THE WORLD'S DEBT TO THE IRISH 
calibre before any other educational institution of 
the west, became the center of the educational world 
of its time. What it meant for education in Ireland 
can be readily perceived from Mrs. Green's account 
of it in her volume “The Irish Nationality.” 
“There was already the beginning of a university 
in the ancient school of Armagh lying on the famous 
hill where for long ages the royal tombs of the 
O’Neills had been preserved. ‘The strong burh of 
Tara has died,’ they said, ‘while Armagh lives filled 
with learned champions.” It now rose to a great 
position. With its three thousand scholars, famous 
for its teachers, under its high-ollave Gorman who 
spent twenty-one years of study, from 1133 to 1154, 
in England and France, it became in fact the na- 
tional university for the Irish race in Ireland and 
Scotland. It was appointed that every lector in any 
church in Ireland must take there a degree; and in 
1169 the high-king Ruaidhri O’Conor gave the first 
annual grant to maintain a professor at Armagh 
‘for all the Irish and the Scots.’ ” 
The two words are used because at this time the 
distinction between the two peoples was being recog- 
nized. 
The prestige of Armagh was shared by many 
other monastic schools in the early days. Professor 
Zimmer in giving a formal estimate of the standard 
of learning in the monasteries of Ireland does not 
hesitate to proclaim his thoroughgoing recognition 
of their very definite efforts to provide an excellent 
education. 
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