Columbanus and the language of concord

The ancient language of concord expressed the desire for unity within a culturally and ethnically diverse Roman empire. Stoic cosmopolitanism, its philosophical underpinning, saw diversity as part of the natural order of the harmonious cosmos. The diversity of the empire, therefore, reflected the variety of the natural world, and the Pax romana was an earthly manifestation of the Pax deorum. These ideals were appropriated, and transformed, by the earliest Christian writers for whom unity was a doctrinal imperative. The language and images of Christian concord were fundamental to Columbanus’s expression of his Irish identity and understanding of the Church as the home of all peoples. In his calls for unity following the divisions caused by the Easter controversy and poor leadership, Columbanus used the rhetoric of concord to promote an ideal of diversity that is no threat to harmony and a form of unity that is not mere uniformity.