The Schottenkloster or Irish Monasteries, a network of Irish Benedictine monasteries extending from Rosscarbery to Kiev.
As Irish pilgrims travelled across Europe, monasteries were established in the places where they settled.
None of the haphazard wanderings of the early Irish saints about these medieval pilgrims. They knew where they were going. Most of them to Rome, Jerusalem or Compostela and in those days such pilgrimages, they were daunting.
This excerpt from the 'Radharc film 'When The Irish Were Scots' shows the Benedictine Abbey of Melk in Austria, where a shrine stands to Coloman, son of Máel-Sechnaill II, High King of Ireland.
In the year 1012, Coloman had set out from Ireland on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. On his journey along the Danube he was arrested as a spy and hanged at Stockerau near Vienna. The martyred Irish man was subsequently made an Austrian Saint. A convent now stands on the site where Coloman was slain.
Coloman was just one of a host of Irish pilgrims to Europe,
At a time when the Irish were better known as the Scots.
'Radharc: When The Irish Were Scots' was first broadcast on 8 February 1982. The narrator is Cyril Cusack.
