The latest commentators on the question of St. Declan's period--and
they happen to be amongst the most weighty--argue strongly in favour
of the pre-Patrician mission (Cfr. Prof. Kuno Meyer, "Learning
Ireland in the Fifth Century"). Discussing the way in which letters
first reached our distant island of the west and the causes which led
to the proficiency of sixth-century Ireland in classical learning
Zimmer and Meyer contend that the seeds of that literary culture,
which flourished in Ireland of the sixth century, had been sown
therein in the first and second decades of the preceding century by
Gaulish scholars who had fled from their own country owing to
invasion of the latter by Goths and other barbarians. The fact that
these scholars, who were mostly Christians, sought asylum in Ireland
indicates that Christianity had already penetrated thither, or at any
rate that it was known and tolerated there. Dr. Meyer answers the
objection that if so large and so important an invasion of scholars
took place we ought have some reference to the fact in the Irish
annals. The annals, he replies, are of local origin and they rarely
refer in their oldest parts to national events: moreover they are
very meagre in their information about the fifth century. One Irish
reference to the Gaulish scholars is, however, adduced in
corroboration; it occurs in that well known passage in St. Patrick's
"Confessio" where the saint cries out against certain "rhetoricians"
in Ireland who were hostile to him and pagan,--"You rhetoricians who
do not know the Lord, hear and search Who it was that called me up,
fool though I be, from the midst of those who think themselves wise
and skilled in the law and mighty orators and powerful in
everything." Who were these "rhetorici" that have made this passage
so difficult for commentators and have caused so various
constructions to be put upon it? It is clear, the professor