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The Hinges of History #1
How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe
The perfect St. Patrick's Day gift, and a book in the best tradition of popular history -- the untold story of Ireland's role in maintaining Western culture while the Dark Ages settled on Europe. Every year millions of Americans celebrate St. Patrick's Day, but they may not be aware of how great an influence St. Patrick was on the subsequent history of civilization. Not only did he bring Christianity to Ireland, he instilled a sense of literacy and learning that would create the conditions that allowed Ireland to become "the isle of saints and scholars" -- and thus preserve Western culture while Europe was being overrun by barbarians. In this entertaining and compelling narrative, Thomas Cahill tells the story of how Europe evolved from the classical age of Rome to the medieval era. Without Ireland, the transition could not have taken place. Not only did Irish monks and scribes maintain the very record of Western civilization -- copying manuscripts of Greek and Latin writers, both pagan and Christian, while libraries and learning on the continent were forever lost -- they brought their uniquely Irish world-view to the task. As Cahill delightfully illustrates, so much of the liveliness we associate with medieval culture has its roots in Ireland. When the seeds of culture were replanted on the European continent, it was from Ireland that they were germinated. In the tradition of Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror, How The Irish Saved Civilization reconstructs an era that few know about but which is central to understanding our past and our cultural heritage. But it conveys its knowledge with a winking wit that aptly captures the sensibility of the unsung Irish who relaunched civilization.
From the Hardcover edition.
From the Hardcover edition.
8 pages, Audio CD
First published February 15, 1995
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About the author
Thomas Cahill
38 books583 followersBorn in New York City to Irish-American parents and raised in Queens and the Bronx, Cahill was educated by Jesuits and studied ancient Greek and Latin. He continued his study of Greek and Latin literature, as well as medieval philosophy, scripture and theology, at Fordham University, where he completed a B.A. in classical literature and philosophy in 1964, and a pontifical degree in philosophy in 1965. He went on to complete his M.F.A. in film and dramatic literature at Columbia University in 1968.
In anticipation of writing The Gifts of the Jews, Cahill studied scripture at Union Theological Seminary in New York, and spent two years as a Visiting Scholar at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, where he studied Hebrew and the Hebrew Bible. He also reads French and Italian. In 1999, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Alfred University in New York.
Cahill has taught at Queens College, Fordham University, and Seton Hall University, served as the North American education correspondent for The Times of London, and was for many years a regular contributor to the Los Angeles Times Book Review. Prior to retiring to write full time, he was the Director of Religious Publishing at Doubleday for six years. He and his wife, Susan, also an author, divide their time between New York and Rome.
—Wikipedia
In anticipation of writing The Gifts of the Jews, Cahill studied scripture at Union Theological Seminary in New York, and spent two years as a Visiting Scholar at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, where he studied Hebrew and the Hebrew Bible. He also reads French and Italian. In 1999, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Alfred University in New York.
Cahill has taught at Queens College, Fordham University, and Seton Hall University, served as the North American education correspondent for The Times of London, and was for many years a regular contributor to the Los Angeles Times Book Review. Prior to retiring to write full time, he was the Director of Religious Publishing at Doubleday for six years. He and his wife, Susan, also an author, divide their time between New York and Rome.
—Wikipedia
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 2,309 reviews
March 11, 2008
Mind-numbingly written, building up to a nearly inconsequential conclusion on how Irish monks might have helped preserve some of Europe's classic literature. I'm descended from the Irish and was looking forward to a little nationalist pride, but this failed by underdelivering from its title and being nearly unreadable from the first chapter. It hurts even worse to hear that the claims may have been false.
March 19, 2008
This was awful. Many reviews say things like "charming" and "pleasant," but I thought it was tedious and meandering. Not all history has to be chronological; there's interesting stuff in here but it's too long with details of Roman society. Also, the author writes like a blow-hard, and interjects things like "Alas!" and "Dear Reader" and "It is up to the reader to decide." That kind of stuff irritates me to no end.
Searching for info online, I found references that refute much of what the author posits, including info about St. Patrick. Granted, the author (in tedious and blow-harded notes) acknowledges that no one can say exactly what happened, but he's disguising mythology and folklore as truth.
Searching for info online, I found references that refute much of what the author posits, including info about St. Patrick. Granted, the author (in tedious and blow-harded notes) acknowledges that no one can say exactly what happened, but he's disguising mythology and folklore as truth.
May 31, 2017
This is the kind of book where the title really seems to over-commit to an idea and overstate the reality of history. I went into this book thinking that Cahill was surely using hyperbole to say that the Irish saved civilization. He may be, but this is still a remarkable and relevant history. This is a great, great book that deserves the wide readership it has received.
The book begins with a retelling of the fall of Rome. Cahill does this to show the peril in which Western Civilization was steeped with the fall of Rome. He makes it clear that Rome fell for good reason--it was top heavy, indolent, decadent, and diseased. But there was much that merited preservation--the libraries of Ancient Rome and Roman learning were in great peril. The barbarian hordes were pagan and illiterate and gave no consideration to books of any kind.
Enter St. Patrick. Here is where the Irish come to the rescue of the West. Some know some of Patrick's story, and Cahill does a good job of telling a condensed version. Patrick was not the traditional type of bishop or missionary--for his formative years were spent as a shepherd and slave. He was not learned as many on the continent. He brought Christianity to Ireland--but apart from the traditional type of Roman Catholic influence. His theology was more catholic, than Catholic. This distinction is significant, as it left Irish Christianity to be more heavily influenced by Irish culture and language than anywhere else on the continent where the Romans held sway.
As Irish Christianity grew and matured, it was a kind of rival to Roman Catholicism. The Irish sent abbots and monks all over the pagan and backwater continent and brought Christianity back where it had been lost or never really held influence. They copied manuscripts and handed them down through generations when they'd been lost on the continent. They wrote in the vernacular Irish language--the first time a vernacular language was written down. This surely led to the Protestant insistence on the Bible being translated into the languages of the people, though Cahill does not make this connection specifically.
Many are aware of the manner in which the Irish monks preserved the literature of the Roman Empire, but this was only the part of it. The fingerprints of Irish monks and missionaries are all over a wide band of Great Britain and Europe. This is perhaps the most important legacy of the Irish during the Dark Ages. They restored Christian learning in Europe and sowed the seeds for the Renaissance and the Reformation.
In his conclusion, Cahill observes that it will be the marginalized of the world that will preserve the best of today in the next crisis of the West. It will not be the powerful, the influential, and certainly not the rich. I think his thesis is sound, for this is the way of God--he humbles the proud and exalts the humble. Thank God for the tradition of faithful Irish saints.
I must add one more thing that I am seeing more and more as I've read recently of the ancient world. The un-Christianized world is remarkably barbaric--vicious almost beyond imagination. Cahill shows the pagan Irish and compares them to other similar Iron-Age cultures. It is clear their worldview and life stand in stark contrast to that of today. We take so much for granted in our Christianized cultures. Yes, we've lost so much of this heritage and are working to squander it. But our world is tame and predictable compared to that of the ancient world. The ancients were a vicious lot--violently demonic in truth. We can scarcely even imagine the truth of this today, for it is so unimaginable as to be thought fictitious. But it was real, and it is there for the historian and archaeologist to see. May this be a lesson to those who dismiss the Christian transformation of cultures that has come with the advancement of the gospel. Christ has truly transformed the world from one of vicious, violent, and demonic forces into his advancing kingdom of light and grace.
In this way, this book is not simply about the way the "Irish Saved Civilization" but a retelling of the great transformation the world has undergone from barbarism to Christian peace through the spreading of the gospel in Europe. The best part of the book is the very end where Cahill projects this model on the future. For that is what history is truly about--how the lessons of yesterday become models for tomorrow. In this case, we may take great hope in the advancing gospel in Africa, Asia, and South America. I suspect that the resurgence of Western Christianity will largely be due to the recolonization of the West by the Third World.
This is a great book--one of my favorites.
The book begins with a retelling of the fall of Rome. Cahill does this to show the peril in which Western Civilization was steeped with the fall of Rome. He makes it clear that Rome fell for good reason--it was top heavy, indolent, decadent, and diseased. But there was much that merited preservation--the libraries of Ancient Rome and Roman learning were in great peril. The barbarian hordes were pagan and illiterate and gave no consideration to books of any kind.
Enter St. Patrick. Here is where the Irish come to the rescue of the West. Some know some of Patrick's story, and Cahill does a good job of telling a condensed version. Patrick was not the traditional type of bishop or missionary--for his formative years were spent as a shepherd and slave. He was not learned as many on the continent. He brought Christianity to Ireland--but apart from the traditional type of Roman Catholic influence. His theology was more catholic, than Catholic. This distinction is significant, as it left Irish Christianity to be more heavily influenced by Irish culture and language than anywhere else on the continent where the Romans held sway.
As Irish Christianity grew and matured, it was a kind of rival to Roman Catholicism. The Irish sent abbots and monks all over the pagan and backwater continent and brought Christianity back where it had been lost or never really held influence. They copied manuscripts and handed them down through generations when they'd been lost on the continent. They wrote in the vernacular Irish language--the first time a vernacular language was written down. This surely led to the Protestant insistence on the Bible being translated into the languages of the people, though Cahill does not make this connection specifically.
Many are aware of the manner in which the Irish monks preserved the literature of the Roman Empire, but this was only the part of it. The fingerprints of Irish monks and missionaries are all over a wide band of Great Britain and Europe. This is perhaps the most important legacy of the Irish during the Dark Ages. They restored Christian learning in Europe and sowed the seeds for the Renaissance and the Reformation.
In his conclusion, Cahill observes that it will be the marginalized of the world that will preserve the best of today in the next crisis of the West. It will not be the powerful, the influential, and certainly not the rich. I think his thesis is sound, for this is the way of God--he humbles the proud and exalts the humble. Thank God for the tradition of faithful Irish saints.
I must add one more thing that I am seeing more and more as I've read recently of the ancient world. The un-Christianized world is remarkably barbaric--vicious almost beyond imagination. Cahill shows the pagan Irish and compares them to other similar Iron-Age cultures. It is clear their worldview and life stand in stark contrast to that of today. We take so much for granted in our Christianized cultures. Yes, we've lost so much of this heritage and are working to squander it. But our world is tame and predictable compared to that of the ancient world. The ancients were a vicious lot--violently demonic in truth. We can scarcely even imagine the truth of this today, for it is so unimaginable as to be thought fictitious. But it was real, and it is there for the historian and archaeologist to see. May this be a lesson to those who dismiss the Christian transformation of cultures that has come with the advancement of the gospel. Christ has truly transformed the world from one of vicious, violent, and demonic forces into his advancing kingdom of light and grace.
In this way, this book is not simply about the way the "Irish Saved Civilization" but a retelling of the great transformation the world has undergone from barbarism to Christian peace through the spreading of the gospel in Europe. The best part of the book is the very end where Cahill projects this model on the future. For that is what history is truly about--how the lessons of yesterday become models for tomorrow. In this case, we may take great hope in the advancing gospel in Africa, Asia, and South America. I suspect that the resurgence of Western Christianity will largely be due to the recolonization of the West by the Third World.
This is a great book--one of my favorites.
