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The history of e-book collections and libraries on the islands of Great Britain and Ireland begins with Celtic Britain. This region inherited the literary culture of the Roman Empire, while it received from the same source in the 4th century the new official faith of Christianity with its e-book culture centered on the Bible and Christian liturgy. Thus, Celtic Britain had two traditions of literary learning, each with its own type of books: the learning of the ancient Roman schools with their classical teaching; and the monastic schools of past antiquity, for whom the highest expression of wisdom is the examination of the Scriptures. Although no physical evidence of the first type of learning has survived, their lifestyles can be inferred from British writers such as Pelagius and Gildas, who demonstrate in their Latin writings their mastery of classical prose taste and their wisdom as Roman poets. Both also testify to the availability of Christian literature in Celtic Britain, as evidenced by their deep wisdom of the Bible and Christian writers such as Jerome, Sulpicius Severus and Orosius.
Ireland was never part of the Roman Empire and did not directly inherit its classical or Christian knowledge. In addition, Irish culture was oral at the time, with the exception of the limited use of a specialized script known as ogam. In the fifth century, Ireland gained Christianity and the literary culture that accompanied it, probably at most thanks to British missionaries such as St. Patrick. The British influence on the formation of Irish Christian culture is evident in the presence of Old Irish words borrowed from the British vernacular, many of which have an ecclesiastical character; the formation of a new alphabet for Irish writing based on the Latin alphabet as pronounced by British speakers; and the old and outdated features of Irish manuscript production and writing, possibly based on British models.