How the Irish Saved Civilization (Hinges of History)
by Thomas Cahill
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Book Summary Information
Author: Thomas CahillEdition: Paperback
Published: 1996-02-01
ISBN: 0385418493
Number of pages: 256
Publisher: Anchor
Book Reviews of How the Irish Saved Civilization (Hinges of History)
Book Review: Salvation from the Irish
Summary: 4 Stars
When I first heard the title of this book I decided not to read it, despite my pleasure in Cahill's prior book, "The Gift of the Jews". After a couple of lukewarm recommendations from friends I respected, I picked up a copy through Amazon.com and put it on my shelf of books to read.
When I got around to reading the book, to my surprise, it was NOT about Irish Whisky, or even specifically about Irish history, but tends to focus on St. Patrick and the Irish monastery. In other words, it is more a book about faith and how that faith, spread predominately by Patrick and the centers of monastic learning and study that he founded, impacted an isolated island naton, and then continued to spread by the expansion of the Irish monasteries missionary work.
According to Cahill (and others), Patrick was not as close to Rome as he was to God, and this greatly influenced his peculiarly Irish way of building and directing his monastic orders. While the Benedictines were equally (some would say 'more') responsible for recording and keeping the history of the prior millenium, the Benedictine monasteries were focused almost as much on accumulating wealth and political influence as they were concerned about doing 'God's work' and thus suffered some dilution of their Christian tasks.
The Irish monasteries were rather austere in their goals, and while their scribes were busy copying the 'wisdom of the ages' along with the wisdom of the church, when they reached a critical mass, they sent out another set of monks who had planned and then built another monastery, spread the gospel in their new locale, and set about reproducing their efforts from prior monasteries.
When Charlemagne was beginning the process of turning the warring fiefdoms in the center of the European continent into an Empire of note, he called Alcuin, a monk who was at the time the head of the York cathedral school, to come and to teach the Emperor himself, his court, their children, and the priests and monks in the kingdom.
Much of Christianity by this time had become segmented and fraught with various heresies, and Charlemagne made Alcuin both his Minister of Education and his de facto 'overseer of church doctrine'.
Alcuin's education was from the ongoing branch of Irish monastic training, and many of the scholars he brought to France and Germany as Charlemagne's Minister of Education came from the Irish monasteries.
The Irish by 625 had founded 80 monastic centers in Ireland, Scotland, Northumbria and Wales. The most important were Bangor and Armagh in Ulster; Clonard in Meath; Glendalough in Leinster.
St. Columban was a spiritual heir of St. Patrick who promoted a great deal of the growth of the Irish monastery. Many scholars take pains to compare the Rule of St. Columban with the Rule of St. Benedict, but this devolves into meaningless theological argument that pleases scholars but proves almost nothing. The crucial difference between the movements is that the Benedictine movement is in it's origin an intellectual movement of the Roman and Greek aristocracies within the Roman Church that tended toward an Aristotelian nature in scholarship and flagged in its growth during the 6th Century Lombard expansion.
The heritage of Patrick and Columban, alternatively, was Augustinian teaching through the love of God and all human beings of every layer of society, with certainly one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful missionizing outreach in the history of the Catholic Church.
Cahill writes in a conversational manner that not all scholars will appreciate, but anyone interested in the growth and the spread of education, unification of what became a strong Europe, and in the history of the shaping of the character and background of France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and most of Central Europe in a Christian mold will find the book both instructive and entertaining.
While Cahill is not without detractors, I believe the contribution he and his books are making will be remembered and appreciated by anyone who likes both a good story and a well-researched treatise on a part of Irish life which has been too-little told.
Odinelson
Summary of How the Irish Saved Civilization (Hinges of History)
In this delightful and illuminating look into a crucial but little-known "hinge" of history, Thomas Cahill takes us to the "island of saints and scholars," the Ireland of St. Patrick and the Book of Kells. Here, far from the barbarian despoliation of the continent, monks and scribes laboriously, lovingly, even playfully preserved the West's written treasury. When stability returned in Europe, these Irish scholars were instrumental in spreading learning, becoming not only the conservators of civilization, but also the shapers of the medieval mind, putting their unique stamp on Western culture.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 fall of Rome to the rise of Charlemagne--the "dark ages"--learning, scholarship, and culture disappeared from the European continent. The great heritage of western civilization--from the Greek and Roman classics to Jewish and Christian works--would have been utterly lost were it not for the holy men and women of unconquered Ireland.
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