No More Learning

Yet can this be so ? does not
the particularity with which he specifies mistakes-false concords, misuse
of prepositions and of cases--go to shew that he at least was in earnest ?
Certainly his self-accusations are borne out by every page of his writings.
He had read some good authors, in particular Virgil; he knew some books
which no longer exist. In a little tract which deals mainly with
astronomy he shews considerable acquaintance with that science, and
quotes a lost chronicler, Julius Titianus. He had, too, a collection of
Latin lyric poetry, which he lent to his friend Fortunatus. And it is
possible (though not very relevant to our present purpose) that he knew
some Syriac: a Syrian (there were not a few then resident in France,
and one became bishop of Paris) helped him to translate the legend of
the Seven Sleepers from Syriac into Latin. This, however, is little
more than a curiosity: Gregory certainly made no use of Syriac
literature. His lament is undoubtedly justified: “ Periit studium
litterarum a nobis. ” The gulf between him and Fortunatus, in respect
of command of correct Latin, is immense.
To dwell upon the value of the Historia Francorum would be quite
out of place here, where we are thinking of Gregory as a link in the
transmission of ancient knowledge. It is more relevant to suggest in
passing a comparison between this and the next national history that
was written-that of Bede; for the slight work of Isidore hardly comes
into consideration. In Gregory we see letters on a level confessedly
low ; in Bede a height has been reached which is rivalled only, in these
centuries, by the best work of the Carolingian Renaissance.
The popularity of Gregory's History in medieval times was far
inferior to that of his hagiological writings, which furnished much
material to the compilers of breviaries and to such writers as Jacobus de
Voragine. Besides the seven which he himself enumerates, dealing with
St Julian of Le Mans, St Martin of Tours, the Martyrs, the Confessors,
and the Anchorites, there is one—the Miracles of St Andrew—which
may be confidently assigned to him, and which is perhaps more
important than any of the others to the historian of Christian litera-
ture. It is our best source for the knowledge of a second or third
century Greek romance, the Acts of Andrew; once eagerly read, but
ultimately condemned by the Church, and only transmitted to us in
fragments, and expurgated epitomes, such as this of Gregory. Not
that Gregory read it in Greek. He had before him, no doubt, a
complete Latin version, made, it is likely, for Manichaeans to read :
since, in Manichaean circles, the apocryphal romances about the
Apostles were adopted as substitutes for the Canonical Acts. Not
long after Gregory's date—it may be even in his lifetime—a complete


## p. 497 (#543) ############################################

Decay of Latin
497
orthodox collection of abstracts of these Acts, with others added to
them, was put together, probably in France, in which the Miracles of
Andrew were incorporated. We know it under the misleading name of
the Apostolic History of Abdias. The investigation of its origin, and
the determination of its text, have not as yet been completely carried
out. As a source of inspiration for artists and romancers it deserves
(though it does not usually obtain) a special recognition among the
literary documents of its time.
I shall be pardoned for passing over the feeble efforts of the
continuators of Gregory's History (the so-called Fredegarius and the
rest) in favour of two writings which attest at once the survival of
a knowledge of Greek in France and an extremely low standard of
culture. The one is known as the Barbarus Scaligeri (from its style
.
and its first editor). It is a Chronicle of the world, rendered from an
almost contemporary Greek original in a fashion and in a Latin of
which it is difficult to exaggerate the badness. The other is a very
similar version, made by the aid of a glossary, of the Phaenomena of
Aratus, and of a Commentary thereon. It can be dated by the fact
that Isidore is used in it, and that Bede uses it. Did we not possess
the Greek original of this extraordinary work, many passages of it
would defy interpretation. The literalness is extreme: 'Apátou
Palvóueva appears as Arati ea quae videntur. This we might perhaps
unravel, but we should be more than ready to suspect corruption in
the phrase “ in quo apud Diodorum” which is the rendering of év tệ
Tipòs Acódwpov, or in this “nihil aliud quorum Eudoxi videntur facere,”
which is the equivalent of μηδέν έτερον των Ευδόξου φαινομένων
TOLNO avta. Nevertheless, absurd as is the interpreter's achievement,
his very attempt is creditable and interesting. We have no clue to
the identity of the man who made it, nor to the part of France in
which he lived.
It has been transmitted to us in more than one copy, as well as in a
revised form due to a scholar of the Carolingian period. The Barbarus
of Scaliger survives in but one manuscript, which is not impossibly the
autograph of the translator.
There is another writer, of southern France, who is the centre of an
unsolved problem-Virgilius Maro Grammaticus. That he must be
reckoned to France seems now to be the accepted view, though the
evidence at command is scanty. An obscure phrase in which he says
th he will set forth “bigerro sermone” the letters of the alphabet, is
taken to contain the name which survives as Bigorre, and to point to the
south-west of France: a plainer indication is his reference to the Gauls
as " nostri. ” Importance is also rightly attached to the fact that Abbo
of St Germain in the tenth century calls him Tolosanus. That he was
a Christian, and a Catholic-not an Arian-may be regarded as certain.
But, though he gives us a great many other details about himself, his
a
C. MED. H. VOL, III. CH. XIX.
32


