GRAMMATICAL TREATISESReferences and Further Reading
Fitzsimons, Fiona. “Fosterage and Gossiprid in Late Medieval
Ireland: Some New Evidence.” In Gaelic Ireland: Land,
Lordship and Settlement, c. 1250–c. 1650, edited by P. J.
Duffy, et al. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2001.
“H. C.’s Tract.” Unpublished manuscript. National Archives,
London, S.P. 63/203/119.
Nicholls, Kenneth. Gaelic and Gaelicized Ireland. 2nd edition.
Dublin: Lilliput Press, 2003.
GRAMMATICAL TREATISES
Because Ireland never formed part of the Roman
Empire, it would have been the first task of the early
missionaries to teach the Latin language and its gram-
mar. The invention of ogham, a cipher system based
upon a form of the Latin alphabet, is evidence that
there already existed in Ireland a knowledge of Latin
sometime before the conversion of the island to
Christianity. The profusion of commentaries and
glosses upon the grammarians of the Classical and
late Antique periods attests that the medieval Irish
studied Latin with great earnestness, much as modern
students would approach the study of a foreign lan-
guage that was essential to their career advancement.
Moreover, they compared their own complex lan-
guage, Old Irish, to that of Latin. As the Celticist
Maartje Draak has said:
That method [of teaching Latin grammar] was thor-
ough and on a considerable level—the more so if we
take into account that it was an achievement by (and
in the context of) an alien culture. The Irish teachers
were interested, they were intellectually stimulated,
but they were not over-awed by the Latin language.
(Draak).
Having completed their elementary studies with
Donatus, Irish students of Latin would have gradu-
ated to Priscian’s great Institutiones grammaticae,
the most extensive grammatical analysis surviving
from late antiquity, of which four ninth-century Irish
manuscripts have survived. But not everyone could
have had access to or mastery of these original
sources, so the Irish soon began to compose gram-
mars, chiefly extracts compiled from ancient author-
ities, strengthening and illustrating specific points of
grammar, and follow their sources in the identifica-
tion and definition of the eight parts of speech. At
least five such texts pre-date 700. Perhaps the earliest
of these is the Ars Asporii, an adaptation of Donatus’s
Ars maior, but set against a Christian grammatical
tradition that relied upon Scriptural sources and
examples and used a monastic vocabulary, the
Anonymus ad Cuimnanum, which may have been
addressed to Cumméne (d. 669), abbot of Iona, and
the Ars Ambrosiana. Malsachanus is the seventh- or
eighth-century author of a grammatical tract on the
verb-participle. Nothing is known of him, but his
work is of importance for its extensive use of a sev-
enth-century Irish tract on the verb, and his use of
earlier Classical Latin grammarians such as Donatus,
Consentius, and Eutyches. These texts drew upon a
very wide range of sources, some of which are now
unknown.
The mass of Hiberno-Latin grammatical material
can best be summarized under a few important autho-
rial headings, since most of the Irish schoolmasters
composed (or compiled) Latin grammars for their
students. Clemens Scottus, who flourished about 800,
was teacher at the Palace School at Aachen and is
the author of a Latin grammar based upon an ancient
commentary on the grammar of Donatus, set in dia-
logue form between master and pupil. It opens with
an excursus on philosophy and some discussion on
the classification of the sciences, which largely fol-
lows Isidore of Seville. The bulk of the work is taken
up with a discussion of the eight parts of speech.
Clemens’s rigorously organized and competent
grammar is closely related to another Irish-Latin
grammar known as Donatus Ortigraphus. Fragments
preserved in Würzburg containing some grammatical
material may also have been compiled by Clemens,
and it is possible that he brought with him to
Würzburg the famous glossed Pauline codex
(M.p.th.f.12).
The ninth-century Irish scholar Cruindmael was the
author of a metrical grammar, Ars metrica, which in
its treatment and source-usage belongs to a well-
defined group of Irish grammatical tracts. It used many
sources, including the older classical grammars by
Donatus, Servius, Pompeius, and later authors. Sedu-
lius Scottus and his scholarly circle flourished in the
mid-ninth century. His writings are numerous and
include commentaries on Classical Latin grammarians,
including Eutyches. The St. Gall copy of Priscian’s
Institutiones, written within the circle of Sedulius, is
heavily glossed in Old Irish and Latin.
Martin of Laon (819–875), wrote extensively on
grammar and composed a commentary on Martianus
Capella’s De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii, a stan-
dard textbook on the liberal arts in the Middle Ages.
Martin had a competent knowledge of Virgil and other
Latin poets and has preserved some fragments of
the lost commentary on Virgil by Aelius Donatus.
Muiredach, of Auxerre and Metz, is the ninth-century
author of a commentary on Donatus’s Ars maior. Israel
Scottus (c. 900–968 or 969) was the Irish or Breton
author of a versified grammar of the Latin verb and
noun, an exposition of Donatus’s grammar, and glosses
on Porphyry’s Isagoge.
AIDAN BREEN