The Latin script in Ireland

The history of Insular script – by this term we understand the Irish, the other Celtic scripts, and the Anglo-Saxon together – must begin with the conversion of the Irish to Christianity in the fifth century and their entry into the Latin church in the late patristic period. Latin writing established itself in Ireland, introduced by Christianity, and thereby expanded for the first time beyond the frontiers of the Imperium Romanum. The script that Palladius, Patrick, and others brought to Ireland would have been an uncomplicated one.

The series of surviving monuments of Latin script by definitely Irish hands (with which later developments in Ireland can be connected) begins probably not before the end of the sixth century, that is to say, a century and a half after Patrick. These are: the wax tablets with psalter texts, from Springmount bog, and the Codex Usserianus I (Old Latin gospels) that are closely related to one another; the Orosius (probably written in Bobbio c. 614); the psalter of St Columba (Cathach); the St Gall Isidore fragment; gospel fragments in Durham A II 10 and others, and the Munich palimpsest sacramentary.