Above : St. Egbert Picture On Paper

Of the most celebrated Anglo-Saxon scholars and saints, many had studied in Ireland; among these were St. Egbert, the author of the first Anglo-Saxon mission to the Continent, and Willi-brod, the Apostle of the Frieslanders, who had resided twelve years in Ireland. From Ireland, also, came two English priests, both named Ewald, who in 690 went as missionaries to the German Saxons, and were martyred in Germany. The celebrated St. Chadd, regarded on account of his virtue and holiness as one of the Fathers of the Anglo-Saxon Church, was educated in Mayo; and Oswald and Aldfrid, Kings of Northumbria, studied at the Irish schools. Dagobert II., King of the Austrasian Franks, was educated at Slane, and Bede tells us that Agilbert, who afterwards became Archbishop of Paris, came from France to Ireland and lived a long time there for the purpose of studying the Scriptures.

It has been pointed out by Zimmer and other Continental scholars that the standard of learning in the great Irish schools was much higher than in Italy. It was derived without interruption from the learning of the fourth century, from men such as St. Ambrose, St. Jerome, and St. Augustine. The pupils had an opportunity of free access to the works of the great Christian writers, and were also well trained in classical studies. In monasteries like Bangor the range of instruction was a wide one, and it must have been a thoroughly equipped and vigorous seat of learn­ing in the latter half of the sixth century when it could have despatched such a trained and even elegant scholar as Columbanus to convert the pagans of France. His learning and scholarship are manifest to any student of his writings. He has left us good Latin verses, full of quaint metrical conceits in the classical and monastic rhyming style, and allusions to pagan and Christian antiquity are frequent in his poems. It is sufficient, as M. d’Arbois de Jubainville says, to glance at his writings, to recognise immediately his superiority over Gregory of Tours and the Gallo-Romans of his time. ” He lived in close converse with the classical authors, as later did the learned men of the sixteenth century, whose equal he certainly was not, but of whom he is the precursor.” He must, too, have acquired this scholarship in Ireland, because his life on the Continent was one of vigorous and all-absorbing effort which left him no time for such studies, and the country in which he worked was plunged in literary and spiritual darkness, and could not present any opportunities for culture.

M. Darmesteter writes that ” The classic tradi­tion, to all appearances dead in Europe, burst out in full flower in the Isle of Saints, and the Renais­sance began in Ireland, 700 years before it was known in Italy. During three centuries Ireland was the asylum of the higher learning which took sanctuary there from the uncultured States of Europe. At one time, Armagh, the religious capital of Christian Ireland, was the metropolis of civilisation.” The Irish schools did not confine their courses to the study of sacred literature and the classics. They sent forth St. Virgilius, a great geometer who taught the sphericity of the earth and the existence of the Antipodes, Dicuil who wrote a complete Geography of the World as then known, and Dungal who gained fame as an astronomer.