September 29, 2012
I do get why this book on "How the Irish Saved Civilization" was a bestseller. Not only is it the perfect gift for St Patrick's Day, it is entertaining and readable. But I also found it superficial and not reliable. It may be the contrast with some really fine histories and biographies I've read lately, but several things in this book made it suspect to me. Cahill isn't a historian. The short biography at the end says only that he has a MFA in "Film and Dramatic Literature" and that he has studied theology. His pro-Catholic bias is notable throughout. (He even takes gratuitous slams at Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses.) I don't claim a writer of a solid history has to be a historian--some of those great histories and biographies recently read were by journalists. And all writers have their take, from conservative to Marxist, that are evident to me. But notably, the good ones, whatever their background or worldview, have pages of sources and notes to back up their claims--this didn't.
But the reason I ended up feeling the book was dubious was the actual content, starting with the title and the very premise: Irish monks saved civilization by preserving classical literature. Other reviewers have pointed out that the Western world isn't the whole of civilization. (Even as Cahill at one point conflates "the whole of the civilized world" with the Roman Empire. What about China, for instance?) And others preserved the old Latin learning. Not just in Europe, the Eastern Roman Empire remained in existence until 1453. Cahill though claims the Irish were more liberal in what they copied than those on the continent. And of the Eastern Romans, he claimed that the "literature of ancient Greece were well enough preserved at Byzantium, but Latin literature would almost certainly surely have been lost without the Irish." I find that hard to credit. They didn't read Vergil at Constantinople?
I think part of why I also find it hard to swallow his encomium to Christianity as a preserver of classical Greek and Roman civilization is that it also did so much to destroy it. One poignant illustration of that is the fate of the works of Sappho. Cahill himself notes that among the treasures of antiquity lost were almost all her poetry. What he doesn't tell you is that her poems were preserved until nearly A.D 1000, at least according to A Book of Woman Poets, "when a wrathful church destroyed whatever it could find. In 1073 her writings were publicly burned in Rome and Constantinople by order of Pope Gregory VIII." So, I guess I wonder, why is it these "great gift-givers" of civilization didn't preserve her for us?
But Cahill doesn't give me a good answer for this, especially because so little of the book even focuses on that part of the story. We don't get to Ireland at all until Part III starting on page 71. The section that tells us how the Irish saved this learning doesn't begin until Part VI on page 145--in a book of 218 pages. Between that we get a biography of St Patrick, who Cahill claimed was "the first human being in the history of the world to speak out unequivocally against slavery." And he'd be wrong by nearly a millennium--look up the "Cyrus Cylinder," called the "first charter of human rights" from the Persian king who ended the Jewish Babylonian exile--a biblical scholar such as Cahill should know better.
Other things irked me. Particularly the comparison of the barbarian "hordes" that destroyed Rome to "the Mexicans, Haitians, and other dispossessed peoples seeking illegal entry" to the United States. It's a point he repeats at the end, and seemed all the more ironic considering Cahill's condemnation of the prejudice their fellow Catholics, the Irish, experienced in America. It's not that there weren't interesting points in the book I'd like to read more about. Such as the case for Augustine's Confessions as the first real autobiography and "story of a soul" and the indomitable Brigid of Kildare, an abbess with the power of a bishop. Cahill might even be right in his take on history--but I didn't find the case presented in his book convincing.
But the reason I ended up feeling the book was dubious was the actual content, starting with the title and the very premise: Irish monks saved civilization by preserving classical literature. Other reviewers have pointed out that the Western world isn't the whole of civilization. (Even as Cahill at one point conflates "the whole of the civilized world" with the Roman Empire. What about China, for instance?) And others preserved the old Latin learning. Not just in Europe, the Eastern Roman Empire remained in existence until 1453. Cahill though claims the Irish were more liberal in what they copied than those on the continent. And of the Eastern Romans, he claimed that the "literature of ancient Greece were well enough preserved at Byzantium, but Latin literature would almost certainly surely have been lost without the Irish." I find that hard to credit. They didn't read Vergil at Constantinople?
I think part of why I also find it hard to swallow his encomium to Christianity as a preserver of classical Greek and Roman civilization is that it also did so much to destroy it. One poignant illustration of that is the fate of the works of Sappho. Cahill himself notes that among the treasures of antiquity lost were almost all her poetry. What he doesn't tell you is that her poems were preserved until nearly A.D 1000, at least according to A Book of Woman Poets, "when a wrathful church destroyed whatever it could find. In 1073 her writings were publicly burned in Rome and Constantinople by order of Pope Gregory VIII." So, I guess I wonder, why is it these "great gift-givers" of civilization didn't preserve her for us?
But Cahill doesn't give me a good answer for this, especially because so little of the book even focuses on that part of the story. We don't get to Ireland at all until Part III starting on page 71. The section that tells us how the Irish saved this learning doesn't begin until Part VI on page 145--in a book of 218 pages. Between that we get a biography of St Patrick, who Cahill claimed was "the first human being in the history of the world to speak out unequivocally against slavery." And he'd be wrong by nearly a millennium--look up the "Cyrus Cylinder," called the "first charter of human rights" from the Persian king who ended the Jewish Babylonian exile--a biblical scholar such as Cahill should know better.
Other things irked me. Particularly the comparison of the barbarian "hordes" that destroyed Rome to "the Mexicans, Haitians, and other dispossessed peoples seeking illegal entry" to the United States. It's a point he repeats at the end, and seemed all the more ironic considering Cahill's condemnation of the prejudice their fellow Catholics, the Irish, experienced in America. It's not that there weren't interesting points in the book I'd like to read more about. Such as the case for Augustine's Confessions as the first real autobiography and "story of a soul" and the indomitable Brigid of Kildare, an abbess with the power of a bishop. Cahill might even be right in his take on history--but I didn't find the case presented in his book convincing.
January 3, 2011
I've noticed that history books on Goodreads are often given lower star ratings by people who are upset to find that the author was using information to present a cohesive thesis rather than providing an unbiased account. Although it is right to bring up slant in evaluating the truth of a thesis, it's somewhat sad to see these complaints for Cahill's defense of pre-Joycean Irish civilization when one of Cahill's major arguments is that biased English historians prevented any appreciation of Irish civilization in the past. I haven't read enough on Irish history to know if Cahill's desire to show an "unblemished" era of Irish greatness allows him to present Ireland entirely falsely, but I can't help thinking that even if it does, it's about time that the early Christian Irish get a book slanted towards them.
And though I want to give Cahill and his peaceful, practically polytheistic Christians as much chance to greatness as I can, I will admit that Cahill is at least exaggerating the title. The Irish didn't exactly "Save Civilization"; they saved Latin writing of the pre-Christian Roman Empire, thus allowing us to read Cicero and Seneca today. Cahill, to his credit, seems to use that contribution of the Irish as only a part of his claim for an Irish golden age. The Irish's greatest contribution to civilization, he argues, was their counter-Augustinian Christianity. In the Irish hey-day, St. Patrick wrote of God's love for all creatures and people despite their foibles, the Irish developed universities and brought limited literacy to lay people, and Irish missionaries brought their tolerant Christian beliefs and love of writing across Europe.
Cahill is a gentle writer, often stopping to say, "Let us explore this world a little more before we move on," and presenting a picture of what life may have been like in the capital in the last century of the Western Roman Empire, and in Britain, and also in Ireland. I particularly enjoyed hearing about the miseries of Roman tax collectors and shepherds all over. Cahill is a convincing writer too. His version of Irish history may be as compelling for the Irish today as the Christian resurrection was for the Irish of St. Patrick's day.
I only wish that Cahill had made the book longer and more scholarly. As fascinating as the epic Tain is, it doesn't seem quite right to base the entire view of pre-Christian Irish civilization on literary works and the evidence of a sacrifice victim/volunteer in a bog. I would have appreciated some more archeology, riotous debate between scholars who've argued about when human sacrifice in Ireland took place, and careful footnotes. (Most disappointingly Cahill doesn't like to do normal bibliographies; he prefers to write about his favorite sources and hope you'll be encouraged to read them yourself.) As the book is, it's a light history that shows the Irish as a scribal powerhouse of the early mediaeval period.
And though I want to give Cahill and his peaceful, practically polytheistic Christians as much chance to greatness as I can, I will admit that Cahill is at least exaggerating the title. The Irish didn't exactly "Save Civilization"; they saved Latin writing of the pre-Christian Roman Empire, thus allowing us to read Cicero and Seneca today. Cahill, to his credit, seems to use that contribution of the Irish as only a part of his claim for an Irish golden age. The Irish's greatest contribution to civilization, he argues, was their counter-Augustinian Christianity. In the Irish hey-day, St. Patrick wrote of God's love for all creatures and people despite their foibles, the Irish developed universities and brought limited literacy to lay people, and Irish missionaries brought their tolerant Christian beliefs and love of writing across Europe.
Cahill is a gentle writer, often stopping to say, "Let us explore this world a little more before we move on," and presenting a picture of what life may have been like in the capital in the last century of the Western Roman Empire, and in Britain, and also in Ireland. I particularly enjoyed hearing about the miseries of Roman tax collectors and shepherds all over. Cahill is a convincing writer too. His version of Irish history may be as compelling for the Irish today as the Christian resurrection was for the Irish of St. Patrick's day.
I only wish that Cahill had made the book longer and more scholarly. As fascinating as the epic Tain is, it doesn't seem quite right to base the entire view of pre-Christian Irish civilization on literary works and the evidence of a sacrifice victim/volunteer in a bog. I would have appreciated some more archeology, riotous debate between scholars who've argued about when human sacrifice in Ireland took place, and careful footnotes. (Most disappointingly Cahill doesn't like to do normal bibliographies; he prefers to write about his favorite sources and hope you'll be encouraged to read them yourself.) As the book is, it's a light history that shows the Irish as a scribal powerhouse of the early mediaeval period.
September 15, 2008
Though not exactly news to anyone who went to school in Ireland (Cahill seems to have an Irish-American readership as his target audience, particularly given-away by his repeated and annoying generalizations about the 'Irish Spirit' and such like: what does he mean, Jameson or Bushmills?), this nevertheless has lots of good stuff in it and the overall argument is strong.
I particularly liked the early material contrasting the moribund writing of Roman Gallic poet Ausonias with St. Augustine, and the philospohical and literary revolution ushered in by his Confessions. It reads as a great argument-in-a-nutshell for the decline of the Roman Empire and the notion that the artistic output of a given culture can be a true reflection of its inner health - or otherwise. It is also hard not to share his enjoyment of the lusty heros and heroines of early Celtic Irish literature. And, finally, his descriptions of the bustling, worldly monastic centers that were translating and transcribing not only the key texts of Christianity, but the epic literature of their native country and the canons of Classical antiquity, are remarkable and inspiring.
I particularly liked the early material contrasting the moribund writing of Roman Gallic poet Ausonias with St. Augustine, and the philospohical and literary revolution ushered in by his Confessions. It reads as a great argument-in-a-nutshell for the decline of the Roman Empire and the notion that the artistic output of a given culture can be a true reflection of its inner health - or otherwise. It is also hard not to share his enjoyment of the lusty heros and heroines of early Celtic Irish literature. And, finally, his descriptions of the bustling, worldly monastic centers that were translating and transcribing not only the key texts of Christianity, but the epic literature of their native country and the canons of Classical antiquity, are remarkable and inspiring.
