This and the like productions of a ruder, but not ignorant nor uncultured, age, deserve no less attention than that which we bestow upon the works of the primitive schools of art and letters, before Giotto and his compeers had effected the release of painting from the bonds of formalism, and had opened out the ways of Nature and imagination, and before the immediate predecessors of Dante had rendered possible his dolce stil nuovo.

At the same time it may be seen how the legend which received its apotheosis in Dante’s immortal verse came into being upon the misty heights of primitive myth, and after forming the theme of poets and philosophers in classical antiquity, entered into the literature and teaching of the early Christian Church; how the ecclesiastical legend, as it had now become, was adopted into the Irish Church at the time of its greatest activity, and there received the impress of the national genius, and became blended with the national traditions; thence it returned again to become a part of the general literature of Europe, and received yet further elements from the newly popular romances of chivalry, and still more from the revived classical tradition, until the elixir of the great magician’s genius finally transmuted the amalgam into gold to be a κτῆμα ἐς ἀεί.

To recognise these facts is not to disparage or limit the originality of Dante’s genius; rather his true originality is thrown into higher relief by a comparison with all other labourers in the same field who had gone before him. Nothing but the study of these labours will enable us to give him his due place in European literature and thought, while such a study will explain and justify certain features in his treatment of the theme which may be repugnant to modern ways of thinking, but were not only justified, but necessitated, by the beliefs and traditions universally accepted in his own day. Dante himself always loved to acknowledge his indebtedness to his literary progenitors, alike among the writers of antiquity and his own contemporaries or immediate predecessors; and it seems fitting to preserve the memory of a school of writers to whom, although he knew it not himself, are largely due the actual character and scope of the work by which he achieved immortality.

2. The Seer[1]

By the close of the seventh century the Irish Church had almost reached the period of its greatest prosperity and of its greatest influence upon the culture of Western Europe. The Three Orders of Saints had done their work, and although in Ireland, as throughout the rest of Europe, Christianity had not entirely prevailed over the heathenism of the more sequestered populations—the pagani—yet, through the length and breadth of the country, the National Church was established in close conjunction with the State, of which, indeed, it had come to form an integral part; and wherever the Irish clergy prevailed, studies flourished.

The missionary zeal of the Irish clergy had made known the Gospel to the courts of barbarian princes, and to the still pagan inhabitants of North Britain and Germany, Gaul and Burgundy, Switzerland, Styria, and Lombardy, and even carried it to the Faroe Isles and Iceland. At home, what sparks of antique learning yet lurked beneath the ashes to which the fires of civilisation had smouldered down were gathered into a focus in schools where crowds of students from the surrounding nations found hospitality and instruction; while abroad, the foundations of Iona, Lindisfarne, and Malmesbury, Luxeuil, St. Gall, and Bobbio, with many more of lesser fame, stood out like citadels erected to maintain a peaceful conquest. And from the schools of Ireland were to issue the men who were destined, during the next two centuries, not merely to leave their mark upon the Church as theologians and founders of monasteries, but, further, to play an important part in moulding the new civilisation of the Frankish Empire, to lay the foundations of modern philosophy, and to promote the study of natural science and literature by lucubrations, crude, indeed, as compared with the productions of more favoured ages, but standing out conspicuous above the level of their own time.[2]

Meanwhile, though the Three Orders of the Irish Saints had come to an end about the middle of the seventh century, they were succeeded by many great Churchmen, who combined with their ecclesiastical duties a lively interest in secular politics, in which they were wont to intervene, most commonly, no doubt, with beneficial effect, though occasionally with results nothing less than disastrous.

One of the foremost, if not the very foremost, among the Irish clerics of this period was St. Adamnán, the reputed seer of the Vision which bears his name. This great prelate is a striking figure both in the ecclesiastical and secular history of his times; but the information we possess concerning him, though not altogether scanty, is not all of equal value. It consists partly of the evidences furnished by his own writings and contemporary records, partly of the further particulars which have been preserved in the annals compiled from the tenth to the twelfth centuries, though these, no doubt, are derived in great measure from earlier records.

Adamnán was of high birth, as were many of the leading Irish Churchmen, the constitution of the National Church being thoroughly aristocratic, in accordance with the civil society upon which it was moulded. His father was Ronán, son of Tinne, a man of chiefly rank in the territory of Sereth, or Tír Aedha, now the barony of Tirhugh, in south-west Donegal, and the descendant of Conall Gulbán, the founder of a famous house, various branches of which ruled Tír Conaill from the fifth century until the fall of the O’Donnells at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Adamnán’s mother, Ronat by name, was of the Cinel Enda, a sept of West Meath.[3] The date of his birth is variously stated, but he appears to have been born between the years 624 and 627 at Drumhome, in Tír Aedha.[4] The name Adamnán is a diminutive of Adam, but through the tendency of Irish phonetics to elide the d and m in certain positions, it came to be written sometimes in the confusing forms Eunan and Onan, and has even been travestied into Theunan and Dennan.

Adamnán entered the great monastery of Iona as a novice, probably about the year 650, as Segine (ob. 652) was then abbot. There he was distinguished for his devotion and learning, and in the year 679, soon after the death of Abbot Failbhe, was elected to succeed him, being ninth in descent from St. Colm Cille, the founder, to whom he was akin. Indeed, all Adamnán’s predecessors, and his successors for several generations, were members of the same great family. In the government of his house and of the ecclesiastical establishments in the neighbouring islands, he displayed the qualities of an able administrator, as well as those of saint