The aim of the present study is to give within reasonable limits a critical and fairly complete account of the Irish Monastic Schools which flourished prior to 900A.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 of education. In accordance with established custom writers are wont to bewail the decline of learning consequent on the Fall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century and then they pass on rapidly to the Renaissance in the fifteenth; a few, however, pause to glance at the Carolingian Revival of learning in the ninth century and to remark parenthetically that learning was preserved in Ireland and a few isolated places on the fringe of Roman Civilization, but with some notable exceptions writers as a class have failed to realise that as in other departments of human knowledge there is a continuity in the history of education. The great connecting link between the Renaissance and the Graeco-Roman culture which flourished in Western Europe during the early centuries of our era is the Irish Monastic Schools. Modern research clearly points to the conclusion that the history of these schools is in reality a chapter in the history of education in Western Europe. While we do not claim that the Irish schools were the sole factor in the preservation and transmission of letters during the Early Middle Ages we are certainly convinced that they played a leading part. The cumulative evidence which we submit amply warrants this conclusion.

The many tributes of a complimentary nature which scholars have bestowed on the work of the Irish Monastic Schools would indicate that the importance of their influence has not been overlooked; yet it seems to us that their real aim and character have not always been clearly understood. In a certain respect these schools were unique: they were neither purely classical schools of the type that flourished in Gaul in the fourth century, nor were they mere theological seminaries such as existed in certain parts of Britain and the Continent that lay outside the Irish sphere of influence. The peculiar character of the Irish monastic school would appear to be the result of the harmonious combination of three distinct elements: 1,Native Irish Culture; 2,Christianity; 3,Graeco-Roman Culture. We believe that this conception of Irish monastic culture furnishes the key to a proper understanding of the real significance of Irish scholarship during the Early Middle Ages. No study of Irish monastic schools which neglected to give due consideration to the potent influence of each of these three constituents would be adequate even if it were intelligible. The force of this conviction which is the result of a prolonged and critical examination of all the relevant material to hand has determined the form which the present study has assumed.

The first and second chapters are not merely introductory: they are fundamental. In the first chapter we discuss the question of a pre-Christian and pre-classical native Irish culture. The second chapter is devoted to an examination of that difficult problem, the beginnings of classical learning in Ireland—a matter on which modern research has thrown considerable light. As the school was so intimately connected with the monastic system it was necessary to devote a special chapter to an examination of the more salient features of Irish monasticism which differed in many ways from Continental monasticism. Here we are impressed with the fact that the native Irish ideals blended with those of Christianity so as to give the Irish monastic life a peculiarly national character which was ever reflected in the educational aims and ideals of the Irish monk even when his missionary zeal carried him far from the environment of his native land. In the fourth chapter the attempt is made to determine the precise relation which existed between the Irish monastic school and the general educational situation not only in Ireland and Britain but in Western Europe from 650 to 900A.D. Those three great centres of intellectual life in every Irish monastery—the school room, the scriptorium and the library—are treated in the fifth chapter. The particular function of each and its relation to the others is described while their combined influence, whether of a contemporary or permanent nature, has been noticed. The all-important question of the nature of the curriculum has been critically examined in the sixth chapter. Finally, a chapter is given to a discussion of the scope of Irish scholarship and its significance in MediÆval Culture.

While a work of this nature can scarcely claim to be original and the acknowledgments are too numerous to recount, yet the grouping is new and not unfrequently facts have been presented from a new angle. Source material has been consulted where possible. The results of previous investigation have been freely used, but even as often happened when we have arrived at conclusions which have been anticipated by other writers, we have maintained quite as critical and independent an attitude as when we ventured to challenge certain popular opinions and to make such generalizations as the result of our own study seemed to warrant. In some instances, however, this study has carried us into fields of inquiry where we have no credentials, but in these cases as in every other where we have used secondary authorities acknowledgment is always made in the foot-notes.

In various ways we have endeavoured to condense a good deal of information into a limited space. For example, to avoid repetition we give frequent cross references to important topics dealt with in different parts of this study. Again, instead of attempting the bewildering and impossible task of giving an account of individual schools we have given a list of the more important ones and merely referred to particular schools as occasion demanded in order to illustrate certain points of primary importance. For similar reasons all attempts at biographical accounts of Irish scholars have been studiously avoided. Such references as have occasionally been made were necessary in carrying out our general plan which was to deal with the Irish monastic school as an educational institution. Of course it would have served no useful purpose to ignore completely those men whose acknowledged scholarship was the best testimony of the character of the instruction available in the schools in which they themselves studied and taught.

A word might be said with reference to the proportion of space occupied by the different topics. The plan invariably followed has been to give a minimum of space to any topic which is treated fairly fully elsewhere in some accessible work. On the other hand no topic which appeared to be an integral part of the general plan has been omitted and such topics as have been inadequately treated elsewhere have here received fuller consideration.

While quite conscious of the limitations of our treatment, it is hoped that by pointing out many supplementary sources of information we have done something to smooth the path of other investigators who may wish to explore those portions of the same field which lay outside the scope of our present inquiry.

The author wishes to express his sincere thanks to the following: to Dr. Fletcher H. Swift, Professor of the History of Education in the University of Minnesota, for his sympathetic interest in the subject and for his advice and guidance; to Rev. Laurence P. Murray, M.R.I.A., Principal of St. Brigid’s Irish College, Omeath, Co. Louth, for the use of his excellent Irish library and for helpful suggestions and criticisms of the earlier chapters; to Rev. Dr. Peter Guilday, Professor of History in the Catholic University of Washington, D.C., for reading the MS. and for his advice and encouragement; to Mr. Patrick O’Daly of the Talbot Press for seeing the work through the press and for painstaking proof-reading; and finally to the publishers for turning out the work in an attractive and scholarly form.

COLLEGE OF ST. TERESA,
WINONA, MINNESOTA, U.S.A.,
LÁ FhÉile PÁdraig, 1923.