To understand the occurrence of such a man, we must turn our attention first to Irish culture in
the centuries following Saint Patrick. Apart from the extremely painful fact that Saint Patrick
was an Englishman, there are two other scarcely less painful circumstances: first, that there
were Christians in Ireland before he went there; second, that, whatever he may have done for
Irish Christianity, it was not to him that Irish culture was due. At the time of the invasion of
Gaul (says a Gaulish author), first by Attila, then by the Goths, Vandals, and Alaric, "all the
learned men on their side the sea fled, and in the countries beyond sea, namely Ireland, and
wherever else they betook themselves, brought to the inhabitants of those regions an enormous
advance in learning." * If any of these men sought refuge in England, the Angles and Saxons
and Jutes must have mopped them up; but those who went to Ireland succeeded, in combination
with the missionaries, in transplanting a great deal of the knowledge and civilization that was
disappearing from the Continent. There is good reason to believe that, throughout the sixth,
seventh, and eighth centuries, a knowledge of Greek, as well as a considerable familiarity with
Latin classics, survived among the Irish. †Greek was known in England from the time of
Theodore, archbishop of Canterbury ( 669-690), who was himself a Greek, educated at Athens;
it may also have become known, in the North, through Irish missionaries. "During the latter part
of the seventh century," says Montague James, "it was in Ireland that the thirst for knowledge
was keenest, and the work of teaching was most actively carried on. There the Latin language
(and in a less degree the Greek) was studied from a scholar's point of view.... It was when,
impelled in the first instance by missionary zeal, and later by troubled conditions at home, they
passed over in large numbers to the Continent, that they became instrumental in rescuing
fragments of the literature which they had already learnt to value." ‡ Heiric of Auxerre, about
876, describes this influx of Irish scholars: "Ireland, despising the dangers of the sea, is
migrating almost en masse with her crowd of philosophers to our shores, and all the most
learned doom them-
* Cambridge Medieval History, III, 501.â
€This question is discussed carefully in the Cambridge Medieval History, III, Ch. XIX, and
the conclusion is in favour of Irish knowledge of Greek.â
€
¡Loc. cit., pp. 507-08.