Above: Map during Charlemagne Empire

As the sixth and seventh centuries were the great period of the Irish Saints and Missionaries, so in the eighth and ninth centuries the Scholars from Ireland became famous throughout the West of Europe.

In the ninth century Irishmen were to be found in every cathedral and monastery of the empire, and were so identified with the new intellectual movement which was then taking place that the teaching of the scholars was called the Irish learning. The 7 went in great numbers to Prance, and a distinguished French savant writes that in the time of Charlemagne nearly all the learned men of the empire were of Irish origin. Their name is inseparably associated with the foundation of the Carolovingian Schools, an event of the greatest importance in the history of civilization, since it marked the commencement of the attempt to recover for Europe all that it had lost by the inroads of the Goths and Vandals.

Above: King Charlemagne Statuette

A great French writer! has described the letter which Charlemagne sent to his mayors, recommending them to found schools, as the Charter of Modern Thought. It marked the beginning of an intel­lectual renaissance in Europe in no way inferior in importance to the humanistic movement of the fifteenth century. Although Tiraboschi in his ‘ History of Italian Literature’ claims the honour of the Carolovingian revival for Italy, the greatest part of the credit is, as Ilenan points out, due to Irish scholars. It was Italy, indeed, that inspired Charlemagne with the idea of founding schools, but it was Ireland that sent him masters to impart the new learning. Charlemagne and Charles the Bald have given the name Carolovingian to this period of revival of letters, but the revival itself had commenced before their time by the emigra­tion to France of learned Irishmen, whom Ilenan calls ” les colonisateurs scientifiques de l’Europe Occidentale.”