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Ireland and the Making
of Britain
Asser, Alfred's minister and biographer, speaks of ambas-
sadors from Ireland to Alfred, writing of "the daily
embassies sent to him by foreign nations from the Tyr-
rhenian Sea to the furthest end of Ireland." 1 He talks
of Alfred making gifts to Irish churches and of numbers
of Irishmen among those who came voluntarily into his
domain. Concerning John the Saxon, whom William of
Malmesbury and other English
chroniclers confound
with Johannes Scotus Eriugena, little is known. But he
came from Corbie in Saxony, a branch of the Irish founda-
tion of Corbie on the Somme. Asser himself came to Alfred
from Menevia, or St. Davids, a great Brito-Irish center
and the point in Wales nearest Ireland. He may have
been wholly or partially Irish. The mere fact of his
culture in that age, when Wales was far from conspicuous
in culture, would tend to show that he had Irish connec-
tions. 2
6. IRISH LITERATI BEFORE AND AFTER DUNSTAN
We are informed concerning Dunstan, archbishop of
Canterbury (d. 988), who became notable for many
reforms, including the restoration of the Benedictine
monasteries, that "he received his education under certain
Irish monks who were excellent masters of the sciences
and at that time resided in Glastonbury, which the wars
had left in a most ruinous condition." 3
Dunstan, the first Englishman meriting the name of
statesman, came from the half-Celtic region of Somerset
1 Giles, Six Old English Chronicles, p. 78.
2 The apparently authentic Asser is preserved almost intact in only one
edition, that of 1722, which was printed from a tenth century Cottonian MS.
(Otho, A. xii), destroyed by fire in 1731. Thomas Wright (Biogr. Brit. Lit.
and "Archaeologia," xxix) questioned the authenticity of any part of the
work attributed to Asser. The question is thoroughly discussed by Paull
In the introduction to his "Life of Alfred the Great," and by T. D. Healy
In the introduction to Petrle's Monumenta.
SVita S. Dunstani, auctore Osberno, Migne, CXXXVII, 417-8.
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