Carolingian Schools - The Irish Teachers

The Irish Teachers

With the extension and promotion of the Carolingian revival of education are associated the names of the Irish teachers, Alcuin's rivals who certainly share in the credit of having been the first masters of the schools. According to the St. Gall chronicler who wrote the history of Charles the Great, two Irish monks arrived in France before Alcuin had received Charlemagne's invitation, and having made known somewhat boastfully their desire to teach wisdom, were received by the emperor with honour, and one of them placed at the head of the palace school. The story, however, is not accepted as reliable.

We know for certain that after Alcuin left the court of Charlemagne, Clement the Irishman succeeded him as master of the palace school, and that he had pupils sent to him even from the monastery of Fulda. The grammarian Cruindmelus, the poet Dungal of Bobbio and Bishop Donatus of Fiesole were among the many Irish teachers on the Continent who enjoyed the favour of Charlemagne. Indeed, the emperor, according to Einhard, "loved the strangers" and "had the Irish in special esteem".

His successors likewise invited the Irish teachers to their court. Louis the Pious was the patron of the Irish geographer Dicuil, Lothair II stood in a similar relation to the Irish poet and scribe Sedulius Scottus, founder of the school at Liège, and Charles the Bald equalled his grandfather in his affectionate esteem for the Irish teachers. Under him Elias taught at Laon, Dunchad at Reims, Israel at Auxerre, and the greatest of all the Irish scholars, Johannes Scotus Eriugena, was head of the palace school.

Naturally the Irish teachers flocked to the places already known to them by the missionary activity of their fellow-countrymen of former generations We find them at Reichenau, St. Gall and Bobbio, "a whole herd of philosophers" as a ninth century writer expresses it. Every monastery or cathedral school at which they appeared soon showed the effect of their influence. To the curriculum already in vogue in the Carolingian Schools the Irish teachers added the study of Greek, and wherever they taught philosophy or theology (dialectic and the interpretation of the Scriptures) they drew largely from the writings of the neo-Platonists and from the works of the Greek Fathers.