## p. 498 (#544) ############################################

498
Virgilius Maro Grammaticus
teachers, and his contemporaries, hardly one of them can be taken
seriously.
Upon a first reading of his works (they are wholly devoted to
grammatical subjects, and consist of two series of Epitomae and
Epistles) the reader feels that he is confronted with a piece of pure mystifi-
cation. A striking, but yet fairly typical example of the extravagances
we encounter is the passage in which he describes, on the authority of a
certain Virgil of Asia, the “ twelve Latinities. " The first of these is the
usitata, that in which (ordinary) Latin writings are “inked” (atramen-
tantur). Of the eleven others, ten, it is safe to say, have never been used
either by Virgilius or anyone else. The second, called assena or notaria,
may possibly be intended to mean the Tironian notes ; it employs a single
letter for a whole word. But the lumbrosa, which expands a single word
into four or five, the sincolla, which condenses a whole line into two syl-
lables, and the rest of the series, correspond to nothing in heaven or earth'.
Not only is the vocabulary of Virgilius abnormal; the authors whom
he cites have left no trace anywhere else. There is a Cicero, and a
Horace; there are three Virgils and three Lucans, and so on : but none
of them are identical with those known to fame. There are, too,
numerous grammarians, of whom Aeneas, Galbungus, and Terrentius
are among the most prominent; but what is told of them does not
carry conviction to the mind. Galbungus and Terrentius disputed for
fourteen consecutive days and nights as to whether ego had a vocative.
Regulus of Cappadocia and Sedulius of Rome went without food and
sleep for a similar period while they were discussing the inchoative and
frequentative forms of the verb: three soldiers in the employ of each
were in attendance ready to arbitrate by force of arms if required.
In all, some ninety writers and teachers are named or quoted. Do
they correspond to anything that ever existed? Of late a suggestion
has found favour that they represent an academy which had its head-
quarters at Toulouse, and that the great names of Cicero, Lucan, Virgil
and so on, were adopted by its members, just as Charlemagne and his
friends called themselves David, Homer, Flaccus, and Naso. Perhaps,
it is added, the Carolingian fashion was a conscious imitation of the
Tolosan. If this be the truth of the matter, it is surely very strange
that while we do hear of Virgilius himself before the end of the seventh
century, no single trace of any of his "authorities” has ever been pointed
out. Moreover, he claims a high antiquity and a wide range of influence
for his school of thought: he traces his writers back to the time of
Romulus, nay, even to the days before the Flood. Some of them lived
at Troy, others in Egypt, Arabia, India. The variety, again, of books
which he quotes is large; there are poems, histories, epistles, orations,
as well as works on grammar; far too many-supposing them to be
1 A notion recently broached that Arabic influence is discernible in his nomen-
clature of metres (and numerals) has yet to be sifted.


## p. 499 (#545) ############################################

Date and use of Virgilius
499
real—to have disappeared without leaving some sign. In short, the
complete isolation of Virgilius compared with his pretensions enforces
the belief that his authorities like his Latinities are from first to last
impositions pure and simple. Such imposition—I allude to the in-
vention of authorities—was an expedient not unknown to the world
of grammarians and scholiasts. The tract of the African Fulgentius
(cent. vi. ) De dubiis nominibus contains, side by side with genuine passages
from Plautus and other early writers, quotations which, it is agreed, are
fabrications of Fulgentius's own. A scholiast on the Ibis of Ovid helps
himself over the difficulties of the poem (and they are many) by
explanatory tags which he fathers upon Propertius, Lucretius, Homer,
Callimachus, etc. , etc. The procedure in both cases is not easily dis-
tinguishable from that of Virgilius.
It is curious to find that in spite of all this he was taken seriously.
Not only does Aldhelm (+ 709) quote him, but also Bede, a man less
likely to be attracted by eccentricity, and so do almost all the Irish
grammarians of the Carolingian period—a point which will demand
further attention. To the later Middle Ages he was quite unknown ;
we have no manuscripts or quotations after the eleventh century? .
We have not yet approached the question of the date at which he
lived. Zimmer in an elaborate investigation (published posthumously)
contends for the fifth to sixth centuries. His main thesis is that western
Gaul had, both commercially and intellectually, a profound influence upon
Ireland long before the age of Patrick. He seeks to shew, in particular, ,
that the grammatical theories of Virgilius affected the language and
methods of Irish writers. He finds traces of them in the Amra or
panegyric on St Columba († 597), that obscure Irish poem by Dallan
Forgaill
, of which we have but a series of enigmatical fragments glossed
by successive commentators. He believes that he has found actual mention
of Virgilius in Irish books under the name of Ferchertne file; and he lays
stress on the undoubted fact that our manuscript authorities for the
text of Virgilius shew traces of transmission through Irish channels.
The text, long preserved in Ireland, he would suggest, passed to the
Continent in the train of the Irish missionaries. To our grammarian, ,
too, he would refer the epigrams in which Ennodius (473–521) ridicules
“ a certain foolish man who was known as Virgilius. ”
Clearly much of this argument is inappreciable by those ignorant of
Celtic languages. To the general contention one objection has been
urged which makes its appeal to a wider circle, and which, if upheld,
must do away with the greater part of Zimmer's hypothesis. It is that
Virgilius makes use of the Etymologies of Isidore of Seville (+ 636). If
so, he takes his place in the seventh century, after Isidore and before
Aldhelm. An examination of the long list of passages cited by
Manitius from the Etymologies, and supposed by him to have been
1 An abridged text of 1465 in a Bodleian MS. (D'Orville 147) is an exception.
CH, XIX.
32-2


