Open [38.2 MB]

Insula Sanctorum et Doctorum
favored by the sons of Irish monarchs and princes. Thus
we read in the Annals of the Four Masters under A. D. 645
that Cathal, second son of Ragallach, king of Connaught,
then a student at Clonard, with a party of twenty-seven
of his fellow students, all young laymen from Connaught,
sallied forth from the college and went to take vengeance
on the assassin of his royal father. In the case of families
of the highest rank, however, such as those of the high
monarch of Ireland, the young princes were generally
educated in the royal household, the tutors residing at the
court.
4. GOING TO IRELAND FOR EDUCATION LONG CONTINUED
The offspring of Irish families settled in Britain and
elsewhere likewise came to Ireland in great numbers to
seek an education in the liberal arts. From Scotland they
of course came in a continual stream, not for a few cen-
turies but right up to the sixteenth century; but of course
Scotland was to all intents and purposes an Irish province
and large portions of it remain part of the Gaedhaltacht
to this day. But they came also from that part of Britain
now denominated Wales, which was also for some cen-
turies an Irish colony, as will be later made plain, and
they came from Brittany in France. The perpetual va et
vient that went on between Ireland and Wales is mir-
rored in the lives of eminent Welshmen and Irishmen
of the early medieval age. A younger Gildas, born of
Irish parents in Wales and flourishing about the beginning
of the ninth century, who wrote a work which he dedi-
cated to Rhabanus Maurus of Fulda, went to Ireland to
be educated. Marcus, born in Britain or Brittany, and
later bishop of Soissons, where he was preceptor to Eric
of Auxerre, likewise received his education in Ireland.
59