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Ireland and the Making
of Britain
gland and part of France succumbed, but finally crushed
it utterly so that Irish sovereignty was not irremediably
impaired.
These things are given in order that we may add to our
conception of the land from which the Irish builders
of European civilization went. Its wealth and its strength,
as well as its culture, were assets in their work. A knowl-
edge of these facts helps us to a clearer analysis of their
motives. Not poverty or strife or hope of betterment car-
ried them to other lands. The occasions and purposes of
their exiles and journeys were altogether different.
5.
EXODUS OF IRISH SCHOLARS
That Ireland should have been the .retreat and nursery
of learning and the center of intellectual activity while
the rest of Europe was the prey of barbarism would ap-
pear to have been distinction enough. Little reproach
could have been cast upon her had she been content to
enjoy the fruits of her own civilization, sharing those
fruits the while with such foreign visitors as sought them
on Irish soil. But the fact remains that she was not so
content.
1
At an early period, as one French writer puts it, Irish
sanctity and culture became animated by an ardent spirit
of proselytism and missionary zeal. The converts of one
generation became the apostles of another. Fervent monks
longed with a great longing to carry beyond the sea their
methods of asceticism. Their voluntary exile appeared
to them in the light of a supreme immolation sovereignly
fitted to perfect the work of renunciation which they had
undertaken. They left the land of their birth, radiant
with tender associations, blooming like a garden with the
1 Gougaud, Les ChretientSs Celtiques, p. 135.
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