## p. 500 (#546) ############################################

500
A Cosmography
borrowed thence by Virgilius, has failed to convince me that Virgilius,
and not Isidore, is the borrower. Practically all the passages contain
derivations of words (legitera = littera and the like). They are
thoroughly germane to the manner of Virgilius ; nor is it a consideration
of any weight that Isidore nowhere names Virgilius as his source, for
in this respect his practice is by no means consistent. In short, though
it may be shewn on other grounds that Zimmer has placed Virgilius too
early, I cannot think that his theory is invalidated by the appeal to
Isidore; and I feel justified in provisionally adopting his date.
Ireland has been named, and will for a time engage our whole
attention ; but before we leave France and Virgilius, a word must be
said of a book which has perhaps a claim to be regarded as a product
of his school. At least it reminds us of him by its language and by
its solemn absurdity. The work in question is the Cosmography of
“Aethicus Ister. ” I use inverted commas because it is not certain
that the form “ Aethicus” is what was intended by the author of the
text, who may have meant to write “ Ethicus” and have used that word
as a synonym for “philosopher. ” The Cosmography comes to us in the
shape of an abstract or series of extracts from a larger work, purporting
to have been made by St Jerome (or at least by a a “Hieronymus
presbyter”). In spite of the efforts of Wuttke to uphold this attribu-
tion and to identify the places and peoples who are mentioned, it is not
possible to regard Aethicus as anything but a romancer or to put him
earlier than the seventh century. His wild Latin, full of hapax legomena,
elaborate alliteration and short assonant clauses, his fables about
countries, tribes, and creatures, partly borrowed from Solinus and the
Alexander-romances, but largely peculiar to himself, and his display of
absurd learning (exemplified by the bogus Scythian alphabet with which
he ends his book), all stamp him as a charlatan. He probably wrote in
France: it seems that the first writer who quotes him is Frankish-one
of the continuators of the chronicler who is called Fredegarius.
At the same time, it would be no surprise to learn that he had Irish
connexions. Indeed, definite allusions to Ireland have been pointed out
in his writings and in those of Virgilius. Aethicus represents himself as
having crossed from Spain to Ireland, and having studied the books
(eorum volumina volvens) which he found there (a phrase which may
reasonably be taken to imply that Ireland enjoyed a reputation for
culture in his time)'. The two passages adduced from Virgilius are
both of doubtful import. One says that in the composition and elocu-
tion of the. . . . the verb holds the first place. The statement is true of
Irish, and the word represented by dots is given in the manuscripts as hi
bonorum, hiborum, in iborum, respectively. The conjecture Hibernorum
lies ready to hand; yet the possibility of Hiberorum or Iberorum must
1 For all that, he says of the island "Inperitos habet cultores, et instructoribus
habet destitutos habitatores. ” (p. 19, Wuttke. )


## p. 501 (#547) ############################################

Irish learning
501
be considered, especially as we have seen that Virgilius elsewhere
mentions the speech of his neighbours, the Basques. The other passage, ,
in which he quotes a verse by one Bregandus Lugenicus, has been
thought to contain an Irish tribal name. But strong collateral evidence
is needed to bring this out of the category of Virgilius's ordinary
mystifications.
We now approach the problem of the classical culture of Ireland.
How, when, and whence did it come into being ? Many generations of
scholars have been contented to regard the mission of Patrick (in 430-460)
as marking the accession of Ireland to the world of learning. It has
been realised, indeed, that Patrick himself was no scholar, but he has
been thought of as the parent of scholars, the progenitor of the great
monastic schools which sprang up all over Ireland in the sixth century-
Clonard (520), Clonmacnois (544), Clonfert (c. 550), Bangor (c. 560).
Before Patrick (or at least before Palladius), it has been commonly
believed, Ireland, lying outside the sphere of Roman political influence,
was also untouched by Roman culture. A readjustment of this view
has become necessary. Patrick was not the Apostle of Ireland in the
sense that before he landed there were no Christians in the island.
Apart from such results as may have attended the obscure mission
of Palladius (whom Zimmer would identify with Patrick), there were
pre-Patrician churches and pre-Patrician saints. It would indeed be
strange, if at a time when Christianity was highly organised and
flourishing both in Britain and in western Gaul—countries in active
intercourse with Ireland—there had been no sporadic evangelisation, no
formation here and there of small Christian communities, As a matter
of fact there are in the undoubted writings of Patrick allusions to
existent Christianity, and in particular to men who, we gather from
Patrick's language, possessed a higher degree of culture than he did.
There is, too, a persistent tradition (though the documents which
contain it are not of the earliest) that certain saints, Ailbe, for instance,
and Declan, were in Ireland before Patrick.
Into the precise value of this tradition I cannot attempt to in-
quire; to do so would be to exaggerate its importance for our purpose.
I should be giving the impression that missionary enterprise was the
sole factor in bringing the learning of the Continent into Ireland. This
would be a mistake. We have seen that stress has been laid in recent
years by Zimmer upon the commercial relations which undoubtedly
linked the island with Gaul, as well as with Britain ; while yet more
recently, attention has been called to a definite statement by an
anonymous writer, evidently of Gaul, such as has not been hitherto
producible: to the effect that in the early years of the fifth century
an exodus of scholars from the Continent took place under the pressure
of barbarian invasion, which affected the area under consideration.
The Huns, says our new authority, began that devastation of the whole
а
CH, XIX.