May 11, 2021
3.5 stars. A good read. Cahill may occasionally engage in exaggeration and speculation, but he increased my interest in history. I have read the first four books in the Hinges of History series, starting book 1 almost 20 years ago, so my memory is not bright. However, the books stuck with me fairly well. Kudos to the author for that. Since then, Cahill wrote two more books, but I have not read them. This is quasi-history told in a fairly accessible narrative style -- if at times meandering. Cahill is not a historian, per se, but his education reflects an interest in history, theology, classic texts, and performing arts.
Each book examines how a particular European people changed the world (alas, no gifts mentioned from Asia and Africa). The four cultures (one per book): Irish, Jewish, Christian (of mixed ethnicity), and Greek. I enjoyed them all but am not a historian, so cannot adequately argue Cahill's points. He probably stretched the "story" to make a strong case for the particular "gifts" he suggests the culture brought to the world, but I always read history through a strainer.
I cannot recall whether Cahill included the contributions women made. I think not.
This book -- How the Irish Saved Civilization -- is the most memorable in the series, for me. It's set primarily in the Dark Ages, after Rome fell, when Visigoths, Goths, and Vandals plundered, burning books, libraries, monasteries, etc. I found some bits riveting, but doubtless there are holes in the author's argument that Irish monks "saved civilization" by saving various classic texts from extinction. They did this by copying and illustrating ancient Greek and Latin writings (Ptolmy, Euclid, Cicero, Plato, etc), as well as ancient scrolls and scriptures. I was rather captivated by these industrious monks, safe from invaders across the Irish Sea, scribbling away in their beehives, creating illuminated manuscripts.
However, I felt Cahill overplayed his hand, making more of his grand theory than history warrants, and his own Irish ancestry may have led him to wax poetic.
I was also interested in the descriptions of Augustine and St. Patrick, even though Cahill admittedly embellished what little we know about Patrick.
Other Books in the Series:
According to The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels (book #2), the Hebrew people introduced various concepts to Western Civ: hygiene and kosher food, the written word (along with Phonecians, Greeks, Sumarians, etc), a code of law, and monotheism, including caring for widows and orphans via a tithing system -- much like paying taxes. That's all I remember.
Book #3, Desire of the Everlasting Hills: The World Before and After Jesus , is thought-provoking. Cahill describes how the message of Christ changed civilization. He attributes to Christ (and to Christians) the gradual propagation of widespread principles of mercy, forgiveness, eleventh-hour second chances, and unconditional love (opposed to the eye-for-an-eye system of retribution encoded in Hamurabi's Code used by ancient Babylonians, Old Hebrew, the Romans, etc. ). Cahill also attributes to Christianity the transformation of cultures that had engaged in human sacrifice, as well as the spread of literacy, eventually enabling commoners to read sacred scriptures. He was a little scattered in his arguments. It felt at times weak, yet he makes some good points. However, he made slight mention of the atrocities perpetrated by the Spanish Inquisition.
I have mixed feelings about book #4, Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter. I was anticipating a rich account of who the Greeks were and how much they influenced modern civilization, but in that sense, it fell short of expectation. The entire book felt a little flat. However, I was intrigued by the notion of the Greeks as intellectual scavengers, sailing the Mediterranean to various ports and bringing the best ideas and inventions back to Athens and integrating them into their culture. Eventually, these ideas trickled or gushed into other cultures, and remain part of civilization today.
Each book examines how a particular European people changed the world (alas, no gifts mentioned from Asia and Africa). The four cultures (one per book): Irish, Jewish, Christian (of mixed ethnicity), and Greek. I enjoyed them all but am not a historian, so cannot adequately argue Cahill's points. He probably stretched the "story" to make a strong case for the particular "gifts" he suggests the culture brought to the world, but I always read history through a strainer.
I cannot recall whether Cahill included the contributions women made. I think not.
This book -- How the Irish Saved Civilization -- is the most memorable in the series, for me. It's set primarily in the Dark Ages, after Rome fell, when Visigoths, Goths, and Vandals plundered, burning books, libraries, monasteries, etc. I found some bits riveting, but doubtless there are holes in the author's argument that Irish monks "saved civilization" by saving various classic texts from extinction. They did this by copying and illustrating ancient Greek and Latin writings (Ptolmy, Euclid, Cicero, Plato, etc), as well as ancient scrolls and scriptures. I was rather captivated by these industrious monks, safe from invaders across the Irish Sea, scribbling away in their beehives, creating illuminated manuscripts.
However, I felt Cahill overplayed his hand, making more of his grand theory than history warrants, and his own Irish ancestry may have led him to wax poetic.
I was also interested in the descriptions of Augustine and St. Patrick, even though Cahill admittedly embellished what little we know about Patrick.
Other Books in the Series:
According to The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels (book #2), the Hebrew people introduced various concepts to Western Civ: hygiene and kosher food, the written word (along with Phonecians, Greeks, Sumarians, etc), a code of law, and monotheism, including caring for widows and orphans via a tithing system -- much like paying taxes. That's all I remember.
Book #3, Desire of the Everlasting Hills: The World Before and After Jesus , is thought-provoking. Cahill describes how the message of Christ changed civilization. He attributes to Christ (and to Christians) the gradual propagation of widespread principles of mercy, forgiveness, eleventh-hour second chances, and unconditional love (opposed to the eye-for-an-eye system of retribution encoded in Hamurabi's Code used by ancient Babylonians, Old Hebrew, the Romans, etc. ). Cahill also attributes to Christianity the transformation of cultures that had engaged in human sacrifice, as well as the spread of literacy, eventually enabling commoners to read sacred scriptures. He was a little scattered in his arguments. It felt at times weak, yet he makes some good points. However, he made slight mention of the atrocities perpetrated by the Spanish Inquisition.
I have mixed feelings about book #4, Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter. I was anticipating a rich account of who the Greeks were and how much they influenced modern civilization, but in that sense, it fell short of expectation. The entire book felt a little flat. However, I was intrigued by the notion of the Greeks as intellectual scavengers, sailing the Mediterranean to various ports and bringing the best ideas and inventions back to Athens and integrating them into their culture. Eventually, these ideas trickled or gushed into other cultures, and remain part of civilization today.
October 29, 2018
Woof.
Let me preface by saying that I'm a historian, I study the middle ages but mostly the high middle ages (roughly 1000-1400.) Lately I've been trying to read and study up more on the early middle ages and during one of the lecture I was watching, the professor mentioned this book as one of the most common "popular history" books on the subject, although he said it was misinformed. I figured I'd give it a read to see what was being pandered to people who don't devote themselves to the study of the past.
A bunch of nonsense is what.
If you're planning on reading this book to justify your Irish nationalism, I'm sure you'll be thrilled by it. "Finally," you might say to me. "something that recognizes the achievements of the Irish! Of course! Who else could have saved Western civilization?"
And I, a historian, would have to awkwardly pop your balloon. Because my main issue with the text is that Cahill's argument about Irish preservation is too laser-focused and narrow. He makes no allowances for the continued preservation of manuscripts and Roman culture and law in the Byzantine empire, relegating it to a minor role mentioned in perhaps two or three sentences. Then, he ignores the achievements of Islam. The Caliphates of the 7th-11th centuries were a golden age not just for preserving classical knowledge (note that I say classical and not the "knowledge of civilization," which I think is a highly outdated concept he brings up again and again) but also of advancing that knowledge. Does that mean that the Irish were not important? Of course not, but writing as if they are lone actors in the face of Barbaric dark ages is ridiculous and nationalist.
He obviously also has a major hard-on for St. Patrick (because, well, of course he does.) One of the most ridiculous things he does is claim that St. Patrick is the first real spiritual successor to Jesus. He claims that St. Patrick was the first missionary to preach outside of the influence of Rome. When faced with the obvious hurdle of Thomas, who is popularly held in the Christian tradition to have traveled as far as India on his missionary journey, he dismisses this because the area Thomas traveled through was "an ancient civilization with many ties to the Greek world." I'm sure the kings of Persia and India would have been fascinated by this assertion. The mental gymnastics Cahill did to construct this argument are nothing short of miraculous.
My secondary issue is that this book is tediously written. It's pretty short at 200 or so pages, but it just drags on with irritating asides to the reader or anecdotes. He also dedicates a lot of the writing of the book to talk about the character of Irish people, which is just a load of nonsense if I've ever read it. Take a step back from it and you'll be able to picture the reader Cahill has in mind for the work: someone from the Irish diaspora, probably American, looking for a little bit of justification of their Irish Pride after their 23 and me DNA test or something.
I'm reminded of an exchange between Ernst Renan and Eric Hobsbawn. Renan says that "Forgetting history or even getting it wrong is one of the major elements in building a nation. . . . history is a danger to nationalism." To which Hobsbawn responds, "I regard it as the primary duty of modern historians to be such a danger." This is why this book failed me. It failed in its duty of the pursuit of truth and fell into a dangerous pit-- that is, not just forgetting history or getting it wrong, but purposefully mangling it.
There's better writing about the early middle ages than Cahill. Give this one a hard pass.
Let me preface by saying that I'm a historian, I study the middle ages but mostly the high middle ages (roughly 1000-1400.) Lately I've been trying to read and study up more on the early middle ages and during one of the lecture I was watching, the professor mentioned this book as one of the most common "popular history" books on the subject, although he said it was misinformed. I figured I'd give it a read to see what was being pandered to people who don't devote themselves to the study of the past.
A bunch of nonsense is what.
If you're planning on reading this book to justify your Irish nationalism, I'm sure you'll be thrilled by it. "Finally," you might say to me. "something that recognizes the achievements of the Irish! Of course! Who else could have saved Western civilization?"
And I, a historian, would have to awkwardly pop your balloon. Because my main issue with the text is that Cahill's argument about Irish preservation is too laser-focused and narrow. He makes no allowances for the continued preservation of manuscripts and Roman culture and law in the Byzantine empire, relegating it to a minor role mentioned in perhaps two or three sentences. Then, he ignores the achievements of Islam. The Caliphates of the 7th-11th centuries were a golden age not just for preserving classical knowledge (note that I say classical and not the "knowledge of civilization," which I think is a highly outdated concept he brings up again and again) but also of advancing that knowledge. Does that mean that the Irish were not important? Of course not, but writing as if they are lone actors in the face of Barbaric dark ages is ridiculous and nationalist.
He obviously also has a major hard-on for St. Patrick (because, well, of course he does.) One of the most ridiculous things he does is claim that St. Patrick is the first real spiritual successor to Jesus. He claims that St. Patrick was the first missionary to preach outside of the influence of Rome. When faced with the obvious hurdle of Thomas, who is popularly held in the Christian tradition to have traveled as far as India on his missionary journey, he dismisses this because the area Thomas traveled through was "an ancient civilization with many ties to the Greek world." I'm sure the kings of Persia and India would have been fascinated by this assertion. The mental gymnastics Cahill did to construct this argument are nothing short of miraculous.
My secondary issue is that this book is tediously written. It's pretty short at 200 or so pages, but it just drags on with irritating asides to the reader or anecdotes. He also dedicates a lot of the writing of the book to talk about the character of Irish people, which is just a load of nonsense if I've ever read it. Take a step back from it and you'll be able to picture the reader Cahill has in mind for the work: someone from the Irish diaspora, probably American, looking for a little bit of justification of their Irish Pride after their 23 and me DNA test or something.
