A Book Review of How the Irish Saved Civilization

Thomas Cahill tells us how the Irish monks beginning with Saint Patrick saved Western Civilization.

Patrick brought Christianity to the barbarians in Ireland in the fifth century. When the Roman Empire was coming to an end and going from “peace to chaos,” in Ireland it was vice-versa. The Irish admired Patrick because he was not afraid of them (See book page124) His commitment, “his steadfast loyalty and supernatural generosity must have moved them deeply.” (124) The Irish from of old had great respect for loyalty, courage and generosity and he taught them its Christian equivalent of “faith, hope and charity.” (124) The difference between the superstitious Irish and Patrick is that Patrick believes that “all beings and events come from the hand of a good God, who loves human beings and wishes them success.” (131) That did not exclude suffering in this life but God is in control at all times. Within a generation after Patrick, they “had mastered Latin and even Greek and, as best they could, were picking up some Hebrew.” (164) They made Irish grammar and “copied out the whole of their native oral literature.” The Irish as they transcribed the different documents respected their content. As time went on, the art of the Irish Codex developed. A Codex was a book made out of dried sheepskin (mottled parchment) or vellum (calfskins) for the more honored text. Today, beautiful Irish manuscripts of the early medieval period are found in great libraries throughout Europe.

Cahill uses Augustine as a mean of viewing the classical world. (58) Augustine was among the last classically educated men. Augustine was never a slave, Patrick was. Augustine was able to reconcile ancient philosophy with Christian theology, Patrick lived it. He copied the text to preserve them for future generations. Patrick wrote two books himself, Augustine wrote several. Augustine did not have anything to do with the barbarians in North Africa. Patrick went out among the barbarians and won their respect, Christianizing them in the process. Augustine lived within Romanized Christianity, and Patrick brought Christianity to form part of the Irish culture. His way of understanding Christianity was different from Augustine who preached on the human weakness of original sin. Patrick was convinced that “even slave traders can turn into liberators, even murders can act as peacemakers, even barbarians can take their places among the nobility in heaven.”(115) Patrick’s sense of “the world as holy, as the Book of God,” (133) according to Cahill, could not come from the Greco-Roman world which had a pessimism, a suspicion of the body as unholy, and of the world lacking meaning.

What was lost when the Roman Empire fell? The civilization that had been cultivated for hundreds of years, the knowledge of philosophy, law, politics, literature, cuisine, arts, horticulture, vinivulture, agriculture, husbandry, and the art of making war. The barbarians were hungry and feeding the mind was not one of their first needs. The barbarian tribes wanted to satisfy their immediate need and did not see any value in preserving culture. The value of a Codex to them was none existent. To the Pax Romana they brought chaos while in Ireland, Patrick brought peace to the chaos of a war torn country.

Ireland spread Christianity in untamed territories by establishing monasteries everywhere they went. One of Patrick’s followers, Columcille, Christianized Scotland, then Aian went to Northern England (187). Brendan went to Iceland, Greenland and North America. Columbanus went to the European continent. Irish monks revived the continent from the pessimism of barbarian destruction.

According to Cahill, the Irish Monks copied the works and were the conduit that brought the culture back to Europe in later centuries. “Wherever they went the Irish brought with them their books, many unseen in Europe for centuries and tied to their waists as signs of triumph, just as Irish heroes had once tied to their waists their enemies’ heads. Wherever they went they brought 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.” (196) V