My wife Stacy and I just returned from a trip of a lifetime to Ireland. The country is breathtakingly beautiful, the people engagingly warm and friendly. I have wanted to visit Ireland for many years now after reading a book by Thomas Cahill entitled How The Irish Saved Civilization.[1] Cahill traces the history of Ireland from its early Druid beginnings through its Christian transformation, and how Ireland then “saved” civilization during the Middle Ages. We visited some of the sites Cahill mentions in his book: the monastery of St. Kevin in Glendalough (founded in the 6th century); the Book of Kells (the colorful transcription of the Gospels from around 800); and the beehive huts on the western shores of the Atlantic (where Irish monks copied ancient manuscripts so vital to the saving of Western culture). While I won’t share photos of our trip, can I tell you the tale of how the Irish saved civilization?
DARK BEGINNINGS
Ireland has an ancient past. The earliest written history comes from the Celts, part of the Gaelic people (from the word “Gaul”) that immigrated from continental Europe into Ireland around 350 BC. The Celts were essentially pagan, with fierce and fearful gods and goddesses who needed sacrifices, which were offered by holy men and women known as Druids or Druidesses. They were a warring people, ruled by kings of city-states dotted around the land, who would fight each other for territory. Sometimes these marauding kings would raid faraway lands (such as the island of Britain). One such king was Miliucc, and around the year 401 AD, Miliucc and his men kidnapped a 16-year-old boy from Britain named Patricius.
For 6 years, Patricius worked as a slave-shepherd in Ireland, and in his own words, he was constantly hungry and cold. Although raised in a Christian home, Patricius was not particularly religious. Yet with no place else to turn, he prayed constantly during the long hours of sheep tending. As he prayed, “the love of God and the fear of him surrounded me more and more—and faith grew and the Spirit was roused, so that in one day I would say as many as a hundred prayers.”[2] After 6 years, one night under the light of the Irish moon he heard a mysterious voice say to him, “Your hungers are rewarded; you are going home. Look, your ship is ready.” Patricius was inland and there was no ship for 200 miles, but he got up and began walking. Miraculously, he was not seen or caught as he walked almost the length of Ireland to the southeast coast, where he boarded a boat. He finally made it home to Britain and was reunited with his family. A few more years went by, and then one night he had a vision of a man from Ireland holding letters, all entitled “The Voice of the Irish.” He then hears that voice, “We beg you to come and walk among us once more.” So Patricius, whom we know as Saint Patrick, crossed the Irish Sea, back to the land of his captivity, this time assured of the power of his God who sets captives free.
THE GOD OF THE THREE FACES
Ireland was a barbaric, fearful, and warring place when Patrick set foot again on the Irish shore. But over the next 30 years, Ireland was transformed as a peaceful, loving, Christian culture began to take root. How did he do it? Cahill notes that the Christian view of the world made sense to the Irish. Their very human values of courage, loyalty, and generosity found their true and deeper equivalents of faith, hope, and love. The Irish loved that Patrick “was attracted to the same kind of oddball, off-center personalities that attracted Jesus,” and that “the passionate, the outsized, the out of control have a better shot at seizing heaven than the contained, the calculated, and those whom the world approves.”[3] Jesus was the greatest of Warriors, fighting off all fears and conquering even death:
The Irish would have said here is a story that answers our deepest needs—and answers them in a way so good that we could never have even dared dream of it. We can put away our knives and abandon our alters. 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 the lamb. God does not hate us; he loves us. Greater love than this no man has than that he should lay down his life for his friends. This is what God’s Word, made flesh, did for us.[4]
The good news of the Christian message also taught them that the world is not a fearful place but “all nature, indeed the whole of the created universe, conspires to mankind’s good, teaching, succoring, and saving.”[5] The culture-transforming message of this good news is beautifully summed up in Patrick’s great prayer for the Irish, “St. Patrick’s Breastplate:”
I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through belief in the threeness,
Through confession of the oneness
Of the Creator of Creation.
Christ to shield me today
Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise,
Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.
HOW CIVILIZATION WAS SAVED BEFORE
As Christianity spread throughout Ireland, monasteries started popping up all over the land. These were places where Christians could devote themselves to learning, prayer, and service, and in time, these monasteries became mini universities. True to Irish generosity, all were welcome, and soon people from all over England and eventually Europe joined these monastic cities. To preserve and expand their learning, the monks copied whatever manuscripts they could get their hands on—not only the Bible and Bible commentaries, but all the ancient Greek and Roman writings that people were bringing with them from continental Europe. These centers devoted to learning turned out to be critical for civilization because while Ireland was “rushing from chaos to peace,”[6] continental Europe was rapidly disintegrating into chaos. With the fall of Rome in 476 AD, the Germanic tribes from northern Europe (the Goths and Vandals) began pillaging cities all over Europe, and in the process, burning whole libraries. The great works of antiquity were being destroyed with no traces left. Except in Ireland, where monks were feverishly copying them so that we might today still have ancient Greek and Roman writings, histories, and poems. When Charlemagne was able to unify much of Europe in the late 700s, he invited Irish monks to instruct him and bring with them their vast libraries. As Cahill notes, “wherever they went the Irish brought with them their books [and] their love of learning…and breathed new life into the exhausted literacy culture of Europe. And that is how the Irish saved civilization.”[7]
HOW CIVILIZATION WILL BE SAVED AGAIN
Many say our civilization today is on the brink of disaster. There is certainly much to be anxious about. Although we face the threat of maniacal dictators in Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran, we in the United States seem paralyzed by political and social polarization.
So how will civilization be saved again? The same way God has always saved civilization: through the culture-transforming people in whom are lodged faith and hope in the steadfast, certain love of God. Cahill ends his book by dividing civilization into the “Romans” and the “catholics” (referring not to the Roman Catholic church but the universal Christian church). He writes:
Perhaps history is always divided into Romans and Catholics—or better, catholics. The Romans are the rich and powerful who run things their way and must always accrue more and more because they instinctively believe that there will never be enough to go around; the catholics, as their name implies, are universalists who instinctively believe..that every human being is an equal child of God and that God will provide. The twenty-first century, prophesied Malruax, will be spiritual or it will not [exist]. If our civilization is to be saved—if we are to be saved, it will not be by Romans but by saints.[8]
[1] Thomas Cahill, 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: Nan A. Talese, 1995).
[2] Id, 102.
[3] Id, 123.
[4] Id, 141.
[5] Id, 131.
[6] Id, 124.
[7] Id, 196.
[8] Id, 218.