## p. 502 (#548) ############################################

502
Greek in Ireland
Empire which was carried on by the Vandals, Goths, and Alani; “and
owing to their ravages, all the learned men on this side the sea fled, and
in the countries beyond sea, namely, Ireland, and wherever else they betook
themselves, brought to the inhabitants of those regions an enormous
advance in learning. ” This statement, printed from a Leyden manuscript
as long ago as 1866, was, it seems, only noticed by Zimmer at the end
of his life. The importance of it may be over-estimated, but cannot be
denied. For the first time we have definite testimony that the culture
of Bordeaux, Toulouse, Autun, Lyons--in other words, the best learning
attainable in the West—did actually make its way in some shape into
Ireland. And we have, besides, the reminder which was needed, that the
missionaries were not solely or primarily the channels by which it came.
The words throw light upon Patrick's own challenge to the rhetorici who
knew not the Lord; but, more than all, they supply an explanation of the
undoubted presence in Ireland in the sixth century of a certain type of
learning. The fact that that learning was widely and rapidly diffused
over the country was due in no small degree to this, that it went hand
in hand with evangelisation. Had missionary effort not been there to
prepare the soil, it is impossible to suppose that men would have been
found so ready to study the grammar and rhetoric of Latin, or the
elements of Greek. But when these were presented to them as part of
the apparatus of the new faith, they were assured of a reception, and
subsequently gained citizenship by their own merits.
It will not be possible to call attention to every indication of higher
learning in Ireland; but it will be worth while to devote some space
to the vexed question, how far this learning included a knowledge of
Greek.
The question is not, it must be premised, a simple one. We must
remember, on the one hand, that some of the most striking specimens of
Irish Greek learning were produced on the Continent, and on the other,
that, in and after the lifetime of Theodore and Hadrian (668-690) when
Greek was made accessible to the English, there is a possibility of
English influence upon Ireland. In any case it remains the most
reasonable account of the knowledge of Greek on the part of a Johannes
Eriugena or a Sedulius Scottus, that it was acquired in Ireland and
transferred thence to the Continent.
In the first place, we can hardly doubt that Graeco-Latin glossaries
had made their way to Ireland in very early times. The occurrence of
Greek words in Irish writings of the sixth century is best accounted for
on this hypothesis. We meet with such Greek words in the hymn Altus
prosător of Columba, in that of St Sechnall on Patrick and in more than one
of those in the Bangor Antiphonary. Their raison d'être from the point of
view of the writers of these compositions is to deck the page. They are the
spangles on the cloak, no essential part of the fabric, and they do not by
themselves necessarily imply a knowledge of the structure of the Greek lan-


## p. 503 (#549) ############################################

Traces of Greek learning
503
mean more.
a
guage on the part of those who use them. They may mean little more than
does the use of Greek letters for colophons- the ΦΙΝΙΘ ΔΕΩ ΓΡΑΘΥAC
of a Breton monk in 952, and the like. Yet as a fact they probably do
It seems likely that with the glossaries (taking the word
glossary as the equivalent of a bare vocabulary) there came to Ireland
a more valuable guide to the Greek language, in the shape of a manual
containing conversations and narratives, fables of Aesop, dicta of the
Emperor Hadrian, stories of the Trojan war, compiled as far back as
the year 207. We have it under the formidable modern title of
Hermeneumata Pseudo-Dositheana. It has been transmitted through
“insular” channels, and was in the hands of Sedulius Scottus in the
ninth century, as is thought, before he left Ireland for the Continent.
The suggestion has been made that this and other Greek writings were
brought to Ireland by Byzantine
by Byzantine monks taking refuge from the
Iconoclastic persecution about the middle of the eighth century: but of
such refugees there is small trace. Certain entries in Martyrologies, and
the existence of a “ Greek church” at Trim in Meath, have been adduced
in favour of the hypothesis, but no such evidence as can be called
conclusive. There seems, moreover, no reason why a monk should have
brought the Hermeneumata with him, whereas it is just the book that is
likely to have formed part of the equipment of a fifth century rhetorician
from Gaul.
Instances have been brought forward of Irishmen who were clearly
acquainted with Greek. We will examine them briefly. Pelagius is the
foremost, both in date and in eminence. He came to Italy about the year
400, and it is on record that in 415 he took part in a controversy at
Jerusalem which was carried on in Greek. It will be allowed that, even
granting that Pelagius was Irish and not British by extraction, he had
every opportunity of acquiring Greek after he had left Ireland.
We find, next, that the commentary of Theodore of Mopsuestia
upon the Psalms was preserved and transcribed in a revised and shortened
Latin form at Bobbio. The actual work of translation and revision has
been ascribed to St Columban. That point is doubtful: but the
commentary was certainly studied by Irish writers on the Continent, and
it is possible that the translation was actually made upon Irish soil. It
had a wide influence. The researches of Dr Robert M. L. Ramsay and
Dr J. Douglas Bruce have demonstrated the use of it by English
glossators of the Psalter (perhaps by Bede himself) down to the
eleventh century.
In a gospel book of the eighth century at Würzburg is a note to
the effect that Mosuin Mac Armin (Abbot of Bangor, who died in 610)
learned by heart a Paschal computus drawn up by a Greek sage-
probably Theophilus of Antioch. " Coupled with the presence of Greek
words in the antiphonary of Bangor, this statement has a certain force,
and it should be noticed that the date of Mosuin excludes the pos-
CH. XIX.


## p. 504 (#550) ############################################

504
Traces of Greek Apocrypha
1
sibility of Theodorian influence from Canterbury and England. What
is not excluded is the possibility that the computus lay before him in
a Latin version.
The Schaffhausen manuscript of Adamnan's Life of Columba, written
at Iona before 714, has in it the Lord's Prayer in Greek, and in Greek
letters. This is an example of importance, though, like those that
follow, it is post-Theodorian in date, and is accordingly liable to a
certain discount.
Sedulius Scottus had in his possession in the ninth century a collection
of apophthegms called Proverbia Graecorum. We have them only in Latin,
preserved in the Collectanea of Sedulius in a manuscript at Cues, quoted
copiously in an English source, the tracts of the famous “Yorker
Anonymus," and alluded to in a letter of one Cathvulf to Charlemagne!
Their Latinity is Celtic, and they may safely be regarded as a Greek
collection rendered into Latin on the soil of Ireland.
To Ireland also we probably owe the excerpts we possess of Macrobius's
important treatise on the differences and conformities of the Greek
and Latin verb, a book for the understanding of which a knowledge of
Greek is indispensable. One of our manuscripts attributes the selection
of the excerpts to a Johannes, thought to be the great Eriugena (Erigena).
The line of transmission has insular connexions. Similarly, quotations
from the lost Peplus of Theophrastus, dealing with the origin of the
alphabet, appear in a Laon manuscript of the school of Eriugena and in
a commentary on Martianus Capella derived from that same school.
That these imply the use of a Greek source, not necessarily of a complete
text of the Peplus, cannot be doubted.
In addition to this evidence, it will be useful, I think, to consider a
class of examples as yet not utilised in the investigation of this question.
They consist of traits in Irish literature (principally Latin) which are
drawn according to all appearance from some of the obscurer apocryphal
writings—writings which are not known to have existed in Latin. This
evidence, again, is not unambiguous. Some of our sources, notably the
Latin Lives of Irish saints, are of late date. Yet that fact is no real
bar to their testimony; for whatever they have absorbed in the way of
reminiscence of old learning was acquired before the exodus of Irishmen
to the Continent. In the interval between that exodus and the com-
pilation of the Lives, Ireland, harried by the Northmen and deserted by
its scholars, had ceased to be a learned country. These Lives, as their
most recent editor, Dr Plummer, has shewn, contain much that is pre-
Christian, and little that is characteristic of the later medieval period.
This is true also of such documents in the Irish language as will be cited.
First among the supposed sources I will place the Acts of Philip.
The Western Church knew absolutely nothing of the sensational Greek
1 The title occurs (crossed out) in an early catalogue of the library of Lincoln
Minster.
a


