The earliest monastic schools of England were destroyed by the Saxon invaders about the middle of the fifth century, and what remained of their teachers were driven with the remnant of the Britons into the mountains of Wales. Yet even before the invasion many of her youth found their way to the continent, and there obtaining an education, returned to their native country to teach their compatriots. Thus St. Ninian, who had studied at Rome under Pope St. Siricius and had visited Tours, established his episcopal seminary and a school for the neighboring children at Witherne, in Galloway, about the beginning of that century. He was, says his biographer, St. Aelred, "assiduous in reading." St. Germanus of Auxerre and St. Lupus of Troyes followed in 429, and established at Caerleon, the capital of the Britons, seminaries and schools, in which they lectured on the Scriptures and the liberal arts. Stimulated by their example, monastic schools sprang rapidly into existence, the most successful of which were those at Hentland; Laudwit, among whose first scholars was the historian Gildas; Bangor on the Dee, in which, according to Bede, there were over two thousand students; Whitland, where St. David studied; and Llancarvan, founded by St. Cadoc. This latter saint was educated by an Irish recluse named Fathai, who was induced to leave his hermitage in the mountains to take charge of the school of Gwent, in Monmouthshire.
We must not be surprised to find an Irish teacher at that early period in Wales; for already the wonderful exodus of Irish missionaries and teachers had commenced. The twenty years' missionary labors of St. Patrick and his disciples had literally converted the entire people of Ireland, and, following the lessons taught him at Tours, Rome, and Lerins, that saint studded the island with seminaries and monastic schools. His own, at Armagh, founded A.D. 455, doubtless formed the model upon which the others were built. "Within a century after the death of St. Patrick," says Bishop Nicholson, "the Irish seminaries had so increased that most parts of Europe sent their children to be educated there, and drew thence their bishops and teachers." So numerous, indeed, were the schools of Ireland founded by the successors of St. Patrick that it is impossible even to enumerate their names in the limits of an article. The most celebrated were those of Armagh, which at one time furnished education to seven thousand pupils; Lismore; Cashel; Aran, "the Holy;" Clonard, the alma mater of Columba the Great; Conmacnois; Benchor, of which St. Bernard speaks in such terms of admiration; and Clonfert, founded by St. Brendan the navigator. When we remember the disturbed condition of the continent during the sixth and seventh centuries, and the almost profound peace which prevailed in Ireland during that time, we cease to be astonished at the influx of foreigners which thronged her schools. St. AEngus mentions the names of Gauls, Romans, Germans, and even Egyptians who visited her shore; and St. Aldhelm of Westminster, in the seventh century, rather petulantly complains of his countrymen neglecting their own schools for those of Ireland. "Nowadays," he remarks, "the renown of the Irish is so great that one sees them daily going or returning; and crowds flock over to their island to gather up, not merely the liberal arts and physical sciences, but also the four senses of Holy Scripture and the allegorical and tropological interpretation of its sacred oracles."
As to the course of study pursued in the Irish monastic schools, there is reason to believe that not only were theology, grammar, that is, languages, and the physical sciences taught, but poetry and music also received special attention. The bardic order were the first to embrace Christianity, and their love for those two beautiful arts was proverbial. Latin and Hebrew were studied, but the sonorous language of Homer and Cicero seems to have been most in favor, probably on account of its remarkable resemblance, in euphony at least, to the vernacular Gaelic. Mathematics and astronomy ranked first on the list of the sciences, and geography, as far as then known, must have been familiar to St. Brendan and his adventurous companions.
But, as we have said, the missionary labors of the Irish had already commenced. Obedient to a law beyond human control, the pent-up zeal of the people had burst its boundaries and overflowed Europe. Of the devoted men destined to roll back the tide of paganism, the first in point of greatness, if not in time, was St. Columba, the founder of the schools of Iona, A.D. 563. Amid all the Irish missionaries, this saint stands out in the boldest relief. Of proud lineage and dauntless spirit, passionately fond of books, yet sharing willingly with his monks the toils of the field, we fancy we can almost see his tall, austere figure stalking amid the unknown and unheeded perils of the barbarous Hebrides and the mountains of North Britain, with his staff and book, overawing hostile chiefs and princes by his very presence, and winning the hearts of the humble shepherds by his sweet voice and gentle demeanor. "He suffered no space of time," says Adamnan, "no, not an hour to pass, in which he was not employed either in prayer, or in reading or writing, or manual work."
