July 1, 2008, Matthew Cochrane, Book Review: How the Irish Saved Civilization
In How the Irish Saved Civilization, Thomas Cahill recounts a fascinating piece of European history regarding how Europe transitioned from the fall of the Roman Empire to medieval times. This brief period of time, known as the Dark Ages, is often overlooked and misunderstood by historians. I once even had a college history professor of mine tell me that the Dark Ages were the Middle Ages! Nothing could be further from the truth. Rather, the Dark Ages was a relatively brief period of time preceding the Middle Ages and after the fall of the Roman Empire when uneducated Germanic tribes overran Europe.
During this time cities were ransacked, priceless art was destroyed and libraries were burned to the ground. Indeed, Cahill writes, if not for a significant contribution made by Irish monks during this time some of the world’s greatest literary works might have been lost forever, including works by Plato, Aristotle, Cicero and Socrates.
In the book Cahill quickly details the events that led to the fall of the Roman Empire. He does not mince words as he describes the many failures, including a vast bureaucracy and an insatiable appetite for taxes, that marked the Roman way of life in the years leading up to the sack of Rome by the Visigoths in the year 410. Cahill writes:
By the fifth century, in the years before the complete collapse of Roman government, the imperial approach to taxation had produced a caste as hopeless as any in history. Their rapacious exactions, taken whenever and wherever they could, were the direct result of their desperation about their own increasingly unpayable tax bills. As these nerved-up outcasts commenced to prey on whoever was weaker than they, the rich became even richer. The great landowners ate up the little ones, the tax base shrank still further, and the middle classes, never encouraged by the Roman state, began to disappear from the face of the earth. Nor would they return till the appearance of the Italian mercantile families of the high Middle Ages.
After discussing the many shortcomings and misdeeds of Rome, why it had ultimately failed and fallen to barbarian hordes, Cahill pauses and asks a fascinating question: “What was lost when the Roman Empire fell?” He continues, “What died, when no one any longer had the leisure to pass on the essentials of the classical tradition, when the barbarians burned the libraries and the books turned to dust, when the stones remaining were reassembled into rural outhouses?”
For an answer, he turns to the last great Roman philosopher and thinker and “very nearly the first medieval man:” Augustine of Hippo. Having recently read
an exhaustive work on Augustine, I was pleased to read Cahill’s brief bio and interesting take on the African bishop. Recounting Augustine’s literary and intellectual contributions to society, Cahill concludes that it would be impossible for a society without modes of education and learning to produce such men. To answer his original question, what was lost when Rome fell, Cahill writes:
A world in chaos is not a world in which books are copied and libraries maintained. It is not a world where learned men have the leisure to become more learned. It is not a world for which the grammaticus schedules regular classes of young scholars and knowledge is dutifully transmitted year by placid year.
In other words, as the last vestiges of the Roman Empire fell away, learning was lost. As the libraries and books went up in smoke, the ancient world’s literature, science, math, technology and order quickly followed.
Cahill then neatly segues into the essence of the book: how the Irish saved civilization. Detailing the missionary work of Patrick, the first Christian to evangelize outside the reach and influence of the Roman Empire, Cahill shows the remarkable transformation of Irish culture after Christianity was introduced on the island. In savage and raw detail, Cahill describes pre-Christian Irish culture before Patrick arrived with the Christian gospel as barbaric – where blood was routinely shed, wars waged without second thoughts, traditional marriages did not exist and sexual perversions were the norm. For instance, in one Irish tribe, on the day of his coronation, the new king was forced to copulate with a horse. In Cahill’s own words, it “was an illiterate, aristocratic, seminomadic, Iron age warrior culture; its wealth based on animal husbandry and slavery.”
As the Irish began to convert to Christianity at an astonishing rate, Irish culture was transformed. Cahill says Patrick “succeeded beyond measure.” He continues:
Within his lifetime or soon after his death, the Irish slave trade came to a halt, and other forms of violence, such as murder and intertribal warfare, decreased. In reforming Irish sexual mores, he was rather less successful, though he established indigenous monasteries and convents, whose inmates by their way of life reminded the Irish that the virtues of lifelong faithfulness, courage, and generosity were actually attainable by ordinary human beings and that the sword was not the only instrument for structuring a society.
Later Cahill adds, Christianity “transformed Ireland into Something New, something never seen before- a Christian culture, where slavery and human sacrifice became unthinkable, and warfare, though impossible for humans to eradicate, diminished markedly.”
After Patrick died, his spiritual descendants began to plant monasteries around the island. The introduction of Christianity also brought education and literacy to Ireland and the first Irish monks showed a remarkable aptitude for learning. Within a generation, Cahill states, “the Irish had mastered Latin and even Greek, and, as best they could, were picking up some Hebrew.” The Irish monasteries became centers of learning and soon began to reproduce at a breathless pace. As the barbarians continued their now unopposed march across Europe, many monks from the continent fled to Ireland bringing valuables books and scrolls with them. These the Irish faithfully read and copied. While the rest of Europe was burning and regressing, Ireland was finally blossoming under the influence of newfound religion and education.
In the years that followed, Cahill writes, these monasteries populated the Irish countryside. Looking to spread their wealth of knowledge and monastic way of life, they began to travel and plant similar monasteries in foreign places. Beginning in Britain, the Irish monks eventually established monasteries across modern day France, Germany, Italy and even Eastern Europe. These monasteries brought back the Greek, Roman and other ancient writings and teachings that had been so tragically lost after the fall of Rome.
Unfortunately, Ireland’s time of prosperity and education unfortunately proved to be short-lived as the Vikings’ reign of terror brought death and destruction to a countless numbers of Irish monks and monasteries. Fortunately, by that time, the Irish had already reintroduced classic thought and literature throughout the European continent.
What to like: The most fascinating thing about this book is its subject. Rare is a development in history so pivotal yet so obscure. I have taken several European history classes on Western Civilization and never have I heard this significant contribution made by the Irish – even in passing.
Those who read history regularly know there are two types of history writers: those who bring history alive in fresh and exciting ways and those who duly record the facts in a dry and technical manner. Cahill is definitely an example of the former; his writing resonates with the reader and the book reads much more like a page-turning novel than an obscure history lesson.
Another nice feature of the book is the inclusion of glossy black and white photographs of historic places in Ireland and ancient Irish artifacts. The subjects of the photos are all discussed within the book so seeing actual pictures helps the reader follow Cahill’s narrative.
What not to like: This is a minor complaint in a history book, but Cahill does interject his opinion and analysis into the history. In most cases I agree with his opinions but, at other times, he does veer off course. At one point he compares obvious exaggerations in early Irish folklore to, what he believes, are similar instances of exaggeration in the Bible. For instance, he states that an account of an Irish warrior slaying thousands single-handedly is akin to the Biblically recorded age of Methuselah. There is nothing wrong with interjecting opinion in history, but readers need to be able to discern the history apart from Cahill’s own estimations.
Memorable Excerpt: “By this point, the transmission of European civilization was assured. 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.”
Conclusion: Would western civilization been preserved without the work of the Irish monks? Probably. Let us not forget that some libraries were preserved in mainland Europe and the Byzantine Empire continued to thrive for centuries after Rome fell. That being said, there is no question that the input of the Irish monks and missionaries greatly aided the restoration of Europe’s past with their excursions to the European mainland. Even with the Irish's contributions important works of antiquity were still lost forever. Cahill does a great job of bringing a little-known history lesson, one of western civilization’s pivotal moments at that, to life for millions of reader.
