Clement was the chief of a group of Irish scholars who took a leading part in the educational reforms promoted by Charlemagne. Alcuin, Clement’s great English rival at the Frankish Court, had been educated at Clonmacnois. Joannes Scotus Erigena, in the reign of Charles the Bald, founded the scholastic philosophy, and by his translation of the pseudo-Areopagite, and his studies of the Neo-Platonists, bridged over the chasm between ancient and modern thought. Dungal, in the first half of the ninth century, was the first astronomer of his age; at the mandate of Lothair, King of Lombardy, he founded a school which afterwards developed into the University of Pavia, with branches in several other cities, and laboured with success at the task of civilising the Lombards. Add to these Dicuil, a geographer of the same date, the most accurate topographer of the early Middle Ages; Firghil, or Virgilius, Archbishop of Salzburg, who taught the rotundity of the earth and the existence of antipodes; Sedulius, the ninth-century grammarian; St. Donatus, Bishop of Fiesole (fl. _c._ 840), traveller, topographer, and Scripture commentator; Marianus Scotus, one of the leading chroniclers of the eleventh century; and many others, who laboured with distinction in France, Italy, Germany, England, and Flanders, down to the thirteenth century, when Frederick II., Emperor, summoned Petrus Hibernicus to the University of Naples, where he counted among his theological pupils no less a personage than Thomas Aquinas. [3] There was also a Tír Enda, between L. Foyle and L. Swilly. [4] Tigernach gives the date as 624, which Dr. Reeves is inclined to accept, _op. cit._ Introduction, xl-xli. Lanigan is in favour of 627, which agrees with the reputed age of Adamnán, 77, at the time of his death. Possibly the latter date is correct, the difference being explicable by the different system of chronology adopted by Tigernach. [5] _Lives of the Irish Saints_, vi. 708; and see _Ibid._, ix. 505. [6] Acts x. 11. [7] 2 Cor. xii. 2-4. Cp. also Galat. i. 12, 16; Ephes. i. 3; and the _Apocryphal Acts of Paul_, Ante-Nicene Library, vol. xvi. [8] With the ancient Irish, the abode of the departed was beyond the Atlantic, towards the setting sun; so, in the Hindu mythology, Yama, King of the Dead, crossed the stream towards the sunset, first showing the way by which all men were to follow him. This natural idea has been shared by many barbarous races. [9] Vault; [Uncial: inna luinge], genitive of [Uncial: long], = ship. _Qy._ here = ‘nave’? [10] South-east, possibly because that is the direction of Jerusalem, the Holy City. [11] The word used is [Uncial: Mórdáil], the name of the Irish National Assembly, or States-General. See _ante_, Sec. 2. [12] Or, ‘a chair highly wrought,’ [Uncial: Inna ċaṫair ċumtaċta].