A series of events that were to have great significance on the continent of Europe began in Ireland about 432. Saint Patrick converted the Irish to Christianity, and in the course of the next century Ireland became the land of saints and of scholars. While the Continent was in the throes of perpetual conflict through the Goths, Eastern and Western, and the Van dals and Huns, a series of Christian schools developed in Ireland which were to send out scholarly missionaries bearing Christianity and education to the Continental barbarians for the next three or four centuries. Ireland, un touched by the Romans,— Caesar had planned to send an expedition there, but was prevented by death and his successors in command of the Roman armies were too much occupied,— failed to share in Roman decadence. Saint Patrick found a people who had an abiding in terest in poetry and other phases of literature, a genius for music and a great talent in the arts and crafts. Their tribal rule had fostered dissensions among them and Christianity did not tame their martial instincts but it turned the national energy into higher channels and their high stage of social life and their respect for the rights of others was refined by Chris tianity.
The result of this educational development was that Ireland protected from the disturb ances of the Continent at this time became a Mecca for students from Britain, Iberia, Gaul and it is said even more distant countries. Be sides Irish missionaries went to the Continent and founded schools, not only in Gaul and in what is now Germany and Switzerland, but even in Italy where the great monastery of Bobbio is one of their foundations. Mrs. Rich ard Green suggested that any one in Western Europe who spoke Greek during the 6th and 7th centuries owed it either to an Irishman or to some one who had been taught by an Irish man. The great Irish schools were situated at Armagh, Bangor, Clonfert, Clonmacnoise, Glen dalough, Tuam, and on the Island of Arran More. The women of Ireland shared with the men in this educational development, and Saint Brigid's school at Kildare became as well known as Saint Patrick's school at Armagh, and ac cording to tradition had hundreds of pupils devoted not only to book learning hut above all to the arts and crafts. Kildare became famous for its fine lace making, needle work, beauti ful church ornaments, marvelous illuminated copies of the Scriptures, rivals of the 'Book of Kells, still preserved at Trinity Col lege, Dublin, for one of them has been de scribed by Giraldus Cambrensis who fortunately taw it not long before the destruction of Kil dare by the Danes. Gerald the Welshman was most enthusiastic in his descriptions of this book. Some of the earliest poems in rhyme ever written were composed here at Kildare as a'recent revival of Gaelic literature has revealed, and manifestly there was a high state of intel lectual development. The abbesses at Kildare.
successors to Saint Brigid, had the privilege of vetoing the names of candidates for the bishopric of Kildare whenever they felt they 'night not be in sympathy with the educational work done there. The abbess ruled over a monastery for men as well as a convent for women, though the men were much fewer in number. It was this Brigittine tradition that was in force at Whitby (North England) when the Abbess Hilda ruled the convent and monas tery. Ihe Irish opportunities for feminine edu cation form a striking pioneer epoch in Ozanam, in (La Civilization au Cinquieme Siecle,' declared that "the Irish were the mis sionary people of the barbarous ages, destined to carry the light of faith and science into the gathering darkness of the West. They are a people whose suffering's are better known to us than their services and whose marvelous vocation we have not sufficiently studied.' He proceeds to add that "the Romans were too old and worn out to complete the education of the on-coming race, so that it required a new generation of non-decadent people to continue the chain and rejoin the links.'" Zimmer, the distinguished German authority on Celtic his to and literature, in his discussion of The Irish Element in Mediaeval Culture,' declared that "these Irish missionaries were teachers of every known branch of science and learning of the time, possessors and carriers of a higher culture than was at that period to be found any where on the Continent, and can surely lay claim to have been the pioneers, to have laid the cornerstone of Western culture on the Con tinent.'" The Franks come into prominence in this century. They gave a new name to Gaul and became the nucleus of the modern French nation. At the fall of the Roman Empire, one of their chieftains, Clovis (later form, Louis), ventured to attack Svagrius, the Roman Gov ernor of Gaul, and gained a decisive victory at Soissons (486). He then began to extend his authority over neighboring Teutonic tribes who had also crossed the Rhine and taken possession of different portions of the country. He ex tended his kingdom as far south as the Loire and then proceeded to conquer the Allemani to the east. One of his battles with them repre sents a great turning point in history. Clovis was not yet a Christian, though his wife was, and he had learned to respect her religion deeply. In the midst of a battle with the Allemani the fighting was so fierce that his troops began to give way, and bethinking him self of the God of the Christians, he promised that he would become a Christian if the Franks should gain the victory. The great Bishop Gregory of Tours, in his famous of the Franks,' written in the next generation, has told the story of how, when the battle was won, Clovis kept his word, and with snore than 3,000 of warriors, was baptized.