Ally Jackson’s Reviews > How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe  > Status Update

“Wherever they went the rish brought with them their books… their love of learning and their skills in bookmaking. In the bays and valleys of their exile, they reestablished literacy and breathed new life into the exhausted literary culture of Europe. And that is how the Irish saved civilization” (Cahill 196).

“More than half of all our biblical commentaries between 650 and 850 were written by Irishmen” (Cahill 195).

“Brigid of Kildare, a convert of Patrick’s… ruled as high abbess of an immense double monastery—that is, a foundation that admitted both men and women, another irregularity that would have deeply offended Roman catholic sensibility, which to this day imagines rule by a woman over men as a perversion of the natural order”

“Sweeney, the king who thought he was a bird and lived his life in treetops” (Cahill 156). Pause. You mean this king thought he was… a BIRD?

“From the fourth century on, instruction in Christianity could even serve as a shortcut to Romanization” (Cahill 124). The early spread of Christianity throughout Europe during the 4th century is closely tied with the Romanization movement.

“However blind his British contemporaries may have been to it, the greatness of Patrick is beyond dispute: the first human being in the history of the world to speak out unequivocally against slavery” (Cahill 114). The author claims that St. Patrick is the first man to speak out against slavery. This is extremely hard to prove, and he doesn’t really back up this claim.

“He might as well have been the king of the Fuzzy-Wuzzies… It was preposterous” (Cahill 30). 😛 🔥