II. Contemporary with this arrested development, the sinister influence of the Norse depredations may be traced in another result, and one which has left a deep and permanent mark in the history of Celtic literature. It is the lamentable dispersion of the literary classes—monks and missionaries—to the Continent with such books and MSS. as they were able to save from the violence of the invaders. Long before the inroads of these Norsemen became a terror to the Gael, we know that Irish missionaries had spread themselves over England, France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. And in addition to their peripatetic preaching, they had established monasteries and colleges for the diffusion of Christianity and learning. From MSS. preserved in St. Gall, Switzerland, we gather that these pilgrim Scots usually travelled in companies, provided with long walking-sticks, leathern wallets, and water-bottles. They wore long flowing hair, and were clad in rough garments. Though thus rude and uncouth in appearance, they were accomplished scholars, many of them, and easily acquired the languages of the countries through which they passed, or in which they settled and preached with all the perfervid eloquence so natural to the Celt. To show the extent of their wanderings, and the distinguished calibre of the missionaries themselves, a few names may be given which still live in books and tradition. St. Columbanus, perhaps the best known of all, died in 615. His name is perpetuated in the town of San Columbano. It was he who founded the monasteries of Luxueil in France, and Bobbio among the Apennines. Almost equally prominent as an evangelist was St. Gall, his companion, who gave his name not only to the town which subsequently grew up beside his monastery, but also to a whole canton of Switzerland. Then there were St. Catald, from the school of Lismore in Ireland; St. Donnatt his brother, Bishop of Lupice in Naples; St Kilian the apostle and martyr of Franconia, still annually commemorated at Würzburg. At a monastery near Strasburg, also founded by an Irish bishop, there is a charter of date 810, which specifies grants made to that house, to the poor, and to the pilgrim Scots—the nine of whom therein mentioned are all bishops except the abbot. In the ninth century there was a convent of Scots at Mont St. Victor near Feldkirk. Dungall, of the same Scotic nationality, figures as the author of the famous letter to Charlemagne on the eclipses of 810, and he held the office of preceptor at the cathedral school at Pavia. Besides the numerous other places in which they laboured, from the middle of the seventh to the twelfth century, Scotic monasteries were founded at Ratisbon, Vienna, Eichstadt, Würzburg, Erfurt, Kelheim, and Constance.