of writings other than those of the Fathers and as they were ignorant of Greek they had to confine themselves solely to the Latin Fathers. Not so the Irish monks as we shall see later. Moreover, the anxiety to obtain more perfect copies of the Scriptures was an additional and perhaps more powerful incentive to the Irish monk to make himself familiar with the classical forms of Greek and Latin. If this is a correct interpretation of the educational situation confronting the Irish monastic schools—and the evidence we shall produce is overwhelming—then we shall see how unwarranted is the statement of a recent writer[324] that the learning of the Irish was wholly psalm-singing and theology—not the classics; and that the _maiora studia_ referred to by Bede meant the Scriptures,—not philosophy and literature. STUDY OF THE SCRIPTURES: We admit that the Scriptures were the great, but by no means the only, subject of study.[325] As early as the fifth century the Irish poet Sedulius wrote his _Carmen Pascale_ in which he recounts the chief events of the Old and New Testament giving us “the first Christian epic worthy of the name.”[326] The Psalms were learned by rote.[327] The _Book of Armagh_ written by an Irish scribe and finished in 807 A.D. contains the only complete copy of the New Testament which has come down from the days of the Celtic Church.[328] The Old Testament must have been well known judging from the many existing fragments with glosses and scholia thereon in the handwriting of Irish scribes,[329] not to speak of commentaries like that of Aileran The Wise (d. 665 A.D.)[330] and innumerable Scriptural references in the religious literature of Ireland which is written both in the Gaelic and Latin languages. Indeed so famous were the Irish monastic schools for Scriptural studies that one of the causes which drew foreigners to the Irish schools was the prospect of reading the Sacred Writings in the MSS. so abundantly furnished through the untiring industry of the Irish scribes. Among the more noteworthy visitors who came for this purpose was Agilbert, a native of Gaul, who came in 650 A.D. to Ireland where “he sojourned some time and read the Scriptures.”[331] On his return he became bishop of the West Saxons, and later occupied the episcopal see of Paris.[332] The Angle Egbert also spent some time in Ireland “as an exile for Christ that he might study the Scriptures.”[333]