It was in the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries of the Christian era that Galicia reached her first zenith as a centre of learning and literary fame. During this period her intellectual development and culture far exceeded that of the whole of the rest of Spain: she was freely acknowledged to be the _Magistra Litterarum_. The writings of the men who made her famous are many of them preserved intact to this day; they are all, without exception, the work of monks or church dignitaries. Outside the Church learning was practically non-existent. But the monks and bishops of those days were anything but mere bookworms, mystics, or recluses; they were men who helped to make history as well as to chronicle and record it. Many a Spanish bishop had earned a name for bravery on the field of battle before his elevation to a See, and was, as Lopez Ferreiro has remarked, a soldier at heart, and, what is also worthy of notice, a married man--with a large family. Many a monk in those days was a bold and fearless traveller, who had seen many peoples and many lands, and enlarged his mental horizon by much and wide observation. We moderns are apt to think that travelling for purposes of education is a comparatively recent invention, but that is not the case. From Galicia in the fourth century young men of spirit and religious zeal--ay, and even young women--started forth to visit far-distant lands and gather for themselves the flowers of learning and piety from their native meadows. Jerusalem was a great meeting-place for leaders of religious thought at that date, so that it had a double attraction for young Gallegans fired with spiritual ambition and a Celtic love of enterprise. Many found their way thither, and each on his return to Galicia became in himself an influence of culture in his diocese or monastery as the case might be. The journey from Galicia to Palestine, in spite of its difficulties and dangers, seems to have been undertaken by the pious as readily in those days as a journey from London to Rome is in our own. Monasteries, which were in reality schools of higher culture, had already become numerous throughout the province. Most of the parochial churches had already been established before the end of the first half of the fourth century; they were almost all dedicated to martyrs, and erected over some spot sanctified by the presence of holy relics.[39] Young men of noble family invariably took up the profession of arms or entered the Church; consequently, clergy and monks abounded in the land. “Fifteen centuries separate us from that epoch,” says Ferreiro, “and twice has the chain which connects with our own time been broken, first by the invasion of barbarians, and then by that of the Saracens. Yet the stars of that period still shine.” Perhaps the brightest of these stars is Idatius, the father of Spanish historians.