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    How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe
    Unavailable
    How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe
    Unavailable
    How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe
    Audiobook (abridged)3 hours

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

    Written by Thomas Cahill

    Narrated by Liam Neeson

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    The perfect St. Patrick's Day gift, and a book in the best tradition of popular history -- the untold story of Ireland's role in maintaining Western culture while the Dark Ages settled on Europe. Every year millions of Americans celebrate St. Patrick's Day, but they may not be aware of how great an influence St. Patrick was on the subsequent history of civilization. Not only did he bring Christianity to Ireland, he instilled a sense of literacy and learning that would create the conditions that allowed Ireland to become "the isle of saints and scholars" -- and thus preserve Western culture while Europe was being overrun by barbarians. In this entertaining and compelling narrative, Thomas Cahill tells the story of how Europe evolved from the classical age of Rome to the medieval era. Without Ireland, the transition could not have taken place. Not only did Irish monks and scribes maintain the very record of Western civilization -- copying manuscripts of Greek and Latin writers, both pagan and Christian, while libraries and learning on the continent were forever lost -- they brought their uniquely Irish world-view to the task. As Cahill delightfully illustrates, so much of the liveliness we associate with medieval culture has its roots in Ireland. When the seeds of culture were replanted on the European continent, it was from Ireland that they were germinated. In the tradition of Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror, How The Irish Saved Civilization reconstructs an era that few know about but which is central to understanding our past and our cultural heritage. But it conveys its knowledge with a winking wit that aptly captures the sensibility of the unsung Irish who relaunched civilization.


    From the Hardcover edition.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateJul 5, 2000
    ISBN9780553750423
    Unavailable
    How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe
    Author

    Thomas Cahill

    Thomas Cahill is a scholar and writer.

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    Reviews for How the Irish Saved Civilization

