The real work of the early Irish missionaries in converting the pagans of Britain and central Europe, and sowing the seeds of culture there, has been overlooked when not willfully misrepresented Thus, while the real work of the conversion of the pagan Germans was the work of Irishmen, Winfried or, as he is better known, […]

Part 13: Columbanus and the church in Europe.
Columbanus proved to be the great avant-courier of the rebirth of civilization in Europe. During the five hundred years that followed there was hardly a generation that did not see the vineyards crowded with Irish laborers, that did not hear the voice of some authoritative personality of the Gael ringing in the ears of princes […]

Part 12 – Aidan and the church in England.
Not Augustine at Canterbury, but devoted Irish Gaels in every valley of the Heptarchy — Aidan, Finan, Colman, Maeldubh, Diuma and the others — first carried the evangel of Christian culture to the savage English tribes. See Footnote 1 PATRICK in Ireland, Columba in Scotland, and Dinooth in Wales were apostles to a people using the […]

Part 11 – Dinooth and the church in Wales.
The abbot of the most distinguished British monastery, at Bangor, Neynoch1 by name, whose opinion in ecclesiastical affairs had the most weight with his countrymen, when urged by Augustin to submit in all things to the ordinances of the Roman Church, gave him the following remarkable answer:1 “We are all ready to listen to the […]

Part 8: Columba and the church in Scotland
Columba possessed a superior education. He was familiar with Latin and Greek, secular and ecclesiastical history, the principles of jurisprudence, the law of nations, the science of medicine, and the laws of the mind He was the greatest Irishman of the Celtic race in mental powers; and he founded in Iona, the most learned school […]

Part 7: Patrick, organizer of the church in the wilderness in Ireland.
From all that can be learned of him (Patrick), there never was a nobler Christian missionary…. He went to Ireland from love to Christ, and love to the souls of men…. Strange that a people who owned Rome nothing in connection with their conversion to Christ, and who long struggled against her pretensions, should be […]
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