Not only did the Irish perfect this script in the schools of their native land, but they carried it with them when they went abroad and taught it in the schools which they founded in foreign countries. Owing to the fact that the Irish schools kept up the tradition of Greek and Latin learning, philologists and palaeographers have studied the development of Irish writing very carefully with a view to determining the dates of classical MSS. which were transcribed by Irish monks or their pupils. The most important of these studies are those made by Keller[297] and Lindsey.[298] The work of these scholars has placed the question of the influence of the Irish style of writing beyond dispute.
“England borrowed it en bloc; and in the Early Middle Ages the Irish missionaries who spread over the continent of Europe and who became the founders of religious houses carried their native script with them and taught it to their pupils. Thus in such centres as Luxeuil in France, Würzburg in Germany, St. Gall in Switzerland, and Bobbio in Italy, Irish writing flourished and MSS. in the Irish hand multiplied. At first there was no difference between the writing in these MSS. and that in the Irish codices actually written in Ireland. But as might be expected the script thus employed in isolated foreign places gradually deteriorated as the bonds with the native hand relaxed and the Irish monks died off.”[299] From these MSS. written in the characteristic Irish script we are able to form some idea, though an inadequate one, of the magnitude and importance of the work done by the Irish monks in preserving the ancient classics. Moreover, in addition to those MSS. described as Scottice Scripta by continental librarians, Zimmer has shown that many of the MSS. ostensibly the work of the continental scholars are in reality the work of Irish monks.[300] The explanation is that those monks who studied on the Continent tried as far as possible to accustom themselves to the forms of the letters used by continental scholars. For instance, this is the case of all the documents written by Moengal at St. Gall between the years 853–860 A.D.[301]
LIBRARIES:
An important feature of every monastic school was the library, or tech screptra, as it is styled in the older Irish MSS. When we recall the fame of these schools, the needs of the students, and the number of scribes whose business it was to cater to these needs we might reasonably infer that these libraries were provided with text-books and with books for general reading. These libraries differed widely from our modern libraries. There were no shelves for rows of books, but there was another arrangement which was more suitable for the type of book then in use. The books were kept in satchels hung on pegs or racks round the room. Each satchel containing one or more volumes was labelled on the outside. The satchels were of embossed leather beautifully adorned with designs of interlaced ornament so common in Irish art. Many specimens of these satchels are on view in the National Museum, Dublin, and there is one in Corpus Christi College, Oxford.[302] These satchels were also used when carrying a book from place to place.
The book itself was of parchment. Manuscripts which were greatly valued were usually kept in elaborately embossed leather covers of which two are still preserved, namely, the cover of the Book of Armagh,[303] and that of the Shrine of St. Maidoc.[304]
Books abounded in Ireland when the Danes made their appearance there about the end of the eighth century; hence the pride with which the old writers referred to “the hosts of the books of Erin.” But with the first Danish incursions began an era of burning and pillaging the monasteries and consequently a woeful destruction of MSS., the records of the ancient learning. The special fury of the invaders appears to have been directed against books, monasteries, and monuments of religion. All the books they could lay hands upon they either burned or “drowned” by throwing them into the nearest river, or lake. For two centuries this wanton destruction continued, and ceased only when the Danes were finally crushed at the Battle of Clontarf in 1014 A.D.[305]
During the Danish period missionaries and scholars who went abroad carried with them great numbers of MSS. As a result of the exportation as well as of the destruction of MSS. we can merely conjecture as to the extent and value of the books in a library attached to a great Irish monastic school during the period covered by our investigation. Fortunately, however, we are able to describe the contents of the libraries of the Irish establishment of St. Gall in Switzerland, and Bobbio in Italy, and this may serve to give us some idea of the wealth of material the Irish libraries once possessed, but most of it is now irreparably lost.
A catalogue of the Bobbio library was made between the years 967–972 A.D. It is attributed to the Abbot Gerbert who afterwards became Pope Silvester II.[306] At this time the library contained about 700 volumes,[307] of which 479 had been acquired gradually from various unstated sources, and over 220 had been presented by scholars who are named with the list of books they had given,[308] 43 having been a donation from the famous Irish monk Dungal who presided over the school of Pavia.[309] This catalogue itself is strong objective evidence for the claim we are making that the classical authors were read. The list of MSS. shows that both Greek and Latin classics, were well represented. Among others we find works by the following authors: Terence, Lucretius, Virgil, Ovid, Lucian, Martial, Juvenal, Claudian, Cicero, Seneca, and the Elder Pliny;[310] also Persius, Flaccus, Horace, Demosthenes, and Aristotle.[311]
The greater part of the Bobbio collection has been dispersed through the libraries of Rome, Milan, Naples, and Vienna.[312] It is practically certain that the Ambrosian palimpsest of Plautus and those of several of Cicero’s orations and of the letters of Fronto discovered in the Ambrosian Library (Milan) early in the ninth century all came from the monastery founded by the Irish monk of Bobbio.[313] Among other MSS. which once belonged to Bobbio may be mentioned fragments of Symmachus (in Milan) and the Theodosian Code (formerly in Turin), Scholia on Cicero (v. century) MSS. of St. Luke (v.–vi. cent.), St. Severinus (vi. cent.), Josephus (vi.–vii.), Gregory’s Dialogue (c. 750) and St. Isadore’s (before 840). Last but not least we must mention the “Muratori Fragment” (viii. cent., or earlier), the earliest extant list of Books of the New Testament.[314]
St. Agilius (St. Aile), a pupil of St. Columbanus the founder of Bobbio, was first abbot of the monastery founded at Resbacus (Rébais, east of Paris) in 634 A.D.[315] The MSS. copied there included the works of Terence, Cicero, Virgil, Horace, Donatus, Priscian and Boethius.[316]