_Astronomy_ had a double interest for the Irish monks. Being great travellers in an age when they had no compass to direct their way the “study of the stars” was a matter of practical interest and possibly they were more observant of the courses of the heavenly bodies than the majority of us are to-day. Again, the ability to compute the date of Easter was a matter of great importance in ecclesiastical circles in those days. The controversies which centred around the Easter question caused many Irish monks to give special attention to practical methods of computing the date of Easter. They were also led to examine the history of the different cycles in use and finally they were led to inquire into the theoretical aspect of the science of Astronomy. In the present chapter we referred to the famous Paschal Epistle of Cummian Fada which showed that he was at one and the same time an accomplished classical scholar and an astronomer of no mean ability versed in all astronomical literature of his time. Other great astronomers were Virgilius, Dicuil and Dungal, of whom we shall have something to say in our next chapter when dealing with the scope of Irish monastic scholarship. Of all the secular sciences Astronomy was perhaps the most popular with Irish monastic scholars the superiority of whose scholarship in this regard is acknowledged by all writers of the early Middle Ages.[475]
We see, then, that though the actual amount of mathematical and scientific knowledge possessed by the Irish monks was small they freely taught all that was known at the time in Western Europe and, limited as was their educational equipment, we may safely conclude that it represented the maximum attainments in western scientific knowledge prior to the tenth century.
While we have no means of determining the precise way in which the curriculum was organised, we may safely conclude that it embraced the following groups of studies:
1. _Vernacular Studies_: The Irish language, its grammar, metrics, literature both secular and religious, prose and poetry, history, antiquities, etc.[476]
2. _Christian Studies_: Theology, especially the study of the Scriptures with the commentaries of the Fathers thereon, and in the ninth century at least the study of Dialectics and Philosophy was pursued with success.