## p. 505 (#551) ############################################

Instances of use of Apocrypha
505
а
romance which passes under that name. According to the Latins, Philip
,
died a peaceful death like John the Evangelist. In Ireland we find
traces of a different tradition. The Passion in the Leabhar Breac inter-
polates the martyrdom into a version of the Latin Acts. The Irish writing
called the Evernew Tongue' is a kind of apocalypse in which the tongue
of the Apostle, cut out nine times by his persecutors, discourses to
assembled multitudes. In the life of St Boece is an incident strongly
reminiscent of the Greek Acts: a wolf brings a kid to the saint, as a
leopard does to the Apostle. In Muirchu's life of St Patrick (not
later than 699) is another possible reminiscence. A magician is whirled
up into the air and dashed on the ground. It may be a version of the
fate of Simon Magus, but it does rather strikingly resemble passages in
the Eastern Acts of Philip and of Peter and Andrew? .
In the life of St Berach there is a story of a druid killed at the
window of his cell by the arrow of a hunter. Pilate, in an exclusively
Greek legend, meets his end in precisely the same way. The climax of
the Greek book known as the Rest of the words of Baruch is that when
the Jews have resolved to stone the prophet to death, a stone pillar is
made to assume his form, and their attacks are directed against it until
Jeremiah has finished his last directions to his disciples. In the Irish
life of St Brendan, a follower of the saint is attacked : a stone is made
to put on his appearance, and the man escapes. In the Greek Testament
of Abraham a striking incident is that a tree utters words of praise to
God and prediction of Abraham's death. In the life of St Coemgen
.
a tree sings to him. In the same Testament is the story of a calf,
slaughtered at Mamre for the entertainment of the three angels, being
restored to life and running to its mother. This miracle figures in
several of the Lives, e. g. that of St Ailbe.
Evidence that apocryphal literature unknown to the rest of Europe
was read in Ireland is furnished by the Irish Vision of Adamnan, which
quotes a form of the story of the death of Mary only found now in
Syriac. The same Vision makes use of an apocalypse, as yet not
identified, which is also quoted in a (Latin) Reichenau manuscript of
Irish connexion now at Carlsruhe. The Irish tale of the Two Sorrows
of Heaven is another document based on an apocryphon which it is safe
to say belongs to Eastern Christendom. In it Enoch and Elias prophesy
to the souls of the blessed, which (as in certain Greek apocalypses) are
in the form of birds, the terrors of the end of the world.
Of the writings I have mentioned so far, the literature of the
:
1 Eriu, 1905, p. 96.
2 Other traces of reading have been pointed out in Muirchu, which may be
mentioned here: an allusion to Abraham's conversion to a belief in the true God,
possibly derived from Josephus; and an apparent reminiscence of a line of Valerius
Flaccus, as well as clear evidence of a knowledge of Virgil. The occasional use of
Greek words (e. g. antropi) may be merely "glossarial” learning.
a
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## p. 506 (#552) ############################################

506
Latin writers known in Ireland
English Church of the seventh and eighth centuries betrays no know-
ledge. There are others, now to be noticed, for example, the Book of
Enoch, of which this cannot be said. A non-Irish insular manuscript of
.
the eighth century has preserved a fragment of a Latin version of Enoch.
In Ireland we find, in the Saltair na Rann, a number of names of angels
which are pretty certainly derived from the same book. There, too, are
episodes taken from a Life of Adam, but whether they are to be traced
to a Western or to an Eastern text has not as yet been made clear. In
the “Gelasian” list of apocryphal books the Testament of Job is mentioned,
which probably implies the existence of a Latin version. An unpleasing
trait which occurs in this Testament is adopted in the Life of St Mochua.
It would not be difficult to shew by examples from the Irish Lives of
Saints that the legends of the Infancy of our Lord were familiar in the
country; but these were so widely diffused that the demonstration would
add nothing to our present purpose. Let it be recorded, lastly, that
the Reichenau manuscript cited above shews, in one of the fragmentary
Homilies which it contains, undoubted knowledge of the obscure
Apocalypse of Thomas, and that a fragment of an Irish service-book
in the Vatican Library presents us with a Lection from a Gospel
attributed to James the Less. Both Apocalypse and Gospel are con-
demned in the “Gelasian” decree.
It has seemed worth while to set forth this class of evidence in some
detail. Without detail, indeed, its force is inappreciable. The upshot
of it is that the Eastern legendary literature was domiciled in Ireland to
such an extent that it coloured the imaginations and contributed to the
stock-in-trade of hagiologists and seers; and this familiarity with a
branch of Eastern literature is not negligible as a confirmation of
other indications that in the sixth and seventh centuries a knowledge
of Greek was far from uncommon in Ireland.
Apart from Greek, which after all must be regarded as the fine
flower of their learning, what did the normal culture of Irish scholars
amount to ? The scanty list of their Latin writers between the end of
the sixth and the beginning of the eighth century-between Columba
(+ 597) and Adamnan (+ 704)—includes besides penitentials, lives of
saints, and hymns of no very marked excellence, several writings which
are without rival in their time. The Altus prosător, Columba's great
alphabetic hymn, and the playful poem in short Adonic lines by
Columban, cannot fail to impress the reader, the former in virtue of
its achievement, the latter by the background of learning which it
implies. The Altus has something of the learnedness and intricacy of
Celtic decorative art: Columban's poem, with its allusions to Sappho
and Danaë, is the work of a man who merits the name of scholar. The
1 This is true also of the Anglo-Saxon Homilists. What is practically a version
of the Apocalypse is contained in the Vercelli Book ; and two other Homilies, in a
Blickling and a Hatton MS. respectively, make copious use of it.
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## p. 507 (#553) ############################################

