The Irish Scholarly Presence at St. Gall: Networks of Knowledge in the Early Middle Ages

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The Carolingian period represented a Golden Age for the abbey of St Gall, an Alpine monastery in modern-day Switzerland. Its bloom of intellectual activity resulted in an impressive number of scholarly texts being copied into often beautifully written manuscripts, many of which survive in the abbeys library to this day. Among these books are several of Irish origin, while others contain works of learning originally written in Ireland. This study explores the practicalities of the spread of this Irish scholarship to St Gall and the reception it received once there. In doing so, this book for the first time investigates a part of the network of knowledge that fed this important Carolingian centre of learning with scholarship. By focusing on scholarly works from Ireland, this study also sheds light on the contribution of the Irish to the Carolingian revival of learning. Historians have often assumed a special relationship between Ireland and the abbey of St Gall, which was built on the grave of the Irish saint Gallus. This book scrutinises this notion of a special connection. The result is a new viewpoint on the spread and reception of Irish learning in the Carolingian period.

Reviews

This is an engaging and useful work [A] first-rate piece of scholarship. * EuropeNow *
Sven Meeder provides us with a fascinating case study on Irish learning and scholarship in one of the most vibrant cultural and religious centers of the Carolingian world and in so doing he allows us to grasp the crucial impact of the adoption and adaptation of Irish intellectual culture on the formation of Western Christendom. * Helmut Reimitz, Professor of History, Princeton University, USA *

Author Bio

Sven Meeder is Lecturer in Medieval History at Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands. He has published in international peer-reviewed journals on the exchange of (insular) learning and is currently heading the research project Networks of Knowledge on intellectual networks in the Carolingian era.