EDUCATIONinstruction mainly in grammar, philosophy, and poetry.
Thefilidenjoyed a very high social status, producing
works of history, topography, romance and heroic
tales, narrative, lyric and elegiacpoetry, law tracts,
folklore, epigrams, and songs. Of course, all of the pro-
ductions by the filidwere oral. It took the arrival of
Christianity and the monastic schools to write down and
record these accomplishments.
Monastic Schools
The fifth to seventh centuries witnessed a rapid
increase in monasteries throughout Ireland, established
by Christian missionaries of whom the Latinists
Palladius and St. Patrick are the most familiar.
Attached to many of these monasteries were monastic
schools where monks instructed students in the Latin
ecclesiastical tradition. Reading and writing Latin and
the rigorous study of the Latin bible constituted the
main conduits to knowledge. In these schools, monks
studied Christian authors, the Scriptures, ecclesiastical
rules, theology, canon law, and ritual. The seventh-
century biography of Columbanus, written by Jonas,
reveals that Columbanus as a youth received instruction
in “liberal letters,” grammar, and religious doctrine. By
“liberal letters,” scholars assume the presence, to a
greater or lesser degree, of a classical curriculum com-
prised of the trivium of grammar, rhetoric, and logic
and the quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry, astron-
omy, and music. Although the stern Patrician tradition
would always maintain a foothold in monastic educa-
tion, monastic schools are usefully characterized by
their catholic interests in Roman knowledge. By the
seventh century, monks studied and transcribed the
works of Virgil, Horace, Marital, Juvenal,Claudian,
Statius, and Ausonius. Using these Christian and non-
Christian writings, the Irish monks labored to instruct
their students about the pursuit of wisdom within a
wider theological frame.
In general, early Christian monasteries were made
up of either a small community dedicated to living a
religious life or a tiny church where a single cleric
served the local lay and religious residents. By the
seventh century, the clergy lived a much more com-
munal life in monastic settlements. Some of the larger
monastic communities included Clonmacnoise (sup-
posedly founded by St. Ciarán), Iona (founded by
St. Colum Cille), Monasterboice (founded by St. Buite),
and Glendalough (founded by Cóemgen [Kevin]).
Writing
A monastic education was synonymous with writing.
Transcription of manuscripts by scholars in the monas-
tic schools everywhere flourished and writing became
the means through which Irish monks communicated
their learning to Europe. Scholars used quill pens and
ink made from charcoal to write on parchment or vel-
lum and the skins of goats, sheep, or calves for works
intended for preservation. Long, thin wooden tablets
covered in wax and etched on by an iron style were
used as practice boards for impermanent notes. Many
of the early monasteries boasted a sciptorium(a school
for penmanship), but as the monasteries grew in size,
it is reasonable to assume that in the larger monasteries
thescriptorium was a separate building where the
scriba(scribe) worked and where finished texts were
stored. The Brehon Laws enumerate seven degrees of
religious learning within the monastic schools: Feal-
mac(a boy after reading his psalms), Freisneidhed
(an interrogator), Fursaintid(an illustrator), Sruth do
Aill(a stream from a cliff), Saí(professor),Anruth(a
noble stream), and Rosaí(great professor). Whether or
not the monastic school actually adhered to these cat-
egories is not known, but scholars contend that these
designations provide insight into the pedagogical orga-
nization within the early monastic schools.
Certainly Latin was the predominate language
taught in monastic schools. However, scholars still
wonder: How did Latin arrive in a country that had
limited contact with the Roman Empire? Undoubtedly,
Christian missionaries brought Latin to Ireland, but the
successful absorption of Latin into Irish scholarship
necessitated instructional manuals and books for learn-
ing and teaching the language. Ó Cróinín plots a tra-
jectory using two grammar textbooks, the Ars Asporii
and the Anonymus ad Cuimnanum, from an educa-
tional system focused on studying Christian texts in the
early sixth century to the celebration and serious study
of classical texts by the eighth century. The Ars
Asporii, an adaptation of the Roman grammarian
Donatus’s Ars Minor, provides a rudimentary gram-
mar guide for beginning Latin students within the
context of Christian devotion. The Anonymus ad Cuim-
nanum, produced two centuries later, renders a much
more subtle and complex pedagogy; it treats Latin
grammar as an autonomoussubject and shows the
influx of the grammarians Charisius, Consentius,
Diomedes, and Probus into Irish thinking. By the
eighth century, copies of many books transcribed in
Irish scriptoria reached monastic libraries through-
outEurope. Much of ancient saga literature owes its
preservation to the monastic schools. In addition,
Greek and Hebrew eventually found their way into
the curricula. Although there is considerable debate
about when Greek entered the monastic schools,
scholars agree that by the ninth century Greek was
known and studied, as we see in the works of early
Irish hymnodists who often refer to Greek myths in
their compositions and, more directly, in the writings