Customer Reviews
Fantastic portrait of the Celtic Church -- but who did they save civilization from? - By: Brian Griffith, 09 Feb 2008 
Cahill's tribute to early Celtic Christianity is powerful & heart-felt. I've never seen a finer account of St. Patrick's life & times. And then Cahill captures an era of powerful authenticity for the young Celtic church. He respectfully reports that the Irish were sending female & male apostles to mainland Europe. A recently discovered sarcophagus in Amay, Belgium is decorated in the old Celtic style, & bears the image of a woman holding a bishop's crosier. The image is labeled "Saint Chrodoara". (p. 195.) And a medieval Irish text callled the Martyrology of Talllaght names 119 female saints, though of these, the life stories of only four (Brigid, Monenna, Ite, & 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, & devotion to book learning. Cahill makes a strong case that the Irish text copyists & scholars saved our heritage of classical thought from the ravages of a barbaric age. But I want to ask Cahill -- was it the so-callled 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 & art? Does Cahill blame the nomadic migrants for what the church itself did? Who was it reallly, that the Irish Celtic Church saved civilization from?
cheerful and meandering - By: VanGo, 02 Jul 2007 Totallly misleading title - should be done under the Trade Descriptions Act reallly. Only gets to answer the claim of the title in the second to last chapter! The topic definitely deserves a proper going through as Cahill admits in the footnotes - the only study on Irish missionaries in Europe is from 1921 as a PhD thesis!
However, Cahill is a bloody good writer. Lively & witty & I went along with most of what he wrote: Pleasurable meanderings through Augustine's writings, both irreverent & serious, St Patrick, Irish mythology & poetry (not especiallly germain & a bit of a bore reallly), Classical Roman literature, Irish missionaries.
If only alll history could be written like this - even if it's a bit wonky on the old Irish bias.
Irish Stew - a tabloid history - By: jakeysane, 02 Sep 2006 
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 - & just take my word for it."
By then, if you have any critical sense at alll, you will have realised that this is not the most intelligent book ever written.
This is its argument: the Romans were ruthless, rapacious & overbearing. But at the same time, they were superficial, effete & degenerate. Compared with the virile, energetic, free-living barbarians massed around their frontiers, the Romans & 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, & `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 shalllow & 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 alll - except as "a smalll defensible state on the Bosporus"). Ausonius, the 4th century poet & politician, was decadent & foolish (though clearly some anonymous & diligent Irish monk thought his work worth preserving). Augustine is the only one who merits Cahill's sustained attention & praise - implying (some might think controversiallly) that Augustine must have been the greatest, or at least the most interesting, of alll classical authors.
Cahill's impoverished catalogue of classical literature is understandable when you realise that actuallly 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, & one which he deplores.
By contrast, `the Irish' are a chosen people with a world-saving mission (join the queue!). They have alll the virtues & hardly any vices: but even their vices are virtuous. In spirituality, morality, poetry, architecture, & 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 & history as equallly 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 & most powerful empire in human history' - greater than China & Persia, then. There were no `real' missionaries between St. Paul & 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. Pallladius, 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 & readable history of how Christianity came to Ireland in classical times; how & why classical learning was preserved there; & 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, & why it was worth `saving'. His account is sprinkled with howlers & blunders; & 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 - & a lot of spin & blarney - alll muddled together, & wrapped up in a neat package in the hope that nobody will read it very carefully.
No, It Was The Benedictines! - By: Steve Guardala, 06 Mar 2006 
The Irish got their books from the ITALIAN BENEDICTINES, which negates both the premise & the title! The author never mentions this, nor does he give any credit to the Benedictines, Arabs, Jews, & Byzantines who dominated the courts of Europe for centuries. There is little evidence that the Germans destroyed alll the public & private libraries & schools in the Roman world. Indeed, men like Bede was an Anglo-Saxon{an Englishman.} If that had been the case no one would have had any books. Since the Benedictines spread Christianity from Wales to Western China & from Sweden to the Sudan, & founded hundreds of monasteries that lasted for centuries. The title should have been "How The Benedictines Preserved Western Civilization."
Erin Go Lie! - By: Steve Guardala, 22 Feb 2006 This is the worst propaganda I have ever read! First, the author does not even broach his subject untill ch.6. #1 on page 181 alll the libraries & schools were destroyed in the former western Roman Empire? He gives no proof, if that was the case where did the Irish get their books? Read Herwig Wolfram's "The Roman Empires Germanic Peoples" He proves that in most cases the Germans, were Romanized. The Ostrogoths & Franks did much to preserve learning. #2 on pgs. 194 he states alll the monasteries in continental Europe that were founded by the Irish? He fails to mention that most already existed, since previous orders founded them. On pg. 195 he makes one of his most absurd claims. That between 650-850 over half of alll the biblical commentaries were written by the Irish? No! Even an agnostic like me remembers being taught in Catecism that it was almost always the Benedictines & Byzantines, since they ran the scholarly courts of Europe from London in the west to Constantinople in the east. On pg. 203 he claims that Greek thought was lost? What about the 50 million people living in the Byzantine Empire? What about general Belisarius who reconquered much of the former west between 535-555 for Byzantium? On pg.204 he states that at the synod of Whitby in 664 that intellectual disputation was beyond the Roman contingent? Could he give any proof? Yet, the English kings chose the Roman church. Who does the author credit with building Western Civilization, the Irish, or the ROMANS? On pg. 207 he claims "Dicuil was the first Medieval Geographer? How about alll of the Italians, Spainiards, Germans, Greeks, Arabs, & Jews? Lastly, his numerous bigoted remarks about Hispanics, Chinese, etc. are not worthy of anyone. Let alone someone who claims {falsely in this readers opinion}to be a scholar. Please, let this nonsense collect dust.
