CHAPTER XXIII.
IRISH SCHOLARS ABROAD.
| “O, pilgrim, if you bring me from some far-off land a sign, Let it be some token still of the green Old Land once mine; A shell from the shores of Ireland would be dearer far to me, Than all the wines of the Rhine-land, or the art of Italie.” —M‘Gee. |
We do not, by any means, propose at present to give an account of the Irish Saints and Scholars, who founded so many monasteries and schools in foreign countries, from the seventh to the eleventh century. The subject is too wide and too important to be discussed in this volume. It will be necessary, however, to give a brief account of a few of those celebrated men, in order to show the character of the scientific and theological training which they received in the Schools of their native land.
I.—St. Virgilius, Archbishop of Salzburg.
St. Virgilius, Archbishop of Salzburg, is one of the most celebrated of those learned men, whom our Irish schools sent forth in swarms during the eighth and ninth centuries. And he was not merely a learned prelate, and a successful champion of orthodox doctrine; he was also a great astronomer, far in advance of his own age, for he taught the sphericity of the earth, and the existence of antipodes, long before Copernicus or his system was known to the scholars of Europe.
The exact place and date of his birth cannot be ascertained, but that he was an Irishman may not for a moment be questioned. In the first place we have the express testimony of the celebrated Alcuin, an almost contemporary writer, who declares that Virgilius was born, reared, and educated in Ireland.[414] Then the author of the poetical epitaph over Virgilius, in his own church of Salzburg, bears the same testimony,[415] affirming that it was the ‘Hibernian land’ that sent him, under God’s guidance, to Salzburg. His Life, too, written about the year A.D. 1190, by a disciple of Ebenhard, Archbishop of Salzburg, expressly affirms the Irish birth of Virgilius; and such, we may add, has been the unvarying tradition of the church and city of Salzburg.
In our domestic Annals we have first the testimony of the Four Masters, who, A.D. 784, record that “Ferghil, i.e., the Geometer, abbot of Achadh-bo, died in Germany in the thirteenth year of his bishopric;” and as we shall presently see, this was the date of the death of Virgil, the Archbishop of Salzburg, and thirteen years was the duration of his episcopacy. In the Annals of Ulster, under date of A.D. 788, we find that:—“Fergil, abbot of Achadh-bo, died”—the year corresponds to A.D. 784 of the Four Masters, and that appears to be the true date.
There can be no reasonable doubt, therefore, that Virgilius of the Latin is equivalent to Fergil of the Irish, as the root-words sufficiently imply; and that Ferghil the Geometer, who died in Germany as a bishop, having been previously abbot of Aghaboe, is the celebrated Virgilius, Archbishop of Salzburg, so widely known to fame as an astronomer and theologian.