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Ireland and the Making
of Britain
3. CENTERS OF INTELLECTUAL ACTIVITY
The Irish monasteries were not places wholly attuned to
mystic contemplation, but great centers of knowledge and
intellectual activity. As the sixth century progressed
they assumed more and more the character of great studia
generalia, reaching forth over the whole contemporary
field of learning. 1
The monastic buildings were mostly grouped round an
oratorio or basilica, as Colgan calls it with a rampart
as with caiseal, rath or lis circularly or ovally surround-
also. This was
ing the whole, tho sometimes rectangular
after the fashion of the houses of the princely and well-
to-do in Ireland and partook of the character of a dun.
The plan, which was afterward followed in the Irish
foundations which later garlanded Europe, included
churches, storehouses, kilns, mills, sacristies or side houses,
the abbot's house, the great house or refectory, the cuisine
or kitchen, the hospice or guest house, the scriptorium
and library, and a vast number of cells distributed in
streets or squares. In course of time round towers rose
over the assemblage of buildings with sculptured high
crosses near by.
The monastic "family" included priests, deacons, minor
clerks, and laymen, who all yielded obedience to the abbot,
as an army to the commander-in-chief. It was a maxim
that they had to support and clothe themselves, and their
work included agriculture, dairying, the breeding of sheep
and cattle, architecture, writing and ornamenting books,
and cabinet-making. In all this labor they attained in-
comparable skill, and as smiths and braziers in various
kinds of metals they outdistanced all rivalry in Europe.
i "One of the most striking features of the organization of the early
monastic church in Ireland and Scotland was its provision for the cultivation
of learning and for the training of its members in sacred and profane
literature." (Skene, Celtic Scotland, IT, p. 419.)
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