But in Bede’s time, and for centuries afterwards, monasteries and cathedrals also cared for the pagan leftovers of Rome. Long before the official Renaissance brought back classical culture and Latin texts, which would not have been possible if nobody had bothered to preserve them in the first place, the Irish were fussing with Virgil; when a seventh-century schoolmaster says he’s just had some valuable copies from ‘the Romans’ he might just possibly mean the ones in Rome, but more likely he means the Irish scholars influenced by Rome.
