It has also been suggested[41] that some of the Britons or Gauls who accompanied St. Patrick brought these studies to Ireland, but Meyer thinks this most improbable and dismisses the idea that any missionaries whether Gallic or British introduced classical learning into Ireland. The origin of that deep culture embracing not only the classical authors but also grammar, metrics, and other sciences such as astronomy he would attribute to a much broader and deeper influence.[42] Basing his argument on a document found among Zimmer’s papers, Meyer contends that the seeds of classical learning were sown in Ireland during the first and second decades of the fifth century by Gallic scholars who fled their own country owing to the invasion of the latter by the Goths and other barbarians.[43] The same explanation seems to have occurred to De Jubainville, for he says: “La culture des lettres classiques et latins a cessé en Gaule depuis la conquête germanique au cinquième siècle; _l’Irlande_ qu’à cette époque n’a pas encore envahie les barbares des contrées situées à nord-ouest de la Gaule, _paraît avoir donné asile aux hommes d’étude chassés de la Gaule_ par les armes et la domination sauvage des Burgundes, des Wisigoths et des Francs.”[44] To Meyer, however, we owe the development of this theory. He quotes from a sixth century entry in a Leyden MS. This note states that owing to a barbarian invasion “all the learned men fled from Gaul, and in transmarine parts, _i.e._ in Ireland and wherever they betook themselves, brought about a great advancement of learning to the inhabitants of these regions.”[45] This theory is supported by a passage in St. Patrick’s “Confession”[46] where evidently replying to the attacks of certain rhetoricians who were hostile to him, the saint exclaims: “You rhetoricians who know not the Lord hear and search who it was that called me up, fool though I be, from the midst of those who call themselves wise and skilled in the law and mighty orators and powerful in everything.”[47] Meyer maintains that the reference is to the pagan rhetoricians from Gaul whose arrogant presumption founded on their own learning made them regard with disdain the illiterate apostle of the Scots. His few and forcible epithets well describe the type of rhetorician common in Gaul. If Meyer’s theory is correct, and it seems the most tenable that has been advanced, then we may conclude that Ireland derived her classical learning from Gaul when Gallic scholarship was at its best. This would explain the excellence of the Latin and the acquaintance with Greek which, as we shall show, was exhibited by the Irish scholars who visited the Continent from the time of Columbanus (543–615) to that of Johannes Scottus Eriugena (c. 810–c. 875).