Open [38.2 MB]

Fruits of the Irish Apostolate in England
formed by Christianity. Men like Aldan, Finan and
Colman were representative of the highest taste and
culture of their time. There were in that age no more
cultivated, no better disciplined, no more highly polished,
men in the world. The trouble with this type of English
writer is that he knows very little of the wonderland
represented in Irish literature and the old Irish civilization.
In projecting his thought into an earlier age, he
carries his modern environment with him and babbles
in phrases of hackneyed superciliousness, where a mood
of reverential appreciation would be proper to him.
Indeed the more prominent Irish schoolmen and
monastic founders were nearly all men of high birth
affiliated with the houses of those potent chiefs to whom
the annalists give the title of king. The tone of authority
which men like Columbanus and Columcille assume in
addressing kings and even popes, the facile assurance with
which men like Sedulius Scotus and Johannes Scotus
Eriugena address the monarchs of their day and min-
gle in court circles with the highest civil and
ecclesiastical dignitaries, the even calmness with which
Aidan, Finan and their associates receive the prostrations
of English kings and nobles, the directness with
which Irishmen on the Continent attain the episcopal or
abbatial dignity in days when bishops and abbots were
the real rulers of the people, their habitual composure in
the presence of demonstrations of popular reverence that
might have moved the hearts of kings and potentates
these are the traits of men accustomed to honor from child-
1
hood, men whose natural milieu was the association of
the great and learned, and in whom an innate pride of
birth was so habitual as to be second nature. lona is
indeed one of the palmary
233
instances of the association