Читать книгу A History of Ireland and Her People - Eleanor Hull - Страница 7

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The wars of King Niall in Britain and the bringing over of large bodies of Irish and Scoto-Irish troops to aid the British wars on the Continent must have greatly strengthened the intercourse already existing between the two countries. It has been a favourite doctrine with one class of historians that Irish interchange with Britain was practically non-existent, and that during all the early centuries Irish commerce and mercantile intercourse passed over and round the island that lay closest to its shores, making its way to the Continent by routes that skirted north and south of it. Such a doctrine, unlikely in itself, is denied by all we know from archaeology, language, and history as to the early relations between the two countries. They were, as we have seen, not only in constant communication, but there was a large intermixture of Gaelic blood all along the western districts, those lying closest to Ireland. Intermarriages, which took place even in the kingly families, must have been frequent among the fighting and mercantile classes, and the period upon which we are now entering saw those ties drawn yet closer by a sympathy in the practice and aims of the religious life and by the frequent interchange of teachers and scholars between the two countries. Early Irish history shows no sign of a desire for isolation; its people kept up a natural intercourse with the whole West of Europe from Norway to Spain, but, as was only to be expected from the geographical position of the two countries, it was most constant with Britain and Scotland. A new and abiding link was now to be formed by the coming of St Patrick to Ireland, and it ought to have been of happy augury for the future good relations between the neighbouring islands that the Irish, instead of choosing as their patron saint one of "the host of the saints of Ireland," a native of their own race and country, gave that honour to a man of British race.

The strangest doctrines as to the birthplace of St Patrick have been put forward from time to time, but it is clear that the main authority on the question must be the writings of the saint himself. His own testimony is explicit. In his Confession he frequently mentions the land of his birth. In chapter xxiii he writes, "And again, after a few years, I was in Britain with my kindred, who received me as a son and in good faith besought me that at all events now, after the great tribulations I had undergone, I would not depart from them anywhither." Elsewhere he speaks of proceeding to Britain, "and glad and ready I was to do so, as to my fatherland and kindred, and not only that, but to go as far as Gaul..." (chapter xliii). The earliest life of St Patrick, that by Muirchu, is still more explicit. It opens thus: "Patrick, who was also called Sochet, was of the British race and born in Britain." These passages have been transferred to Brittany in Gaul by many writers from the time of Keating onward; but it is impossible that they could refer to that country, which up to the middle of the sixth century, at least, was known as Armorica, and only adopted the name of Brittany after the flight of the Britons before the Saxons, when large numbers of the persecuted Britons passed overseas and settled on the opposite coasts. [1] For more than a hundred years after Patrick's birth, the date of which must have been 389 or thereabouts, this exodus had not begun. But it was a British population which eventually took root there.

[1] At the Second Council of Tours, in 567, the inhabitants were spoken of as the Britons and Romans of Armorica; and see J. Loth, L'Émigration bretonne en Armorique (1883).

The exact place in which Patrick was born is, and will probably always remain, uncertain. Muirchu calls it Bannavem Thaburinde, or Taberniae, and says that it was "not distant from our sea" (i.e., the Irish Channel), which is a clear indication that it was somewhere on the sea-coast of Britain. Very early Irish writers identify it with Ail-cluide, i.e., "the Rock of Clyde," or Dumbarton. It is so identified in a very ancient note on the name 'Nemthur' in the hymn Genair Patraicc; and also in the Hymn of St Secundinus in praise of the saint, called the first hymn made in Ireland, where it is said, "Now Patrick, of the Britons of Ail-cluide was his origin." Notes found on early copies of his Life in Oxford [2] and in Trinity College, Dublin, [3] make the same statement. There was evidently no prejudice against his British origin in the minds of the early Irish ecclesiastical writers.

[2] Rawl. B. 512, at the foot of fol. 21a.

[3] MS. H. 3. 18, p. 520, 1 20; see Tripartite Life of St Patrick, ed. W. Stokes. PP. xv, xlvii.

The Roman legions at the time of Patrick's birth still retained their hold on Britain, from which they did not finally withdraw till about 418, when the lad had grown to manhood. The Roman organization, though it was gradually breaking up over parts of the country with the recall of the army and officers to the defence of Rome, still held sway over the northern province. The year of his birth had witnessed the defeat and death of Maximus, who had drawn out of Britain a great army, many of whom afterward settled in Armorica as the first contingent of that army of fugitives which was to make a little Britain of their Frankish home, and also the triumphal entry of Theodosius into Rome. During his youth the tidings of the revolt of the barbarians, the invasions of Italy by Alaric and Radagaisus, and the flight of the Emperor Honorius must have been received with eagerness and terror in Britain. The triumphs of Stilicho must have been the more welcome from the protection he had, in an earlier day, extended to their own shores but they were followed, while Patrick was yet but a youth, by the frightful news of the Gothic sieges and sack of the Eternal City under the terrible Alaric. In all these startling events the young Patrick would feel an almost personal interest; his family, whether natives of Strathclyde or Roman in descent, formed part of the Roman organization in Britain; he had been brought up proud of his "free birth" and "noble rank" as the son of a Roman decurion; and it was one of the highest sacrifices he was afterward to be called upon to make when he "sold his noble rank for the profit of others; and became a slave in Christ to a foreign nation [Ireland] for the unspeakable glory of the eternal life which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." [4] Patrick's call to work among this "foreign nation" did not come very early in his life. If, as seems probable, he was born in the year 389 he must have been over forty years of age when Palladius was sent as bishop to the Irish people in 431. [5]

[4] Letter to Coroticus, ch. x, p. 56. Newport White's translation (1920) is used in these quotations. There are also translations of the Saint's writings by Archbishop Healy and others.

[5] The date of St Patrick's birth was probably 389 (this is the date accepted by Prof. Bury in his St Patrick); that of his return to Ireland as bishop, 432; and of his death, 461.

The mission of Palladius had not been a success. Three little churches on the coast of Wicklow attest the reality of his visit, but he soon retired, and died, Nennius tells us, among the Picts. Muirchu, the earliest biographer of St Patrick, says that "the wild and rough people" to whom Palladius was sent "did not readily receive his teaching, nor did he himself desire to spend a long time in a land not his own." It is easy to understand that a foreigner unable to speak the tongue of the people to whom he was sent, and assuming among them episcopal functions, would not be warmly welcomed. Palladius showed, indeed, no anxiety to continue his work among an unwilling nation, whom he perhaps despised, because their ways of life and their primitive form of Christianity were wholly unlike anything to which he had been accustomed.

St Patrick first came to Ireland as a young lad with no official status and with little knowledge of religion. It was during the time of the distant raids and wars of Niall of the Nine Hostages that he and other British youths were carried away from their homes into slavery in Ireland. His own account of himself in his Confession, written in old age when his work was almost done, is our safest guide to a knowledge of his early life. It begins thus: "I, Patrick, the sinner, am the most illiterate and the least of all the faithful, and contemptible in the eyes of very many. My father was Calpurnius, a deacon, one of the sons of Potitus a presbyter, who belonged to the village of Bannavem Taberniae. Now he had a small farm near by, where I was taken captive. I was then about sixteen years of age. I knew not the true God; and I went into captivity to Ireland with many thousands of persons, according to our deserts, because we departed away from God, and kept not His commandments, and were not obedient to our priests who used to admonish us for our salvation. And the Lord poured upon us the fury of His anger and scattered us among the heathen, even to the ends of the earth, where now my littleness may be seen amongst men of another nation." [6]

[6] Confession, ch. i, p. 31.

Thus, humbly and simply, opens the testimony of the man whose work was to leave so deep an impression on the nation to whom he first came as a slave. The Confession, found in the Book of Armagh, is not an autobiography giving the events of his career in order; it is written hurriedly and late in life, under the stress of deep feeling, to defend himself against evil reports put out by his enemies. They hoped to destroy the effect of his work in Ireland by bringing up against him some error of conduct committed in his extreme youth, when he was not yet fifteen years old, and had not yet learned to believe in the living God. [7] He points to the wonderful success of his mission to Ireland as a testimony of its acceptance by God, against the malice of those 'elders' who endeavoured to undermine it. St Patrick's own writings are two in number, but only one is found in the venerable book which takes its name from Patrick's primatial see of Armagh, being long preserved in the abbey church of that city. The writings were copied by a scribe, Ferdomnach by name, [8] at the request of the then abbot, and from a note at the close of the Confession it would seem that he was copying from a manuscript believed to have been written by the saint's own hand. The note runs, "As far as this folio [53 of the manuscript] was written by Patrick's own hand." If we may judge by the difficulty the scribe appears to have had in deciphering it, and the gaps that are found in it, it must have been an old and worn copy.

[7] Ibid. ch. xxvii, p. 40.

[8] Probably between A.D. 807 and A.D. 846.

The chief facts that we learn about the saint's early life are that he was the son of a deacon of noble rank who was also a decurion, or civil officer under the Roman administration, and the owner of a farm on which the boy was brought up. He was of good birth and, as he proudly asserts, a free-born citizen under Roman law. That his father was a man of some wealth is shown by the mention of the manservants and maidservants of whom the marauders made havoc when they attacked his home. [9] The combination of offices held by Calpurnius, which seems strange to us, was not uncommon under the later system of Roman administration. The duties of an Imperial decurion were so onerous that those holding the office often fell heavily into debt. They were responsible for the collection of the taxes of their districts, as well as for the upkeep of the roads and other matters; and many of them entered the army or the church to escape from their obligations to the state. [10] If Patrick's father and grandfather were men of this type it is likely enough that religious teaching took but a small place in the household, and we can understand how the boy, brought up in a family outwardly Christian, could grow up without education and in ignorance of the true God.

[9] Letter to Coroticus, ch. x, p. 56.

[10] See S. Dill, Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western Empire (1899), pp. 250-253, and Bury, History of the Later Roman Empire (1923), ch. i, p. 59. The curiae, or corporations of the cities, were formed of the richest landowners, who bore the burdens of the municipality on their shoulders.

An early and almost universal tradition places the scene of Patrick's captivity with a pagan farmer of Co. Antrim. Here, as he tells us, "tending flocks was my daily occupation; and constantly I used to pray in the daytime. Love of God and the fear of Him increased more and more, and faith grew and the spirit was moved...Before daybreak, I used to be roused to prayer in snow, in frost, in rain, and I felt no hurt...because the spirit was then fervent within me." [11] Muirchu, his earliest biographer, tells us that the name of his master was Miliuc and that his house lay on the southern slopes of Slieve Mis, or Slemish (Co. Antrim). Later in his life, when he returned to Ireland from Gaul, Patrick's first act was to make his way north, carrying in his hand the price of his release from service. But the pagan, "hearing that his old slave was coming to see him to endeavour to make him adopt a religion which he disliked," and fearing that his former slave "would lord it over him," gathered all his property round him and set fire to the house in which he lived as chief. Patrick, coming full of a gracious purpose, was so stupefied at the sight of the blazing pyre that he was speechless for two or three hours. [12]

[11] Confession, ch. xvi, p. 36.