    3.5/5

    977 ratings50 reviews

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    • 2/5
      The concept behind the Hinges of History series, of which How the Irish Saved Civilization is the first volume, is commendable: to bring attention to important moments and players in often overlooked in Western history. That being said, I was sorely disappointed in the first book. To begin with, the first quarter of the text doesn't even mention the Irish except for brief allusions. Instead, he focuses on Roman history and culture. When he finally does begin to address the issues of Ireland and its people, and in particular St. Patrick (who technically wasn't even Irish), very little is devoted to the supposed subject of the book. I was astonished to discover, by reading the chapter notes, that large portions of the book are virtually invented and are not based on scholarly research. He diverges from commonly held theories, offers very little evidence to support his own, and shows very poor scholarship. For a book that is portrayed as historical fact, these are very serious issues that the reader might not be aware of since they are buried in the notes, which aren't even referenced to in the main text. Certainly, he brings up interesting subjects that deserve more attention. Unfortunately, they had to be culled from what can be seen as a seriously flawed book. Experiments in Reading
    • 4/5
      This is an entertaining and informative book, and the audiobook is winsome and sparkling, courtesy of 'performer' (not credited merely as 'narrator') Donal Donnelly. The personality of the subjects is amply shown by the texts quoted, and the story is interesting and definitely underknown, if not unknown. What really gives me pause is the suffusion of Cahill's own biases in the text. This isn't a scholarly work, but even for a popular history, the degree to which Cahill's opinions and judgments color the narrative gives me pause and makes me trust his version of history slightly less. Oozing affection for things and people Irish is appropriate to the work, and I'm with him on his nostalgia for the Celtic Church, if only from descriptions in Brother Cadfael books. But in general, the Occidocentric (saved Civilization did we, or just one?) and Christianocentric biases seemed a little strong. Plus, he totally buys into monkish anti-Viking propaganda. My favorite part was the biography and discussion of Patrick and his assumption of and effects on Irishness.
    • 4/5
      Just glancing quickly through the reviews here at Librarything is pretty amusing. It seems like Cahill managed to find a sweet spot where his critics say completely contradictory things. I think it's a good book, and you can learn a lot from it. The presentation is easy, and the assertions that annoyed some of the critics are transparent and enjoyably open to challenge. It would still probably make a fine book club selection so everyone could argue that he's too scholarly and not scholarly enough, too Christian, or a vile pagan who should burn in hell with Gibbon. Page 161 in my edition. "Or, to recall the most characteristic of all Irish responses when faced with the demand for a plain, unequivocal answer: "Well, it is, and it isn't".
    • 3/5
      This reads like breezy fiction; the style is annoying; the book is full of assumptions that are presented as fact. Thomas Cahill is NOT a scholar! Where did he go to school? The book raises many questions about the thoroughness of Cahill's research. Like a bedtime story, this is fabulous--as in mythical, not as in wonderful.
    • 3/5
      Very disappointing. This covers the basic facts about the preservation of learning in Ireland during the Dark Ages--the barest, most minimal facts, written in a boring, tedious, sleep inducing manner. This should be an interesting topic, but so lacking in scholarship or depth that you would be just as well off to read the encyclopaedia.
    • 1/5
      Rambling. Unreadable. Didn't finish it, I figured if it hasn't managed to get on track a quarter of the way through it isn't going to.
    • 3/5
      A must read if you love art, classic literature, and history! Also a great read right around St. Patrick's Day! If you read the summary on the back, the book is about exactly what is in the summary. If you are expecting a history book full of battles and war imagery, this might not be what you're looking for. I think some people get drawn in by the title and don't understand what Cahill is considering to be "civilization". Cahill does not mean humankind, but by "civilization" he means cities with a literate culture, learned men/women, and history/language/literature that could have been lost without the Irish monks.While, Cahill can get a little carried away with his historic connections between people and has a tendency to list people and their accomplishments at times (which gets a bit confusing if you aren't as well versed in this time in history), overall I really enjoyed this book and it definitely got me more interested in this time period in history! Cahill has a really great way of breathing life into the historic figures he talks about and also, not only has a sense of humor about the time period, but also gives the people of the time period a sense of humor as well. I will probably read it again for better understanding, which is why I only gave it 3 stars instead of 4. But, will definitely keep it on my bookshelf for many years!
    • 5/5
      Cahill has documented the self-destruction of the Roman Empire and the spread of barbarism and darkness throughout most of the civilized world. The Irish monks took on the task of spreading literacy while making beautifully illustrated manuscripts of everything they could get their hands on, including not just Christian theology, but Greek, Roman and Egyptian writings. Then, as England and Europe began to stabilize, Irish monks went into the world spreading the word and literacy to encourage the rebirth of civilization.
    • 3/5
      A very interesting topic but, a challenging read. World history is not a strength of mine, so I struggled through some of Cahill's material. Difficult to cover centuries of Western history in a little over 200 pages without assuming the reader has some background. It did give me a chance to do some research of my own to look up places, events and people that Cahill talks about. I read this as part of a book group, and I was glad to have weekly conversations to discuss the material, otherwise I may not have finished reading. I'm hoping to read some more in the Cahill series.
    • 4/5
      Detailed and highly documented history of the role that Ireland played in not only preserving the Classics of Rome and Greece following the fall of the Roman Empire but in bringing Christianity to Northern Europe. The author demonstrates the role that the distinctive Irish character played in these accomplishments
    • 5/5
      Deeply satisfying book about how the Irish were last to get Christianity, via Patrick, their ex-slave, and then discovered learning just as it was being wiped out all over the rest of Europe. They were sheltered from the invaders long enough to reseed Europe with Latin learning in the Dark ages, before succumbing to the Vikings themselves. Describes the attractive nature of their faith and takes time to tell a lot of the story of Western learning in the course of the story.
    • 3/5
      so i would say its a good history lesson on the Irish and their contribution to mankind, but was slow
    • 4/5
      I wish I had read this before my trip to Ireland instead of afterwards! It was very informative, but still an enjoyable read. The book begins with more of the Roman Empire than I was expecting and that portion was a bit of a slog for me. About the time Patrick appeared on the scene, the pace picked up and I was more engaged. I particularly enjoyed the excerpts of poetry. Overall, this was a good overview of Irish contributions to Western European culture and it might serve as a springboard for further reading.
    • 5/5
      An absolutely mesmerising thought provoking book.
    • 3/5
      I'm glad I had a chance to read this, and it's an interesting angle of history, but it also was a bit slow to work through and I won't come back to it again and again.
    • 5/5
      I love Cahill's interpretation of history - so dynamic!
    • 3/5
      High marks for focusing on a little-known period of history - the time between the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the High Middle Ages. I did feel that it took the author a while to get to his point - a lot of time was spend laying the groundwork for what Roman civilization was and what was going on in pagan Ireland before getting to the explosion of a literate culture around Irish Christianity. A quick, short read packed with details about Ireland in the early medieval period.
    • 2/5
      A great premise, and some good insights, but overall I was too bothered by the point of view to give a better rating -- the focus is less on civilization than on Christianity, and in fact the narrator seems to consider the two interchangeable, making many assumptions of Christian superiority and being, at best, fondly patronizing toward pre-Christian Irish society. The text felt based more on religious sentimentality than on hard historical facts, which is what I really would've wanted to read. I may have taken less of an issue with it if the title had divulged this slant from the beginning -- "How the Irish Saved Christian Civilization" would be much more appropriate. Also, spent a good deal too much time talking about irrelevant details of Roman philosophers. So, 2 stars.
    • 4/5
      Great book and well worth reading. St Patrick is discussed in depth as well as a comparision between Irish christianity and the more typical Roman Catholic christianity of the middle ages.

