Page 97 - Demo

Chapter three 97
in 810 and which had so terriied Charlemagne’s subjects. He later came to reside at the Imperial Court at the request of the Emperor. Charlemagne’s grandson, Lothaire, had pre- viously supported Dungall in founding the famous school of Pavia, in Italy.
Several old scribes relate the quaint tale of how in Charlemagne’s day there arrived in the royal city two men from Ireland. According to the tale, the travellers quickly assumed a prominent position in the market-place and to the stunned crowds announced that they had knowledge for sale. When word of their strange activity was brought to the Emperor he had them fetched to the palace, and in due course he set them teaching his subjects. Another one of the many distinguished Irish scholars whom the Emperor Charlemagne gathered to him was the astronomer and geographer, Diciul, he would later, in 825, publish his geography of the then known world titled “The Extent of the Earth’s Surface”. The renowned 19th century Irish scholar, Rev. Professor George Thomas Stokes said of this publication “when we com- pare it with the geography of the Greeks, the latter is laughable in its blunders.”
Scaliger Le Jeune, the sixteenth-century French critic, maintained that in Charlemagne’s day almost all the learned men in Europe were Irish, and some 25 years later, during the reign of King Charles the Bald, it was said that every man on the Continent of Europe who knew Greek was either an Irishman or the pupil of an Irishman.
That wonderful Irish Greek scholar, distinguished philosopher, poet and theologian John Scotus Ereena, always referred to by European academics as “The Master” and lauded as being “a miracle of learning” and “the leading scholar of his day” was invited to France by Charles the Bald and installed as head of the Royal School in Paris. His many works on philosophy were standard works for centuries afterwards.
Of the Ireland of those times, Professor Zimmer of Berlin, whom we quoted earlier wrote: “Her sons, carrying Christianity and a new learning over Great Britain and the Con-
tinent, became the teachers of whole nations and the counsellors of kings and emperors.”
In Ireland itself , as we have seen, the monasteries were the great centres of learning- they were the schools, the libraries, and the universities of the nation, and it was principally through their inluence and exertions that Irish became, like Latin, a written and cultured language and in turn the culture rose to new heights.
As a result it was written by some anonymous chronicler: