How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe [Paperback]

Cahill's tribute to early Celtic Christianity is powerful and heart-felt. I've never seen a finer account of St. Patrick's life and times. And then Cahill captures an era of powerful authenticity for the young Celtic church. He respectfully reports that the Irish were sending female and male apostles to mainland Europe. A recently discovered sarcophagus in Amay, Belgium is decorated in the old Celtic style, and bears the image of a woman holding a bishop's crosier. The image is labeled "Saint Chrodoara". (p. 195.) And a medieval Irish text called the Martyrology of Tallaght names 119 female saints, though of these, the life stories of only four (Brigid, Monenna, Ite, and Samtham) are now known.

Of course this outburst of spirit was quelled for the sake of conformity with a church of imperial Rome. And Irish Catholicism settled into a quieter era, featuring a genial tolerance for pagan tradition, and devotion to book learning. Cahill makes a strong case that the Irish text copyists and scholars saved our heritage of classical thought from the ravages of a barbaric age. But I want to ask Cahill -- was it the so-called barbarian invaders of Europe who tried to destroy the classical heritage? Or was it more the imperial church itself, with its drive to suppress older pagan traditions of religion, philosophy and art? Does Cahill blame the nomadic migrants for what the church itself did? Who was it really, that the Irish Celtic Church saved civilization from?

Anyone reading this book will receive, at page 51, the following advice: "Most of Plato is impenetrable at first reading. If it begins to give you a headache, skip to the end of the passage - and just take my word for it."

By then, if you have any critical sense at all, you will have realised that this is not the most intelligent book ever written.

This is its argument: the Romans were ruthless, rapacious and overbearing. But at the same time, they were superficial, effete and degenerate. Compared with the virile, energetic, free-living barbarians massed around their frontiers, the Romans and their Empire were a waste of space. Nevertheless, `the Irish' deserve undying praise from the rest of the world because they copied out much of the literature left behind by the `unattractive' Roman civilisation, and `saved' it for posterity.

Why classical literature was worth saving is not immediately clear from Cahill's account. In a brief summary, he reviews only five celebrated classical writers: Virgil, Cicero, Plato, er . . . Ausonius, and, er . . . St. Augustine.

Virgil's Aeneid, he tells us, was valuable as the first great national epic - superior to the `folk epics' of Homer, though (as he later demonstrates) inferior to the `Irish epic', the Tain. Cicero is dismissed as shallow and boring. Plato, as we have seen, was `impenetrable' (anyway, his works were saved, not by the Irish, but by the Byzantines - almost the only time the great Eastern Roman Empire which lasted until the fifteenth century is mentioned at all - except as "a small defensible state on the Bosporus"). Ausonius, the 4th century poet and politician, was decadent and foolish (though clearly some anonymous and diligent Irish monk thought his work worth preserving). Augustine is the only one who merits Cahill's sustained attention and praise - implying (some might think controversially) that Augustine must have been the greatest, or at least the most interesting, of all classical authors.

Cahill's impoverished catalogue of classical literature is understandable when you realise that actually he hates the Romans. They are, he tells us, those who have plenty, but want more. For Cahill, being `Roman' is a state of mind, as much as a cultural or political identity, and one which he deplores.

By contrast, `the Irish' are a chosen people with a world-saving mission (join the queue!). They have all the virtues and hardly any vices: but even their vices are virtuous. In spirituality, morality, poetry, architecture, and every other field of human endeavour Cahill can think of (including metalwork), they were the first, the best, the exemplary.

In labouring that point, Cahill never lets common sense get in the way. He presents myth and history as equally credible: Cuchullainn killed 130 kings in one day; St. Brendan dined on the back of a whale; St. Columbanus arrived in Lombardy in 612 AD - take your pick. Rome was the `vastest and most powerful empire in human history' - greater than China and Persia, then. There were no `real' missionaries between St. Paul and St. Patrick - so, Cahill asks us to believe, for the first four centuries AD, Christianity just blew about the world on the breeze, from Ethiopia to Ireland. Palladius, who went to Ireland before Patrick can be dismissed - because he was not Patrick. Patrick was a Briton who `became' an Irishman.

Without doubt, the Irish contribution to European history is unduly overlooked. There is a genuine need for a sensible and readable history of how Christianity came to Ireland in classical times; how and why classical learning was preserved there; and how monks from Ireland spread Celtic Christianity though post-classical Europe. Unfortunately, Cahill does not provide that. He clearly does not understand the essence of his subject: i.e. why classical civilisation was important to the world, and why it was worth `saving'. His account is sprinkled with howlers and blunders; and his quotations are not footnoted, so it is impossible to verify the bases for his controversial claims - though many appear suspect.

`How the Irish Saved Civilisation' is the historical equivalent of a tabloid newspaper: some facts, some myths - and a lot of spin and blarney - all muddled together, and wrapped up in a neat package in the hope that nobody will read it very carefully.

There is a good book in here, but not the one the author thinks he is writing. The story of how classical texts were preserved in Irish monasteries isn't well enough known, and it is true that, once the enlightened minds of the Renaissance started looking for them, many of the surviving texts were traced in monasteries with strong Irish connections. And the tale of St Patrick, familiar to every Irish schoolchild, is illuminating and interesting enough to be worth telling to a new audience.

Unfortunately Cahill, who is clearly writing for a US audience, combines a strong personal agenda with a lack of historical knowledge. He repeatedly characterises early Irish christianity as "Catholic" in the sense of "as opposed to Protestant" when not only is that anachronistic, but Christianity in early Ireland wasn't even centred on Rome. (it was inspired by the Desert Fathers of North Africa; differences were only resolved at the Synod of Whitby in 664). He uses arguments based on the shape of the early church in the post-Roman provinces when these are irrelevant to Ireland's totally different tradition. He is equally weak on Irish pre-Christian culture, unable to decide whether it survived into the Christian era or was wiped out by Patrick.

Cahill's bias lets him down repeatedly, and he often wants to have his cake and eat it. Early on he cites as an example of vile anti-Catholic propaganda the tale that, in Irish parochial schools, the 'nuns told their charges never to order ravioli on a date lest their boyfriends be reminded of pillows'. I'm sure anyone who was schooled by Irish nuns in the 50s or 60s could top that with even more hilarious examples. Calling traditional Irish catholicism narrow-minded and sex-obsessed is not a libel, but Cahill has too much of an axe to grind to admit it.

Unfortunately Cahill also ignores the role of Byzantium and the Eastern Empire - which only fell in the 15th century, AFTER the start of the Renaissance - and of Arab scholarship; at least, if not more, important in preserving classical texts. Claiming that, without the Irish monks, the knowledge of the classical world would have vanished without a trace is overstating the case.

By presenting his arguments so poorly - in many places the book is incoherent, his arguments contradictory - we find ourselves doubting whether any of this is worth paying attention to. There is a place for a good, popular book decribing the importance of the north, Ireland included, in early Christianity and the preservation of scholarship - but this isn't it. If you are seriously interested in the way the late Roman Empire turned, Transformer-like, into the Roman Church, try The End of Antiquity: Archaeology, Society and Religion in Early Medieval Western Europe or The Inheritance of Rome: A History of Europe from 400 to 1000, though I wouldn't describe either as a light read. Sir Kenneth Clark's Civilisation also has a good section on the role of the Celtic West in preserving Christian culture; shorter, far more readable and with better pictures.