Adamnan
507
a
second half of the seventh century gives us a treatise—that known as
Augustine De mirabilibus Scripturae—which, alike for its Latinity and
for the wide reading of its author, deserves respect. “ Augustine" has
some acquaintance with ancient history, gathered from such sources as
the Eusebian Chronicle and from Josephus; he is a student of Jerome,
and seems to have read books on medicine and natural history. His
allusions to Ireland, fewer in number than we could have wished, add a
pleasant flavour to his book. Aileran the Wise, not far from this author
in date, has left a tract on the interpretation of the names of our Lord's
ancestors according to the flesh, in which there is not much sound philo-
logy.
At the end of the same century we have Adamnan. His two un-
doubted works, the account of Arculf's pilgrimage to Palestine, and the
Life of Columba, are intrinsically two of the most precious books of their
time. The value of the tract on the Holy Places to the archaeologist
and topographer needs no exposition. It is worth much, also, as
exemplifying the interest in all sorts of knowledge which characterised
the Irish scholars of the day. The Life of Columba--less a biography
than a collection of anecdotes-preserves a picture of that saint and
seer which will never lose its charm. Evidence of Adamnan's gram-
matical studies, and of his knowledge of Greek (or at least of Greek
words), abounds in this book ; but there is a third work, a set of notes on
a
the Bucolics and Georgics of Virgil, which, if it could be proved to be
his, would be plain evidence of his distinction as student and as teacher.
It is in the form of excerpts from three earlier commentaries, those of
Philargyrius, Titius Gallus, and Gaudentius, which seem to have been
written down by a class at the dictation of Adananus. Whether or not
this Adananus was the Abbot of Hy, this work is an undoubted product
of Irish scholarship. It witnesses to these facts: that the scientific
study of “grammar," as the Romans understood it, was carried on by
the Irish at a time when it was dead in continental Europe: and that
complete texts of ancient commentaries on Virgil had made their way
into the hands of an Irishman.
Exaggerated language has no doubt been used about the learning of
the Irish, and about their share in the preservation of classical literature.
When allowance has been made for this, it remains incontestable that,
during the latter part of the seventh century, it was in Ireland that the
thirst for knowledge was keenest, and the work of teaching was most
actively carried on. There the Latin language (and in a less degree
the Greek) was studied from the scholar's point of view. To the Irish,
we must remember, Latin was no inheritance: they had not heard it
commonly spoken among them: their knowledge of it was book-know-
ledge. They had to treat it very much as we do now-more nearly,
perhaps, as it was treated in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
when it was the recognised medium of communication for scholars of
CH. XIX.


## p. 508 (#554) ############################################

508
British writers
99
8
all countries. We need not, however, insist that the great body of
the classical Latin literature which we now possess was preserved to us
by the exertions either of the Irish or of the English, to whom the
lamp of learning passed next in order. No doubt, whatever the Irish
came across in the way of ancient literature they welcomed and treasured,
but it is not to be supposed that they ever acquired in their native land
a very large mass of such writings. It was when, impelled in the
first instance by missionary zeal, and later by troubled conditions at
home, they passed over in large numbers to the Continent, that they
became instrumental in rescuing fragments of the literature which they
had already learned to value. It is reserved for the palaeographers of the
next few decades to shew how many of our Latin classics betray the
existence of an “insular” stage in the line of their transmission. An
important class of scribal errors is due to the fact that a copyist of
the Middle Ages or of the Renaissance was using an archetype in
Scriptura Scottica,” in the insular script, in which the peculiar forms,
say, of r and s misled him. Sometimes these errors affect the whole body
of manuscripts of a given author, and in these cases it is obvious that
we owe the preservation of the text to an insular scribe. A leading
instance, as Traube has shewn, is furnished by the History of Ammianus
Marcellinus.
We shall have occasion to revert to the work of the Irish on the
Continent. The time has now come for us to pass from Ireland to
Great Britain. It will be worth while to inquire what, apart from
vague modern panegyric, is to be known of the state of learning in the
British Church before the coming of Theodore.
The small tract of the British bishop Fastidius is the only monument
assignable to the fifth century. In the sixth we have the writings
ascribed to Gildas, the Epistle, undoubtedly his, the Lorica, and the
penitential Canons. We have, too, the Hisperica Famina.
, Little, if
anything else, has been credited to Britons of this period. For any
further information about the leading lights of the British Church we
have to depend upon traditions committed to writing at a far later
time, and in particular upon the lives of the saints, which are of
exactly similar complexion with those of the Irish; embodying a
modicum of fact wrapped in a sparkling tissue of wonders.
Fastidius may
be dismissed with a word : he has no trait that can be
identified as British. Gildas, as his Epistle attests, was a man of educa-
tion. The writers whom we may credit him with having known are,
indeed, not recondite, but they are of good quality: Virgil, Persius,
Claudius (? Claudian), Jerome, Orosius, Rufinus. Such books as these,
then, were accessible in Britain ; was there more than this? The Epistle
affords no evidence of the study of languages other than Latin ; Greek
and Hebrew words occur in the Lorica, but-whether this be of Gildas's
composing or no—they need imply no more than the use of a glossary.


