A map of Europe showing the monasteries where Irish and Scottish monks had settled in the 10th–12th centuries, including the Schottenkirche, in what is now southern Germany.
and economic growth lead to an increase in the number of towns. There were advances in philosophy, theology and law, leading to the formation of the first universities in Europe. Irish monks were renowned for their scholarship and were welcomed into monastic communities and universities across Europe. By the mid-1100s, there were several Irish monasteries called Schottenkirche (literally ‘Irish monasteries’) of the Benedictine order in southern Germany (Fig. 26.1).
The Normans (who were, incidentally, direct descendants of the Vikings who settled in northern France) were powerful colonists, invading Britain in 1066, taking over southern Italy and leading the First Crusade which captured Jerusalem in 1099. In Rome, the pope was keen to assert papal authority
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following periods of war and confusion in parts of Europe. Monastic orders were reorganised and new ones formed to improve and standardise religious practice.
Church Reform The Irish Church had developed its own organisation based on allegiances between monasteries. In the rest of Europe, the Church was organised with the pope at the head, then cardinals, archbishops, bishops and priests. Irish monks in Europe and the new European monastic orders coming into Ireland brought word of these irregularities back to the authorities on the continent, who set about bringing the Irish Church into line.
NEW APPRECIATING ART IRELAND AND ITS PLACE IN THE WIDER WORLD