[12] Muirchu, Life of St Patrick, ch. xii, p. 81.

St Patrick's life was a varied one. After his escape from slavery he was taken on board a ship by heathen men carrying in their cargo a number of hounds, probably the already famous Irish wolfhounds which were considered meet gifts for princes in after days. He landed after a stormy passage, on a desert shore, probably in Gaul, which was then wasted by the invasions of the Goths. He seems again to have fallen into captivity; later, he apparently visited his kindred in Britain, who "received him as a son" and besought him, after the great tribulations he had undergone, not to depart again. [13] But Patrick was haunted by visions of "a man coming from Ireland with countless letters," who gave him one, entitled "The Voice of the Irish"; and as he read he thought he heard the voice of them who lived beside the wood of Foclut, which is nigh to the Western Sea, crying with one mouth, "We beseech thee, holy youth, to come once more and walk among us." [14] This vision decided Patrick's future life. He spent some years in Gaul, travelling much, and studying, according to the summary of Tirechan, at the monastic island of Lerins (Atalanensis) and, according to Muirchu, under St Germanus of Auxerre; probably he passed some time in both centres of learning. There is no direct mention of a visit to Rome by his earliest biographers, but it is not improbable that Patrick visited the central church of Christendom at some time during his stay on the Continent. Muirchu speaks of him as "the venerable traveller" when he re-crossed to Ireland, and he himself speaks of being "nearly worn out" when he returned. But the fervour of his soul carried him through nearly thirty years of work in Ireland, work which left an impress on nearly every part of the country. He says that he baptized many thousands and ordained clergy everywhere, "not demanding from any even the price of my shoe"; "sons and daughters of Scotic [Irish] chieftains becoming monks and virgins of Christ." [15]

[13] Confession, ch. xxiii, p. 38.

[14] Ibid. ch. xxiii, pp. 38-39.

[15] Confession, ch. 1, p. 48; ch. xli, p. 45.

His task was a hard one. He was plundered and bound in irons by a chief who "eagerly desired to kill him"; he faced Laery, King of Tara, surrounded by his host of Druids; he had to grieve over the raids of Coroticus, a British king, who carried off newly baptized Christians "still in the white array" of their baptism, to sell them into the hands of Scots and apostate Picts of Strathclyde, cruelly butchering and slaughtering others with the sword. He revised the native system of law and committed it to writing. He taught everywhere the Latin tongue, the language of the Church and of the Scriptures, as he used them. He had to face slander both from the elders of the Church in Britain, and even from "his dearest friend," whom he does not name, but who would seem from the context to have been St Germanus, his teacher at Auxerre, who also gave him consecration. [16] But he succeeded where Palladius had failed; partly, no doubt, because of his familiarity with the Irish tongue, acquired during his years of slavery, but still more because of the simple sincerity of his own life and teaching. In his old age he writes thus in the opening of his Epistle to Coroticus: "Patrick, the sinner, unlearned verily; I confess that I am a bishop, appointed by God in Ireland. Most surely I deem that from God I received what I am. And so I dwell in the midst of barbarians, a stranger and an exile for the love of God. He is witness if this be so." It was undoubtedly the intention and hope of St Patrick to establish in Ireland a Church system similar to that with which he had been familiar in Britain, in Rome, and in Gaul. Roman Britain had long been Christian, and three British sees had been represented at the Council of Arles in 314, and a larger number at the Councils of Sardica in 347 and of Rimini in 359. At an even earlier date Christianity had spread into parts of Britain where the Roman arms had never penetrated, for Tertullian, in 208, had already spoken of "districts in Britain, inaccessible to the Roman arms, but subdued to Christ." [17]

[16] Ibid., ch. xxxii, p. 41. St Germanus was born about 378 and died in 448. He visited Britain twice, in 429 and 447.

[17] Adv. Jud., vii.

Whence this original Christianity had penetrated to Britain it is impossible to say. But the Roman districts of Britain, at least, were early organized into sees, and Patrick, who was proud of his Roman faith and citizenship, [18] and who came to Ireland the second time as an ordained bishop, would naturally endeavour to establish in the country of his adoption the orderly system to which he had been accustomed at home and abroad. In accordance with this desire he founded the earliest bishopric in Ireland, that of Armagh--the first, and for the next 650 years the only fixed episcopal see in Ireland. It is interesting that he chose as the site a spot close to Emain Macha (Navan Fort), the old centre of the heroic tales of Ulster, then disused, so far as we know, but evidently still retaining something of its old prestige. There seems no other reason for the choice of so retired a spot for his bishopric. The few Christian communities in the south-east of Ireland grouped themselves round native teachers, but they were growing up on native lines, with special peculiarities. In particular, they had no episcopal organization, or fixed sees, and the efforts of the Apostle of Ireland to introduce the system prevailing generally in the churches of Western Christendom did not prove a success For centuries afterward bishops in Ireland did not occupy fixed sees, and the country was not laid out in dioceses. They exercised their episcopal functions within the monasteries in a position subordinate to the abbot, who was their head and superior officer. Some others were wandering bishops, who moved about within or outside the country on missionary journeys. Even Armagh did not long retain its metropolitan character. On the death of St Patrick in 461-462, he was succeeded in the bishopric by his pupil, St Benen, and from that time till the death of Ailill, the fifth of his successors, there was a regular sequence of bishops of Armagh after the usual Church manner of organization; but from 526 onward the title of bishop is, except in rare instances, dropped, and the holders of the see are styled abbots, the future bishops being apparently, as in other Irish monasteries, subject to the abbot. [19] Thus Armagh, unable to resist the pressure of native custom, fell into line with the other Christian settlements all over the country and became primarily a monastic centre. It was not until the twelfth century that the archbishopric of Armagh was restored, and the bishopric of Cashel substituted for the abbacy of Cashel in the south, by the direct action of the Pope. Between the time of St Patrick and this late date the native Irish Church had quietly pursued her way, covering the land with Christian settlements formed on a tribal basis and within the limits of the tribe, each under some noted saint or teacher who was the inspiring spirit of his group and the abbot of his monastery. The importance attached to the office of abbot in Ireland is quaintly expressed by the Irish custom of calling the Pope Abbot (Abb) of Rome instead of Bishop of Rome, while in a singular invocation known as the "Path Protector" St Columcille speaks of Christ as "Son of Mary, the Great Abbot." It was only slowly, in the course of centuries, that the native Church gave up certain national peculiarities, such as the form of the Irish tonsure, and the old date of keeping Easter. It retained its marked monastic character all through the period of its greatest activity, and it carried on that work of evangelization and education not only within, but far beyond the limits of Ireland, which has ever since been considered its greatest glory.

[18] "Church of the Scots," he exclaims, "nay, of the Romans! In order that ye be Christians as well as Romans ye must chant in your churches at every hour of prayer that glorious word, Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison" (Dicta Patricii, from the Book of Armagh). Even if these words are later St Patrick's day they seem to convey the spirit of his teaching.

[19] H. J. Lawlor, in P.R.I.A., vol. xxxv, Sect. C, No. 9 (1919).

St Brigit's monastery of Kildare formed a link between the Church of St Patrick and the monastic foundations that sprang up all over the country with an almost simultaneous growth from about 530 onward. It was a mixed convent, and Cogitosus, the father of Muirchu, who wrote her life, [20] tells us that in his time the church of Kildare was large and lofty, with many pictures and hangings and ornamental doorways. It had a partition which ran down the church lengthways, dividing the men who sat on the right from the women who sat on the left side of the nave. It was in her church that the Welsh historian of the Norman conquest saw in 1185 the illuminated book which was of such great beauty that he was ready to assert that it was the work of angelic and not of human skill. Kildare may have been one of the centres for this exquisite work; very early it possessed a school which produced chalices, bells, and shrines.

[20] Trias Thaumaturga (Louvain), p. 524. This must have been the earliest life of any Irish saint.

During the twenty-five years after Brigit's death many of the most famous of the Irish foundations were established and were in full working order. Nendrum, in Strangford Lough, now Inish Mahee, or Mahee Island, under Abbot Mochaoi; Clonard and Moville, Co. Down, under the two Finnians; Clonmacnois on the Shannon under Ciaran; Bangor under Comgall, Glasnevin under Mobhi, were among the earliest of which we know the history, but the two monasteries of Birr and Clonfert, under the two Brendans, that of Molaise of Devenish in Lough Erne, and that of Senan on Scattery Island in the Shannon, were probably founded about the same date. Many of these famous men studied together in the school of Finnian of Clonard and formed lasting friendships. The latter was known as "Finnian the Wise, teacher of the saints of Ireland." The most important group of monasteries was that founded by the great Columcille, the future founder of Iona, or Hi, in Scotland, who in rapid succession established the monasteries of Derry, Raphoe, Durrow, Glencolumcille, Lambey, Swords, and many others, the head of the group being Kells, in Co. Meath.

The extension of the monastic system was abnormal, and it cannot be understood unless we have formed a clear idea as to what an Irish monastic foundation of this period was like. It was no single building of large size capable of holding numbers of persons. It generally arose around the person of some teacher whose fame had gone abroad and around whose hut, often intended originally as a hermitage or retreat, the cells of his pupils began to be raised by their own hands, made, according to the conditions of the district, either of wattle or of stone. Gradually, as people gathered, and fresh huts and oratories were constructed, the place would assume the aspect of a regular settlement. Rules were laid down, and a regular order was introduced into the work and worship of the day, and some of these establishments attracted as many as three thousand persons. They were partly educational, partly agricultural, and wholly religious. They came gradually to include the larger part of the entire Christian population. Each establishment was self-contained, having its own fields for growing corn and vegetables, its own mills, kilns, storehouses, and barns. The students and monks did the entire work of the place, sowing, reaping, carrying burdens to the mill, grinding corn, and performing in general the duties of the settlement. Even the abbots and bishops are found ploughing the fields, grinding corn, and fulfilling other agricultural offices. The extreme simplicity of life in these early monasteries must be carefully borne in mind. Part of each day was set apart for the instruction of students and part for active duties, while the offices of the Church were regularly and minutely observed. It was a system suited to the needs of a primitive and unlettered people and well calculated to guide and elevate them. These communities set before the entire population a new ideal of ordered, industrial life, sanctified by religion and enlarged by study. The highest saints retained to the end this primitive simplicity. St Brigit, after she had founded Kildare, still milked the cows, herded sheep, baked bread, churned milk, and carried on the ordinary work of a household, besides her care of the sick and lepers. When Columcille went to Bishop Etchen for consecration, he found him ploughing in his fields; when, in later life, he visited Clonmacnois the monks gathered hastily from the little grange farms on which they were working in order to receive him with honour. He himself and St Ciaran of Clonmacnois reaped and ploughed, and even ground corn in the quern, which was the office of the women-slaves. Nor did they look upon such labours as derogatory; they rather felt them to be ennobling and elevating. St Nathalan, a Scottish Celtic monk, believed "that in the lowly work of cultivating the earth, he approached nearest to the divine contemplation; therefore, though of noble birth, he practised with his own hands the lowly art of cultivating the fields," and this must have been the attitude of many even greater than he.

