While we believe the above conclusions fully warranted, we confess that many of the terms used in both schemes are either so vague or so obscure that we do not feel satisfied that an adequate idea of the course of study in the Irish monastic schools can be derived from this source. We propose to supplement Dr. Joyce’s helpful but rather meagre account by many additional facts which have been gleaned from an examination of the acknowledged works of Irish writers of this period and such references as are met with in the works of other writers. We hope to show that the curriculum was a comparatively broad one, including not only the study of the Sacred Scriptures with the commentaries of the Greek and Latin Fathers, but also the study of the pagan authors of Greece and Rome. Nor was the study of the Irish language and literature neglected. Science in the modern sense of the word was unknown, but as regards Geography, Computation, and Astronomy the Irish Monastic Schools were quite as far advanced as any in Europe and certainly far ahead of their neighbours. At least in the ninth century philosophy and dialectic were eagerly studied. We shall have a word to say about the Irish school of church music. Art too flourished, especially the illumination of manuscripts, various ornamental forms of metal work and stone-carving. No doubt the primary aim of the Irish monastic school was the teaching and study of Christian theology, but just as Christianity itself did not mean the abolition but rather the fulfilment of Hebrew ideals and traditions, so when Christianity was introduced into Ireland where an ancient native culture was flourishing the new culture did not displace the old but rather combined with it to form a new type of culture which in course of time became at once both Irish and Christian. In the schools everything that was not absolutely opposed to the ideals of Christianity was utilised to enrich the course of study. Thus the native laws, literature, music and art became the handmaid of Christianity. The same liberal and enlightened conception of education would explain the success with which the Irish monks pursued the study of the pagan classics. The literary taste already acquired through a study of native literature was entirely favourable to the appreciation and enjoyment of the great authors of antiquity. Besides the Christianity of the Irish monk was sufficiently robust to prevent any of those scruples of conscience which were said to have haunted the continental monk who loved his Virgil.[323] Indeed the stories in the classics about gods and goddesses would be regarded by the Irish purely from a literary and artistic standpoint and could have little religious significance for them since there was little in common between the paganism of Greece and Rome and such remnants of paganism as still survived in Ireland. On the Continent the case was different, hence the suspicion with which continental ecclesiastics regarded the study