These schools and churches gradually made their way throughout the whole country; some of the oldest of them are still to be seen, as at Donaghpatrick, Clonmacnoise and Glendalough.  Roofed with stone, they are well fitted to resist the waste of time.  An intense spiritual and moral life inspired the students, a life rich also in purely intellectual and artistic force.  The ancient churches speak for themselves; the artistic spirit of the time is splendidly embodied in the famous Latin manuscript of the Gospels, called the Book of Kells, the most beautiful specimen of illumination in the world.  The wonderful colored initial letters reproduce and develop the designs of the old gold work, the motives of which came, it would seem, from the Baltic, with the De Danaan tribes.  We can judge of the quiet and security of the early disciples at Kells, the comfort and amenity of their daily life, the spirit of comity and good-will, the purity of inspiration of that early time, by the artistic truth and beauty of these illuminated pages and the perfection with which the work was done.  Refined and difficult arts are the evidence of refined feeling, abundant moral and spiritual force, and a certain material security and ease surrounding the artist.  When these arts are freely offered in the service of religion, they are further evidence of widespread fervor and aspiration, a high and worthy ideal of life.

Yet we shall be quite wrong if we imagine an era of peace and security following the epoch of the first great Messenger.  Nothing is further from the truth.  The old tribal strife continued for long centuries; the instincts which inspired it are, even now, not quite outworn.  Chief continued to war against chief, province against province, tribe against tribe, even among the fervent converts of the first teachers.

Saint Brigid is one of the great figures in the epoch immediately succeeding the first coming of the Word.  She was the foundress of a school of religious teaching for women at Kildare, or Killdara, “The Church of the Oak-woods,” whose name still records her work.  Her work, her genius, her power, the immense spiritual influence for good which flowed from her, entitle her to be remembered with the women of apostolic times, who devoted their whole lives to the service of the divine.  We have seen the esteem in which women were always held in Ireland.  St. Brigid and those who followed in her steps gave effect to that high estimation, and turned it to a more spiritual quality, so that now, as in all past centuries, the ideal of womanly purity is higher in Ireland than in any country in the world.

This great soul departed from earthly life in the year 525, a generation after the death of the first Messenger.  To show how the old order continued with the new, we may record the words of the Chronicler for the following year:  “526:  The battle of Eiblinne, by Muirceartac son of Erc; the battle of Mag-Ailbe; the battle of Almain; the battle of Ceann-eic; the plundering of the Cliacs; and the battle of Eidne against the men of Connacht.”  Three of these battles were fought at no great distance from St. Brigid’s Convent.