MORAL AND RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION
NiceneCreed, but contain much instruction on how
Christians should live.
Biblical Exegesis
By the fifth century, Christianity’s approach to scrip-
ture, both in content and form, were already fixed. The
Latin West, found in the fourth and fifth century writers
such as Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine, masters it
could revere and whose books would be the basis of
all they wrote. Seeing themselves as disciples of these
great “fathers,” they believed it was their task to repeat
this material, organize it systematically, and make it
as accessible as possible to students. Hence their
emphasis on the repetition of patristic themes, staccato
questions and answers, the production of collections
of facts, and manuals that survey complex questions
through a series of quotes from authorities. The aim
of all Irish exegesis was to provide textbooks and syn-
theses within an established intellectual paradigm.
These scholastic repetitions were original works, and
their innovation lay in the way they systematized the
inherited tradition.
Irish exegesis has to be examined against this back-
ground for it is similar in content and quality with the
work from Italy, Visigothic Spain, Merovingian Gaul,
and, slightly later, the Anglo-Saxon and the Carolingian
writers. However, it does present some striking quali-
ties of its own. The productivity of Europe in the
periodbetween 500 and 800 is meager when compared
with the ninth century, but in the earlier period the
work of Irish scholars, in Ireland and abroad, is sig-
nificant disproportionally to the country’s size or
background. Hence we can assert that there was a
significant Irish input into the exegesis and theological
life of the period, and we must view scholars such as
Eriugena (John Scottus)—who saw himself as engaged
in exegesis—not as a lone phenomenon, but as the
most famous expression of a well-established exeget-
ical culture.
One peculiarity of Irish exegesis is how much of it
is anonymous or pseudonymous, for we have only a
handful of names: Adomnán, Ailerán, and Laidcenn.
While works of major importance such as the De mira-
bilibus sacrae scripturaepresents itself as Augustine’s,
theDe ordine creaturarum is attributed to Isidore, and
Cummian’s (?) Commentarius in Marcumto Jerome;
and most of the exegetical material bears no name and
is attributed to Irish writers only on the basis of modern
comparative research. This has raised the question of
“an Irish school” of exegesis, and has promoted the
search for telltale “Irish symptoms” in such works.
While there are features that figure prominently in Irish
works, such as interest in grammar or computistics
questions in the midst of exegesis, these cannot settle
the question of origins as such features are not exclu-
sively Irish. The presence of even several “character-
istics” in a single work cannot be decisive, and must
be viewed only as increasing the probability of Irish
origins.
At present we are still in the period of discovery:
finding the texts, providing editions, and making pre-
liminary studies of their contents. Only when this pro-
cess is complete, and the material compared with that
from Gaul and Spain, will the true character of the
Irish group emerge. Only then will the attribution of
works to places of origin be possible on a secure foot-
ing and allow considered answers to be given to ques-
tions such as why so much Irish writing is anonymous.Manuals
While many manuals produced in Ireland are linked
to exegesis, as a form of instruction they deserve spe-
cial attention; and because they were often works pro-
duced by teachers responding to their local situation
they exhibit regional differences not found in works
aimed at the larger church. These manuals range form
single pages (e.g., the plan of the New Jerusalem in
the Book of Armagh), to works to be committed to
memory (e.g., Ailerán’s Kanon evangeliorum), to text-
books that distill many of the major problems of Latin
theology into a user-friendly system (e.g., the De
ordine creaturarum). The notion of such manuals was
seen as being sanctioned by their authorities, the task
being to go through the materials they had in their
libraries, abstract the relevant bits, and present it in an
easily taught format. Adomnán’s De locis sanctisis an
example of this process where, on the basis of what
could be found in his library, he produced the manual
Augustine had said would be so useful for teachers—
and the work was found useful throughout Europe. In
a similar spirit, glossaries of Hebrew and Greek words
were produced, synopses of major texts (e.g., of
Augustine’s De Genesi ad litteram), and key refer-
ences assembled in convenient packets (e.g., the Liber
exlege Moysi). Lastly, some large gospel books may
have been specially prepared with intention that they
would be reference resources (e.g., the complexity of
the marginal apparatus in the Book of Durrow, or the
amount of material relating to text-division found in
the Book of Armagh).Monastic Instruction
Life-long instruction of the monks/nuns in a monastery
is part of the very reason for the monastery’s existence;
and we know that in the West, and nowhere more than