In these monasteries and their schools all was life and activity. The monks were always busily employed; some at tillage on the farm round the monastery--ploughing, digging, sowing, reaping--some teaching, others writing books. The duty of a few was to attend to travellers, to wash their feet and prepare supper and bed for them: for strangers who called at the monastery were always received with welcome, and got lodging, food, and attendance from the monks, all free. Others of the inmates, again, employed themselves in cooking, or carpentry, or smithwork, or making clothes, for the use of the community. Besides all this they had their devotions to attend to, at certain times, both day and night, throughout the year. As for the students, they had to mind their own simple household concerns, and each day when these were finished they had plenty of employment in their studies: for the professors kept them hard at work. There were also great numbers of schools not held in monasteries, conducted by laymen, some for general learning, such as History, Poetry, Grammar, Latin, Greek, Irish, the Sciences, &c.; and some for teaching and training young men for professions, such as lawyers and doctors. And these schools helped greatly to spread learning, though they were not so well known outside Ireland as the monastic schools. The Irish professors were so famed for their learning, and the colleges were so excellent, that students came to them from every country of Europe: but more from Great Britain than elsewhere. The Irish were very much pleased to receive these foreign students: and they were so generous that they supplied them with food, gave them the manuscript books they wanted to learn from, and taught them too, all free of charge. Ireland was in those times the most learned country in Europe, so that it was known by the name of the Island of Saints and Scholars. But the Irish scholars and missionaries did not confine themselves to their own country. Great numbers of them went abroad--to Britain and elsewhere--to teach and to preach the Gospel to the people. The professors from Ireland were held in such estimation that they were employed to teach in most of the schools and colleges of Great Britain and the Continent. We shall see that the Northern Picts of Scotland were converted by St. Columkille and his monks from Iona (see p. 144): and a large proportion of the people of England became Christians through the preaching of Irish monks before the arrival of St. Augustine.[48-1] [48-1] St. Augustine came to England in the year 596--having been sent by Pope Gregory--and converted to Christianity those of the English who had not been already converted.