## p. 509 (#555) ############################################

Early British learning
509
The same is true of the Hisperica Famina. Whoever were the authors
of that strange and attractive farrago, glossarial learning was to them
synonymous with culture. Literary success meant the forging of phrases
that should only just not defy interpretation. When, however, we find
in a Bodleian manuscript (Auct. F. 4. 32), written in Wales about 887,
passages from the Bible in Greek (and Latin) it is possible that we may
be in the presence of a relic of British learning independent of Theodore's
influence. The volume comes to us from Glastonbury, one of the few
places where Celtic and English learning had a chance of blending; and,
as Bradshaw says, “it passed out of British into Saxon hands in the
tenth century, during St Dunstan's lifetime, when the old animosity had
given way to a much more friendly feeling between the races. ” When
we remember how sharp the animosity had been, we shall be more ready
to acknowledge the probability that the pedigree of this solitary evidence
of the study of Greek in Britain may be wholly independent of the school
of Canterbury
The truth of the matter is probably this, that in the period with
which we are concerned there was learning in Britain, and learning of
the same standard that then existed in Ireland ; but that it was confined
to a smaller area, that its products were fewer and that they have
perished more completely. There must surely be some foundation for
the stress laid by the Irish hagiographers upon the intercourse between
the saints of Ireland and of Britain. Over and over again we find that
the former go for instruction to the latter: they sit at the feet of David,
Cadoc, Gildas. Gildas visits Ireland, as he visits Brittany ; in the life
of St Brendan it is said that he, Gildas, had a missal written in Greek
letters, which Brendan, ignorant of the characters, was miraculously
enabled to read at sight. It is, if I mistake not, the one mention of
Greek in these late lives,-a fact which adds something, be it but a
feather-weight, to the credit of the tale, apart from the miracle. In the
Breton and Welsh lives we hear of the school of St Iltut (Illtyd) at
Llantwit Major, and, through the mist of words with which modern writers
have enwrapped the “first of British Universities,” we discern something
comparable to the monastic schools of Clonard and the Irish Bangor.
For Brittany at least Llantwit was a mother of teachers. From her
went forth Paul Aurelian (St Pol-de-Léon), Samson, Leonorius; and
they went qualified to Christianise the Bretons, if not to educate them.
Of their studies at Llantwit no first-hand record survives; but a few
ancient Welsh books, a famous Juvencus at Cambridge, and a Martianus
Capella, probably written at St David's and now among Archbishop
Parker's manuscripts at Corpus Christi, may safely be accepted (though
not earlier than the ninth century) as representing the kind of culture
attainable in such a school. And the beautiful story of St Cadoc's
intercession for the soul of Virgil, uncertain as is the date of it, gives a
glimpse of the attitude of some Britons towards the great literature of
CH. XIX.


## p. 510 (#556) ############################################

510
Theodore of Tarsus; Hadrian
Rome that at least harmonises well with evidence of a better kind
emanating from Ireland,
Thus our knowledge of early British culture is scanty. It rests
largely upon conjecture and inference, It is not so with the first
beginnings of learning among the English. Whereas no English scholar
or writer can be named before 668, the next half century produces two
who would be remarkable in any age--Aldhelm and Bede. Nor is there
any room for doubt that these men owe their learning to Theodore and
Hadrian. For, even if there be a Celtic strain in Aldhelm's education,
as there surely is in his style, we must remember in the first place that
the very fact of an Englishman's taking to literary pursuits is a novelty;
and in the second place that we have this Englishman's own testimony
(in his letter to Eahfrid) to the enormous influence of Theodore and
Hadrian in the work of education: an influence not confined to England,
for it was potent enough to attract the scholars of Ireland. In Bede no
admixture of Celtic influence is traceable: he is simply the supreme
product of the normal teaching of his day. What, then, did Theodore
and Hadrian bring with them to this country? They brought the
permanent equipment of learning in the shape of books. They also
brought the knowledge and enthusiasm which secured that the books
should be used to profit. In these two men the culture of East
and West was concentrated. Theodore of Tarsus had studied in the
schools of Athens, and very little of his life had been spent in Italy.
Hadrian was of African extraction and abbot of a monastery near Naples:
he had absorbed all that Italy could furnish, and was possessed of Greek
as well. Through him we are linked with the ancients. The Institutions
of Cassiodorus are responsible for the existence of a man with such
qualifications. Unproductive of written monuments as Italy was at
this time, its monks had not, thanks to Cassiodorus, lost all touch with
the education of an earlier day. It is to Hadrian that we must attribute
the greatest share of achievement in the educational work which now
began in England. Less could be done by Theodore, occupied as he
was with administration and organisation, and often absent on journeys
to distant parts of the island.
With them an Englishman must be joined in our grateful remem-
brance—the man who spent his life and substance in the labour of
bringing to us the actual palpable treasures of art and learning-
Biscop, surnamed Benedict, Abbot of Wearmouth. It was he who
accompanied Theodore and Hadrian to England; he was himself
returning from his third journey to the tombs of the Apostles. On
every subsequent expedition (and he made four more) he brought back
in quantities books of every kind", pictures, and vestments, to say
nothing of the masons and the musicians whom on several occasions
1 The only book of a secular kind specified-indeed, the only one specified at all
except a Bible-was a book on cosmography of admirable workmanship which
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## p. 511 (#557) ############################################