Reading and writing, the copying and multiplication of copies of the Gospels and the Psalms, the study of Latin and the making of ecclesiastical bells, crosses, book-satchels, and covers for illuminated books, occupied all of the day not occupied in religious or agricultural matters. The industry of many of these great teachers in copying books, chiefly the Gospels and Psalms, was remarkable. St Patrick is said to have "sowed the four books of the Gospel in Erin"; and St Columba is stated to have written three hundred books with his own hand, this being his chief occupation whenever he went for a time into retreat in the island of Eigg. St Finnian of Clonard is said to have given a copy of the Gospels to every church he founded. Besides the books needed for the services of the Church, we read of boys going to school with leather satchels of books upon their backs, and in the libraries that gradually grew up in connexion with the monastic schools these hand-written volumes were preserved in such satchels hung round the walls on pegs. A few have survived the lapse of time and still exist.

In the beginning few, if any, of the copies were illuminated; they were designed solely to meet the needs of the oratories scattered over the country; but two at least of the most elaborate and precious specimens of Irish illuminated art, the Book of Durrow and the Book of Kells, now in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin, come down from the seventh and eighth centuries, proving that already the art of book-illumination had reached its highest beauty of execution. Kells was the central church of the large Columban group of monasteries, taking precedence even of Iona, so there was a reason for the preservation there of this exquisite specimen of the draughtsman's art. It once had a wonderful cover of great value from the precious stones with which it was inlaid, but at an early period this cover was stolen, and it no longer exists. The Book of Durrow had a special sanctity from the belief that it was the work of Columcille's own hand; it seems, at least, to have been copied from his original. Both books are copies of the Gospels. The metal covers, on which the gold-workers of the day lavished their most careful art, are of later date; they were used for enclosing bells, manuscripts, and relics.

An ancient Irish Catalogue of Saints mentions that one of the special features of the 'second order' of saints was the great variety in their masses and monastic rules, one of which was said to have been introduced into Ireland by the British or Welsh bishops David, Cadoc, and Gildas. There is no doubt that the rules varied in different monasteries, each founder framing his own rule for the guidance of the monks who joined his foundation. They differed considerably in length and strictness. Some contained only general admonitions to penitence, love of God, fasting, and prayer, with a spirit apart from the world and devoted to the contemplation of heavenly things. Many are in verse, no doubt in order to be more easily remembered or for chanting. One of them, ascribed to the King-abbot of Cashel, Cormac MacCuilennan, in the ninth century, describes the low-voiced congregation singing the melodious song of the believers; he calls on them to join in the chanting of the rule, "the song which the ancients have sung." [21] In some rules we can trace the gradual introduction of severer admonitions, added to the original simpler regulations, and imposing greater mortifications. Of one called "An old Irish metrical rule" we have two versions. One, which apparently gives the original standard of an early date, says "These are thy three rules--have thou nought else more dear --patience, humility, and the love of God in thy heart." The other enjoins more explicit humiliations: "Three hundred prostrations every day and three at every canonical hour; two hundred blows on the hands every Lent will be a help." [22] There still exist rules attributed to SS. Ciaran, Manach Liath, or "the grey monk," Carthach or Mochuta of Rathin, Columban, Maelruain of Tallaght, and other well-known founders of monasteries. They were probably in use in the foundations established by the saints whose names they bear. Some were of great severity; the rule of St Columban, which divided the working day between copying manuscripts, teaching in the schools, and labour in the field and forest, enjoined severe punishments for the least infraction of the orders, amounting to two hundred stripes for some offences or rigorous and prolonged fasting for others. The discipline in the monastery of St Fintan at Clonenagh was so stern that the neighbouring clerics, feeling that the life of these monks was a reproach to them, begged Fintan, for the love of God, to relax its extreme rigour. His monks were not allowed to have any animals or ever to eat meat; even milk and butter were not permitted and, if offered, must be refused. He finally consented to make some changes for the brethren, but continued the same way of life for himself.

[21] Ériu, ii, 63 seq.

[22] Ériu, 1, 191 seq.

The old Irish tract De Arreis shows to what a pitch punishments for ecclesiastical offences could be carried in the Irish Church. [23] There were, however, monasteries where such excessive austerities were discouraged. In the rule of St Ailbe it is said that if the erennach, [24] who had under his charge the secular affairs and provisioning of the establishment, were wise, his rule should not be too harsh; "as the food shall be, so will the order be." "Let it not be too strict, neither let it be lax; let it not be a rule without knowledge, so that each may be able to bear his yoke." [25] In Tallaght, where Maelruain the Abbot did not approve of listening to music, as distracting the mind from its religious duties, and would allow neither a morsel of meat to be eaten nor a drop of beer, "the liquor that causes forgetfulness of God," to be drunk during his lifetime, we are told that fasting was not commended, but that a regular measured pittance was preferred by the Abbot. To a man much given to severe austerities he even refused admission, saying, "Those who are here, while they do their proper share of work, are able to eat their rations. Thou wilt not fit among them. Thou wilt neither do active work nor be able to eat thy rations." [26]

[23] Revue Celtique, xv, 485 seq.

[24] The erennach (airchinneach) seems to have combined the offices of archdeacon and steward; he farmed the Church lands. See O'Laverty Down and Connor (1887), iv. 61-62.

[25] Eriu, iii, 97 seq.

[26] P.R.I.A., vol. xxix, Sect. C, No. 5 (1911).

Of the monastic schools of Northern Ireland the three most important were Armagh, Bangor, and Clonmacnois. We have the fullest account of Bangor, preserved by the pen of the great St Bernard, in his life of St Malachy, or Mael Maedoc Ua Morgair, who in the twelfth century rebuilt the monastery, destroyed by the raids of the Danes in the early ninth century, when "its learned men and bishops were slain by the sword," and the relics of Comgall, its founder, shaken out of their shrine. But the tradition of its ancient fame was fresh in the mind of Malachy as he set about to rebuild, and he had communicated to his close friend, St Bernard, his own enthusiasm for the original Bangor of the sixth century. "For, indeed," the latter writes, "there had been formerly a very celebrated monastery under the first father, Comgall, which produced many thousands of saints, bringing forth most abundant fruit to God, so that one of the sons of that holy community, Lugaid by name, is said to have been the founder, himself alone, of a hundred monasteries." Bangor was founded in 559, and according to the Latin life of Comgall, so great a number of monks resorted to him that there was not room for them, and he had to found cells and monasteries in different parts of Ireland and Scotland to contain them all. He is said to have presided over three thousand monks, but such figures have to be accepted with caution. Still, the numbers in some of the Irish and Welsh foundations were very large. St Columban the most distinguished of the Bangor saints "who poured forth like a flood into foreign lands," is said by St Bernard to have established at Luxeuil the system of continuous church worship practised at Bangor, where the choirs succeeded each other in turn, "so that not a moment of the day or night was empty of praise." The Antiphonary of Bangor, found at Bobbio, shows that St Columban founded his cycle of the divine offices on the order familiar to him in his old monastery. The continuous office may have been a feature of the many monasteries called Bangor, or Benagher, in Ireland and Wales.

No less distinguished was the school of Clonmacnois on the Shannon, founded by St Ciaran near the site already famous as the burial-place of ancient kings, but now to become still more famous as the principal seat of learning and literature in the West. To Colcu, its fer-leginn, or chief professor, Alcuin addressed a letter from the Court of Charlemagne, enclosing a contribution of fifty shekels "from the King's bounty" and from himself fifty shekels, with a request that they will pray for him and for King Charles. He also sent a gift of oil to divide among the bishops, oil being now "a scarce article in Britain." He addresses Colcu, who has left a curious poem called "The Besom of Devotion," as "the blessed master and pious founder," and his letter is full of interesting details on matters of public interest in France and Europe generally, showing that even an isolated school like Clonmacnois was concerned about the current events of the larger world. Much literary and historical work of value was accomplished in later times at Clonmacnois. There the Leabhar na h-Uidhre, or "Book of the Dun Cow," was compiled about 1100; it contains the most ancient surviving collection of the old romances, together with much other material. The oldest existing annals, written by Tighernach partly in Latin and partly in Irish, were also produced there in the eleventh century, and the Chronicum Scotorum was probably written there. There must have been an extensive library in the monastery, for Tighernach quotes freely from Latin authors as well as from Irish and British authorities. The remains of its churches, its round tower, and its splendid crosses attest its former importance; but of Bangor not a trace is left.

The Norse raids of the ninth century made a break in the continuity of the schools, large numbers of the professors and scholars passing over to the Continent so that they might carry on their work in safety; but when quiet returned the old haunts in Ireland again became homes of study. It was at this time that Clonmacnois and Armagh attained their highest position as places of learning, the number of fer-leginn or professors increased, and Armagh, in particular, held so high a position that it was ordained at the Synod of Clane in 1162 that no one should henceforth be permitted to give public lectures in Holy Scripture or in theology unless he had spent some time studying at Armagh. This would seem to imply that Armagh was then considered the chief school or university. When the city was burned down in 1020 the library fortunately escaped, though the books in the dwellings of the students, all of course in manuscript, were destroyed.