I'm reminded of an exchange between Ernst Renan and Eric Hobsbawn. Renan says that "Forgetting history or even getting it wrong is one of the major elements in building a nation. . . . history is a danger to nationalism." To which Hobsbawn responds, "I regard it as the primary duty of modern historians to be such a danger." This is why this book failed me. It failed in its duty of the pursuit of truth and fell into a dangerous pit-- that is, not just forgetting history or getting it wrong, but purposefully mangling it.
There's better writing about the early middle ages than Cahill. Give this one a hard pass.
January 8, 2014
As the Roman Empire crumbled, so too did literacy and libraries suffer. By the seventh century, however, Patrick had converted enough men into being Christians and scribes that many ancient Greek and Roman books were preserved in Ireland, even as the originals crumbled elsewhere. The preservation of ancient texts is a fascinating theme upon which to relate a history, but alas, the majority of the book concerns how awesome Plato is. Seriously, there is a three page quote from Plato, followed by a good fifty page digression about what all that philosophy means. First off, I don't much like Plato--his logic is fuzzy and his arguments are based on premises that are easily proven false. So telling me that the Irish saved some Plato texts doesn't impress me all that much. Plus, it seems like many of these texts were saved elsewhere anyway, so its not like we would have no ancient philosophy at all without Irish monasteries. Second, two-thirds of this book is a recounting of Greek and Roman philosophy and ways of thinking, one-third has to do with the conversion of the Irish to Christianity, and about three pages actually address scriptoriums and scribes and all the rest of that good stuff. Not as advertised! I assumed we'd get at least a few pages on how copying out manuscripts actually worked, with maybe a little information about early monasteries, but Cahill is too busy endlessly telling us how super-cool Greek philosophers are to recount any actual scholarship. This is particularly frustrating because the little tidbits Cahill does share about early Irish scholars are fascinating: the punny poems in margins of manuscripts, the fights with European Christians over everything from tonsures to orthodoxy, the melding of pagan and Christian ways of thinking into something new and unique. We only get about a sentence on each of these things, though, and then the book abruptly ends.
February 14, 2012
I'm Irish. Don't let my last name (Zimmerman) fool you. I'm the proud son of a guy whose surname unfortunately obscures the fact that my mother (of whom I'm also a proud son) is 100 percent Irish, so assuming my dad has a little Irish in him (who doesn't?) I'm at least 50 percent.
Not sure why that's so important to me, but it is. There's a mystique to Irishness that simply isn't there with other countries of distant origins. Ireland is ever green, it's charmed and charming, thick with thin space. So you would think that by now I would have made my pilgrimage there. But I haven't; Ireland remains a place of fanciful imagination for me. You would also think that by now a proud wannabe Irishman would have read the 1995 national bestseller How the Irish Saved Civilization, but again you would be wrong. It's been on my shelf for at least fifteen years, waiting for me to finally crack the spine and dig into it. I'm not sure what kept me otherwise occupied; it might be that my copy has a very distracting manufacturing error on the cover (the spot gloss over the title is offset by about an inch, or it might be that I have so much time-sensitive reading to do that I just left this one slow-cooking on the back burner, or it may be that I know that calling myself Irish is absurd and vaguely insulting to people who actually are from Ireland, so I felt guilty and avoided the uncomfortable feeling. Whatever: 2012 is the Year of Overdue Books, so I swallowed my pride and indulged my self-perception and dug in.
How the Irish Saved Civilization is popular history at its apex. Part of a series of audacious arguments from Thomas Cahill ("The Hinges of History"), this one observes that the fall of the Roman Empire, and the corresponding neglect of the archives of Western Civilization, was paralleled by the Christianization of Ireland, whose nascent monks saw their calling as twofold: with no real opportunity to experience the "Red Martyrdom" of persecution unto death for their faith, the Irish took first to "Green Martyrdom," or the cloistered life of studying the Scriptures and the works of the early church. The prodigality of the Irish mind (from p. 131: "In Patrick's world all beings and events come from the hand of a good God, who loves human beings and wishes them success. And though that success is of an ultimate kind--and, therefore, does not preclude suffering--all nature, indeed the whole of the created universe, conspires to mankind's good, teaching, succoring, and saving") was such that enthusiasm for these early works extended to pagan classics and other ancient culture. Irish monks became archivists for the ancient West at a time when Roman civilization could no longer be bothered by its own history, its own legacy.
Simply archiving history wouldn't save civilization, of course. And the Irish historically were not known for sitting around all day. Irish folk history, told compellingly by Cahill, is lusty and brazen, sometimes violent and always earthy, painting a portrait of a culture consumed with life. Such virility informs monasticism in unique ways, and the Green Martyrs eventually created an outlet for Irish wanderlust with "White Martyrdom," self-surrender that involved taking to sea and going where the waves took you. White Martyrs went everywhere--some undoubtedly to their death--and some of them wound up in Europe, where they reintroduced Europe's classics to itself. Not only Western civilization's culture was restored but a culture of being cultured was introduced: the love of learning and the life of the mind, and ethical responsibility that flows from it, can be traced back to the missionary efforts of these White Martyrs.
Thomas Cahill made me want to be more Irish, not less. His writing is elegant and exhilarating; you assume the truth of his absurdist claim--that a tiny island in the North Atlantic known mostly for famine, fantasy and fatalism gave Western civilization its life and soul back. I'm struck by the lessons from Cahill's take on European history for people today invested in the mission of the church. There are plenty of parallels between late antiquity and the modern day, from the comparable dominance and moral vulnerability of ancient Rome and the contemporary United States to the increasing cultural irrelevance of the Christian church. Cahill does a great job of noting the different worldviews of the two great Confessors of the era--Bishop Augustine of Hippo and Patrick of Ireland--one who developed an intricate and complex theology that over time proved oppressive and confining, the other whose theology was informed by and responsive to the people who surrounded it. Patrick's Christianity, focused as it is on God's good desire for his creation, is more welcoming than Augustine's, which emphasized the fall from grace and led to an emphasis on human depravity and eternal conscious punishment. If the church wants to "win some," it could stand to learn from Patrick's winsome approach. From the last paragraph of Cahill's book:
"Perhaps history is divided into Romans and Catholics--or, better, catholics. The Romans are the rich and powerful who run things their way and must always accrue more because they instinctively believe that there will never be enough to go around; the catholics, as their name implies, . . . instinctively believe that all humanity makes one family, that every human being is an equal child of God, and that God will provide. . . . If our civilization is to be saved--forget about our civilization, which, as Patrick would say, may pass 'in a moment like a cloud or smoke that is scattered by the wind'--if we are to be saved, it will not be by Romans but by saints."
Not sure why that's so important to me, but it is. There's a mystique to Irishness that simply isn't there with other countries of distant origins. Ireland is ever green, it's charmed and charming, thick with thin space. So you would think that by now I would have made my pilgrimage there. But I haven't; Ireland remains a place of fanciful imagination for me. You would also think that by now a proud wannabe Irishman would have read the 1995 national bestseller How the Irish Saved Civilization, but again you would be wrong. It's been on my shelf for at least fifteen years, waiting for me to finally crack the spine and dig into it. I'm not sure what kept me otherwise occupied; it might be that my copy has a very distracting manufacturing error on the cover (the spot gloss over the title is offset by about an inch, or it might be that I have so much time-sensitive reading to do that I just left this one slow-cooking on the back burner, or it may be that I know that calling myself Irish is absurd and vaguely insulting to people who actually are from Ireland, so I felt guilty and avoided the uncomfortable feeling. Whatever: 2012 is the Year of Overdue Books, so I swallowed my pride and indulged my self-perception and dug in.
How the Irish Saved Civilization is popular history at its apex. Part of a series of audacious arguments from Thomas Cahill ("The Hinges of History"), this one observes that the fall of the Roman Empire, and the corresponding neglect of the archives of Western Civilization, was paralleled by the Christianization of Ireland, whose nascent monks saw their calling as twofold: with no real opportunity to experience the "Red Martyrdom" of persecution unto death for their faith, the Irish took first to "Green Martyrdom," or the cloistered life of studying the Scriptures and the works of the early church. The prodigality of the Irish mind (from p. 131: "In Patrick's world all beings and events come from the hand of a good God, who loves human beings and wishes them success. And though that success is of an ultimate kind--and, therefore, does not preclude suffering--all nature, indeed the whole of the created universe, conspires to mankind's good, teaching, succoring, and saving") was such that enthusiasm for these early works extended to pagan classics and other ancient culture. Irish monks became archivists for the ancient West at a time when Roman civilization could no longer be bothered by its own history, its own legacy.
Simply archiving history wouldn't save civilization, of course. And the Irish historically were not known for sitting around all day. Irish folk history, told compellingly by Cahill, is lusty and brazen, sometimes violent and always earthy, painting a portrait of a culture consumed with life. Such virility informs monasticism in unique ways, and the Green Martyrs eventually created an outlet for Irish wanderlust with "White Martyrdom," self-surrender that involved taking to sea and going where the waves took you. White Martyrs went everywhere--some undoubtedly to their death--and some of them wound up in Europe, where they reintroduced Europe's classics to itself. Not only Western civilization's culture was restored but a culture of being cultured was introduced: the love of learning and the life of the mind, and ethical responsibility that flows from it, can be traced back to the missionary efforts of these White Martyrs.
Thomas Cahill made me want to be more Irish, not less. His writing is elegant and exhilarating; you assume the truth of his absurdist claim--that a tiny island in the North Atlantic known mostly for famine, fantasy and fatalism gave Western civilization its life and soul back. I'm struck by the lessons from Cahill's take on European history for people today invested in the mission of the church. There are plenty of parallels between late antiquity and the modern day, from the comparable dominance and moral vulnerability of ancient Rome and the contemporary United States to the increasing cultural irrelevance of the Christian church. Cahill does a great job of noting the different worldviews of the two great Confessors of the era--Bishop Augustine of Hippo and Patrick of Ireland--one who developed an intricate and complex theology that over time proved oppressive and confining, the other whose theology was informed by and responsive to the people who surrounded it. Patrick's Christianity, focused as it is on God's good desire for his creation, is more welcoming than Augustine's, which emphasized the fall from grace and led to an emphasis on human depravity and eternal conscious punishment. If the church wants to "win some," it could stand to learn from Patrick's winsome approach. From the last paragraph of Cahill's book:
"Perhaps history is divided into Romans and Catholics--or, better, catholics. The Romans are the rich and powerful who run things their way and must always accrue more because they instinctively believe that there will never be enough to go around; the catholics, as their name implies, . . . instinctively believe that all humanity makes one family, that every human being is an equal child of God, and that God will provide. . . . If our civilization is to be saved--forget about our civilization, which, as Patrick would say, may pass 'in a moment like a cloud or smoke that is scattered by the wind'--if we are to be saved, it will not be by Romans but by saints."
June 16, 2018
Own. I'm going to actually give it 3.5 because the first half of the book was so good.
