Above: Picture of Knock Shrine in County Mayo - the largest church in Ireland

During the sixth and seventh centuries in Ireland,” says Dr. Dollinger, the Church of Ireland stood in the full beauty of its bloom. The spirit of the Gospel operated amongst the people with a vigorous and life-giving power; troops of holy men from the highest to the lowest ranks of society, obeyed the holy Gospels of Christ, and forsook all things that they might follow Him.

There was not a country of the world during this period, which could boast of pious foundations or of religious communities equal to those that adorned this far distant island. Amongst the Irish, the doctrines of the Christian Religion were preserved pure and entire; the names of heresy and schism were not known to them ; and in the Bishop of Rome they acknowledged and venerated the Supreme Head of the Church on earth, and continued with him, and through him with the whole Church, in a never interrupted communion.

Above: Aerial shot of an early Irish monastery

The schools in the Irish cloisters were at the time the most celebrated in the West. While almost the whole of Europe was desolated by war, peace­ful Ireland, free from the invasion of external enemies, opened to the lovers of learning and piety a welcome asylum. The strangers who visited in the Hiitory of Modiaxal Thought.”