During these centuries the borders of Ireland had been freely opened to the world, and commerce and friendly intercourse were encouraged with all who desired it. In the most active period of her early Christianity pilgrims seem to have gathered from every land to her shores. A Litany of Saints, known popularly as the Litany of Aengus, [27] composed about the seventh century, mentions lists of these foreigners who came to enter the Irish monasteries, or to make their home in the country. Roman pilgrims to various foundations are mentioned, and Gauls appear to have come in considerable numbers. The presence of Romans in Ireland is also attested by the inscription Septem romani in the churchyard of St Brecan at Aranmore. [28] In the life of St Senan we hear of a ship's crew of fifty Italians "from the lands of Latium" coming on pilgrimage to Ireland. [29] A Frankish priest and an English archdeacon are said to have settled in Glendalough, and seven Egyptian monks in Desert Kilaigh. Greeks are said to have trafficked at the Irish provincial fairs, and some of them appear to have settled down permanently, for as late as Ussher's day there was a Greek church at Trim in Co. Meath, its site retaining the name of Greek Park up to recent times.

[27] Edited by Charles Plummer (Henry Bradshaw Society), vol. lxii (1925), pp. 54 seq.

[28] Petrie, Christian Inscriptions, ii, Pl. XIV.

[29] Lives of the Saints from the Book of Lismore, ed. W. Stokes (1890) p. 209, l. 2069.

Nor were her nearest neighbours excluded. One of the most important settlements, frequently mentioned, was that of the Saxons in Mayo, in a district which bore the name of "Mayo of the Saxons" until much later times. It was the adverse result of the Synod of Whitby in 664, where the Columban and the Continental teachers disputed the question of the correct date for keeping Easter, that determined the emigration of these Columban monks under Bishop Colman from Northumbria to Iona and thence to Ireland. Colman was accompanied by many of the nobility and of the lower ranks of the English nation, who thought as he did, and they passed over in the year of the great plague, called in Ireland the Buidhe Conaill, which was raging alike in Ireland and England, and settled in the solitary island which Bede calls Inis-bo-finde, or "the Isle of the White Cow," now Inisbofin, off the coast of Connemara. Here he founded a monastery for the Columban monks of both nations. [30] They were willingly received by the Irish, who supplied them with books and food, but they do not seem to have agreed well, for they eventually separated, the Irish monks remaining at Inisbofin, while the English monks settled in Mayo (Magheo, "the Yew Plain" ), where a large establishment grew up, which was constantly recruited from England. Some of them devoted themselves to conventual life, but others, choosing to apply themselves to study, wandered about from one teacher to another according to the Irish plan. The Litany of Saints speaks of 3300 students who settled in Mayo, under Bishops Gerald [31] and Egbert, the latter a young English noble "who long lived a stranger in Ireland for the sake of the eternal kingdom." He afterward became Abbot of Iona and did much to induce the monks to adopt the Roman date for the celebration of Easter, having been enjoined to do so in a vision, "because their ploughs do not go straight." He was stricken with the plague, but recovered, and passed a long and strenuous life in combating the peculiarities of the Columban Church customs and bringing them into conformity with the general Western use. [32] Bede mentions the names of many others who went over to Ireland, either to adopt the hermit's life or for study. One of these was Wictbert, who became the first missionary to Friesland.

[30] Bede, Eccl. Hist., Bk. III, ch. xxvi-xxvii, and Bk. IV, ch. iv; Calendar of Aengus, ed. W. Stokes (1880), August 8, and note on p. cxxx.

[31] P. 57; and see "Life of St Gerald," Vitae Sanc. Hib., ii, 106 seq.

[32] Bede, Eccl. Hist., Bk. III, ch. xxvii; Bk. IV, ch. iii; Bk. V, ch. ix, xxii.

In the notes to the Calendar of Aengus [33] we hear of several early settlements of English besides those of Inisbofin and Mayo in Connacht. One was in the barony of Cianachta, in the present Co. Londonderry; another at Tullalease of the Saxons (Tulach-leis na Saxan), in Co. Cork; still another at O'Connell Gawra (Ui Conaill Gabhra), in Co. Tipperary. This shows that up to the twelfth century, when many of these notes were added to the Calendar, distinct English settlements were recognized in different parts of the country. They must have been still existing when Henry II came over. In the tenth century, when the schools of Armagh were at the height of their influence, they were resorted to in such numbers by English students that one-third of the monastic city was set apart for them. It was known as Trian Saxan, or the "Saxon Third," or "Quarter," and retained this name up to a late period.

[33] Calendar of Aengus, note on December 8, pp. clxxx-clxxxi; and see also p. cxxxv, where the district of the Little Saxons is mentioned, near Scattery Island, in the Shannon.

There are numerous records both of friendly and warlike relations between the two peoples during the early centuries which accord well with the known facts. Keating remarks that Ireland was a place of refuge for Britons who fled from the oppression of the Romans and Saxons, and that they found land there for themselves and their families, teaching their children Irish and carrying back with them many Gaelic words to England. He speaks of townlands named after them Graig na mBreathnach ("the Hamlet of the Britons" ), Baile or Dun na mBreathnach ("the Village or Fort of the Britons"), etc. [34] Intermarriages between Welsh and Saxon princesses and Irish chiefs are mentioned in many of the old stories. Later on, Keating quotes Hanmer's record of the visit of a king of Wales named Cadualin, who was banished to Ireland by Edwin, son of Æthelfred, in 635, and of two British princes, Haralt and Conan, who fled to Ireland in 1050 and were protected by the Irish; also of another Welsh chief, Bleithin ap Conan, who was maintained there in 1087. "Thus from age to age did they cultivate alliance and intercourse with one another."

[34] Keating, History, ii, 69,70-72, quoting Hanmer's Chronicle for the latter statement.

An earlier Lord of Pembroke than Strongbow is said to have married a daughter of Murtogh O'Brien in 1101; and Griffin ap Conan, the prince who occupied the throne of Wales in the time of Henry I of England, could boast that both his mother and grandmother were Irishwomen, and that it was in Ireland that he was born and educated in polite manners. The Norman-Welsh who accompanied Henry II to Ireland came to a country with which they were familiar, and with which they had long had intimate dealings.

In the North of Ireland the connexion was particularly close. Though the Romans had never, in a military sense, set foot in Ireland, Agricola says that in his day her harbours were well known at Rome. A considerable number of silver coins dating from the time of Constantius II to that of Honorius, with others about the same date, have been found in the North of Ireland, especially about Coleraine, showing that a certain amount of trade was in progress with Roman Britain, or Gaul. [35] During the seventh and eighth centuries the British took part on several occasions in the wars of Dalriada, or Eastern Ulster, on one side or the other. A host out of Britain, Saxon-land, and France is said to have assisted Con-gal Claen in the great historical battle of Magh Rath, or Moira, against his fosterfather King Donnell, prince of the peoples of Conaill and Eoghan, in 637. [36] This battle is mentioned by Adamnan and called by him Bella Roth.

[35] See Sir W. Ridgeway's paper on Niall of the Nine Hostages (Journal of Roman Studies, 1924).

[36] Battle of Magh Rath, ed. J. O'Donovan (Irish Archaeological Society, 1842).

Besides the intercourse with Britain there was also an independent trade with Gaul and Spain. The oldest version of the "Wooing of Emer," one of the most famous of the Cuchulain stories, speaks of "wine of Gaul" being brought to Ireland by one who purported to come on an embassy from the King of the Gauls--an early example of a trade destined to continue for many centuries. In the life of St Ciaran of Clonmacnois we hear of "a cask full of wine from the land of the Franks" being bestowed upon him. This was one of those acts of friendly intercourse which show that a constant interchange was kept up between that now retired spot and the Frankish Court and nobility. In Jocelyn's Life of St Patrick we are told that wine, honey, iron, and salt were imported into Dublin from ancient times, while the exports were mead, beer, shoes, and gloves. Wine was at all times a large article of import. Spanish and French wines were the usual beverage drunk in all the larger houses from the fourteenth century onward, whisky (uisge beathadh) becoming common about the sixteenth century, though the bards ignored and perhaps despised it. We hear of a chief of the Hy-Many who received an annual tribute in wine from one of his underlings; it was shipped into a harbour in Connacht, and carried up to his house. The "sea-laws" of the Book of Aicill relate to trading regulations for vessels arriving either from Britain or from abroad on the Irish coasts; [37] and Jonas in his life of St Columban, who crossed from Ireland to Nantes, speaks of a ship "which plied for the sake of commerce" between the two countries. Among the articles of commerce were the splendid wolfhounds bred in Ireland, which were so highly esteemed throughout the Middle Ages that they were offered as royal gifts to friendly potentates up to the seventeenth century; St Patrick's vessel sailing to Gaul contained a pack of these noble dogs. [38]

[37] Ancient Laws and Institutes of Ireland, iii, 423.

[38] Confession, ch. xix, p. 37.

From an early period Leinster was closely connected with Gaul, and a considerable portion of its inhabitants derived their origin from that country. "There was," says Keating, quoting old traditions, "a special friendly understanding between the Leinstermen and the French." He makes the curious statement that in early times "every province in Ireland had formed a special alliance of friendship beyond the sea, the Clann Neill [of Western Ulster] with the Scots, the men of Munster with the English, the [Eastern] Ulstermen with the Spaniards, the men of Connacht with the Welsh, and the Leinstermen with the Franks." [39] He quotes this from a poem of the bard John, son of Torna O'Mulconaire, who lived early in the fourteenth century, when these traditions were still alive among the people. The story that King Lowry (Labhraidhe) the Exile sought an asylum in France and returned bringing with him many foreigners "who were not of the Gael" seems to have confirmation from other sources. There is a tradition that the province of Leinster (Laighin) was named from the broad green-blue iron heads of the spears (laighne) of the foreigners who accompanied him; and those newcomers, known as Galian, were looked upon with jealousy by the older inhabitants on account of their superior celerity and expertness in matters of camp-warfare, as the story of the Táin bó Cúalnge shows. [40] The name is sometimes applied to the whole of the Leinstermen. The only instance of a chariot-burial being alluded to in Irish story is in connexion with this Lowry, who may have become familiar with this mode of burial of chiefs in Gaul. [41] There are many Gaulish names in the Irish genealogies, and we hear in early times of a place in Westmeath called Bordgal, the Irish form of the French Burdigala, or Bordeaux. The Litany of Saints mentions seven bishops of the Irish Bordgal, and in the life of St Colman MacLuachan [42] it is stated that two places were bestowed upon the saint in what was afterward Queen's County, called Bordgal and Lemchail. There seems to have been still another place of the same name, commonly corrupted to Bordwell, in the parish of Aghaboe; old records give it under the earlier form. It would seem likely that these places in Ireland were named by settlers from the French Bordgal, or Bordeaux.

[39] Keating, History, ii, 167, 168.

[40] Windisch, Táin bó Cúalnge, p. 51; Hull, Cuchullin Saga, pp. 125-126.

