How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe

Between 400 and 600, the world as it had been previously known ended for Europe and the Near East.

We generally look at this period as a dark time since it featured the collapse of the Roman Empire, a loss from which Europe would strive to recover over the next 1400 years.

But that period looked quite different in Ireland, as well expressed by Thomas Cahill in How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe (affiliate link).

Cahill set the tone by exploring the Roman world and Ireland as they had existed at the turn of the fifth century: Rome, the inheritor of the legacy of the Classical world and over a millennium of philosophical, scientific, religious, show more etc. advancements and learning; Ireland, as pagan and remote as ever.

Cahill then explored the great reversal over the next two hundred years: overrun by the “barbarians” to the east, beset by plagues and famines, the Roman Empire collapsed, and in the urgency of survival, much of the ancient learning was lost. Patricius, a Briton Celtic born and raised as a Christian, was captured by Irish pirates and was enslaved; he escaped slavery but felt called to proclaim Jesus to the Irish. After getting some training, Patricius returned and found ways to well evangelize the Irish; he would become known as St. Patrick, and by the end of the fifth century Ireland had been well evangelized and mostly Christian. Cahill describes how the Celtic Christianity of this age was quite distinct from standard Roman Catholicism later, or even at that same time, and how little connection existed between Rome and Ireland.

Cahill then considered what would follow: many of the Irish would dedicate themselves to Jesus and the monastery, and not a few desired to cultivate learning. Irish monks and scribes would collect manuscripts of the Bible but also of the Greek and Latin classics and would copy them.

Thus Irish Christians preserved a lot of the classical works which remain to this day. The Book of Kells is a beautiful Irish manuscript. And Irish monks would spread throughout western Europe, setting up monasteries in Scotland, England, and what we consider France and Germany. Many of Charlemagne’s favored scholar monks were Irish. And wherever they went, they not only brought their distinctive expression of Christianity, but also dedication to copying manuscripts and preserving the heritage of a culture which had not been their own at the time.

While there were still conflicts among the Irish from 450-600, the chaos enveloping everywhere else left them alone: they would only begin suffering Viking, then Anglo-Norman, then British invasion after 750. In this way the Irish lost some of that distinctiveness in scholasticism and suffered themselves as other Europeans had been suffering in the fifth and sixth centuries.

But by the time the Vikings began to invade and pillage, the situation in France, Germany, England, etc. had somewhat stabilized. Their own would learn from the Irish monks and continue their work in their countries.

When the author told this story, it was not otherwise well known. The author likes to make broad characterizations which we today would find a bit prejudicial. But the story is quite engaging and powerful, and a reminder of the great power possible in the Gospel of Jesus Christ: for as the rest of the world was burning, Ireland found Jesus and enjoyed a golden age. show less

More than anything, the frequent use of the term barbarian set me on edge and left me wholly unimpressed with this book. The idea that ancient Roman culture is absolutely central to the notion of civilization is so absurd I don't even know where to begin. And the implication late in the book that a further spread of Islam in the Middle Ages would have been an unmitigated horror? Yeah I see your ass there, buddy. Newsflash: civilizations have sprung up all over the world completely separate from the particular brand of civilization centered on the Mediterranean Sea. There's something to mourn in losing a large body of literature, regardless of which culture it originated from, but civilization as a whole wasn't going to completely show more disappear if Europe never remembered anything of its Greek and Roman past.

I'm still interested in learning more about the history of the Irish people and specifically about the transition from an oral to a written tradition (which is ostensibly the topic of this book), but I didn't really learn much of anything about that from this book, so I'm gonna have to look elsewhere. show less

Cahill’s book narrates Irish Christianity from the 5th to 9th centuries, especially how the monks of Ireland preserved classical literature and practiced a form of Christianity refreshingly modern and appealing to our time. I was left with mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, Cahill is an amazing writer. I really enjoyed learning about saints like Patrick, Brigid, Columcille, Columbanus, and Aidan. Just read this passage — the whole book is like this:

The vigorous gods of Rome were not eclipsed by some effeminate eastern fantasy religion Fecund Venus and bloody Mars did not vacate the field to the pathetic, pacifistic Christ. Rather, the life of the old religion had already drained away; and by the time Christianity came show more to the attention of the Roman gentry, the gods were shadows of their formerly lively selves — marginal, quieti manes, rustling through a dimly viewed eternity. (22)

This passage, however, is also symptomatic of what drove me nuts about this book. Cahill can be a bit too polemical for my taste, and he makes blanket statements that make me pause. The statement above is a case in point. From my reading of scholarship on Roman religion early this summer such as [Rituals and Power: The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor] by [[S. R. F. Price]] and [Religions of Rome: Volume 1: A History] by [[Mary Beard]], I have been made aware that the average Roman was still highly emotionally invested in their polytheistic religions. As I understand it, the idea that Roman paganism had fallen into rote ritual is a canard designed to explain the rise of Christianity.