Leaving Ireland forging the weapons of spiritual and intellectual combat, and the Albanian Scots to the care of Columba and his monks, we turn again to England, which, with the exception of Wales, was up to the end of the sixth century sunk in the grossest paganism. In the year 596, when, to use the words of Pope Gregory, "all Europe was in the hands of the barbarians," that pontiff conceived the idea of converting the Saxons of England. He accordingly despatched St. Augustine and some monks from Monte Cassino, lately reduced to ruins. St. Augustine brought with him a Bible, a psalter, the gospels, an apocryphal lives of the apostles, a martyrology, and the exposition of certain epistles and gospels, besides sacred vessels, vestments, church ornaments, and holy relics. He forthwith established a seminary and school at Canterbury, which afterward attained great celebrity. But the schools of Lindisfarne, founded by St. Aiden, A.D. 635, eclipsed all lesser luminaries. Aiden was a worthy descendant of Columba, and brought to his task all the learning and discipline of Iona. "All who bore company with Aiden," says the Venerable Bede, "whether monks or laymen, were employed either in studying the Scriptures or in singing psalms. This was his own daily employment wherever he went." In the south of England, Maidulf, also an Irish missionary, founded the schools of Malmsbury; Wilfred, a student of Lindisfarne, the abbey and school of Ripon, introducing the Benedictine rule into England; while Archbishop Theodore, a native of Tarsis, and Adrian, described as a "fountain of letters and a river of arts,"' gave a wonderful impetus to the study of letters in Canterbury. These latter added to St. Augustine's library the works of St. Chrysostom, the history of Josephus, and a copy of Homer. The studies pursued at Canterbury consisted of theology, Latin and Greek, geometry, arithmetic, music, mechanics, astronomy, and astrology. The most illustrious pupil of the early schools of Canterbury were St. Aldhelm, who was thoroughly familiar with the classical authors, himself a writer of no mean order, and who afterward became teacher at Malmsbury; St. Bennet Biscop, who founded schools at Monk Wearmouth, Yarrow, and various other places, endowing them with valuable books which he had collected on the continent. He first introduced the use of glass in England.
In the school at Yarrow, Bede commenced his studies. This extraordinary man, besides attending to his duties as a missionary and teacher, found time to compose forty-five books on the most diverse subjects, including commentaries on the Holy Scriptures, works on grammar, astronomy, the logic of Aristotle, music, geography, arithmetic, orthography, versification, the computum or method of calculating Easter, and natural philosophy, besides his Ecclesiastical History and Lives of the Saints. He was well versed in the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew languages, and, for his success in reducing the barbarous Anglo-Saxon tongue to something like grammatical rules, he has been justly styled the father of the English language. For the immense knowledge which he displayed in his various writings, he was indebted, doubtless, to the valuable libraries collected by St. Bennet, who, like a true son of Iona, seized upon a book whenever or wherever an opportunity was afforded. At the beginning of the eighth century, the schools of York attained general notoriety under the management of Egbert, who taught the seven liberal sciences, chronology, natural history, mathematics, and jurisprudence. Here Alcuin, the adviser and friend of Charlemagne, received his first lessons.
Nor are we to suppose that the great schools above mentioned occupied the entire attention of the hierarchy of England. On the contrary, every bishop had his own seminary; and every monastery, of which there were hundreds in the seventh and eighth centuries, had its interior or claustral, and its exterior school for the education of the children of its neighborhood. In England, as elsewhere, wherever a monastery was built, no matter how remote the situation or how barren the soil, people flocked round it not only to hear the gospel preached, but to learn the mechanical arts and the laws of agriculture. Besides this, parish priests, or, as they were called in the Anglo-Saxon, "mass priests," were obliged to open and sustain parochial free schools for the children of the peasantry and serfs.
It is acknowledged by all writers, no matter how sceptical they may be on other points, that the church was the first to raise woman to her true place in society. In pagan times woman was treated much the same as she now is in Mohammedan countries, and only the very vilest of the sex enjoyed any freedom of speech or action; but Christianity not only threw its aegis around her, but provided for her education with a care only second, if indeed not fully equal, to that bestowed on ecclesiastics. We find by the correspondence between St. Boniface and his relative Lioba, that the nuns of England at that time understood and could write the Latin language, and were well versed in the Scriptures and the writings of the fathers. Nunneries were, in fact, in the middle ages almost as numerous as monasteries, and in their sphere as powerful agents in the advancement of religion and education.
By the close of the eighth century England had reached the zenith of her first period of literary glory. Not only were her people thoroughly instructed according to their degree and rank, but the island abounded in saints and scholars, many of whom, like those of Ireland, went forth, from time to time, to repay to benighted Europe a portion of the debt contracted two centuries earlier.