Madam, - There is no doubt among scholars about the central importance of the medieval Irish in the creation of Western civilisation.
One hardly needs to do more than mention the great Irish illuminated manuscripts, and such figures of European standing as Columba, Columbanus, Sedulius Scottus, and Eriugena - all the subjects of international scholarship now, and for the last two centuries or more. One can estimate the civility of a nation by its respect for its cultural heritage. How do we stand?
Let us look at some universities. University College Dublin is the largest university in the State. Its chair of medieval history, once occupied by the distinguished church historian Aubrey Gwynn and by F.X. Martin, who battled to preserve Viking Dublin, has been vacant for 14 years. Its chair of Late Latin and palaeography, where the great Ludwig Bieler taught, and the only chair of Irish Latin in the world, has been vacant for 12 years.
The chair of early Irish history, once occupied by Eoin MacNeill, has been vacant for five years. The chair of Old Irish, once held by Osborn Bergin, a founding father of Celtic Studies and the teacher of some of the greatest Celtic scholars of the 20th century, has just fallen vacant, and UCD appears in no hurry to fill it.
This is either drift or policy. If drift, it betrays an appalling neglect of one of the most creative phases in Irish culture when Irish scholars abroad brought learning - grammar, law, theology, philosophy, and hermeneutics - to a Europe very glad to receive them, and when Irish scholars at home, among many achievements, created the earliest and the richest European vernacular literature. If policy, this is surely evidence of an alarming philistinism at the heart of one of our premier universities. One would like to know what UCD's incoming president, Prof Brady, intends to do about this sorry state of affairs.
Lest Trinity College Dublin take any adversarial pleasure in UCD's shortcomings, its own failure must be revealed: its chair of medieval history, once occupied by such eminent scholars as Lydon, Otway-Ruthven, and Curtis, is now vacant for 10 years, and there is nothing to suggest that the university proposes to fill it. And where the metropolitan universities go, others may tend to follow.
Is this because of lack of money? No. All these chairs were filled in the 1960s when we were much poorer than we are now, and most were filled in the 1920s and 1930s when we were truly impoverished. Lack of resources? Hardly, when both universities are expanding and engaged in the keenest competition over their schools of commerce and like undertakings.
This must, then, be the deliberate decision of the university authorities, and it is a philistinism no civilised nation can tolerate. - Yours etc.,
Prof DONNCHADH Ó CORRÁIN, Department of History, University College Cork.