Benedict Biscop; Bede
511
a
he induced to come and work upon his buildings and to teach his
monks. Is it not a fair inference from the facts that the influence
of Theodore and Hadrian went for something here? Whether or no,
Biscop's work was just what was wanted to supplement theirs and to
ensure its continuance after their removal,
We do not find these intellectual fathers of the English race figuring
as writers. This is a slight matter. Their effectiveness as teachers and
the importance of their literary equipment are attested by the works of
the first generation of English scholars. Both Aldhelm and Bede are
able to use books on grammar and prosody in large numbers: they know
the standard poets, both heathen and Christian, and have access, it seems,
even to contemporary Spanish writers. The great Latin fathers, and
such other books as were valued for their bearing on the Scriptures,
doubtless formed the bulk of the libraries which now began to be formed
at Canterbury, York, Wearmouth, and perhaps Malmesbury. To put
it shortly, within the space of a few years England was placed on a level
with the Continent (and with Ireland) in respect of the apparatus of
learning. There was this great difference between them, that on the
Continent the tools were lying neglected, in England they were in
active use.
It is not, perhaps, necessary to describe in any detail the literary
monuments of the first
age
of our literature: the
age
of which Aldhelm
marks the youth and Bede the prime. The subject is well-worn : little
that is new can be offered in a general survey. The central fact is that
at the beginning of the eighth century England was the home of the
one great writer of the time, and was a source of light to the whole of
the West. In Bede's Ecclesiastical History we have a book of real
literary excellence, as well as an invaluable historical source. In his
other works, some of which have outlived their period of greatest
usefulness, especially his commentaries, he provided sources of infor-
mation which were at once welcomed as superior to anything then
available, and which retained their popularity until the thirteenth
century at least? .
The lifetime of Bede tides over the first third of the eighth century.
The last third sees the beginning of the Carolingian Renaissance. The
middle third, compared with its neighbours, is a barren time so far as
regards the production of writings of abiding value.
Indeed, when one has named Boniface, with the small group of
English writers who were his contemporaries, and Virgilius of Salzburg,
almost all is said. Boniface and his circle bear witness, in their letters
Ceolfrid gave to King Aldfrid in exchange for some lands. (Bede, Vitae Abbatum, 15. )
This may possibly have been the Christian Topography of Cosmas Indicopleustes,
from which we undoubtedly find an excerpt in Latin in a manuscript given by King
Aethelstan to the see of St Cuthbert (CCCC. 183).
1 See also Vol. 11. p. 574.
CH. XIX.


## p. 512 (#558) ############################################

512
Wanaerings of Manuscripts
99
and in their poems, to the sound learning imparted in the great English
schools. What they wrote has some flavour of the elaboration charac-
teristic of Aldhelm as distinguished from Bede. The acrostic and the
riddle are in favour: Boniface even copies, in his verses to Duddus,
the “figured” poem of Publilius Optatianus, in which certain letters
picked out of the lines form a pattern or picture, and also compose
distinct lines or sentences. It is more to the purpose however to draw
attention to the frequent requests for books which Boniface prefers to
his friends in England, the fruit of which we may perhaps see now in
some of the small but precious group of manuscripts still preserved at
Fulda. Among the treasures of the Würzburg library too are books
with English connexions: in one is mention of a Worcester abbess? .
The presence of others may be due to the Irish missionary and martyr
Kilian († 689), among them the unique copy of the works of the heretic
Priscillian, or, as Dom Morin now inclines to think, of his companion
Instantius. It is thought, I may add, that the Graeco-Latin Codex
Laudianus of the Acts has made the journey between Britain and the
Continent twice. First brought to England by Theodore and Hadrian,
and there used by Bede, it travelled to Germany with some members
of the Bonifacian circle, and found a home there till the seventeenth
century, when a second Archbishop of Canterbury, Laud, was instru-
mental in bringing it once again to this country along with many other
spoils of German libraries.
It will eventually be possible, thanks to the work of the great palaeo-
graphers of our own time, to write a history of the transmission of ancient
literature, and to trace its influence upon individual authors of the early
Middle Ages by the help of our rapidly growing knowledge of the styles
of writing peculiar to the great centres of learning, monastic and other,
and by the indications, which single manuscripts are gradually being
induced to yield, of their own parentage and wanderings. But the time
for attempting this is not yet: many monographs have to be written
and multitudinous details correlated, and the reader of a survey such
as this must be content to be told that the cloud which hangs over the
literary life of the sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries is in process of
being thinned : it is beyond hope that it can be wholly dispersed.
One other name demands notice before we close our review of pre-
Carolingian literature. Virgilius, Bishop of Salzburg, has made a con-
siderable figure in many a text-book in the capacity of an enlightened
cosmographer; or of an early martyr of science, persecuted and silenced
by clerical obscurantists because of his belief in the Antipodes. We
have not a line of his writing: our only life of him makes no allusion
to his secular learning : all that we know of this side of him is confined
to a couple of lines in a letter of Pope Zacharias to St Boniface, and to
1 The MS. is of Jerome on Ecclesiastes (cent. vi): the owner was Abbess Cuth-
suuitha (690-700).
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## p. 513 (#559) ############################################

Virgilius of Salzburg
513
the epithets Geometer and Solivagus' which were applied to him, the
former by the Annals of the Four Masters when recording his death,
the other by an authority as yet untraced. Pope Zacharias, answering
a complaint of Boniface, says, “ with regard to the perverse and wicked
doctrine which he has spoken, against God and his own soul; if it be
made clear that he admits it,—that there is another world and other
men, or sun and moon, beneath the earth (sub terra)—you must hold
a council, deprive him of priestly rank, and expel him from the Church. "
This brief and rough characterisation has been made to bear the interpre-
tation that Virgilius had published a philosophical treatise setting forth
the view that there are Antipodes, possibly in dependence upon Martianus
Capella's teaching. Or, it is put more modestly that he had given
expression to this view in his lectures. It will be seen that the words
of Zacharias contain nothing to support (and nothing to bar) this
explanation.