Donatus of Fiesole: Virgil and Ireland

Donatus of Fiesole was one of the many Irishmen who scattered across europe in the eighth and ninth centuries, ending up as bishops and later as somewhat dimly remembered local saints. He is known to us as the author of a number of poems, including one on St. Brigid. Donatus visted Rome on a pligrimage, on his way back, he passed through he pretty Tuscan hill town of Fiesole, near Florence, where the inhabitants, acting on a miraculous pealing of the cathedral's bell, acclaimed the rather reticent Irishman as bishop (becoming a bishop could clearly be a fairly random process in ninth century Tuscany). Donatus spent the rest of his life in Fiesole, teaching and tending to his flock. upon his death, he was buried in the cathedral there, his tomb bore a verse epitaph of his own composition. He was acclaimed as a saint (Fiesole's other Saint is a St. Romulus), his feast is celebrated on 22 October (One of the few errors I've encountered in the New History of Ireland is that the index conflates our Donatus with the much earlier grammarian of the same name. It does the same to Sedulius Scottus, mixing him up with the author of the Carmen Paschale). Donatus appears to have been fond of Virgil, his farewell to his brethren includes a line from the fourth Eclogue. Virgil was a favourite of a number of Irish monks, even if some of them were less keen: one of them commented ' ni réid chene!' (he's not easy either!) next to the statement 'Virgil was a great poet' in his Grammar. One Irish Grammarian even took the name Publius Virgilius Maro. The poem below, as well as being an attractive description of Ireland, cited as a precursor of the later genre of the aisling poem, also shows the extent of Donatus' appreciation of the Roman poet:

Finibus occiduis describitur optima tellus

nomine et antiquis Scottia scripta libris.

dives opum, argenti, gemmarum, vestis et auri,

commoda corporibus, aere, putre solo.

melle fluit et lacte Scottia campis,

vestibus atque armis, frugibus, arte, viris.

ursorum rabies nulla est ibi, saeva leonum

semina nec umquam Scottica terra tulit.

nulla venena nocent nec serpens serpit in herba

nec conquesta canit garrula rana lacu.

in qua Scottorum gentes habitare merentur,

inclita gens hominum milite, pace, fide.

Donatus isn't the only poet from this period to write in this strain, a poem survives by a certain Colman addressed to a younger colleague who is leaving from home, which has its own Virgilian reminiscences which do much to add to the air of wistful melancholy which pervades the poem. Our little poem contains a number of Virgilian echoes and reminiscences, most of which are taken from the laudes Italiae, the passage in the Second Georgic where Virgil praises the beauty and fertility of Italy. for example, the phrase ursorum rabies recalls the rabidae tigres of of Georgic II 151, while the phrase saeva leonum / semina is taken directly Virgil's poem. The boast about Ireland's freedom from snakes echoes and goes one better than Virgil's claim that Italy is free from poisonous animals at Georgic II 153 - 154. What more apt passage for Donatus to draw upon for his description of Ireland than Virgil's celebration of his own native land and Donatus' adoptive home?