[41] Dobbs, "Chariot-burial in Ireland," in Zeit. für Celtische Philologie (1912), viii, 278.

[42] Todd Lectures, R. I. A. (1911), p. 63, and note on p. 116.

Dr Kuno Meyer, [43] following up an interesting suggestion made by Professor Zimmer, ascribes the revived intellectual impulse visible in Ireland from the sixth century onward to the arrival from Gaul of a body of learned men flying in the fifth century before the irruption of the Goths and Huns, and he relies for this explanation on a passage in the writings of a Gaulish grammarian named Virgilius Maro, who lived in the fifth century, near the time of the exodus of which he speaks, and whose works were read in Ireland. Virgilius says that "the depopulation of the entire Empire commenced...and owing to their devastations all the learned men on this side of the sea fled away, and in transmarine parts, i.e., in Hiberia and wherever they betook themselves, they brought about a very great advance of learning to the inhabitants of those regions." Zimmer and Meyer would read "Hibernia" for "Hiberia," or Spain, which would not be called a "transmarine" district or be reached across sea. The comparative quietude of Ireland would make it a natural place of resort for the hunted scholars. However this may be, it is certain that Ireland never lost touch with the main currents of classical and theological literature in Europe and the East, and that traditions, legends, and apocryphal literature, as well as some knowledge of Greek and a full competence in Latin, survived there, much of which was stamped out elsewhere by the inroads of the barbarians. Ireland never suffered the decay of religion and learning consequent on the devastations which befell Gaul and threw back its civilization for nearly three hundred years.

[43] Learning in Ireland in the Fifth Century (1913).

We may take it that Ireland had, before the seventh century, absorbed into its population large numbers of foreigners Leinster was intermixed both with British and Gaulish settlers, the South must always have had a considerable Spanish element, and Ulster an admixture both of Norse, Picts, and Scots. There were English or Saxon centres in Ulster, Connacht, and Munster. Even before the historical period of the Norse incursions, which brought in a large new element, the Irish nation, far from being a pure race, must have been one of the most varied in Western Europe; but long before the eighth century these had become absorbed into the older populations, speaking their language, and living in large part like the people among whom they had settled. The stranger, from whatever country he hailed, if left to himself without outside interference made himself speedily at home and grew proud to call himself an Irishman. It was outside influences alone that interrupted this natural process.

In the seventh century we find, on the other hand, Irish students crowding the classes of Archbishop Theodore of Canterbury, who had come to England from Rome in 664, and whose instruction in Greek made his school a centre for those who desired the higher learning. The restless Irish scholars seem to have had some sharp passages at arms with their teacher. Aldhelm, who was also a student, describes how they baited the Archbishop, who, however, proved more than a match for his unruly pupils. "He treated them as a truculent boar treats the Molossian hounds. He tore them with the tusk of grammar and shot them with the deep and sharp syllogisms of chronography, till they cast away their weapons and hurriedly fled to the recesses of their dens."

At the same time that Irish students were studying Greek with Theodore at Canterbury, and Latin and the arts under the teachers of Malmesbury, English youths were resorting to Ireland, thus bringing about an interchange of thought and learning which was to the advantage of both countries. Among the numerous students whom Bede mentions as having gone for study to the Irish schools was Aiden, first bishop of Lindisfarne (635), who is said to have spoken English so imperfectly on his return that Oswald, King of Northumbria, who had also made himself proficient in the Irish tongue during a long banishment in that country, went about with him to translate his sermons. Later the young Northumbrian prince Aldfrid (sometimes erroneously confused with Alfred the Great), who had been excluded from the throne on account of illegitimate birth, and who was of a studious disposition, crossed over to devote himself to literature, "suffering a voluntary exile to gratify his love of knowledge." He was recalled to the throne on the death of his brother Egbert and proved a worthy and noble king. He is said to have been "most learned in the Scriptures," and he "nobly retrieved the ruined state of the kingdom while confining it within narrower limits." In Ireland he was known as Flann Fina, from his mother, Fina, who according to Irish accounts was of the Irish race of Niall. He loved the country of his exile, and a poem in its praise is ascribed to him. Among other students of high rank was the Frankish prince who afterward became King Dagobert II, who passed his youth in foreign lands as an exile from his country, and whose student days were spent at the school of Slane, in Westmeath. It is a testimony to the widespread reputation of the Irish schools in the seventh century that one of them should have been chosen for the education of this Frankish prince by the lords of his household. On his return home in 670 the young prince was attended by a train of Irish friends, one of whom, St Arbogast, he raised to the see of Strassburg. His successor founded there a monastery for ' Scots ' or Irish in 687. Another of his followers, Maelceadar, an Irish warrior, became a person of distinction at Dagobert's Court. His wife, St Waldetrude, the patroness of Mons, accompanied her husband when he went on a visit to his native land to invite Irish teachers to come over and settle in the Frankish kingdom.

Students repairing to Ireland for study were free to pass from school to school and to choose their own masters. There must have been some great attraction in the Irish student's life, for Aldhelm, in a letter addressed to three young men just returned from Ireland, exclaims, "Why does Ireland pride herself on a sort of priority, in that such numbers of students flock there from England, as if here upon this fruitful soil there were not an abundance of Argive and Roman masters to be found, fully capable of solving the deepest problems of religion and satisfying the most ambitious students?" [44]

[44] The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, under 891, speaks of three Irish pilgrims who arrived in England in a boat without any oars, and who were cared for by King Alfred the Great. Their names were Dubhslane, Macbeth, and Mealinmun.

Many of the foremost of the Welsh teachers and saints gained part of their education in Ireland. St Gildas, the historian, frequently visited the country and is said to have "revived faith and discipline" and to have given to it a special Mass. St Cadoc, or Cathmael, the Wise, founder of the important monastery of Llancarvan, had been baptized and instructed by an Irish hermit named Tathai, who had settled in Wales and who taught St Cadoc grammar, the Scriptures, and the liberal arts for twelve years. Determining to perfect himself in the advanced learning then only to be acquired in Ireland, St Cadoc passed over in a coracle built by himself to Lismore, where he was received by "the master of the city [monastery] and all the clergy," and he remained three years "perfecting himself in the learning of the West." All his life he continued to wear the rough and hairy mantle "such as the Irish wear out of doors," and one of his special treasures was a small bell of peculiar sweetness which he brought back from Lismore. [45] St Padarn, St Cybi, and others built churches in Leinster, and as late as 1058 St Sulien the Wise, founder of the college of Llanbadarn Fawy, "stirred by the example of the fathers," spent thirteen years studying in Ireland. Some valuable manuscripts of his family and school remain. On the other hand, many of the chief Irish founders of monasteries passed part of their early life in Wales. It is even said that when the "Priority and Headship" of the Welsh Church was in question, the population being undecided whether to elect St David or St Gildas, the young Finnian of Clonard, who was standing among the huge assembly, was called upon to give an impartial opinion. He gave his award for St David "in such good Welsh that it might have been his mother-tongue." [46] An example of what was constantly going on is the story of the "fleet of Irish ships" which one day sailed into the harbour of Hayle, in Cornwall, where they were attacked by the inhabitants and many killed. The few who escaped entrenched themselves on a hill, and they gradually extended their power over the Land's End district. A large part of Cornwall became Irish, the original inhabitants taking flight overseas to Brittany, along with emigrants from Devon and Wales. There are also a great number of dedications to Irish saints in Brittany. From the north of Scotland southward to Cornwall we find Irish dedications in great plenty; St Brigit is found all over the Hebrides, St Finnbarr of Cork in Argyllshire, St Cainnech of Aghaboe is the St Kenneth of St Andrews. St Bees Head is so called from St Bega, and Brandon Head, near Bristol, from St Brendan, the navigator saint. The wide influence of the Irish Church in early times is clearly shown. [47]

[45] W. J. Rees, Lives of the Cambro-British Saints, pp. 313-317, 326, 352.

[46] Stokes, Lives of the Saints from the Book of Lismore, pp. 222-223.

[47] Plummer, Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae, Introduction, pp. cxxiv-cxxvi; Baring-Gould and Fisher, British Saints, Introduction.

In the heart of Somerset the romantic village of Glastonbury was in old days known as "Glastonbury of the Gaels." It was founded by an Irish monk and seems to have been the special resort of pilgrims from Beggery Island in Wexford Harbour. The Irish tradition is very strong in Glastonbury. On either side of the figure of St Dunstan on the great seal of the monastery are found those of St Patrick and St Brigit. It was an old belief that St Patrick died here, but this "Sen-Patrick," or old Patrick, was probably another saint of the same name. Nevertheless, this tradition was one of the most persistent causes of the flocking to Glastonbury of Irish students and pilgrims. The life of St Dunstan says that "men of the Irish nation inhabited the place in large numbers, men who were most skilful and had fully given up their mental energies to the prosecution of the liberal arts; who, that they might the more entirely devote themselves to philosophy, leaving their native land and laying aside all their old habits, had hastened to Glastonbury, attracted by love of their first preacher St Patrick, whose corporal shell is from antiquity said to have been deposited there." [48] It is possible that it was the presence of these Irish students that infused into the severe mind of St Dunstan that love of music and the liberal arts for which he and his monastery became celebrated, just as in the neighbouring monastery of Malmesbury, founded by an Irish hermit named Maelduf, Aldhelm found a congenial atmosphere for the cultivation of that love of music which led him in later days to sing, on open ways and bridges, songs and religious poems to the chance passer-by.

[48] Vita Sancti Dunstani, ed. William Stubbs (1874), pp. 10, 74, 256, etc.; cf. William of Malmesbury, De Antiquitate Glastoniensis.

Though the western coasts were naturally the first to be invaded many Irish wanderers found their way farther afield. The dreamer of one of the earliest visions of heaven and hell, St Fursey, or Fursius (b. 633), was a Galway youth "of noble Irish blood, but much more noble in mind than in birth." He made his way across England and settled in the kingdom of Sigebert of the East Angles, in order to escape from the crowds that followed him in his own country. There he built his monastic cells "pleasantly situated in the woods and with the sea not far off," wherein he might the more freely indulge his heavenly studies. It was there he saw his strange vision of the other world, the earliest of those apocalyptic writings which were to find their culmination in the thirteenth century in the Divina Commedia of Dante. [49] Fursey seems to have been accompanied by a band of Irish followers, for, when he decided to cross to France to found his two monasteries of Péronne and Lagry on the Marne, he left behind him at his older foundation two priests of Gaelic name, Gobban and Dicuil, and took with him another named Ultan to join his anchorite cell in France.

