There is no mention of a library in an Irish school before the llth century; but it is .reason able to suppose that they existed. The learning of the Irish scholars and the references they employ in their writings prove that the range of books they had access to must have been extensive. In the libraries the books• rested not on shelves, but were kept in leather satchels which hung on hooks or pegs around the wall. One of the distinguishing marks of the Irish scholar or teacher traveling on the Continent was, besides his strange dress, the leather bag in which he' carried his tablets and handbooks. In this way no doubt many vain able manuscripts written in Ireland reached Continental libraries and some of them remain there. Some of these travelers must have owned the books they brought with them, but it is on record that a book called the (Lebor (the Short Book), which was at Mon asterboice in 1050, was missing after that date, for a student had feloniously abstracted it from the library and carried it off to the Continent. The number of manuscripts in the Irish hand on the Continent dating from the 7th to the flth century is about 200, of which some 33 are molt or less in the Irish language. In every monastery founded by Irish missionaries on the Continent the library was, next to the church, tnost important, and those very schools which were either of direct Irish foundation or most strongly under Irish influence, such as Bobbio, Saint Gall, and Reichenau, and which may be regarded as peculiarly representative of Irish culture, were most conspicuous for their HI braries.
The flourishing period of the Irish schOoli and the golden of ' 'Irish civilization chronizes roughly with the 300 years which at known as the darkest period in the history of European civilization. The waves of barbar ism had spread over the entire Continent and it seemed as if they were to engulf it in the abyss of ignorance. Through that dark night Ireland was the principal sanctuary of civiliza tion and the storehouse of classical antiquity and theological learning: Her schools and scholars kept alive the feeble spark of learning and drew the attention of the world to Ireland whose fate it has been so often since to attract attention to her because of her unparalleled suf.: ferings. As Dr. Johnson observed, Ireland twas the school of the West, the quiet habitation of sanctity and- literature?) She had teachers in every branch of knowledge, sacred and profane, and it was they who planted the foundation of western civilization which we enjoy to-day and on vihkh our times are building.
From the earliest period the Irish scholars, not satisfied with educating own youth and attracting students from abroad, sent forth disciples who were to scatter her treasures. of learning. Many of ,these scholars were no doubt compelled to rake up their books and flee from Ireland because of the 'Scandinavian Vasions, which greatly disturbed the 'peace of the. Irish 'schools, • but h is a mistake to suppose that that was the sole reason of their exodus., Their own energy and the need of trained teachers abroad forced them forward to wider fields of action. From Iona they went to Northumbria, a land which above all, owed its Christianity to the Irish and whose.antonastic and episcopal capital, Lindisfarne,• was in di rect literary relations with Ireland. They reached the Scandinavian lands and even Ice? land. From the end of the' 6th to the end of the 9th century, crowds of Irish missionaries went to Gaul, Germany, Italy and and by the end of the 7th and beginning of the century a wide circle of their monasteries la arisen from the mouth of the Meuse and the Rhine to the Rhone and the Alps and even yond the Rhine in the eastern, settlements of the Franks and the Bavarians, among the ruined i heaps of Roman ,settlements and in forests, deserts and mountains where until then only, wild beasts found shelter. Ten centuries later
some of those abbeys in southern Germany were still called SchottenklOster.
The .Irish scholars who first bronght Irish culture to the Continent, beginning at the' end of the 6th century, came rather as missionaries than as teachers, and they came •willingly, im pelled only by religious ardor. But there were some great scholars among them. Their coun trymen who followed 200 years Tater came as fugitives seeking rest and protection in the establishments fonnded by their predecessors. Some of them were mere wanderers and have /eft only a trace of their presence in the hospices where they lodged as pilgrims. The others settled down as teachers. As their repu cation stood very high throughout western Europe (they were spoken of everywhere as •Pentissimi Scotti"), they became teachers of the clergy, the aristocracy, and the common people and counselors of kings and emperors. In a word, they became the schoolmasters of Europe. Every school had its Irish teachers. Charles the Bald brought Scotus Erigena, the founder of scholastic philosophy, to Paris, and Charles the Great surrounded himself with such Irish scholars as Clement and Joseph Scotus, the friend and disciple of Alcuin. There were at least five distinguished Irish scholars named Dungal in France in the time of Charlemagne. In fact, the two first universities of Europe, those of Paris and Pavia, owed their founda tion in no small degree to Irish professors.
The number of Irish monks living on the Continent appears to have reached its height in the 11th and 12th centuries. While the names of many of them are known to us, there were, no doubt, some who have not left sufficient evidence to enable us even to connect them with the land of their birth, and others of whom the continental records make no mention whatsoever. It is likely, however, that among anonymous works composed during that period there were some which are to be added to the credit of the Irish scholars. The names of some of the mo k11,1mguished among them have already been mentioned. To them may be added Fursey at Lagny, Fredolin at Glarus, Frigidian at Lucca, Livinu) who underwent martyrdom in Flanders, Arbogast who occupied the see of Strassburg, Killian, the apostle of Franconia, Saint Fiacre, Saint Virgilius and Cathaldus. Many of these men no doubt had but little originality, and only Scotus Erigena could claim to have opened up a new path in science, yet they were all leaders in the moral and intellectual movement of their time and bearers of a higher culture than was then to be found among the other nations of Europe.
Healy, 'Ireland's Ancient Schools and Scholars) (Dublin Iwo ' • Joyce,
History of Ancient Ireland' (Dublin 1903); Gougaud, (Les Chretientes Celtiques' (Paris 1911); D'Alton,
of Ireland' (Dublin 1910); Montalembert, (Monks of the West' (Edinburgh 1861) ; Moran, 'Irish Saints in Great Britain) (Dublin 1903) ; Stokes, M.,