The Early Irish Monastic Schools / A study of Ireland's contribution to early medieval culture

Transcriber’s Notes:
THE EARLY IRISH MONASTIC SCHOOLS
A STUDY OF IRELAND’S CONTRIBUTION TO EARLY MEDIEVAL CULTURE
HUGH GRAHAM, M.A.
Professor of Education, College of St. Teresa, Winona, Minnesota, U.S.A.
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

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 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 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.