I started this on the beach and read for about 4 hours straight (ish) what with watching kids and people and dogs thrown in. I did manage to sit there and get sunburned though. I found the chapters interesting and the comparisons easily (too easily?) applicable to modern day. Ausonius' poetry being politically correct and expected; Augustine being a robust thinker. The description days of the Roman Empire being fat and happy and their failure to be prepared for invasion. All of that made sense in a historical as applied to today sense. I enjoyed the writing and the pace of that section. He made an argument for Western Civilization and learning as was known through the fall of Rome.
The next part was a lot new to me. I enjoyed the mythos of Ancient Ireland. My kids had just been reading and narrating about the Tain and other stories in their AmblesideOnline Year 7 readings, so that crossover of ideas was quite helpful. Cahill introduces an Irish people rife with story and as ready to hear the gospel as the Greeks had been. His tracing of where they came from and his discussion of a national character were interesting. His storytelling is a little bawdy in this section, but probably good.
We come back to the church and to Patrick. Here is where some of Cahill's claims start to fall apart for me. His story of Patrick was engaging and interesting, the work Patrick did in Ireland to evangelize the people was miraculous for sure. Cahill's characterization of the Irish comes into play here and as the narrative continues the Irish remain Irish but believe the Gospel. There's less fighting, but in general the Gospel makes no real change in their lives and activities. This is contrasted sharply with the uniform whitewashing of culture that the Church is described as having over the rest of Europe.
And, then, Rome falls.
The last part was, IMO, the part that knocked stars off. Part of the issue, for me, is that while this isn't an academic work, it is presented as scholarly for the public. The bibliography is insufficient, IMO, for helping with the claims that he is making. All of the books in all of Western Europe were entirely destroyed? All of civilization imploded that completely? Now he had made an argument that they were already failing from within to advance in intellectual and cultural ways (cf. Ausonius and his poetry) I think he needed to make a much stronger argument that salvation was necessary for the continent.
All of the sudden, out of nowhere the Irish come to save the day. These men who were exiled from their green isle and have been copying any scrap of paper that came their way. I did love that he portrayed the monks as loving learning and the creative impulse that came out of their copywork. I guess I wanted to see more than two paragraphs make the case that civilization needed saving and that the Irish swooped in like Superman to save it without any real danger to those who were in need.
The sharp dichotomy he built between the Irish church and the Continental church is disturbing as well. He also seems to have dug to find many salacious stories to keep modern readers engaged and reflects on Saint Brigid, in particular, with a decidedly modern eye. He paints Ireland with a fine brush and European Christianity with a broad one and then compares distinctions. This is a book for a careful, mature reader IMO.
I loved how he brought story, poetry, philosophy, and memoir together to build his story. It was fun to meet Beowulf in the pages as I had just finished it. His use of story to display the Irish character was very well done.
Overall, I'm not disappointed to have read it. I greatly enjoyed vast swaths of it. I'm disappointed in the speed with which it was all wrapped up. The overall arc was good, but the last chapters felt rushed and not as carefully crafted and engaging as the beginning. They were more jumbled and a timeline of events was hard to follow. I'm also not totally convinced he made his case - that civilization needed saving and the Irish are the means by which it was accomplished.
I started this on the beach and read for about 4 hours straight (ish) what with watching kids and people and dogs thrown in. I did manage to sit there and get sunburned though. I found the chapters interesting and the comparisons easily (too easily?) applicable to modern day. Ausonius' poetry being politically correct and expected; Augustine being a robust thinker. The description days of the Roman Empire being fat and happy and their failure to be prepared for invasion. All of that made sense in a historical as applied to today sense. I enjoyed the writing and the pace of that section. He made an argument for Western Civilization and learning as was known through the fall of Rome.
The next part was a lot new to me. I enjoyed the mythos of Ancient Ireland. My kids had just been reading and narrating about the Tain and other stories in their AmblesideOnline Year 7 readings, so that crossover of ideas was quite helpful. Cahill introduces an Irish people rife with story and as ready to hear the gospel as the Greeks had been. His tracing of where they came from and his discussion of a national character were interesting. His storytelling is a little bawdy in this section, but probably good.
We come back to the church and to Patrick. Here is where some of Cahill's claims start to fall apart for me. His story of Patrick was engaging and interesting, the work Patrick did in Ireland to evangelize the people was miraculous for sure. Cahill's characterization of the Irish comes into play here and as the narrative continues the Irish remain Irish but believe the Gospel. There's less fighting, but in general the Gospel makes no real change in their lives and activities. This is contrasted sharply with the uniform whitewashing of culture that the Church is described as having over the rest of Europe.
And, then, Rome falls.
The last part was, IMO, the part that knocked stars off. Part of the issue, for me, is that while this isn't an academic work, it is presented as scholarly for the public. The bibliography is insufficient, IMO, for helping with the claims that he is making. All of the books in all of Western Europe were entirely destroyed? All of civilization imploded that completely? Now he had made an argument that they were already failing from within to advance in intellectual and cultural ways (cf. Ausonius and his poetry) I think he needed to make a much stronger argument that salvation was necessary for the continent.
All of the sudden, out of nowhere the Irish come to save the day. These men who were exiled from their green isle and have been copying any scrap of paper that came their way. I did love that he portrayed the monks as loving learning and the creative impulse that came out of their copywork. I guess I wanted to see more than two paragraphs make the case that civilization needed saving and that the Irish swooped in like Superman to save it without any real danger to those who were in need.
The sharp dichotomy he built between the Irish church and the Continental church is disturbing as well. He also seems to have dug to find many salacious stories to keep modern readers engaged and reflects on Saint Brigid, in particular, with a decidedly modern eye. He paints Ireland with a fine brush and European Christianity with a broad one and then compares distinctions. This is a book for a careful, mature reader IMO.
I loved how he brought story, poetry, philosophy, and memoir together to build his story. It was fun to meet Beowulf in the pages as I had just finished it. His use of story to display the Irish character was very well done.
Overall, I'm not disappointed to have read it. I greatly enjoyed vast swaths of it. I'm disappointed in the speed with which it was all wrapped up. The overall arc was good, but the last chapters felt rushed and not as carefully crafted and engaging as the beginning. They were more jumbled and a timeline of events was hard to follow. I'm also not totally convinced he made his case - that civilization needed saving and the Irish are the means by which it was accomplished.
May 4, 2021
If you ever wondered who pulled Europe out of the Dark Ages, wonder no more. It was the Irish, led by St. Patrick. So he didn't drive the snakes from Ireland nor is there evidence of his using the shamrock to explain the Holy Trinity (although he could well have). What he did was to gather the work from antiquity, introduce a new, more readable script, and spread it throughout Europe. After Patrick, there was Columcille who, following in Patrick's footsteps did the same. They also spread Christianity throughout the land but they did not do it in the manner of later missionaries. They left out the violence and did not force people.
This is a highly readable book containing a myriad of information on the topic and I highly recommend it.
This is a highly readable book containing a myriad of information on the topic and I highly recommend it.
August 26, 2019
4.5 stars rounded up
I had those why-was-none-of-this-ever mentioned-in-school? moments several times as I was reading through this pithy tome on one of Ireland's distant but most historically important eras of the past.
Cahill's "How the Irish Saved Civilization" tells the story of Ireland's early Christian monks who became nearly the sole preservers of western literary and religious tradition.
Knowledge of pre-medieval European history is probably a rarity for most of us, certainly in the U.S. -- it's reasonable to assume most of us don't get this period covered in any history classes, but Cahill's book proves that it should be, particularly Ireland at the time.
Cahill takes readers through the final days of the Roman empire and details how book learnin' went the way of the libraries that were burned to the ground throughout the empire by marauding tribes of barbarians.
As Rome fell on the continent, scholars and monks sought refuge as far away as they could get from the burning wreckage of the seats of scholarship and civilization. Following St. Patrick (whose story is fascinatingly told here as well), scholars from as far away as Africa made their way, with as many armloads of religious and literary scrolls from Greece and Rome as they could carry.
These monks joined with the Irish monks to transcribe countless texts in the early centuries following Rome's collapse, thus saving ancient literature from being lost forever.
This book inspires readers to want to delve into more of this period and read more about Europe's most underestimated and probably overlooked country and the critical contribution they made to western civilization.
I had those why-was-none-of-this-ever mentioned-in-school? moments several times as I was reading through this pithy tome on one of Ireland's distant but most historically important eras of the past.
Cahill's "How the Irish Saved Civilization" tells the story of Ireland's early Christian monks who became nearly the sole preservers of western literary and religious tradition.
Knowledge of pre-medieval European history is probably a rarity for most of us, certainly in the U.S. -- it's reasonable to assume most of us don't get this period covered in any history classes, but Cahill's book proves that it should be, particularly Ireland at the time.
Cahill takes readers through the final days of the Roman empire and details how book learnin' went the way of the libraries that were burned to the ground throughout the empire by marauding tribes of barbarians.
As Rome fell on the continent, scholars and monks sought refuge as far away as they could get from the burning wreckage of the seats of scholarship and civilization. Following St. Patrick (whose story is fascinatingly told here as well), scholars from as far away as Africa made their way, with as many armloads of religious and literary scrolls from Greece and Rome as they could carry.
These monks joined with the Irish monks to transcribe countless texts in the early centuries following Rome's collapse, thus saving ancient literature from being lost forever.
This book inspires readers to want to delve into more of this period and read more about Europe's most underestimated and probably overlooked country and the critical contribution they made to western civilization.
April 16, 2008
In college I took a class entitled "Christianity in History." It turned out to be merely a church history class.
This book is everything I wished that course had been, but wasn't. It does an amazing job in pointing out how Christians have impacted history, summed up best in it's final sentence:
If our civilization is to be saved -- forget about our civilization, which, as Patrick would say, may pass "in a moment like a cloud or smoke that is scattered by the wind" -- if we are to be saved, it will not be by Romans but by saints.
This book is everything I wished that course had been, but wasn't. It does an amazing job in pointing out how Christians have impacted history, summed up best in it's final sentence:
If our civilization is to be saved -- forget about our civilization, which, as Patrick would say, may pass "in a moment like a cloud or smoke that is scattered by the wind" -- if we are to be saved, it will not be by Romans but by saints.
December 6, 2011
The title may be a slight exaggeration, but it's a good read for students of western history. Lots of good Middle Ages as well as the expected Irish background.
Multiple readings pull out a wealth of details and insights.
Multiple readings pull out a wealth of details and insights.
July 9, 2025
After taking a bit of a social media break I am back catching up and logging all the books I read in the past month, starting with this unfortunate let down.
How did the Irish save civilization? Well despite the title, we don't get to the root of the answer until the very end of the book. The keepers of the books of late antiquity, the Irish monks and priests preserved and scribed western texts, safeguarding them over time. Thus saving civilization! Have you read Plato? Boethius? Thank the Irish for that one! Now this is not something I learnt from the book... no no, I learnt this from the internet
Thomas Cahill manages to drag on and on about Irish history for 90% of the book, delving into what makes the Irish, well.. Irish as well as What St Patrick's Day means and the mythology behind it. This is all interesting subject matter don't get me wrong! But Cahill manages to make it the most boring drabble I have heard. Droning on and on with facts after facts, no heart or soul in the writing (in my opinion). I decided when I was about a third through that I would try and listen to the audiobook instead, this is where it got worse. The audiobook narrator is HORRID. Do not waste your money! Mouth noises upon mouth noises! Inconsistent audio recordings and a drone that perfectly mimicked what was in my brain whilst reading the book physically. This is when I put the book down for good.
