The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1915-02-13
FOUNDERS Of GERMAN
MONASTERIEs
IRISH MONKS WHO ESTABLISHED
NEW FOUNDATIONS IN GER
MANY IN THE TWELFTH AND
THIRTEENTH CENTURIES.

Tin EEN n ZEN ORIES.
Those brilliant names in the his
sory of. European scholarship who
distinguished themselves under Char
lemagne, his son and his grand-sons,
Clemens, Dicuil, and Scotus Erigena,
who all taught in the Court schools,
Oungal, who taught in Pavia, Sedu-
ius, who worked in Luttich, Fergal,
Virgil who ruled in Salzburg, and
Moengal, the teacher of st. Gall,
we're not altogether without success
'ors, says Douglas Hyde in his Litter
ary History of Ireland" 1t is true
hat lreland's great mission of instruc-
ion and conversion came to a close
With the eleventh century, yet for two
centuries more, driven by that innate
instinct for travel and adventure
which was SO strong within them that
t resembled second nature, we find
Irish monks creating new foundations
On the continent, especially in Ger
many. One of the most noteworthy
Of these was monk from the present
Donegal, Muiredach mac Robertigh,
Who assumed the Latin name of Mari
mus Scotus, or Marian the Irishman.
II 1916 he had succeeded in estab-
ishing an Irish monastery at Rats
BON, or as the Germans call it, Regens-
burg, the fame of which rapidly
spread, and attracted to- it many of
lis countrymen from Ulster, so many
hat the parent monastery failed to
accommodate them; and a branch
house, that of st. Jacob, was com
pleted in I'LL.
From these points Irish monks
penetrated in all directions. Fred
oriCk Barbarossa in 1889 on his way
from the Crusades, founded even at
SRTibentium, in what is now Bulgaria,
About the same time the Irish Abbots
Of Ratisbon are found writing to King
Wratislaw of Bohemia to facilitate
the passage of their emissaries into
Poland. Under the influence of the
.wo Irish houses, st. James of Rats
bon and st. Jacob, quite a number of
other Irish monasteries were founded,
that of Wuerzburg, in 1134, Nuern-
ourg in 1140, Constant in 1142, ST.
George in Vienna in 1855, Eichstaedt
IL 1883, st. Maria in Vienna in 1900.
Extant Manuscripts in Irish.
These Irish monks, who in the
eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth cen
turtles left the north of Ireland and
thus planted themselves in Germany,
where, says thinner, worthy success
SOrs of those apostles and scholars
who labOred from the seventh to the
zenith century in France, Switzerland,
and Burgundy, full of religious zeal,
piety, sobriety, and a genuine love of
learning" A chronicle of the mon
astery of Ratisbon, written in 1855,
states that the greater part of all
documents belonging to the
different Irish monasteries which
sprang from it had been written by
Marianus Scotus himself. A speci-
men, writes thinner, of his beautiful
script and the remarkable rapidity
If his work may be seen at the Court
Library of Vienna, where is pre-
served a copy of st. Pauls Epistles,
in 160 sheets, written by Scotus in
1919, between March % and May IT.
Very many of the monks-Malachias
Patricius, Macian, Finnian, and others
who came to these monasteries from
Ireland brought books with them
which they presented to the German
The century which preceded the
battle of Clontarf was the most flour
ishing period of the Irish monks in
Germany. In the thirteenth century
their influence visibly declined. Once
the English had commenced the con-
quest of Ireland the monasteries
ceased to be recruited by men of
sanctity and learning but were re-
sorted to by men who sought rather
material comfort and life of worldly
freedom. The result was that towards
the end of the thirteenth and the
beginning of the fourteenth century
most of the Irish establishments in
Germany came to an end, being
either made over to the Germans,
like those of Vienna and Wuerzburg,
or else altogether losing their monas-
tic character like that of Nuremberg
The Monastery of the Irishmen.
AS for the parent monastery, that
of st. James of Ratisbon, its fate
was most extraordinary, and deserves
to be told at greater length. 1t had
of course always been from its foun-
dation inhabited by Irish monks
alone, and was known as the Mon
asterium Scotorum, or Monastery of
the Irishmen. But when in process
of time the word Scotus became am
biguous, or rather had to be almost
exclusively applied to what We now
call Scotchmen, the Scotch prudent
ly took advantage of it, and claimed
that they, and not the Irish, were
the real founders of Ratisbon and
"a