Transcriber’s Notes:
- A number of obvious typos have been corrected. Except for thesecorrections, the spelling and punctuation of the book have not beenchanged.
- In the source book there are 539 footnotes numberedby chapter, so that footnote number 1 is the first footnote in eachchapter. In this e-book the footnotes and their markers have beenrenumbered from 1 to 539 thus giving each footnote a unique marker.
- All the footnotes have been moved to the end of thebook.
- The cover image contains a photograph, taken by thetranscriber, of the remains of one of the two round towers on the oldmonastic site of Clonmacnoise on the eastern bank of the River Shannonin County Offaly.
THE EARLY IRISH
MONASTIC SCHOOLS
THE
EARLY IRISH
MONASTIC SCHOOLS
A STUDY OF IRELAND’S CONTRIBUTION
TO EARLY MEDIEVAL CULTURE
BY
DUBLIN
THE TALBOT PRESS LIMITED
85 TALBOT STREET
1923
PRINTED IN IRELAND
AT
THE TALBOT PRESS
DUBLIN
TO
IRISH TEACHERS
WHO,
TRUE TO THE TRADITIONS OF THEIR RACE,
SERVE HUMANITY IN MANY LANDS
BY LIVES CONSECRATED TO
RELIGION AND LEARNING
PREFACE
The aim of the present study is to give withinreasonable limits a critical and fairly complete account of the IrishMonastic Schools which flourished prior to 900 A.D.
The period dealt with covering as it does the sixth, seventh, eighth,and ninth centuries is one of the most obscure in the history ofeducation. In accordance with established custom writers are wont tobewail the decline of learning consequent on the Fall of the RomanEmpire in the fifth century and then they pass on rapidly to theRenaissance in the fifteenth; a few, however, pause to glance at theCarolingian Revival of learning in the ninth century and to remarkparenthetically that learning was preserved in Ireland and a fewisolated places on the fringe of Roman Civilization, but with somenotable exceptions writers as a class have failed to realise that as inother departments of human knowledge there is a continuity in thehistory of education. The great[Pg viii]connecting link between the Renaissance and the Graeco-Roman culturewhich flourished in Western Europe during the early centuries of our erais the Irish Monastic Schools. Modern research clearly points to theconclusion that the history of these schools is in reality a chapter inthe history of education in Western Europe. While we do not claim thatthe Irish schools were the sole factor in the preservation andtransmission of letters during the Early Middle Ages we are certainlyconvinced that they played a leading part. The cumulative evidence whichwe submit amply warrants this conclusion.
The many tributes of a complimentary naturewhich scholars have bestowed on the wo