ABSTRACT
While it is well-known that the scriptoria of the Irish Benedictine monasteries in Germany, called Schottenkloster, produced a large number of manuscripts, not many of these have survived.1 This is the more lamentable because the employment as scribes of Marianus Scotus (alias Muiredach Mac Robartaig) and his companions by the abbesses of two convents at Regensburg was the reason for the setting up of the first Irish colony there c. 1080.2 Subsequently, to cater for an ever increasing stream of compatriots, the Irish monastery dedicated to St James was consecrated in Regensburg in 1111. A succession of competent abbots not only ensured papal and imperial privileges for this church, but also led to the foundation of a network of affiliated monasteries, of which those at Würzburg, Erfurt, Vienna, Konstanz and Niirnberg were most famous. During the twelfth century the scriptoria of these houses produced a great variety of texts, such as calendars and necrologies, to address the need for liturgical books, annals and chronicles, and, as might be expected, saints' Lives. This latter category included Lives of Irish saints, some of which are still extant, for example in the manuscripts of the Magnum Legendarium Austriacum.
