But of all the foreigners who flocked to the Irish schools, whether for the purpose of ac quiring wisdom or of leading a life of stricter discipline, the students from England were the most numerous. In fact during the entire 7th and 8th centuries the Anglo-Saxons regarded Ireland as their university. Bede's 'Ecclesi astical History) is our greatest source of in formation on this subject. The Irish, we arc told, received the English with true Irish hos pitality, and they were all, rich and poor, sup plied gratuitously with food, books and educa tion. Consequently whole troops and ship loads, Catervatim . . . classibus advecti,) says Ald helm, of the English youth crossed the Irish Sea. In those days the Irish were most friendly toward the English; the Saxon, not the Celt, was the recipient not the giver, and wher ever we read of an Anglo-Saxon of a superior education in the 7th and 8th centuries we may be sure that he must have spent a time in Ire land. With the beginning of the English regime, however, Irishmen had to go abroad for an education.
Under Benignus, Patrick's successor; the at tendance at the great School of Armagh so increased that it was necessary to divide it into three parts, one of which was devoted entirely to students of the Anglo-Saxon race. Among those students were some who were destined to be the most eminent teachers and preachers of North Britain. The most famous of all was Aldfrid, King of Northumbria at the end of the 7th century, who, though a king, could not ob tain sufficiently trained teachers at home. Some others were Ecgberct (Egbert) who, in the 7th century lived in the Irish cloister of Rath melsigi, or Mellifont, in the County Louth; Ceadda or Chad, one of the Fathers of the Anglo-Saxon Church, and Oswald, King of Northumbria, who not only learned Christian civilization in Ireland, but even the Irish lan guage to the extent, it is said,. of being able to act as interpreter in it.. It is in the life of Saint Ecgberct that the often quoted passage occurs, namely, that at the time of the great plague in 664 many of the English nobility and the lower classes received at the Irish schools their daily food, instruction and books with out any pay at all. ,1 The most frequented of these early schools were those of Bangor and Clonard, each of which, before the close of the 6th century, is said to have had 3,000 students. It is not to he supposed, however, that in these and similar cases all the students resided in one place. The students were in the habit of migrating from one famous school to another, attracted by the reputation of its professors and the excellence of its equipment. The piety of the Irish saint, and scholars was not so narrow as to exclude the pagan authors from their curricula. The monastic code of Columbanus shows that the humanities entered largely into his plan of edu cation, and, judging from his own writings, he seems to have given more attention to classical literature than to philosophy. He left Ireland at the age of 40 and his life on the Continent was one of constant activity, of rough, vigorous, absorbing effort, spent in building monastries, governing them and preaching the Gospel. Con sequently no time was left for reading, and he must have acquired his classical education be fore leaving his native land. The breadth of that education is easily seen to have been far greater than that of his celebrated contempo rary, Gregory of Tours, for example. He wrote poems in classic measure in which there are reminiscences of Greek mythology, and he seems to have been familiar especially with the works of Sallust, Seneca, Virgil, Horace and Ovid.
Virgil and Ovid were the pagan authors most read in the Irish schools and not so much for themselves and their poetic beauty as for the light they could throw on ancient history and on the understanding of the Bible. The
ease and rapidity with which the Irish scholars acquired an acquaintance with the language and literature of ancient Rome is to be explained, partly at least, by the fact that from the eailiest historical times there existed in Ireland a class of men devoted especially to the cult of letters and to the study of their own complicated lan guage and highly intricate verse-forms.
But, what is more important, the Latin au thors were not only read with enthusiasm, they were copied with zeal and diligence in the Irish cloisters. Adaptations or translations were made of some of them and others were pro vided with glosses in Irish; sometimes even the names of lost Latin authors or quotations from their works are known to us through Irish literature. While in other lands monks de stroyed manuscripts when pagan or used precious copies of Plautus or Cicero on which to write copies of monastic chronicles, Acts of Councils, or texts of the Vulgate, the Irish monks, appreciating the importance of preserv ing these monuments of classical antiquity, copied them for posterity. The world owes a debt of gratitude, therefore, to the early Irish scholars for their great services in this direc tion. Moreover, the role they played as the link between antiquity and the later Middle Ages and as the forerunners of the Renaissance has never been adequately treated. But the ad miration which the Irish scholars had for the classic authors was not at the sacrifice of the literature of their own country. Practically all the extant manuscripts dealing with the ancient literature and mythology of Ireland were made by scribes attached to cloistral schools, and Whatever is known of the old Irish language is derived from the glosses which they made to Latin texts and from hymns of praise which it was the practice of the Irish Church to sing in Irish as well as in Latin. i In order to provide their students with the tools of learning it was necessary for the Irish scholars to multiply books and, collect libraries. Consequently in every monastic school the copy ing of manuscripts was the principal task of many of its members and regarded as a most meritorious occupation. The Irish scribes were famous not only for the number of manuscripts they transcribed, but also for the wonderful degree of elegance with which they. adorned them. The forms of the letters of their alpha bet had been introduced into Ireland by British missionaries and are about the same as those found in Latin manuscripts in Romance lands in the 5th and following centuries; the Anglo Saxons afterward learned their letters from the Irish. Certain monastic schools acquired a veritable reputation for their caligraphy. The position of scribe was held in the greatest honor and importance and the title of scribe is some times found added to enhance the celebrity of an abbot or bishop. Saint Columcille was a noted copyist and is said, though perhaps with exag geration, to have made 300 copies of the psalms or gospels. The same is told of Bishop Dagda, who was called librorum peritissimus? and who passed his nights in copying manu scripts. The scribe of 'Leabhar na (The Book of the Dun Cow), the oldest manu script in the Irish language, was bishop of Clonmacnois, and another bishop, Find of Kil dare, who died in 1060, was closely associated with the writing of the next oldest manuscript, the Book of Leinster. The 'Annals of the Four Masters' name 61 remarkable scribes as having flourished before the year 900, 40 of whom lived between 700 and 800. Somewhere in the Irish laws it is stated that the same penalty was inflicted for killing a bishop, an abbot, or a scribe.