university town in northern Switzerland. 

The Story of Ceallach: The Story of Europe 

Ceallach: prince and monk; exile and hermit – this book is his story. This is our story as well, the story of the part our forebears played in European civilisation one and a half thousand years ago. Ceallach: he was never to return to his homeland. But his story lives on.