[49] Bede, Eccl. Hist., Bk. iii, ch. xix.

This is not the place to relate at length the lives and labours of the Irish evangelists abroad. The place of honour must be assigned to Columban, who passed forth with twelve companions from the great school of Bangor, Co. Down, landed in Gaul, and reached Burgundy about the year 574, at the age of thirty-one. He settled down among the forests of the Vosges, building his simple monastery under the walls of a ruined castle at Annegray, and living chiefly on the wild fruits and herbs of the woods. Here he composed the rule for his monks, and though it was severe the gentle character of its followers drew many to join his order. He boldly attacked the vices of the three kings who ruled in Gaul, and he won over one of them, Sigisbert, who offered him land on which to build. Twice he was called into Italy to combat the Arian heresy and his conversion of the Lombard king, Agilulph, who began his reign in 590, led to the offer of any piece of land he might choose if he would consent to stay in Italy. He longed for solitude and chose a spot high among the Apennines which was destined to become famous as the monastery of Bobbio, the fourth of the monasteries founded abroad by Columban, the other three, Annegray, Luxeuil, and Fontaines being in Gaul. The grant of King Agilulph, making over the land to Columban, still exists, as do also a knife, cup, and bell said to have belonged to the founder. But the most splendid memorial of Bobbio is the valuable collection of manuscripts, many of them now in Rome, Turin, and Milan, which formed its library. A catalogue drawn up in the tenth century and attributed to Abbot Gerbert (967-972), who afterward became Pope Silvester II, contains a list of 700 volumes, 220 of which had been presented by scholars who are named, while the rest had been acquired from various unstated sources. The explanations of passages in the classical books and on copies of portions of the Bible made by Irish students in their own tongue are among the oldest surviving specimens of the Irish written language. They are known as the Turin and Milan 'glosses.' Eighteen monasteries in Germany and Switzerland, over thirty in France, and many in Italy and the Netherlands (to give these countries their modern names) earned on into the Middle Ages the work and memory of their Irish founders. The canton of St Gall was named after one of the companions of St Columban, who was so much attracted by the quietude of the region that he refused to cross the Alps into Italy, a country then rent by religious disputations. His monastery became one of the chief houses of call in the Middle Ages for pilgrims passing into Italy to visit Rome. At Salzburg, in the Tyrol, the bishopric dates back to Fergal, or Virgil, once Abbot of Aghaboe in Queen's Co. Over the canton of Glarus still waves the figure of St Fridolin, its Irish patron saint. St Cathaldus, patron of Taranto in Southern Italy, and St Colman, patron of Lower Austria, were Irishmen. When travellers enter Florence by the western gate they pass under the portals of St Fredianus, or Finnian, the Irish preacher and Bishop of Lucca. As they climb the sweet slopes of Fiesole they may rest beside the spot where Donat or Donatus built his hut and chapel.

Outside the city of Paris may be visited the holy well of St Fiacre, an Irishman whose shrine was so much frequented in the Middle Ages that it gave a special name to the carriages that bore pilgrims thither, and in Paris a cab is still a fiacre. From the shores of Iceland and the Faroe Isles down to the vine-clothed hills of Italy we find the cells, the traditions, and the manuscripts of Irish monks and travellers.

Among the twenty-nine chief monasteries which in the eighth century obeyed the Columban rule were, besides those we have mentioned, the almost equally well-known foundations of Péronne, Reichnau, Ratisbon, Seckingham, and Würzburg. When, in 723, the Saxon Winifred, better known as Boniface, was sent to the Franks as Papal legate, not one of the German or Bavarian tribes to which he went could be considered pagan, and in this work of Christianization the Irish had borne a considerable part. The last of the Irish foundations to be recognized as such was St James's of Ratisbon, known as the Monasterium Scotorum. But when the word 'Scotia' ceased to be applied to Ireland, and Scotsmen from Scotland claimed the monastery as their own foundation, it was handed over to them by Pope Leo X, and the remaining Irish monks were forced to leave.

It was during the disturbance of the monastic life at home through the onslaughts of the Northmen that Europe was flooded for a second time with Irish missionaries and teachers. The schools in Ireland were broken up, and life and property were rendered insecure. As the Norsemen and Danes penetrated farther into the country the monasteries became the chief points of attack, and the quiet pursuit of learning became more and more difficult. Then the thoughts of Irish men of letters turned naturally to the already existing Irish foundations abroad. The story of the foreign work of the Irish teachers thus falls into two parts. There were first the early missions like those of Columban and St Gall; of Finnian of Moville, known abroad as St Frediano of Lucca (500-588); of Ursus of the Val d'Aosta (c. 550); and of Cathaldus of Waterford (c. 618), who became Bishop of Taranto about 680, and whose brother Donatus founded a church near Naples about the same date. These men were followed in the ninth century by the great influx of learned men who gathered principally round the schools of Charlemagne and of Charles the Bald; from which centre they spread gradually over all Southern and Central Europe. The earlier movement was inspired by the love of adventure, the desire for solitude, and the craving to undertake missionary work among foreign nations. The later effort was made in response to the well-known ambition of Charlemagne to make the schools at Paris a centre of advanced learning. He welcomed with enthusiasm teachers who could assist him in carrying out his aims.

An old story, which, even if it be rather a parable than an historical fact, well describes what actually happened, tells us that "when the illustrious Charles began to reign alone in the West, and literature was everywhere almost forgotten, it happened that two Scots of Ireland, Clemens and Albinus, came over with some British merchants to the shores of France. These Scots [Irishmen] were incomparably skilled in human learning and in the holy Scriptures. As they had not merchandise for sale, they used to cry out to the crowds flocking to the churches, 'If anyone is desirous of wisdom, let him come to us and receive it, for we have it to sell.'" [50] The report of these men came to the ears of Charles the Great, who, being a lover of wisdom, ordered them to be brought before him without any delay. He asked them whether the report was true that they did really possess wisdom. They replied that it was so and that they were ready to impart such as they had to any who would seek it worthily. They required nothing in return but food and raiment, a convenient dwelling, and ingenuous minds. This was about the year 772. Clemens remained in France, and became magister palatinus or Instructor to the Imperial Court, teaching all children of the nobility and of the lower ranks who desired to attend his classes. Albinus was sent as ambassador to Pope Adrian I (772-795) by King Charles, who had succeeded to the Frankish throne in 769; [51] later he was placed by him in charge of the monastery of St Augustine in Pavia, where he continued to lecture until his death to all who desired to receive his instruction. Charles had added the kingdom of Lombardy to his dominions when, in 774, he entered Pavia and took its king Desiderius prisoner.

[50] The story is related by a monk of St Gall of the ninth century, and is accepted by Muritori, Ussher, Lanigan, and Hadden.

[51] Charles was crowned Emperor in the year 800; he died in 814. Lothaire succeeded Louis le Débonnaire in 817 and died in 855.

Pavia became a great centre of Irish learning. In 825 the French King Lothaire, who had been educated under two Irish teachers in the schools of his grandfather Charlemagne, desired one Dungal to accept the post of Principal of Pavia University, while Clemens remained at Paris. The edict of Lothaire declares that "through the extreme carelessness and indolence of certain superiors, true learning had been shaken to the very foundations on all sides"; therefore it had pleased him to desire that students should assemble from Milan, Brescia, Lodi, Vercelli, Genoa, Como, and other neighbouring towns, to the instruction to be given at Pavia under the superintendence of Dungal, and that neither poverty nor distance should serve as an excuse to the people. Dungal was one of that "vast train of philosophers" who, Eric of Auxerre says, removed to France in the ninth century, along with "almost all Ireland" flying as refugees before the Norse and carrying with them their books and valuables. The Irish saints' names scattered so thickly about Belgium, France and Brittany, and the great number of Irish manuscripts in foreign libraries, attest the truth of this passage. Dungal had arrived at the Court of Charles the Great about 780. He was a poet, theologian, and astronomer, and he became the trusted friend of the Emperor, to whom he wrote a letter that is still extant. In a Latin poem addressed to Charles he calls himself the Irish exile (Hibernicus exul). It begins, "These verses the Irish exile sends to King Charles." His letter is on the subject of a double eclipse of the sun which occurred in 810; the phenomenon so much excited the curiosity of the Emperor that he asked Dungal, then a recluse in St Denis, to write for him an explanation of the event. At Pavia he speedily attracted students from the surrounding states, many of whose names are still remembered, and his school acquired wide celebrity. He greatly esteemed Virgil and was acquainted with the early Christian Latin poets, such as Prudentius and Fortunatus. His numerous Latin verses prove his taste and his love of poetry. In a poetic address to the Emperor he exclaims, "Dost thou demand of what avail are the verses of our song? Ah, my friend, dost thou not know the names of the Muses, or can it be that scornfully thou dost despise their gifts? While the starry worlds revolve in their loftiest orbits...so long will be heard throughout the ages the everlasting names of the Muses by whom the glorious deeds of kings are celebrated." [52] Another Dungal, whose tracts show some acquaintance with the works of Greek as well as of Latin authors, took part in the discussion that rent the Church during part of the eighth century about the honour that should be paid to images. He was called upon as the only man able to enter into controversy with the Spanish bishop, Claudius, on this subject of the Western iconoclasm. [53]

[52] Martène and Durand, Vet. Scrip. Coll. (1729), vol. vi, p. 811. Quoted by M. Stokes, Six Months in the Apennines, pp. 213-214.

[53] Yet another Dungal presented his valuable library to Bobbio at a later date. Traube, in his O Roma nobilis, distinguishes five Dungals, all of Irish birth, but this seems uncalled for; see also L. Gougaud, Les Chrétientés Celtiques, pp. 287-288.

Nearly all the chief Irish saints wrote hymns and poems, both religious and secular, sometimes in Latin and sometimes in the native tongue. We find chance compositions penned on the borders of old manuscripts at home and abroad, such as the "Student's Address to his Cat" or the "Lines to the Blackbird"--the one written on the margin of a codex of St Paul's Epistles in the monastery of Carinthia, the other as a marginal note on a copy of Priscian found in the monastery of St Gall. [54] Columcille wrote his tender and patriotic verses in both tongues; his contemporary and namesake, Columban, left several Latin poems written while he was abroad, notably the charming epistle addressed to his friend Fedolius in Adonic verse, in which he prays him "not to despise these little verses by which Sappho loved to charm her contemporaries." The Book of Hymns of the ancient Church of Ireland has a number of early hymns and eulogies of Irish saints both in Irish and Latin. The poetic fervour of the hermit monks, who lived in the closest intimacy with nature, brought forth a group of poems, both on religious subjects and on the natural beauties of the woods and streams and stormy ocean beside which they passed their peaceful days. These poems are unsurpassed in any literature for the delicacy of their sentiment and their vivid perception of the life of bird, and beast, and insect, the humble companions who lent interest to their solitude.