If Cahill is so wrong on this, a subject I do know something about, then what about the many statements he makes about Irish Christianity? He certainly seems to see Irish Christianity as a Golden Era, constantly contrasting it to the sexually puritanical, book-burning Roman Church of the patristic era and today. I do not know enough about the subject to disprove him, but academic habits of mind have trained me to be skeptical of the kind of blanket statements Cahill writes.

I’m not saying don’t read this book. It’s a great book and a great entry-point into the subject. But it is also a general public book written by a nonspecialist. So enjoy the book, but don’t let it be the be-all, end-all of writing on Irish Christianity. Thankfully, Cahill so entrances the reader with his subject, and provides such a useful list of further reading, that it would be difficult for this to be the only book one would ever read on the subject. show less

Rather than a heroic role in saving civilization, I felt that Cahill made a case that the Irish of the middle ages played a somewhat accidental roll in "saving" civilization. Nonetheless, there was a lot of information which was new to me, especially regarding Irish history. But the book also went into other periphial areas such as the ancient greeks, which added pages but didn't contribute much to making the point of the books title.

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 show more 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. show less

A great short read about early Irish history if one discounts the author's paranoid view of seeing the fall of Rome as a template for the impending demise of the United States of America, crushed by Mexican and Haitian "hordes". While the US will certainly become a less white country, immigration was and will never be the trigger of doom in this still largely empty country. It is truly strange that a descendant of the malnourished and poor Irish immigrants wants to shut the door to people in need. Although not helping "the least among you" fits the world view of US Christian Conservatives. Besides his conservative Catholicism, it is the author's dirty old man perspective that imbues the book with a pungent yet funny flavor. The heathen show more Irish had very catholic sexual mores. The unstoppable Irish libido later on shocked the English puritans.

Too many pages of this rather short book are devoted to the fall of Rome, in which the author partly misinforms his readers. He largely follows the outdated Gibbonian Christian degeneration argument for the fall of Rome, using the prissy Saint Augustine as his key witness. This allows him to present the vibrant heathen Irish in the best of light (I have to learn more about the old Irish sagas) and turn Saint Patrick into a true hero. In an otherwise good account of the Irish saint's life, I wish he had included more information what made the Irish chieftain kings accept Christianity. The sudden spectacular conversion of most of the island remains a mystery to me.

The author also fails to develop the economic successes of the Irish monasteries. After the destruction of the Roman large estates, it was the autonomous Irish monasteries that established engines of economic growth in the wilderness. This model was developed in Ireland where civilization and trade were notable by their absence. A fortunate side effect was the creation of scriptoria that preserved many Latin texts.

The author's titular claim that the Irish saved civilization, however, is totally wrong. Firstly, can anybody today still limit the use of civilization to Western civilization? Secondly, there was the Rome that never fell, Constantinople as well as Alexandria. Many of the Latin authors also survived either via Greek or Arabian scribes. The Irish monks managed to re-establish pockets of civilization, often in remote spaces. It took others to recognize the value of what they had saved. Petrarca and the early humanists rediscovered the ancient manuscripts rotting away in the monastery libraries.

Overall, an enjoyable and highly readable account of early medieval Ireland that is somewhat flawed by the author's prejudices that flavor the text to the detriment of accuracy. show less

I really wanted to like this book, but ultimately I was unimpressed with Cahill's argument that "the Irish saved civilization". He almost gets there, and maybe he would have if he had dedicated a hundred pages or more to this overall short book, but he keeps it brief and spends a lot of his space on making a poor case for how civilization ended.
Cahill's argument on Rome's fall is quite short and a little disappointing since he brushes aside a lot of the existing scholarship that has gone into this question. He eventually settles on greed and loose morals and then poses that the values of early Christianity pulled the tatters together.
Cahill also makes an argument for early Irish peoples having a certain cultural attitude that lends show more itself to Christian enlightenment. Thus Ireland was a prime place for the remnants of book learned Christian monks to settle and keep the flame alive until they were strong enough to reseed England and the rest of Europe with the Greek/Roman/Christian heritage.
The big question left over is exactly what does Cahill mean by "civilization"? If he means a certain Roman Christianity version of Greek enlightenment, then yes, he might have a good argument here. But if he simply means "civilization" as in cities, with trade, philosophy, religion, agriculture, ect. then we have a bit of a problem. Were there any other places that were committed to retaining and preserving knowledge during this time? Why yes, there were. Byzantium was still going strong, as was Baghdad. In fact, the Islamic tradition was also doing basically the same thing as Cahill says the Irish monks were doing, copying and studying Greek and Roman classics. In fact, the Islamic scholars made many advancements in mathematics and medicine during this time. And if we want to extend "civilization" to include the east, then we can't forget China and South Asia too.
Overall, I think Cahill's writing style was engaging and he certianly gave me some food for thought. But as "hinge of history" he really should have called his book something like "How the Irish Helped Saved Western Civilization" instead of the sweeping generalization he posits on the book's cover. show less