how the irish saved civilization by thomas cahill

The founder of the Cahill & Company Catalogue and the director of religious publishing at Doubleday, Mr. Cahill concludes with typically wry unabashedness, 'is how the Irish saved civilization.' And once they were Christianized, the Irish founded the monastic movement, copying the books being destroyed elsewhere by Germanic invaders, eventually bringing them back to the places Patrick, however, provided 'a living alternative.' He was a serene man who slept well without drink, a man 'in whom the sharp fear of death has been smoothed away.' The Christianity he proposed to the Irish succeeded because it tookĪway the dread from the magical world that was Ireland. Of their world so acute that they drank themselves into an insensate stupor in order to sleep. The Ireland of the early fifth century was a brooding, dank island whose inhabitants, while carefree and warlike on the outside, lived in 'quaking fear' within, their terror of shape-changing monsters, of sudden death and the insubstantiality Cahill's theory about him goes something like this: His name was originally Patricius, but he came to be known to later generations as St. The Patrick in question was a former Celtic slave brought to Ireland from Roman-era Britain. The phrase, wry and pithy at the same time, is as good a way as any of suggesting Mr.

Glory' when, according to our author, the Irish saved classical civilization after the fall of the Roman Empire. The Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role From the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval EuropeĪtrick slept soundly and soberly,' says Thomas Cahill in this charming and poetic disquisition, which describes what he calls Ireland's 'one moment of unblemished Who Saved Civilization? The Irish, That's Who!ĪpWho Saved Civilization? The Irish, That's Who! By RICHARD BERNSTEIN Books of the Times

How the irish saved civilization by thomas cahill