The first and second chapters are not merely introductory: they are fundamental. In the first chapter we discuss the question of a pre-Christian and pre-classical native Irish culture. The second chapter is devoted to an examination of that difficult problem, the beginnings of classical learning in Ireland—a matter on which modern research has thrown considerable light. As the school was so intimately connected with the monastic system it was necessary to devote a special chapter to an examination of the more salient features of Irish monasticism which differed in many ways from Continental monasticism. Here we are impressed with the fact that the native Irish ideals blended with those of Christianity so as to give the Irish monastic life a peculiarly national character which was ever reflected in the educational aims and ideals of the Irish monk even when his missionary zeal carried him far from the environment of his native land. In the fourth chapter the attempt is made to determine the precise relation which existed between the Irish monastic school and the general educational situation not only in Ireland and Britain but in Western Europe from 650 to 900 A.D. Those three great centres of intellectual life in every Irish monastery—the school room, the scriptorium and the library—are treated in the fifth chapter. The particular function of each and its relation to the others is described while their combined influence, whether of a contemporary or permanent nature, has been noticed. The all-important question of the nature of the curriculum has been critically examined in the sixth chapter. Finally, a chapter is given to a discussion of the scope of Irish scholarship and its significance in Mediæval Culture. While a work of this nature can scarcely claim to be original and the acknowledgments are too numerous to recount, yet the grouping is new and not unfrequently facts have been presented from a new angle. Source material has been consulted where possible. The results of previous investigation have been freely used, but even as often happened when we have arrived at conclusions which have been anticipated by other writers, we have maintained quite as critical and independent an attitude as when we ventured to challenge certain popular opinions and to make such generalizations as the result of our own study seemed to warrant. In some instances, however, this study has carried us into fields of inquiry where we have no credentials, but in these cases as in every other where we have used secondary authorities acknowledgment is always made in the foot-notes.