In various ways we have endeavoured to condense a good deal of information into a limited space. For example, to avoid repetition we give frequent cross references to important topics dealt with in different parts of this study. Again, instead of attempting the bewildering and impossible task of giving an account of individual schools we have given a list of the more important ones and merely referred to particular schools as occasion demanded in order to illustrate certain points of primary importance. For similar reasons all attempts at biographical accounts of Irish scholars have been studiously avoided. Such references as have occasionally been made were necessary in carrying out our general plan which was to deal with the Irish monastic school as an educational institution. Of course it would have served no useful purpose to ignore completely those men whose acknowledged scholarship was the best testimony of the character of the instruction available in the schools in which they themselves studied and taught. A word might be said with reference to the proportion of space occupied by the different topics. The plan invariably followed has been to give a minimum of space to any topic which is treated fairly fully elsewhere in some accessible work. On the other hand no topic which appeared to be an integral part of the general plan has been omitted and such topics as have been inadequately treated elsewhere have here received fuller consideration. While quite conscious of the limitations of our treatment, it is hoped that by pointing out many supplementary sources of information we have done something to smooth the path of other investigators who may wish to explore those portions of the same field which lay outside the scope of our present inquiry. The author wishes to express his sincere thanks to the following: to Dr. Fletcher H. Swift, Professor of the History of Education in the University of Minnesota, for his sympathetic interest in the subject and for his advice and guidance; to Rev. Laurence P. Murray, M.R.I.A., Principal of St. Brigid’s Irish College, Omeath, Co. Louth, for the use of his excellent Irish library and for helpful suggestions and criticisms of the earlier chapters; to Rev. Dr. Peter Guilday, Professor of History in the Catholic University of Washington, D.C., for reading the MS. and for his advice and encouragement; to Mr. Patrick O’Daly of the Talbot Press for seeing the work through the press and for painstaking proof-reading; and finally to the publishers for turning out the work in an attractive and scholarly form. COLLEGE OF ST. TERESA, WINONA, MINNESOTA, U.S.A., _Lá Fhéile Pádraig, 1923._ CONTENTS PAGE CHAPTER I.—CIVILIZATION AND LEARNING IN IRELAND IN PAGAN TIMES 1