How The Irish Saved Civilization

 I subscribe to two of the major papers: The Washington Post and the New York Times. Online subscriptions are reasonably priced, so why not take both. This posting is all about a large obituary they both carried a couple days ago concerning a writer/historian named Thomas Cahill. Since they gave this much space to a man’s death, I wanted to know more and read on.

          He has written a series of books dealing with the general topic he called “Hinges of History.” The first is pictured here - HOW THE IRISH SAVED CIVILIZATION. I found a copy of it to purchase at the local Barnes and Noble.

         The title of the book is enough to generate curiosity. How could the Irish save civilization? He asserts a simple answer. Fifth century monks copied down classical texts onto sheepskin, thereby rescuing works of literature and philosophy that were being destroyed by Germanic invaders after the collapse of the Roman empire. He gives much credit to the man we’ve come to recognize as Saint Patrick for the hand he plays in the picture.

          Cahill’s Jesuit-educated mind soars above my humble blackland farmer’s understanding in many places, but he clearly makes his point about the Irish and their preservation efforts. Ireland had become isolated and the European battles for supremacy and destruction left them mostly alone for the monks to copy texts of literature that survived.

          He finishes one chapter with his simple analysis. “Wherever they went the Irish brought with them their books, many unseen in Europe for centuries… Wherever they went they brought their love of learning and their skills in bookmaking. In the bays and valley 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.”

          His past experience in the book world had brought criticism from the Catholic church hierarchy, especially Cardinal John O’Connor, Archbishop of New York. The Times obituary stated Cahill was a practicing Catholic but cared very little about the archbishop’s criticism since he’d long been a skeptic of the church hierarchy. He was quoted as saying in one of the obituaries this humorous statement: “A religious spokesman can make a pronouncement, but then someone else will think, ‘That’s what you say, Buster, so where can I buy the book?”

          I was slow coming to the topic since the book had been a past best-seller for a few years and was already quite old with its copyright of 1995. Nevertheless it made a solid case to me for the way such classics as those written by Homer, Socrates, and Plato were protected in the Dark Ages by the monks’ efforts.