I hate to be a hater, I truly do! I bought this book because I was genuinely interested in learning about the subject matter, but don't waste your time with this one. I can however recommend some great Youtube documentaries that I learnt from and loved down below!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIuoI...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8B9B...
How did the Irish save civilization? Well despite the title, we don't get to the root of the answer until the very end of the book. The keepers of the books of late antiquity, the Irish monks and priests preserved and scribed western texts, safeguarding them over time. Thus saving civilization! Have you read Plato? Boethius? Thank the Irish for that one! Now this is not something I learnt from the book... no no, I learnt this from the internet
Thomas Cahill manages to drag on and on about Irish history for 90% of the book, delving into what makes the Irish, well.. Irish as well as What St Patrick's Day means and the mythology behind it. This is all interesting subject matter don't get me wrong! But Cahill manages to make it the most boring drabble I have heard. Droning on and on with facts after facts, no heart or soul in the writing (in my opinion). I decided when I was about a third through that I would try and listen to the audiobook instead, this is where it got worse. The audiobook narrator is HORRID. Do not waste your money! Mouth noises upon mouth noises! Inconsistent audio recordings and a drone that perfectly mimicked what was in my brain whilst reading the book physically. This is when I put the book down for good.
I hate to be a hater, I truly do! I bought this book because I was genuinely interested in learning about the subject matter, but don't waste your time with this one. I can however recommend some great Youtube documentaries that I learnt from and loved down below!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIuoI...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8B9B...
February 21, 2014
An entertaining little history of Irish scholarship, culture, and monk/saint heroes of antiquity who greatly respected early learning, writing etc. This very much has a catholic bias but still well written and worth reading if you are interested in Irish history.
September 21, 2025
Oh my goodness, this book was INCREDIBLE! It was succinct and simply written but thought-provoking and beautiful, and funny, and exciting, and heart-breaking, and I learned so much! For anyone who loves Irish history, Catholicism, and forgotten old illuminated manuscripts, this is the book for you!
January 21, 2023
An excellent telling and explanation of the Celts pagan background and how it influenced their flavor of Christianity. Their love of story contributes much to their collecting, copying, and preserving of many documents. As often happens, the diaspora of monks through banishment spreads their philosophy throughout the continent. From the time of the Viking invasions of the late 8th century to the great famines of the 19th century, the scholarly civilization that the Irish had built up has been constantly under attack, but signs of what they once were, and how hard they worked to preserve that can still be found to this day in relics found in digs.
The Irish conversion to Christianity is noted as being the first that did not bring Roman culture with it. The Irish blended their love of story and images with the gospel story of the Bible. They were not a culture that relied on well thought out arguments to persuade but on stories. The Greek influence on Roman thought was gone. "The intellectual disciplines of distinction, definition, and dialectic that had once been the glory of men like Augustine were unobtainable by readers of the Dark Ages*, whose apprehension of the world was simple and immediate, framed by myth and magic. A man no longer subordinated one thought to another with mathematical precision; instead, he apprehended similarities and balances, types and paradigms, parallels and symbols. It was a world not of thoughts, but of images." [*my wish is that this would appear as "Dark Ages"]
There is so much similarity to these ideas of myth, symbols, and images with the mind of people of the Middle Ages that though from the Vikings on various invaders and oppressors were trying to destroy this Irish way of seeing and learning, it is obvious it survived to influence those of medieval times. There is a big push in some educational circles to be "classical", to return to the forms of the Greeks and Romans. As for me and my house, I'm going with the story-telling Celts and image-seeing Medievals.
How can you not want to be like a people that loved story and then came to love the greatest story of them all?
"In 1225, almost four centuries after it was written, Pope Honorius III order all copies of 'De Divisione Naturae' to be burned. Some, obviously escaped the bonfire.
"But in the age of John Scotus Eriugena, Christian churchmen did not burn books. Only barbarians did that."
The Irish conversion to Christianity is noted as being the first that did not bring Roman culture with it. The Irish blended their love of story and images with the gospel story of the Bible. They were not a culture that relied on well thought out arguments to persuade but on stories. The Greek influence on Roman thought was gone. "The intellectual disciplines of distinction, definition, and dialectic that had once been the glory of men like Augustine were unobtainable by readers of the Dark Ages*, whose apprehension of the world was simple and immediate, framed by myth and magic. A man no longer subordinated one thought to another with mathematical precision; instead, he apprehended similarities and balances, types and paradigms, parallels and symbols. It was a world not of thoughts, but of images." [*my wish is that this would appear as "Dark Ages"]
There is so much similarity to these ideas of myth, symbols, and images with the mind of people of the Middle Ages that though from the Vikings on various invaders and oppressors were trying to destroy this Irish way of seeing and learning, it is obvious it survived to influence those of medieval times. There is a big push in some educational circles to be "classical", to return to the forms of the Greeks and Romans. As for me and my house, I'm going with the story-telling Celts and image-seeing Medievals.
How can you not want to be like a people that loved story and then came to love the greatest story of them all?
"In 1225, almost four centuries after it was written, Pope Honorius III order all copies of 'De Divisione Naturae' to be burned. Some, obviously escaped the bonfire.
"But in the age of John Scotus Eriugena, Christian churchmen did not burn books. Only barbarians did that."
November 9, 2007
It seems to me that the basic thesis of this book is absurd. The "Irish" didnt save civilization - a few scholarly monks set to work on preserving the classics, all very noble, but meanwhile the rest of the Irish were cavorting around not being like fucking Romans or Greeks and living a different kind of anti-state and somewhat anti-authoritarian "civilization".
This from wikipedia -
Celtic Ireland (650-1650)
In Celtic Irish society of the Middle Ages and Early Modern period, courts and the law were largely anarchist, and operated in a purely stateless manner. This society persisted in this manner for roughly a thousand years until its conquest by England in the seventeenth century. In contrast to many similarly functioning tribal societies, preconquest Ireland was not in any sense "primitive": it was a highly complex society that was, for centuries, the most advanced, most scholarly, and most civilized in all of Western Europe. A leading authority on ancient Irish law wrote, "There was no legislature, no bailiffs, no police, no public enforcement of justice... There was no trace of State-administered justice.[1]
All "freemen" who owned land, all professionals, and all craftsmen, were entitled to become members of a tuath. Each tuath's members formed an annual assembly which decided all common policies, declared war or peace on other tuatha, and elected or deposed their "kings." In contrast to primitive tribes, no one was stuck or bound to a given tuath, either because of kinship or of geographical location. Individual members were free to, and often did, secede from a tuath and join a competing tuath. Professor Peden states, "the tuath is thus a body of persons voluntarily united for socially beneficial purposes and the sum total of the landed properties of its members constituted its territorial dimension.[2] The "king" had no political power; he could not decree or administer justice or declare war. Basically he was a priest and militia leader, and presided over the tuath assemblies.
Celtic Ireland survived many invasions, but was finally vanquished by Oliver Cromwell's reconquest in 1649-50.
[edit]
This from wikipedia -
Celtic Ireland (650-1650)
In Celtic Irish society of the Middle Ages and Early Modern period, courts and the law were largely anarchist, and operated in a purely stateless manner. This society persisted in this manner for roughly a thousand years until its conquest by England in the seventeenth century. In contrast to many similarly functioning tribal societies, preconquest Ireland was not in any sense "primitive": it was a highly complex society that was, for centuries, the most advanced, most scholarly, and most civilized in all of Western Europe. A leading authority on ancient Irish law wrote, "There was no legislature, no bailiffs, no police, no public enforcement of justice... There was no trace of State-administered justice.[1]
All "freemen" who owned land, all professionals, and all craftsmen, were entitled to become members of a tuath. Each tuath's members formed an annual assembly which decided all common policies, declared war or peace on other tuatha, and elected or deposed their "kings." In contrast to primitive tribes, no one was stuck or bound to a given tuath, either because of kinship or of geographical location. Individual members were free to, and often did, secede from a tuath and join a competing tuath. Professor Peden states, "the tuath is thus a body of persons voluntarily united for socially beneficial purposes and the sum total of the landed properties of its members constituted its territorial dimension.[2] The "king" had no political power; he could not decree or administer justice or declare war. Basically he was a priest and militia leader, and presided over the tuath assemblies.
Celtic Ireland survived many invasions, but was finally vanquished by Oliver Cromwell's reconquest in 1649-50.
[edit]
March 28, 2019
Thomas Cahill is a fun author with an interesting take on how communities impact society. Sure, it’s pop level but so what. Cahill respects religious faith and it’s clear impact on society.
August 5, 2007
Here Cahill provides a popular-level history of the early middle ages with mixed success. His greatest asset is a suprisingly strong prose style, which allows him to effortlessly, and even peotically, lead his readers through a complicated and fuzzy period of history. No doubt this is the reason the book was a bestseller. But it also proves to be his downfall in that his efortless sentences ellide the complexity of his subject matter. Perhaps this is the fate of all popularizers, but I found myself time and again cringing at the frequent bald assertions with which he moves the narrative forward. This is not to say that he cannot reach the deeper parts of his story. Indeed, he does go deep at many points, but I was left wishing that he would do this more. His readings of early Irish vernacular literature are excellent, and his discussion of Augustine of Hippo is lively in the best of ways. And yet at times, especially in the later parts of the book, it feels like he is telling a story rather than explaining it. And explanation is what is required when you provacatively title your book How the Irish Saved Civilization.
And about the title: it's completely wrong for the book! Its unfortunate hyperbole begs caveats, which Cahill is eventually required to give. His actual claim is that the Irish people, specifically the Irish monastic communities in Ireland and the rest of Europe, played an important part in human history by preserving Latin learning in a time when no one else was doing so. And this is a fair assesment of the situation in the early middle ages. But it is a long way from the Irish people as saviors of the Western World. As he himself notes, it was only the Roman, not the Greek or Jewish or Christian books that the Irish needed to save. "Yes," he seems to write between the lines late in the book, "Without those monks, we still would have had the vast majority of the Western cultural heritage, but that isn't the point." And yet it IS the point if your going to say the Irish SAVED CIVILIZATION! But I guess you can't title a book How the Irish Saved the Roman Heritage and Made It Possible That We Could Read Cicero and Virgil ... but We Still Would Have Had Plato, Aristotle, the Greek Dramatists, Augustine, the Church Fathers, the Bible, and a Whole Mess of Other Stuff.
Oh well, I can still say that I enjoyed reading the book. Particularly refreshing was Cahill's understated but evident respect for Christianity. Indeed, I suspect he is a Catholic, or at least was at one point in his life. This mercifully saves the reader from having to slog through anti-Christian nonsense. Moreover, it means he actually understands Christian theology and can write clearly on the topic--a decided advantage in studying this period--though, in truth, he is woefully simplistic when it comes to heretics like Pelagius and Arius. It seems to me that Cahill's Christianity also provides the underdeveloped but interesting subtext of the book: a comparison of late Roman culture in all its decadence and blindness ot its own weekness to current American culture. Once in a while he provides salient (though perhaps none too original) parallels between the fifth century and our own that we would do well to scrutinize. And it is with this concern that he ends his book. In discussing the differences between the markedly radical, mystical, and borderline-heretical Irish monastics and the institutionally minded Roman church, he gives us this gem to chew on: "The twenty-first century, prophesied Malraux, will be spiritual or it will not be. If our civilization is to be saved--forget about our civiliation, which, as Patrick would say, may pass 'in a moment like a cloud or smoke that is scatterd by the wind'--if we are to be saved, it will not be by Romans but by saints." Here, here.