[54] Originals and translations in Stokes and Strachan, Thesaurus Palaeo-hibernicus, ii, 290, 293; and cf. Hull, Poem-book of the Gael, pp. 132, 139.

The most important of the gifts of knowledge which the Irish were able to restore to a rent and distracted Europe was the study of the Greek tongue. From a very early period the study of Greek seems to have formed part of the curriculum in Irish monastic schools. Columcille is said as a child to have "learned Greek grammar," though his earliest lessons were given him by a bard. The abbot Aileran of Clonard, writing about the year 600 a curious work on the mystical meaning of the names in our Lord's genealogy, quotes apparently from Philo as well as from Origen, Jerome, and Augustine. The old glossaries occasionally give Greek equivalents for Irish words, and Greek vocabularies and paradigms have been found in Irish manuscripts abroad. These occasional words in glossaries do not necessarily argue any extensive acquaintance with the language, but they show that its study was still alive in Irish monastic schools in the ninth century. It was from St Gall that the Greek copy of St Paul's Epistles with a Latin translation between the lines, known to scholars as Codex Boernerianus, was brought to Dresden. It dates from the ninth century and was therefore probably acquired or copied either in the time of the abbot Moengal (under whom the school of St Gall attained its greatest fame both as a seat of learning and as a school of music) or in that of Grimald, who was abbot from 854 to 872, and who bestowed upon the library a collection of valuable manuscripts. The few fragments in Irish script still remaining at St Gall are made up into miscellaneous collections, in which the precious St Gall palimpsest of Virgil is found side by side with several very ancient fragments of the Gospels. [55]

[55] H. J. White, Old Latin Biblical Texts, Nos. II, III.

Two Irish scholars of the ninth century are admitted to have been the first Greek authorities of their day. These were Sedulius Scotus ('the Irishman') and Johannes Scotus. Sedulius, who was Abbot of Kildare about 820, sought the Court of Charlemagne and was appointed by him to an important post at Liege, where he remained for many years. He arrived there one winter's day, through deeply drifted snow, exhausted by hunger and fatigue, but he received a welcome appropriate to his gifts and learning, and soon entered upon his professorial duties. He continued at Liege from 840 to 860 and died soon afterward at Milan. He tells us that "many learned grammarians" from his country were studying under his tuition at Liege. It is probable that his Treatise on Government was written for the instruction of Charlemagne's grandson, Charles the Bald, for whom also he composed numerous poems. When Charles visited the monastery Sedulius the Irishman presented a poem in his honour. He wrote commentaries in which he displays his reading by the variety of works from which he quotes. He corrects his Latin New Testament by a Greek original and he refers to the Hebrew readings. He composed a grammatical treatise on the basis of Priscian and Donatus, as well as the Treatise on Government of which we have spoken, which was discovered in the Vatican Library by Cardinal Mai. He was not only a man of exceptional erudition and versatility, but he was also a graceful Latin poet. His verses on "The Lily and the Rose" in which these flowers contend in rivalry for the palm of beauty are worthy of Thomas Moore. He is not to be confused with the fifth-century Italian poet of the same name who wrote the Carmen Paschale.

Undoubtedly the most remarkable thinker produced by the Irish schools and one of the foremost thinkers of the Middle Ages was John 'Scotus' or 'Scotigena,' or 'John the Irishman,' though he preferred to call himself John Ériugena, from Ériu, the old native name of his country. [56] John lived at a time when Western Europe was disturbed by the invasions of the Northmen, who were pouring down upon Northrumbria and Ireland, sacking the towns of Western France, Bordeaux, Rouen, Toulouse, and making their way inland to the gates of Paris. It was "with the din of war crashing around him" that, sometime about 847, John crossed over to France to obey the behest of Charles the Bald, who, amid the terrors of war, was building up under his own immediate care a school of philosophy at which learned men from every country were welcomed and given the opportunity of promulgating their ideas. The man, "little of stature but of merry wit," who came at his call from Ireland captivated the affection of the King, as his teaching was speedily to stir the attention of Europe.

[56] An alternative form is Ierugena; in later manuscripts the incorrect form Erigena appears. Ériu is the oldest form of the name of Ireland in the native tongue, with dative Érinn or Ére, from which the forms Erin and Ierne seem to be taken.

It was John's knowledge of the Greek language that induced the French King to invite him to his Court. Though his capital was then at Laon, he was attracted to Paris by its neighbourhood to the abbey of St Denis, which Charlemagne had chosen as the burial-place of his house, and which was then universally believed to have been founded by Dionysius the Areopagite, the earliest Athenian convert of St Paul. Works attributed to this man were supposed to have been discovered, but the knowledge of Greek, the language in which they were written, had so completely died out in the west that no one could be found to translate them. Charles probably remembered that an Irish teacher in the schools of his grandfather Charles the Great, and whom he had met at Liege, was not only a learned Latinist and a graceful Latin poet, but possessed as well some knowledge of Greek. The memory of Sedulius induced him to send for help to Ireland, and John, on his arrival, was able to carry out the wishes of his patron, and produce a translation which, owing to the then general ignorance of the language, threw Anastasius, Librarian of the Vatican Library, into the deepest astonishment. "It is wonderful," he exclaimed, "that this uncivilized man, dwelling on the confines of the world, should have been able to understand such things and to translate them into another tongue."

It was from his knowledge of Greek philosophy, especially of Plato, that John rose to the conception of things which he elaborated in his great work On the Division of Nature. "In the simplicity of his general plan," it has been said, "he surpasses all the philosophers of the Middle Ages." He accepts Plato's conception of a world of ideas as the pattern on which the sensible universe is made, thought to him being the only reality and goodness its essential significance. The inherent dignity of man's nature must assert itself in the end. "The soul may forget her natural goods, may fail in her striving towards the goal of the inborn virtues of her nature; the natural powers may move, by fault of judgment, towards something which is not their end," but not for ever, for the universal tendency of things is upward. "Our nature is not fixed in evil;...it is for ever moving, and seeks nought else but the highest good, from which as from a beginning its motion takes its source and to which it is hastening as to an end." Since all things proceed from God, so in God they find their final perfection. John was not a pantheist, for he believed in personal immortality. "This," he writes, "is the end of all things visible and invisible, when all visible things pass into the intellectual, and the intellectual into God, by a marvellous and unspeakable union; but not, as we have often said, by any confusion or destruction of essences or substances." His effort was to produce a philosophy of religion; he was led to conclusions on the essential goodness of human nature, and the negative and transient nature of evil, which were not acceptable in his own day, but many of which were revived, perhaps unconsciously, in the works of later thinkers. This belief in the dignity of human nature and its innate desire for good marks the conceptions of two mediaeval Celtic teachers, Pelagius and John Scotus, The one, with restless energy, was untiring in endeavouring to get his views accepted by a Church to which they were unwelcome; his doctrine is still the only heresy against which, in the Articles of the English Church, its adherents are warned by name. The other addressed himself to a more limited audience; and up to the death of his patron, Charles the Bald, John continued to enjoy the protection of this enlightened prince, whose scholar's instinct led him to encourage unfettered discussion, and whose respect for learning made him the personal friend of the scholars who gathered round him.

John came to a dreadful end at the hands of his own pupils and his own countrymen. On the death of Charles in France he was invited to repair to England by King Alfred the Great, and placed by him in charge of Malmesbury Abbey. Here he is said to have fallen a victim to the turbulence of his Irish pupils, who set upon him with the sharp ' stiles ' with which they wrote, inflicting wounds of which he died. [57]

[57] For an admirable essay on John Scotus see R. Lane Poole, Mediaeval Thought and Learning, ii, 46-68, from which the above quotations are taken. The question of the identity of John Scotus with the teacher of Malmesbury is fully discussed in Appendices I and II of the above-mentioned work.

It was not only in classical studies that Irishmen of the ninth century stood in the forefront of the knowledge of their time. They were also geographers and mathematicians. Fergal, or Virgil, of Salzburg has the double reputation of being a teacher of geometry and a missionary. At home he had been abbot of Aghaboe, and he must have been beloved in his native land, for he is one of the few among the host of Irish teachers who went abroad who is remembered in the annals and martyrologies of the homeland. His death is recorded in the Annals of Ulster under the date 784. On going to France he was recommended to Odilo, Grand Duke of Bavaria, by King Pepin (752-768), to fill the see of Salzburg. He had already achieved a reputation before leaving Ireland, for he was known there as the Geometrician; from his Greek studies he had learned the theory that the earth was a sphere and that there are antipodes. This theory was believed to run counter to the religious doctrines of the day, and Fergal was condemned again and again by the ecclesiastical authorities. But he still continued to maintain that the world was round, that the sun and moon passed beneath it, and that there must be inhabitants on the other side. No measures were actually taken against him, and he seems to have gone on quietly administering his diocese, while occasionally he startled the mediaeval world with new knowledge, wrought out in his study in the intervals of episcopal work.

An equally interesting writer was Dicuil, who lived about 820 or later, and who wrote in his old age a geographical work called De Mensura Orbis Terrae, which was discovered by M. Letronne about 1812 in the French National Library. Dicuil was a very intelligent man who was not content merely to compile an account of the world's geography from the records of the classical writers, though he was familiar with these and quotes from Solinus, Pliny, Isidore of Seville, Priscian, and many others. But he was also at great pains to find out any new material which could be contributed at first-hand by those who had travelled in little-known regions. The island of Iceland, for instance, was not discovered and peopled by Norsemen before 874, but Dicuil, who probably wrote half a century earlier, gives a long account of it. He corrects the common idea of his day that the island was surrounded with a sea of ice, remarking bluntly that those who made such reports "have evidently lied"; but he says that at a day's sail farther north the frozen ocean had been found, for certain clerics who visited the island went beyond it in the depth of winter. He describes, among other interesting details, the long days near the solstice, when the sun "hardly disappeared at all, but seemed only to hide itself behind a hill, so that, even during its short absence, the light of day does not fail." All this, he says, he had learned from some Irish anchorites who had visited the island over thirty years before and had remained there from the month of February till August. The account he gives of these hardy wanderers, who, despairing of finding nearer home the quiet they longed for, had pushed their way into the frozen seas, remarkably bears out the tradition handed down in the Icelandic Landnámabóc, which gives the history of the settlements on Iceland by the Norse. This old book says that when the Norse arrived in the island, flying before the harsh laws of Harold Fairhair, they found there already "Irish bells, books, and croziers." This passage is so interesting, as bearing on the wanderings of the Irish anchorites, that it will be well to quote it in full. It occurs in the prologue to this native record of the 'land-takes ' of Iceland and runs as follows: "Before Iceland was peopled from Norway there were in it men whom the Northmen called Papas [Fathers]; they were Christian men, and it is held that they must have come oversea from the west, for there were found after them Irish bells, books, and crooks [croziers], and more things besides, from which it could be understood that they were Westmen. These things were found east in Pap-isle, and it is stated in English books that in those times voyages were made between those countries." [58]

[58] Landnámabóc, Prologue.

