The Monk of Birr is the anonymous author of the verses on the Twelve Apostles of Ireland, naming the twelve disciples who gathered around Finnian of Clonard at his school on the Boyne — the ’twelve apostles of Ireland’ among them Columba, the two Ciaráns, Brendan and Molaise. Written in the tenth or eleventh century, it preserves the scholastic tradition of the second generation of Irish saints.