And about the title: it's completely wrong for the book! Its unfortunate hyperbole begs caveats, which Cahill is eventually required to give. His actual claim is that the Irish people, specifically the Irish monastic communities in Ireland and the rest of Europe, played an important part in human history by preserving Latin learning in a time when no one else was doing so. And this is a fair assesment of the situation in the early middle ages. But it is a long way from the Irish people as saviors of the Western World. As he himself notes, it was only the Roman, not the Greek or Jewish or Christian books that the Irish needed to save. "Yes," he seems to write between the lines late in the book, "Without those monks, we still would have had the vast majority of the Western cultural heritage, but that isn't the point." And yet it IS the point if your going to say the Irish SAVED CIVILIZATION! But I guess you can't title a book How the Irish Saved the Roman Heritage and Made It Possible That We Could Read Cicero and Virgil ... but We Still Would Have Had Plato, Aristotle, the Greek Dramatists, Augustine, the Church Fathers, the Bible, and a Whole Mess of Other Stuff.
Oh well, I can still say that I enjoyed reading the book. Particularly refreshing was Cahill's understated but evident respect for Christianity. Indeed, I suspect he is a Catholic, or at least was at one point in his life. This mercifully saves the reader from having to slog through anti-Christian nonsense. Moreover, it means he actually understands Christian theology and can write clearly on the topic--a decided advantage in studying this period--though, in truth, he is woefully simplistic when it comes to heretics like Pelagius and Arius. It seems to me that Cahill's Christianity also provides the underdeveloped but interesting subtext of the book: a comparison of late Roman culture in all its decadence and blindness ot its own weekness to current American culture. Once in a while he provides salient (though perhaps none too original) parallels between the fifth century and our own that we would do well to scrutinize. And it is with this concern that he ends his book. In discussing the differences between the markedly radical, mystical, and borderline-heretical Irish monastics and the institutionally minded Roman church, he gives us this gem to chew on: "The twenty-first century, prophesied Malraux, will be spiritual or it will not be. If our civilization is to be saved--forget about our civiliation, which, as Patrick would say, may pass 'in a moment like a cloud or smoke that is scatterd by the wind'--if we are to be saved, it will not be by Romans but by saints." Here, here.
December 26, 2015
The "Dark Ages". Now, whoever was the idiot who coined that term did not know history.
This book again sets the record straight that the Medieval Period was a time of cultural and technological stagnation. It was actually during the Medieval Period when the seeds of many cultural and intellectual advancements were sown.
If you enjoy reading books, then you have the Medieval Church men and women, like the Irish, who laboriously and lovingly copied the Scriptures and other classics that the world still enjoys, to thank for. They saved the classics from oblivion and laid the basis for the modern book. As research had already shown, the "Dark Ages" were anything but dark. It was actually illuminated by the light of learning.
This book again sets the record straight that the Medieval Period was a time of cultural and technological stagnation. It was actually during the Medieval Period when the seeds of many cultural and intellectual advancements were sown.
If you enjoy reading books, then you have the Medieval Church men and women, like the Irish, who laboriously and lovingly copied the Scriptures and other classics that the world still enjoys, to thank for. They saved the classics from oblivion and laid the basis for the modern book. As research had already shown, the "Dark Ages" were anything but dark. It was actually illuminated by the light of learning.
August 11, 2016
-De la Civilización Celta… y también de la contribución a la supervivencia de la cultura occidental antigua de los monjes irlandeses-.
Género. Ensayo.
Lo que nos cuenta. Retrato de la evolución de Irlanda desde sus nebulosos orígenes hasta tiempos del Sacro Imperio Romano, como guía histórico-religiosa, y en general más rico en lances y chascarrillos que en fuentes historiográficas convencionales y contrastadas, para señalar lo mucho que supuso “lo irlandés” en la conservación y posterior difusión del conocimiento cultural griego, romano, judío y cristiano que estuvieron muy cerca de perderse tras la caída del Imperio Romano.
¿Quiere saber más del libro, sin spoilers? Visite:
http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com/...
Género. Ensayo.
Lo que nos cuenta. Retrato de la evolución de Irlanda desde sus nebulosos orígenes hasta tiempos del Sacro Imperio Romano, como guía histórico-religiosa, y en general más rico en lances y chascarrillos que en fuentes historiográficas convencionales y contrastadas, para señalar lo mucho que supuso “lo irlandés” en la conservación y posterior difusión del conocimiento cultural griego, romano, judío y cristiano que estuvieron muy cerca de perderse tras la caída del Imperio Romano.
¿Quiere saber más del libro, sin spoilers? Visite:
http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com/...
November 3, 2018
My first Cahill and it just didn’t resonate with me. I’m sure it was engaging for some, but I was never very interested in his content or his writing style. He took two chapters of Rome to finally get around to mentioning the Irish, and the whole book still never felt very much about the Irish. He constantly quotes songs and poems and stories, drops names, but nothing was very... tied together? I won’t say it was a disappointing book, but I was disappointed in my experience of it.
Read John's 5-star review of How the Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Read John's 5-star review of How the Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
January 16, 2021
I don’t give out very many five star reviews, and even fewer one star reviews.
So, when I say this was one on the worst, most insipid books I have read, I mean to tell you this one is in my all-time Bottom Ten.
That’s all.
So, when I say this was one on the worst, most insipid books I have read, I mean to tell you this one is in my all-time Bottom Ten.
That’s all.
May 17, 2016
Review Title: When in Ireland,...
As I have gotten the chance in the last year to see some of the fabulous treasures of Christianity in the British Museum and Library, the Bodleian Library in Oxford, and Dublin's Trinity College, and see some of the ruins of 6th to 10th Century England and Ireland, I have often referred to Cahill's only partially tongue in cheek title. I had read the book several years ago before I had started listing and then writing down what I thought about the books I read, which turned into these book reviews that are now my life's avocation, and before I had the God-given gift to see these treasures firsthand. So of course, when in Ireland I had to find a copy and read it again. It didn't disappoint.
Cahill is what I would call a "popular theologian", although he might be better known as a historian, as this small volume turned into a readable yet thoughtful series he calls "The Hinges of History" (perhaps growing out of a phrase he uses here). Not in chronological order, other volumes have covered Jesus, Judaism, and Greek philosophy. Just like his title here, his topics and viewpoints are a little off-kilter, but he knows when to drive a serious point home and how to deflate a historical figure or event of its hot air. So, for example, the one about the Irish saving civilization....
... Except they really did. Of course making a statement like that and backing it up requires context, so Cahill backs way up and starts in Rome, in about 400 AD, when the borders of the aging Empire are about to be overrun by barbarians--are we allowed to still use that word without air quotes or irony? Defined as peoples from the north and east of the Empire with no exposure to the centuries of Greek and Roman language, literature, art, political order, and religion, and with no appreciable quantities of any of those cultural artifacts of their own, these were indeed barbarians at the gate, who burst through the weakened borders and even weaker institutions at the core of the hollowed out empire and quickly laid most if that civilization to waste.
Meanwhile, far to the north and west was born a "Romanized Celtic Briton", as Cahill calls him. We know him as St Patrick, but as a young middle class son of a fading empire far away, he was kidnapped into slavery by marauding bands of Irish Celts, so far beyond the pale the Romans never attempted to invade, conquer or incorporate them into Roman civilization. His conversion while tending sheep on cold lonely Irish hills, his escape back home, and his call back to Ireland are the stuff of both history and legend, and while the dates as with most legends are speculative, Cahill places the fall of the Empire and the rise of St Patrick's mission as roughly contemporary.
And rough that mission was, as the Irish landscape and people, ignored by history and civilizations both past and Roman, comprised what Cahill refers to as "Unholy Ireland." But unholy, as Cahill proves, is not uncultured. In fact he points out that Ireland, unconquered by larger more advanced cultures, developed the best documented vernacular history, legends, and language on the planet. Likewise, St. Patrick was the first missionary to take Christianity to, as it were, uncivilized people--"to barbarians beyond the reach of Roman law. " (p. 108) in the thirty years of his ministry in Ireland, Patrick is able to meld the wild heart of the Celt to the wild heart of Christianity in a vibrant religion (looked at with heresy-seeking skepticism when it interfaced with the Roman religion of the continent) and an explosion of literacy (Cahill claims that Irish is the first vernacular literature to be written down) and language that doesn't obliterate the Irish Celtic heritage but gives it a recorded voice and direction that would....
.... save civilization. How did that work? First the lost part (otherwise what's to save?): now overrun by the uncivilized, learning, literature, and literacy itself retreated to small isolated pockets while the barbarians looted and destroyed the artifacts of millenia of civilization. The shattered bits of Empire became tiny feudal kingdoms with little energy, interest or surplus to build or even retain their cultural heritage. While Cahill speculates that most of the Hebrew and Greek Bible might have been saved, he believes most of the rest of civilization (Greek and Roman literature, law, religion, and ways of thinking that developed into modern philosophy, science, and democracy) as we know it today from 2,000 years of development would have been lost without the Irish. Patrick's death in 461 and the deposing of the last Roman emperor in 476 seemed death knells for the great civilization borne by Greece and Rome.
But following Patrick's leadership, his spiritual children like Columcille began planting centers of learning, libraries and scriptorium around the rocky edges of western and northern Ireland, then around the edges of "Hibernia," including the most famous places like Skellig Michel, Iona, and Lindesfarne among dozens of others. There they produced and reproduced the cultural heritage that, sheltered from from the barbarians long enough to incubate and rebuild the cultural stock, then spread east and south through England, meeting the Roman mission of Augustine's spreading north from Canterbury on better than equal terms: "All England North of the Thames was indebted to the Celtic mission for its conversion," claims one historian quoted by Cahill. (p. 200). Over the next 300 years they sailed across the North Sea and the English Channel to replant the cultural stock amongst the European remnants and settled-down barbarians populating the continent and ready to reclaim or adopt the nearly-lost heritage. So that by the time the Vikings began sweeping south through Lindesfarne and Iona to bring a new band of destruction from which the Book of Kells and the Lindesfarne Gospels were miraculously preserved, these great cultural symbols could survive today as representatives of the time when the Irish saved civilization.
It's a great story, and if you have the chance you can and must make the trip to the British Library to see the Lindesfarne Gospels, and Trinity College, Dublin, to see the Book of Kells. Go see Augustine's Abbey in Canterbury, mere ruins outside the walls of the massive Cathedral he also established on that first official Roman mission to England. Make the effort to visit one of the far flung islands that shelter the stone ruins of the once vibrant scriptorium that reproduced the works of men and angels. I missed Lindesfarne when I was in England, but made it to the Aran Islands off Ireland's west coast on a perfectly mystical foggy day to see the ruins of 6th and 8th century churches and the graves of the people who had the infinitely incredible power of faith to raise these monuments on a tiny island on the western edge of the civilization they would save. Because for me, Cahill's excellent account isn't just about saving civilization, but is more importantly the living proof thousands of miles away across dangerous bodies of water of the living Logos, the Word made Flesh of the first chapter of John's Gospel. When the Romans pushed the diaspora out of Jerusalem, it was only a handful of generations later that all of these living evidences of the living Logos in word and stone were created directly from their spiritual testimony and influence. They exist, they are real, the Logos is alive. The British Library calls its exhibition where the Lindesfarne Gospels are displayed "The Treasures". These are eternal Treasures we can see and hold in our hands and our hearts because, well, the Irish really did save civilization.
