Students from every part of Ireland and Europe attended them and , under their guidance , European people began again to work the land , to read and write . From here Irish monks , answering to a special call , spread everywhere throughout the world . . To leave Ireland for Christ became a must for the new converts , who gave origin to the famous movement : Peregrinatio pro Christo . St . Bernard wrote of throngs of Irish Saints who flooded Europe . Many of them went as pilgrims to the Holy Land , others to Rome , but as missionaries or pilgrims , in both cases , the Irish monks , with their books , striped on their back , spread culture and faith everywhere they went .
In the 6th century , the abbot of Iona , Adamnam ( 624-704 A . D .), in De locis sanctis 3 , 6 , 1-3 , writes how the monk Arculf , being in Catania for a few days , saw the fire of the Volcano at night and was
fascinated by the rumbles of Mt . Etna , that made all Sicily tremble . Before the end of the 8th century , Irish monks reached Modra in Moravia ( now in the Slovak Republic ), 30 km North of Bratislava .
The ruined wall of an ancient church , similar to the little St . Kevin church at Glendalough , and nearby town of Malacky seem to speak of the presence of the Irish monks in this part of central Europe . A Celtic cross in Ják , the most complete Romanesqe church in Hungary , is another example of this presence . Up and down the length of western and central Europe , as far east as Kiev , we can find a living legacy of the travels and achievements of these intrepid Irish monks from the 6th to the 14th century .
They founded the Schottenstift in the city centre of Vienna , today a Benedictine monastery . In 782 we find Alcuin , at Charlemagne ’ s Court as director of the Palatine School , that turned into the University of Paris . Another Irish monk , Dungal , was sent by Charlesmagne to Pavia , the capital of the Longobards and of the Franks in Italy , to preside over the local Palatine School . This School , that became the University of Pavia , was the most important of his Kingdom and all young people from Milan , Bergamo , Brescia , Novara , Lodi , Asti , Tortona , etc ., had to continue their higher studies in this College - “ ln Pavia conveniant ad Dungalum ”, as the Corteolona Capitulary ( year 825 ) stated . So we can say that Irish monks were at the birth of the Paris and Pavia Universities and of the education in general of the Kingdom of Italy in the late Midle Ages .
John Scotus Eurigena ( 800-877 ), dominated the philosophical scene of the 9th century and certainly he was one of the best scholars of the Greek and Latin world . He was “ the giant of the Carolingian Renaissance , whose like was not seen again in Western Christendom until the Italian Reneissance ” ( Toynbee ). Many were also the