Cahill's account of the Irish

Cahill, Thomas. “How The Irish Saved Civilization: The untold story of Ireland’s heroic role from the fall of Rome to the rise of medieval Europe.”

New York: Doubleday, 1995. Review by Adrian Peetoom

Occasionally one come a across a book that illuminates a topic ne has never thought about, and does it in language so inviting and engaging that one sighs at the end: “How could I not have known about this until now?” This is one such book.

Cahill takes us back to the last few centuries of Imperial Rome, and its demise.  Yes, the northern European Barbarians crossed various rivers (Rhine, Danube) to overwhelm the erstwhile seemingly invincible Roman legions, but they managed it only because the Imperium had been fatally weakened by a number of factors (Cahill describes for us).  The tax collection system was one, and he pouts into a wider context those folks we meet in the Gospels. They were poor sods, actually, not just the brutal exploiters we’ve had implanted in our minds by sermons and church teachings. No wonder that Jesus embraced at least one (Levi or Matthew) – see pp 24 ff.

The Barbarians did their barbaric things, which included destroying books and libraries, as well as works of art. In doing so they destroyed not only the representations of Greek philosophy, but also the body of theological works already built up in the Christian Church’s still short history.  They scorched Europe barren of learning.

Except in Ireland. This isolated island was largely spared this kind of destruction.  Enter Patrick, a slave boy born in England but transported to Ireland, whence he escaped to become a wanderer, until he felt called by God to serve him as pries, and returned to Ireland. He never did become all that well educated himself, but as he set out to convert Ireland, his followers assembled in monastic communities, and began to copy whatever books they could lay their hands on: bibles (in Latin), commentaries, works of philosophy written in Greek and Latin, whatever. And once established and with ample available manpower, they entered first England, and then continental Europe, for form similar communities with similar mandates. Without them so much literature we know take for granted would have been lost forever.  And my own Dutch forebears might never have become Christians but for Irish missionaries like Boniface (who, I was taught in my Christian elementary school, was murdered in a small old community called Dokkum in Frisia – a myth I have been told much later).

A fine, fine read!