As I have gotten the chance in the last year to see some of the fabulous treasures of Christianity in the British Museum and Library, the Bodleian Library in Oxford, and Dublin's Trinity College, and see some of the ruins of 6th to 10th Century England and Ireland, I have often referred to Cahill's only partially tongue in cheek title. I had read the book several years ago before I had started listing and then writing down what I thought about the books I read, which turned into these book reviews that are now my life's avocation, and before I had the God-given gift to see these treasures firsthand. So of course, when in Ireland I had to find a copy and read it again. It didn't disappoint.
Cahill is what I would call a "popular theologian", although he might be better known as a historian, as this small volume turned into a readable yet thoughtful series he calls "The Hinges of History" (perhaps growing out of a phrase he uses here). Not in chronological order, other volumes have covered Jesus, Judaism, and Greek philosophy. Just like his title here, his topics and viewpoints are a little off-kilter, but he knows when to drive a serious point home and how to deflate a historical figure or event of its hot air. So, for example, the one about the Irish saving civilization....
... Except they really did. Of course making a statement like that and backing it up requires context, so Cahill backs way up and starts in Rome, in about 400 AD, when the borders of the aging Empire are about to be overrun by barbarians--are we allowed to still use that word without air quotes or irony? Defined as peoples from the north and east of the Empire with no exposure to the centuries of Greek and Roman language, literature, art, political order, and religion, and with no appreciable quantities of any of those cultural artifacts of their own, these were indeed barbarians at the gate, who burst through the weakened borders and even weaker institutions at the core of the hollowed out empire and quickly laid most if that civilization to waste.
Meanwhile, far to the north and west was born a "Romanized Celtic Briton", as Cahill calls him. We know him as St Patrick, but as a young middle class son of a fading empire far away, he was kidnapped into slavery by marauding bands of Irish Celts, so far beyond the pale the Romans never attempted to invade, conquer or incorporate them into Roman civilization. His conversion while tending sheep on cold lonely Irish hills, his escape back home, and his call back to Ireland are the stuff of both history and legend, and while the dates as with most legends are speculative, Cahill places the fall of the Empire and the rise of St Patrick's mission as roughly contemporary.
And rough that mission was, as the Irish landscape and people, ignored by history and civilizations both past and Roman, comprised what Cahill refers to as "Unholy Ireland." But unholy, as Cahill proves, is not uncultured. In fact he points out that Ireland, unconquered by larger more advanced cultures, developed the best documented vernacular history, legends, and language on the planet. Likewise, St. Patrick was the first missionary to take Christianity to, as it were, uncivilized people--"to barbarians beyond the reach of Roman law. " (p. 108) in the thirty years of his ministry in Ireland, Patrick is able to meld the wild heart of the Celt to the wild heart of Christianity in a vibrant religion (looked at with heresy-seeking skepticism when it interfaced with the Roman religion of the continent) and an explosion of literacy (Cahill claims that Irish is the first vernacular literature to be written down) and language that doesn't obliterate the Irish Celtic heritage but gives it a recorded voice and direction that would....
.... save civilization. How did that work? First the lost part (otherwise what's to save?): now overrun by the uncivilized, learning, literature, and literacy itself retreated to small isolated pockets while the barbarians looted and destroyed the artifacts of millenia of civilization. The shattered bits of Empire became tiny feudal kingdoms with little energy, interest or surplus to build or even retain their cultural heritage. While Cahill speculates that most of the Hebrew and Greek Bible might have been saved, he believes most of the rest of civilization (Greek and Roman literature, law, religion, and ways of thinking that developed into modern philosophy, science, and democracy) as we know it today from 2,000 years of development would have been lost without the Irish. Patrick's death in 461 and the deposing of the last Roman emperor in 476 seemed death knells for the great civilization borne by Greece and Rome.
But following Patrick's leadership, his spiritual children like Columcille began planting centers of learning, libraries and scriptorium around the rocky edges of western and northern Ireland, then around the edges of "Hibernia," including the most famous places like Skellig Michel, Iona, and Lindesfarne among dozens of others. There they produced and reproduced the cultural heritage that, sheltered from from the barbarians long enough to incubate and rebuild the cultural stock, then spread east and south through England, meeting the Roman mission of Augustine's spreading north from Canterbury on better than equal terms: "All England North of the Thames was indebted to the Celtic mission for its conversion," claims one historian quoted by Cahill. (p. 200). Over the next 300 years they sailed across the North Sea and the English Channel to replant the cultural stock amongst the European remnants and settled-down barbarians populating the continent and ready to reclaim or adopt the nearly-lost heritage. So that by the time the Vikings began sweeping south through Lindesfarne and Iona to bring a new band of destruction from which the Book of Kells and the Lindesfarne Gospels were miraculously preserved, these great cultural symbols could survive today as representatives of the time when the Irish saved civilization.
It's a great story, and if you have the chance you can and must make the trip to the British Library to see the Lindesfarne Gospels, and Trinity College, Dublin, to see the Book of Kells. Go see Augustine's Abbey in Canterbury, mere ruins outside the walls of the massive Cathedral he also established on that first official Roman mission to England. Make the effort to visit one of the far flung islands that shelter the stone ruins of the once vibrant scriptorium that reproduced the works of men and angels. I missed Lindesfarne when I was in England, but made it to the Aran Islands off Ireland's west coast on a perfectly mystical foggy day to see the ruins of 6th and 8th century churches and the graves of the people who had the infinitely incredible power of faith to raise these monuments on a tiny island on the western edge of the civilization they would save. Because for me, Cahill's excellent account isn't just about saving civilization, but is more importantly the living proof thousands of miles away across dangerous bodies of water of the living Logos, the Word made Flesh of the first chapter of John's Gospel. When the Romans pushed the diaspora out of Jerusalem, it was only a handful of generations later that all of these living evidences of the living Logos in word and stone were created directly from their spiritual testimony and influence. They exist, they are real, the Logos is alive. The British Library calls its exhibition where the Lindesfarne Gospels are displayed "The Treasures". These are eternal Treasures we can see and hold in our hands and our hearts because, well, the Irish really did save civilization.
January 23, 2009
Quite good.
May 6, 2024
An incredibly well-told story. Cahill badly misconstrues Augustine, and so the theological contrasts he develops between Patrick and the Irish with Augustine and Roman Christianity is not accurate. There were certainly some theological contrasts, but they were not the ones Cahill names. That I can think he gets Augustine so wrong and still feel compelled to rate this book with 5 stars is a testament to Cahill's overall writing, and his storytelling in particular.
September 6, 2012
In 406 A.D the Rhine River froze solid - and the barbarians crossed this temporary bridge to strike one of the final blows to a lazy, corrupt, and aging empire. When Alaric, king of the Visigoths, showed up at Rome's gates in 410 A.D., the citizens still didn't know the end was at hand. Unable to defend themselves - it was a lot of effort after all - they negotiated a "sack" to spare the city from bloodshed:
"So they kept their lives, most of them. But sooner or later they or their progeny lost almost everything else: titles, prosperity, way of life, learning: especially learning. A world in chaos is not a world in which books are copied and libraries are maintained. It is not the world where learned men have the leisure to become more learned."
While working through Gibbons' The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire for my nightstand reading, I realized I needed a shorter "boost" to keep going, so I decided to reread Thomas Cahill's much heralded work that shows the disappearance of learning, scholarship, and culture from the European Continent from the fall of Rome to rise of Charlemagne. All the great works of western civilization would have been lost were it not for the fact that as the Continent became illiterate, one small "unconquered people" at the edge of the Empire were just learning to read and write with gusto. As peaceful Rome turned to chaos, chaotic Ireland grew more peaceful - the key word being more. Following the lead of their eclectic and spiritually patron saint, St. Patrick, and his spiritual son, Columcille, they built centers of learning that not only drew visitors from the Continent, but sent a wave of missionaries that restored and returned the Greek, Roman, Christian and even "pagan" literature to Europe.
Just a fun note or two on Patrick. He was not actually Irish. He was a Briton - "almost Roman" - that was captured, enslaved and brutally mistreated by the Irish as a young boy. Following a vision from God - like King David he was a shepherd and solitude and deprivation turned his thoughts toward God - he escaped Ireland and received a seminary education. But his heart beat for Ireland. In one of history's unique footnotes, he became the first missionary since the Apostolic Age. Also, he didn't drive snakes out of Ireland, but he did curb the Irish passion for violence - curbing the passions of that day for hard drink and, um, ah, for a liberated sense of sexuality, is another matter. One of the reasons Patricus was so well received by his one-time tormentors was that he may have been the only man to stand up to the Irish of his century and say, "I am not afraid of you, I fear only God." That they liked and respected.
I'm only one in a long line of many to recommend Cahill's short, poetic, sometimes rambling, but always charming narrative that brings history to life.
"So they kept their lives, most of them. But sooner or later they or their progeny lost almost everything else: titles, prosperity, way of life, learning: especially learning. A world in chaos is not a world in which books are copied and libraries are maintained. It is not the world where learned men have the leisure to become more learned."
While working through Gibbons' The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire for my nightstand reading, I realized I needed a shorter "boost" to keep going, so I decided to reread Thomas Cahill's much heralded work that shows the disappearance of learning, scholarship, and culture from the European Continent from the fall of Rome to rise of Charlemagne. All the great works of western civilization would have been lost were it not for the fact that as the Continent became illiterate, one small "unconquered people" at the edge of the Empire were just learning to read and write with gusto. As peaceful Rome turned to chaos, chaotic Ireland grew more peaceful - the key word being more. Following the lead of their eclectic and spiritually patron saint, St. Patrick, and his spiritual son, Columcille, they built centers of learning that not only drew visitors from the Continent, but sent a wave of missionaries that restored and returned the Greek, Roman, Christian and even "pagan" literature to Europe.
Just a fun note or two on Patrick. He was not actually Irish. He was a Briton - "almost Roman" - that was captured, enslaved and brutally mistreated by the Irish as a young boy. Following a vision from God - like King David he was a shepherd and solitude and deprivation turned his thoughts toward God - he escaped Ireland and received a seminary education. But his heart beat for Ireland. In one of history's unique footnotes, he became the first missionary since the Apostolic Age. Also, he didn't drive snakes out of Ireland, but he did curb the Irish passion for violence - curbing the passions of that day for hard drink and, um, ah, for a liberated sense of sexuality, is another matter. One of the reasons Patricus was so well received by his one-time tormentors was that he may have been the only man to stand up to the Irish of his century and say, "I am not afraid of you, I fear only God." That they liked and respected.
I'm only one in a long line of many to recommend Cahill's short, poetic, sometimes rambling, but always charming narrative that brings history to life.
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