The conversion of the Irish and Anglo-Saxons inevitably involved contact with the Christian Continent. Direct contacts with Gaul and Italy became frequent after Augustine's mission to Kent (597). A few years earlier there began the Irish Christian custom of undertaking voluntary, penitential exile, which led to the establishment of monasteries abroad. Thus, following Columba's foundation of Iona, Columbanus founded Annegray and Luxeuil in Gaul and Bobbio in Italy. Other important foundations followed at St Gall and Peronne.
From the late seventh century the Anglo-
Saxons, whose conversion owed much to the Irish, followed the Irish lead on the Continent, being, however, primarily concerned with the conversion of their fellow Germans in Frisia and Germany. Amongst the best known of these missionaries are Wilfrid, Willibrord, founder of the monastery of Echternach, Boniface, martyred in 754 and buried at Fulda, and Lull, archbishop of Mainz. The cathedral of Wurzburg, an Anglo-Saxon foundation and Irish pilgrimage centre, exemplifies Anglo-Irish contacts. The strongly papal outlook of the Anglo-Saxons could lead to such difficulties as
The dispute between Boniface and the Irish Virgil of Salzburg.
Irish and Anglo-Saxon influences on Continental Christian culture appear in exegetical, grammatical and other literature and in the transmission of earlier Latin texts. Virgil of Salzburg, Johannes Scottus and Sedulius Scottus were among Irish scholars achieving fame on the Continent during the eighth and ninth centuries. Alcuin, a product of the Northumbrian school at York and one of the scholars called by Charlemagne to assist in his ecclesiastical and cultural reforms, worked during his last years at Tours.
The Irish and Anglo-Saxon presence is often indicated by the use in manuscripts of 'Insular' scripts and abbreviations. (A ninth-century booklist from St Gall groups such books under the heading Libri Scottice Scripti.) More spectacular are the manuscripts decorated in the Hiberno-Saxon style. Some like the Echternach Gospels or the Irish Gospel books at St Gall were perhaps imported. Others like the Cutbercht Gospels (written perhaps at Salzburg) were made on the Continent. The initials of such books were widely imitated in Carolingian manuscripts and in the ninth century the style became the basis for the decoration of the 'Franco-Saxon' group of manuscripts.
Such influences cannot easily be mapped. The places selected here are major Irish and Anglo-Saxon foundations and/or centres to which books with Insular characteristics have been plausibly attributed.
J. Higgitt
World History
