When people share their reading habits with you, what they are really granting is privileged access to their deepest interests, and predilections, even their dreams, needs, and anxieties.
Nicholas Basbanes
How the Irish Saved Civilization — I bought this book on a whim. It was recommended by a friend and the title sounded intriguing. Then the unexpected happened. The author Thomas Cahill introduced me to someone who would become one my faith heroes — Patrick of Ireland.
St. Patrick is more than a day dedicated to drinking. Patrick did more than chase the snakes out of England or teach the Trinity through a three-leaf clover (both are folk tales). Drinking, snakes, and clover marked my limited knowledge of this shadowy fifth century figure . . . until I read Cahill’s book.
Half of How the Irish Saved Civilization is dedicated to Patrick. Cahill, in entertaining, historical, and informative prose, brings to life the man whom he calls “the first missionary.”1 Here’s the story that Cahill unfolds.
At the age of sixteen (approximately 406 C.E.), Patrick was kidnapped from his home in Britain and forced into slavery in Ireland. During this time of harsh deprivation, Patrick came to the Savior. After living in slavery for seven years, he escaped and returned home. At the ripe age of forty-eight Patrick responded to God’s call and returned to Ireland as a missionary to convert his former captives. Instead of revenge or retribution, he came with a message of forgiveness.
Cahill documents how Patrick was the first recorded missionary to go to the “barbarians” — those outside the bounds of the Roman Empire and Roman laws. The Apostles stayed within the confines of the Empire and this set the example for centuries until Patrick came along.
Patrick’s mission was inspired by a night-time vision where the Irish people cried out in a dream, “We appeal to you, holy servant boy, to come and walk with us.” With an entourage of priests, seminarians, and others, he embarked for Ireland in 432 C.E.
What world did he enter? Cahill describes a nation of tiny kingdoms and fiefdoms, local rulers who held sway over small patches of land and people. Dominating the landscape and religious life of this people were horrific gods and idols: “. . . there are few idols that we have retrieved from barrow or bog that would not give a child nightmares and an adult the willies . . . Archeological finds serve only to underscore the monstrousness of the Celtic pantheon.”
At the time of Patrick’s arrival they were still offering human sacrifices to their gods. How did he respond? “He refused to be afraid if them,” writes Cahill. “And in a damp land where people lived and slept in close proximity, everyone would have known sooner or later if Patrick’s sleep was brought on by the goddess of intoxication or broken by the goddess of fear. Patrick slept soundly and soberly.”
I love Cahill’s eloquence in describing the gospel’s impact: “Yes, the Irish would have said, there is a story that answers our deepest needs — and answers them in a way so good that we could never have dared dream of. We can put away our knives and abandon our altars. These are no longer required. The God of the Three Faces has given us His own son and we are washed clean in the blood of this lamb.”
In his lifetime, Patrick planted seven hundred churches and baptized thousands of people. His gospel wed salvation and social justice together. Cahill documents how within his lifetime or soon after his death, the Irish slave trade stopped, violence, murder, and intertribal warfare decreased, and new laws were influenced by gospel norms.
So, Patrick saved Ireland but how did the Irish save civilization?
“The first Irish Christians became the first Irish literates.” Cahill records how Patrick “understood that, though Christianity [in Ireland] was not inextricably wedded to Roman custom, it could not survive without Roman literacy.” This survival was launched through a monastic movement.
During and after Patirck’s lifetime, believers retreated to found isolated monasteries. “Since Ireland had no cities, these monastic establishments grew rapidly into the first population centers, hubs of unprecedented prosperity, art, and learning.” What happened in these hubs?
Once these monastics had learned to read the Bible, the books of the church martyrs, and the commentaries of the early church leaders, “they began to devour all of the old Greek and Latin pagan literature that came their way.”
Within a generation, they had mastered Latin, Greek and were picking up some Hebrew . . . and they kept copying these books along with the Bible. Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Cicero — to name a few — took on new life. These Irish Christians believed that all truth was God’s truth and welcomed the wisdom of ancient authors.
A chief function of these monasteries, then, was the copying of the biblical and Latin texts. Monasteries became centers of learning where “people began to come from all over Ireland to sit at the feet of the monks and learn all they had to teach.” Like the Jews, Cahill concludes, “The Irish enshrined literacy as their central religious act.”
Here’s a wonderful picture of the power of the printed page: “In a land where literacy had previously been unknown, in a world where the old literate civilizations were sinking fast beneath successive ways of barbarism, the white Gospel page, shining in all the little oratories of Ireland, acted as a pledge: the lonely darkness had been turned into light.”
Ireland, Cahill writes, “at peace and furiously copying, thus stood in the position of becoming Europe’s publisher.” Their books were adorned with elaborate decorations, manuscripts that are today “the great jewels of libraries in England, France, Switzerland” and the list could go on.
But this dedication to literacy and books did not stop at Ireland’s shoreline. The Irish monastic tradition began to spread beyond Ireland. “Now, Irish monks would themselves colonize barbarized Europe, bringing their learning with them.” First they came to Scotland and soon spread as far west as Italy.
Without the Irish monastic movement, “there would have perished in the west not only literacy but all the habits of the mind that encouraged thought.” Cahill writes that these brave Christians marked Europe in a permanent way: “Wherever [the Irish] 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 library culture of Europe.” The gospel and literacy changed a culture.
Good books mark us in a myriad of ways. How the Irish Saved Civilization introduced me to the life and ministry of Patrick; an introduction that was worth the price of the book. So, whenever you pick up a book to read consider how these brave Irishman crossed the channel to Europe and left behind a legacy of faith, learning, and books. Let’s raise a pint to Patrick!
Want to read more about Patrick? Check out The Celtic Way of Evangelism by George Hunter. Patrick’s approach to ministry is a marvelous alternative to the approaches we use.
- All of the quotes in this blog are from the book How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe by Thomas Cahill. ↩︎
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