It is an important testimony to the accuracy of this Icelandic record to find that Dicuil had conversed with those who knew some of these early explorers. He had also met a "man worthy of trust" who related to his master, the abbot Sweeney (Suibhne), how he had landed on the Faroe Isles after having navigated "two days and a summer night in a little vessel of two banks of oars." He found that they also had been inhabited nearly a hundred years before by eremites who had gone out of "our Scotia [Ireland]," but whom the inroads of the Northmen had driven away from Faroe, since which time the islands had been inhabited by an innumerable multitude of sheep, who were probably the descendants of those introduced and reared by the Irish hermits. To this day the sheep that are found on the Faroe Islands are of a breed unknown in Norway, but resembling those of the Western Isles of Scotland and the inhabitants have a peculiar method of rearing their sheep, unlike that of Norway. The name Faroe or Faerey Isles means "The Sheep Islands." [59]

[59] P. A. Munch, Chronica Regum Manniae et Insularum (1860), p. viii. Dicuil also wrote a remarkable treatise on astronomy which has been printed by M. Esposito in P.R.I.A., vol. xxvi, Sect. C, p. 378 seq. (1906-7).

As life at home became increasingly difficult for learned men new colleges of Irish began to spring up abroad, and Würzburg, Ratisbon, Fulda, Mayence (Mainz), Constance, and Nürnberg were all crowded with Irish students. They have left behind them many precious manuscripts, the fruit of their learning and patience. In the Imperial Library at Vienna is a copy of the Epistles of St Paul transcribed by a Donegal monk of Ratisbon in 1079. His name, Marianus "Scotus," shows the country of his birth, and his book was written "for his pilgrim brethren" who joined him from Ireland. Seven of his immediate successors were natives from the North of Ireland. Another Irish monk of the same name is associated with the Irish abbeys of Cologne and Fulda. He was educated at Moville in Co. Down, but, leaving his native land, he became an enclosed monk of the abbey of St Martin at Cologne. Though living as a solitary he wrote there a History of the World and various tracts of a controversial nature. His reputation spread, and when Siegfried, the Superior of Fulda Abbey, visited Cologne in 1058 he induced Marianus to return with him and take up his residence at Fulda. He became for the second time a professed 'incluse' in May 1059, taking up his abode in a cell in which another Irish incluse had lived and died sixteen years before. He died at Mayence, having followed his friend Abbot Siegfried thither, the remaining thirteen years of his life being passed in seclusion. All this we learn from his own diary, which has fortunately been preserved. A touching marginal note in a copy of his History gives a glimpse of the feelings which passed through the mind of an Irish scribe when, in foreign lands, he received tidings of events passing at home. It reads: "It is pleasant for us to-day, O Maelbrigte [i.e., Marianus], incluse in the inclusory of Mayence, on the Thursday before the feast of Peter, in the first year of my obedience to the Rule; namely, the year in which Dermot, King of Leinster, was slain. [60] And this is the first year of my pilgrimage from Scotia [Ireland]. And I have written this book for love of the Scots all, that is, the Irish, because I am myself an Irishman."

[60] King Dermot MacMaelnamo (Mael-na-mbó) of Leinster, who died in 1072.

At home the growing power of the Church had, even so early as the days of St Columcille, led to a struggle between the founders of monasteries and the central authority of Tara. The abbots began to exercise an authority independent of the secular arm and claimed, among other powers, the right to shelter criminals behind the 'law of sanctuary,' refusing to give them up to justice. Thus a merciful provision, intended to shelter an accused man from the vengeance of his pursuers until his case had been lawfully tried, was interpreted into a defiance of all legal punishment, the abbots in this way claiming an authority superior to that of the State even in matters not directly concerning the Church. The question was fought out by a test case in the reign of Dermot MacCarroll (Cearbhall), High King of Ireland about 538-565, a man of just aims and high ideals and determined to uphold the authority of the state. The story has taken the form of a parable in which the twelve chief saints of Ireland, as representing the Church, solemnly excommunicate Dermot by ringing of bells and "fasting upon" him. [61] Their action led to the downfall of Dermot and, with him, of the central supreme authority of Tara. After his time its position waned, and it was deserted as the seat of government. Thus the kingship was weakened just at the moment when a strong government would have been invaluable to the country. The last feis, or triennial festival, of Tara is recorded in the reign of Dermot. The Calendar of Aengus, composed late in the Norse period, speaks of "Tara's mighty town with her kingdom's splendour" as having perished, though the chief monastic foundations, in spite of Danish assaults, still survived, and "a multitude of champions of wisdom abode yet in great Armagh." But though Tara was deserted the name and title of Áird-rí continued up to the reign of Rory O'Conor, who submitted to Henry II, and during the Norse period a succession of powerful princes occupied the throne. Among signs of advance was the checking by St Columcille of the overgrown numbers of the bards, who were accustomed to go about the country in large bodies demanding entertainment and impoverishing the population. The exemption of women from warfare was obtained by St Adamnan, or Eunan (d. 704); and the adoption by the Irish Church of the customs and discipline of the Catholic Church in such matters as the date of keeping Easter and the form of the tonsure was largely secured by the persistent efforts of the same reformer. His powerful influence was exercised both at Iona (Hi), of which he was abbot, and in Ireland, where he held two important Synods, one at Armagh and another at Tara, where spots still known as the "Tent" and "Chair" of Adamnan are shown. He, like his great predecessor at Iona, St Columcille, was a Donegal man, and he wrote the most authoritative life of the founder, besides a book on the Holy Land highly praised by Bede. He was, as his writings show, a man of force and imagination.

[61] Silva Gadelica, ii, 70-74, 82. A speech of great dignity is put into Dermot's mouth. To "fast upon" a man from whom a debt was due was the legal form of enforcing a demand upon a man of higher rank under the Brehon law. It has recently been revived as the 'hunger-strike.' See Ancient Laws and Institutes of Ireland, i, 83, 113.

The state of the country during the close of the seventh and the eighth centuries declined with the decline of the restraining influence of the monastic schools, which had to a large extent replaced that of the secular arm. Disputed successions and enfeebled princes combined to produce a condition of disorder, and the gloom and misery of the period was accentuated by frequent and terrible visitations of pestilence which spared neither princes nor abbots, while the common people were swept away in vast numbers. Abbots of Clonard, Fore, Clonmacnois, and other monasteries, died of it. About 666-669 four abbots of Bangor, Co. Down, succumbed to it in succession. These plagues were followed by a great mortality among the cattle, which added the misery of famine to that of sickness. Extreme frosts are said to have occurred at the same time.

With the passing away of the founders of the greater monasteries the reverence in which these institutions were held seems to have declined. Early in the eighth century began that sacrilegious system of burning the monasteries which the Northmen copied but did not originate. In the period immediately preceding the first recorded Norse descents there is not a year in which the destruction of some old foundation is not noted. For instance, in 774 Armagh, Kildare, and Glendalough were burned. In 777 Clonmacnois was destroyed, in 778 again Kildare, in 783 Armagh and Mayo, in 787 Derry, in 788 Clonard and Clonfert, besides numerous smaller monasteries and churches. [62] The Danish fury shows us nothing worse than this. Quarrels and actual conflicts between the brethren were frequent. Both monks and students were armed and obliged to attend the warlike expeditions of their chiefs in the same way as other subjects; it is perhaps not surprising that, being trained and expected to fight, they should often have turned their arms against each other. They even appear in Church councils fully armed. [63] It was not until 803 that the clergy were legally exempted from hostings and wars. But a custom sanctioned by time did not easily die out; we shall find the clergy taking an active part in tribal warfare up to the beginning of the tenth century, though by that time a feeling seems to have been growing up that it was unseemly for monks and clergy to appear on the battlefield.

[62] Annals of Ulster, at above dates.

[63] Ibid., 806, 816. Notices of students "with shields and spears in their hands" at the monastery of St Aedh of Ferns will be found in the Life of St Aedan. Cf. W. J. Rees, Lives of the Cambro-British Saints, p. 566.

Never had Ireland been in a weaker condition morally and politically than at the moment when the foreign invader first arrived upon her shores; never was she less prepared to resist the fierce attacks of the Northmen whose conquering arms, spreading westward, fell at the close of the eighth century on the undefended coasts of Ireland.

But a great need called out the finer elements in the nation, and, in spite of the terror of the Norse incursions, the period was one of revival. A succession of purposeful rulers resisted with energy the onsets of the Northmen, and the gradual amalgamation of the two peoples brought to each some elements which were needed for the permanent benefit of both nations. The Danish period in Ireland, usually regarded as one of destruction and fury only, was, in fact, one of distinct advance both in material and intellectual conditions. It found Ireland an open country without large towns or solid fortifications, its chief centres the groups of simple huts gathered round the monastic foundations or along the river-mouths. The close of the Norse occupation left her with a number of walled towns, the beginnings of the larger towns of the present day, with fleets capable of penetrating to the Hebrides or Man, and with a commerce that made cities such as Dublin and Limerick centres of wealth and activity. Stone-built bridges, churches, and round towers showed an advanced style of building and the use of the true arch brought about a revolution in architecture; stone buildings also began to replace the old stockaded forts of the native princes. From the same period come many of the sweetest lyrics that Ireland has ever produced and a large body of prose literature. The most important religious poem of Ireland, the Psalter of the Verses (Saltair na Rann), relating Biblical events from the creation of the world to the final judgment, and containing a hundred and fifty poems in imitation of the Psalter, was composed toward the close of the tenth century.

It may be called the Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained of early Ireland. Few Irish poems are written on so extended a plan. To reach this state of renewed life the country had to go through a baptism of fire; but, comparing the Ireland of the eighth century with that of the eleventh, there is no question but that a great step forward had been taken, if not in the direction of internal peace at least in the direction of external prosperity.