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olumbanus had the task of reforming the Frenchchurch, and, after having started a civil war in Burgundy by hispreaching, went to Italy, where he became the apostle of theLombards and founded the monastery at Bobbio. Frigidian, son ofthe king of northern Ireland, occupied the bishopric of Lucca.St. Gall, who at first was the student and panion ofColumbanus, lived among the Grisons in Switzerland as a hermit,hunting, and fishing, and cultivating his fields by himself. Herefused the bishopric of the city of Constance, which was offeredto him, and died at the age of ninetyfive. On the site of hishermitage an abbey rose, and its abbot became prince of thecanton by the grace of God, and greatly enriched the library, whose ruins are still shown to those who visit theancient town of St. Gall. Finnian, called the Learned, founded a school of theology onthe banks of the river Boyne in Ireland, where he taught Catholicdoctrine to thousands of students from Great Britain, France,Armorica, and Germany, giving them all (O happy time!) not onlytheir books and instruction but also free room and board.However, it seems that some of them neglected to fill their studylamps, and one student whose lamp went out suddenly had to invokethe divine grace, which made his fingers shine miraculously insuch a way that by running his luminous fingers through thepages, he was able to satisfy his thirst for knowledge. St.Fiacre, for whom there is a memorative plaque in the church ofSt. Mathurin in Paris, preached to the French and conductedextravagant funerals at the expense of the court. Fursey foundedmonasteries in five countries, and his feast day is stillcelebrated at Peronne, the place where he died in Picardy. Arbogast built sanctuaries and chapels in Alsace and Lorraine,and ruled the bishop39。s help, founded an institute ofscience at Paris and another which he directed for many years inancient Ticinum (now Pavia). Kilian, the apostle of Franconia,was consecrated bishop of Wurzburg, in Germany, but, trying toplay the part of John the Baptist between Duke Gozbert and hismistress, he was killed by cutthroats. Sedulius the younger waschosen by Gregory II for the mission of settling the quarrels ofthe clergy in Spain, but when he arrived there, the Spanishpriests refused to listen to him, on the grounds that he was aforeigner. To this Sedulius replied that since he was an Irishmanof the ancient race of Milesius, he was in fact a nativeSpaniard. This argument so thoroughly convinced his opponentsthat they allowed him to be installed in the bishop39。The Royal Journey39。 although, if the good Alfred, who found anabundance of laymen and priests in Ireland at that time, weretogo there now, he would find more of the latter than the former. Anyone who reads the history of the three centuries that precede the ing of the English must have a strong stomach,because the internecine strife, and the conflicts with the Danesand the Norwegians, the black foreigners and the whiteforeigners, as they were called, follow each other socontinuously and ferociously that they make this entire era averitable slaughterhouse. The Danes occupied all the principalports on the east coast of the island and established a kingdomat Dublin, now the capital of Ireland, which has been a greatcity for about twenty centuries. Then the native kings killedeach other off, taking wellearned rests from time to time ingames of chess. Finally, the bloody victory of the usurper BrianBoru over the nordic hordes on the sand dunes outside the wallsof Dublin put an end to the Scandinavian raids. TheScandinavians, however, did not leave the country, but weregradually assimilated into the munity, a fact that we mustkeep in mind if we want to understand the curious character ofthe modern Irishman. During this period, the culture necessarily languished, butIreland had the honour of producing the three great heresiarchsJohn Duns Scotus, Macarius, and Vergilius Solivagus. Vergiliuswas appointed by the French king to the abbey at Salzburg andlater was made bishop of that diocese, where he built acathedral. He was a philosopher, mathematician, and translator ofthe writings of Ptolemy. In his tract on geography, he held thetheory, which was subversive at that time, that the earth wasround, and for such audacity was declared a sower of heresy byPopes Boniface and Zacharias. Macarius lived in France, and themonastery of St. Eligius still preserves his tract De Anima, inwhich he taught the doctrine later known as Averroism, of whichErnest Renan, himself a Breton Celt, has left us a masterfulexamination. Scotus Erigena, Rector of the University of Paris,was a mystical pantheist, who translated from the Greek the booksof mystical theology of Dionysius, the pseudoAreopagite, patronsaint of the French nation. This translation presented to Europefor the first time the transcendental philosophy of the Orient,which had as much influence on the course of European religiousthought as later the translations of Plato, made in the time ofPico della Mirandola, had on the development of the profaneItalian civilization. It goes without saying that such aninnovation (which seemed like a lifegiving breath resurrectingthe dead bones of orthodox theology piled up in an inviolablechurchyard, a field of Ardath) did not have the sanction of thePope, who invited Charles the Bald to send both the book and theauthor to Rome under escort, probably because he wanted to havethem taste the delights of papal courtesy. However, it seems thatScotus had kept a grain of good sense in his exalted brain,because he pretended not to hear this courteous invitation anddeparted in haste for his native land. From the time of the English invasion to our time, there is aninterval of almost eight centuries, and if I have dwelt rathe