Insula Sanctorum et Doctorum; Or, Ireland's Ancient Schools and Scholars

by John Healy

One of the earliest and most celebrated of these schools in the West was that founded by the illustrious John Cassian near Marseilles, between the years A.D. 415-420. No man was better qualified than Cassian to introduce the monasticism of Egypt into Europe. He spent the earlier years of his life at a monastery in Bethlehem, then he retired to the Thebaid for seven years, conversing with the Fathers of the Desert, whilst closely observing their religious exercises, and the daily routine of their lives. Afterwards he visited Constantinople, Rome, and even the far distant Churches of Mesopotamia. At length about A.D. 415 he settled down in the neighbourhood of Marseilles, then as in Cicero’s time famous for intellectual pursuits, and there founded the celebrated monastery of St. Victor, which was the nursery of many of the greatest prelates of the fifth century. He gave himself up with all zeal to the propagation of monasticism in the West; and with this view wrote twelve books of Monastic Institutes, in which he deals at great length with the nature of the monastic life, its aids, and its hindrances. In the twenty-four books of his ‘Conferences’—Collationes—he deals with the eremitical life as he saw it in Egypt, and purports to give the discourses of the Egyptian Fathers, whom he had himself seen and heard. These works have been always highly prized in the Church, although the author in one or two of his ‘Conferences’ is supposed to have touched too closely on the errors of Semi-Pelagianism.

The most celebrated disciple of John Cassian was St. Honoratus of Arles, the founder of the famous monastery of Lerins. There he put in practice the divine maxims of Cassian, and changed that barren island, which he found covered with brushwood and filled with serpents, into a garden of Eden, where man once more walked in innocence with God; and bounteous nature rewarded the incessant labour of the monks with fruits of choicest flavour and flowers of richest hues. He was taken away much against his will from his beloved island and made Bishop of Arles; but he survived only two years, dying in the year A.D. 429, just at the time that St. Patrick, his disciple, was preparing to come to Ireland. A similar monastery and monastic school was about the same time, and under the same influence, founded by St. Germanus at Auxerre, as we have already seen, when speaking of St. Patrick’s training for the Irish mission.

It is in these cradles of western monasticism that we must try to find the true character of the monasticism, as well as of the discipline and ritual, which St. Patrick introduced into Ireland. If, as the Tripartite asserts, St. Patrick spent some thirty years in France and Italy, and the islands of the Tyrrhene Sea, preparing for the work for which Providence destined him in Ireland, he had ample time to visit all their celebrated monasteries, and doubtless spent some of these years not only at Marmoutier of St. Martin, and with St. German at Auxerre, but also with Cassian at St. Victor’s, and with Honoratus in Lerins, and probably also at Arles. The Tripartite states distinctly that first of all he resolved to go to Rome, the citadel and mistress of Christian faith and doctrine, in order that he might draw from these fountains of true wisdom and orthodox doctrine; that he went to France and even beyond the Alps to the southern region of Italy where he found Germanus, then a most famous bishop, with whom he read, like another Paul at the feet of Gamaliel, the ecclesiastical canons, serving God in labour, in fasting, in chastity, in compunction, and in love of God and his neighbour. The same writer adds that he went to St. Martin’s of Tours to receive tonsure, and that he studied at Arles—or what he calls insula Aralanensis—which he seems to confound with the city of St. Germanus.

We are also told that when he was in the Tyrrhene Sea[163] he met three other Patricks, which is not at all unlikely, for Patrick was a common name, and the great monastery of Lerins had attracted strangers from every part of the Christian world, who had established themselves in some of the neighbouring islets. These three Patricks lived together in a rocky cave between the cliff and the sea, and our Patrick wished to live with them in the solitary service of God. But it was only for a time, for God had destined him for another and loftier purpose. It is quite evident, however, that Patrick was trained under the greatest masters of the spiritual life, and in the greatest monastic schools of the Western Church. These considerations will also serve to explain why the Irish Church of the sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries was so monastic in its character and tendencies, why the religious houses rather than the cathedrals were the centres of its spiritual life, and also why its greatest schools were in the halls of the cloister, and its greatest scholars wore the frontal tonsure and the monk’s cowl.

Yet St. Patrick did not himself establish monasteries or monastic schools in Ireland. His work was to preach, to baptize, to ordain, to found churches. Monasteries are the outcome of an existing Church. The nation must become Christian before the Church could in any wide sense become monastic. It was always so, even in the time of the Apostles. They did not found monasteries or monastic schools, or colleges of any kind. They had other and more urgent work on hand. It was only after Christianity took hold of men’s minds that the nobler and more grateful hearts amongst them sought to realize the Gospel ideal of Christian perfection.

Even in the time of St. Patrick, however, there were monks and nuns in Ireland, as we have already seen. He himself expressly declares it. “The sons of the Scots,” he says, “and the daughters of the princes became monks and virgins of Christ.” And he tells a touching story of an Irish maiden of noble birth and of great beauty—pulcherrima—whom he himself baptized: “A few days afterwards the maiden came to me and told me that she got an intimation from God to become a virgin of Christ, and thus become nigh to God. Thanks be to Him—on the sixth day after, she perfectly and ardently embraced that vocation; and so do all the virgins of Christ, even against the will of their parents, from whom they patiently endure reproaches.”[164]

With such ardour did the noble sons and daughters of the Scottic race advance in the paths of perfection. And therefore Patrick loved them so dearly that he would not leave them, as he tells us, even to pay a visit to his own country and his own friends. He sowed the seed, and after ages reaped the crop. The great monasteries and monastic schools of the sixth century, though not founded by him, were the outcome of that spirit of faith and love which he had planted so deeply, especially in the hearts of the young.

II.—St. Finnian of Clonard.

St. Finnian of Clonard is set down first in the Catalogue of the Saints of the Second Order; and his School of Clonard was certainly the most celebrated, if not the earliest, of the great schools of the sixth century. It was the nursery of so many learned and holy men that its founder came to be known as the “Tutor of the Saints of Erin.” Twelve of his most distinguished disciples were called the “Twelve Apostles of Erin,” because, after St. Patrick, they were recognised as the Fathers and Founders of the Irish Church; and the monasteries and schools which they established became, in their turn, the greatest centres of piety and learning throughout the entire island.

It must not, however, be supposed that all these holy men were themselves younger than Finnian of Clonard, or remained for a very long period at his monastic school. It sometimes happened that the disciple was quite as old, if not older than the master; for it was by no means unusual at this period for holy men to visit the monasteries of younger men who had become remarkable for sanctity and learning, and, placing themselves under their spiritual guidance, take rank in their humility as disciples of their juniors. Lanigan, keen and learned as he was, allows himself sometimes to be led into error by forgetting this custom, which is more than once explicitly referred to in the lives of those saints themselves.