Another great Irish college was Clonfert on the Shannon, founded about the year 556 by Brendan the Navigator, who, like Finnian, came of the Irian race, being descended from Fergus mac Roy.[5] He was born towards the close of the fifth century, and his school, too, became very famous, having, it is said, produced as many as three thousand monks. The influence of the _Navigatio Brendani_, by whomsoever written, was immense, and was felt through all Europe, so that in many of the great continental libraries good MS. copies of it, sometimes very ancient, may be found.[6] But perhaps Brendan's grand-nephew and pupil may have indirectly influenced European literature in a still more important manner. This was Fursa, afterwards St. Fursa, whose visions were known all over Ireland, Great Britain, and France. There can be no doubt about the substantial accuracy of St. Fursa's life, for Bede himself, who dedicates a good deal of space to Fursa's visions,[7] refers to it. It must have been written within ten or fifteen years after his death, because it refers to the plague and the great eclipse of the sun which _happened last year_, that is 664. Now Dante was acquainted with Bede's writings, for he expressly mentions him, and Bede's account of Fursa and Fursa's own life may have been familiar to him, and furnished him with the groundwork of part of the Divine Comedy of which it seems a kind of prototype.[8] Brendan's own adventures and his view of hell, which he was shown by the devil, may also have been known to Dante. Brendan prepared three vessels with thirty men in each, some clerics, some laymen, and with these, says his Irish life in the Book of Lismore, he sailed to seek the Promised Land, which, evidently influenced by the old pagan traditions of Moy Mell[9] and Hy Brassil, he expected to find as an island in the Western Sea, and so says his Irish life poetically-- "Brendan, son of Finnlug, sailed over the wave-voice of the strong-maned sea, and over the storm of the green-sided waves, and over the mouths of the marvellous awful bitter ocean, where they saw the multitude of the furious red-mouthed monsters with abundance of the great sea-whales. And they found beautiful marvellous islands, yet they tarried not therein."