333 



SECTION IV. 



Sciences, Learning, and Learned Men. 



Ireland still struggled to maintain its high character for learn- 

 ing and education, and even in the eleventh century, " that dark 

 period of the middle age,"* Sulgenus Bishop of Saint Davids, 



" Exemplo patrum commotus amore legend!, 

 Ivit ad Hibemos sophia mirabili claros ; 



Ast ibi per denos trinos jam placidus annos 

 Congregat immensam pretioso pond ere massam, 

 Protinus arguta thesaurum roente recondens; 

 Post haec ad patriam remeans jam dogmate claras."f 



Tigernach (ad ann. 1040, &c.) mentions several schools as of his 

 day flourishing in the island, while that of Armagh still seems to 

 have asserted its pre-eminence ; the synod held at Clane has been 

 already alluded to, J where it was decreed " that none should for the 

 time to come be admitted public readers in divinity, but such as had 

 been students in the University of Armagh ;"§ and, adds Harris, "in 

 the year 1169, Roderic O'Conor, King of Ireland, enlarged the sti- 

 pend of the chief master of this academy, by binding himself and his 

 successors to the payment of a pension of ten oxen yearly to him and 

 his successors, on condition that the " studium generale " or public 

 school, should be continued and kept open for all students who should 



* Campbell's Strictures, p. 101. 



f Verses by Sulgenus Junior, cited O'Conor, Rer. Hib. Script, vol. iv. p. 353. 



X Ante, p. 325. § Ware's Antiquities, p. 241. 



