Above: Made of gold weapon used by the Picts

The mere summary of the names of the best known of the Irish missionaries is sufficient to show how great and wide was the influence which they exercised on other nations.

• St. Columcille founded the celebrated monastery of Iona, which spread the knowledge of the Gospel amongst the Picts of the Scotch mainland. At the time of his death forty-one missions had been established, twenty-five amongst the Scots, and eighteen in the country of the Picts. His monks went to all the islands of the west coast of Scotland, and there is scarcely one of these islands that does not acknowledge an Irishman as the founder of its church.

• Coriuac, a disciple of St. Columcille, visited the Orkneys, and there were settlements of the Irish monks on the Faroe and Shetland Islands. Further north they went to Iceland, and when the Northmen first discovered that island they found there books and other traces of the early Irish Church.

Above: Painting of St. Aidan of Lindisfarne

• Aidan, a monk from Iona, founded the great monastery of Lindisfarne and spread Christianity through the kingdom of Northumber­land and the North of England. Finnian and Colman, his successors, carried on the work begun by Aidan and brought the faith to Mercia and East Anglia.

• St. Columbanus went through France, founding monasteries at Luxeuil, Fontaines and Annegrai; then passing through Switzerland, he crossed the Alps to build the famous Abbey of Bobbio in Lombardy. Jonas, his contemporary and biographer, tells us that from Luxeuil alone over six hundred missionaries went to Bavaria.

• St. Gall, one of the companions of St. Columbanus, laboured in Switzerland, and established a monastery near the lake of Constance on the site of the town that still bears his name.

• St. Killian became the Apostle of Franconia and Thuringia, and St. Colman is the Patron Saint of Lower Austria.

• St. Fridolin, the first Bishop of Alsace, worked at Glarus where his figure still finds place on the cantonal arms and banner.

• St. Frigidian who converted the Lombards and became Bishop of Lucca

• St. Donatus, the first Bishop of Fiesole, were both Irishmen.

• In Southern Italy St. Cathaldus of Lismore became the Bishop and Patron baint of Tarentum.

Above: Chapel in the Monastery of Redensburg

• Marianus Scotus, on his pilgrimage to Home, stopped at Regensburg on the Danube and founded a monastery, out of which there grew twelve Irish convents in Ger­many and Austria. The Irish missionaries did not confine themselves to Europe, for we find one of them named Augustine residing at Carthage, and writing a treatise on the Sacred Scriptures, while at the same time two of his countrymen Baetan and Mainchine taught in the same city.