      This is one of those books that reminds you that you cannot understand an era without understanding the differences between our time and theirs.

      How did the Irish save the world? Their Christians became lovers of learning. They copied and preserved many of the great books that helped kindle the Renaissance that brought the west out of the middle ages. Also, not only did they preserve in their own land but the started a great missionary exedus that carried the Irish love of learning and love of their fellow man into Europe spreading their love of learning and education.

      The author points out that the Irish were not as focused on following the laws of Christian living as much as the Roman Catholic church did. He ascribes this in part to their love of learning that drove many Irish to be well read and familiar with concepts and philosophy outside of Christianity. St Augustine and his brand of religion compared to the Irish is discussed in a small way.
    • 2/5
      The concept of this book intrigued me and I was looking forward reading some deep and thoughtful historical insights. Unfortunately, the author chose to couch his analysis in Christian culture and the entire book was lost on me.

      Cahill completely discounted the enormaous contributions of Muslim scholars, scientists, and doctors during midieval European history. They preserved vast amounts of medical and philosophical information from pre-Christian Greek thinkers. I find it ironic that the author is claiming that bringing Christianity to Ireland made them more literary and intellectual when the spread of Christian dogma was a huge factor in Man's descent into the Dark Ages.
    • 4/5
      I've just started "Heretics and Heroes" by the same author and realized how many of his books I've read and enjoyed. It turns out the author has created a series called Hinges of History to lend a theme to all these works. I enjoyed this work on how the Irish monasteries were the bastion of literacy in Europe and how the Irish monks worked on that far edge of Europe.

      The author has a way with narrative history.

      I'm pretty sure I read this with a year or two of it's publication.
    • 4/5
      Dense but entertaining. With a much needed pronunciation guide.
    • 4/5
      I borrowed the book from the library to learn about St Patrick. By reading it I have a good idea of history from the fall of Roman empire. The little backwater Ireland and the scribes in the monasteries played a big part in saving much literature and historical bible texts. I now have a great admiration for St Patrick and the tenacity of the Irish people. He was the right influential leader and the right time. Turned them from fighting to loving Christians with a heart for God. A magic book, written in an easy style, teaching about history and illuminating historical influences and key people.
    • 2/5
      As the Roman Empire crumbled, so too did literacy and libraries suffer. By the seventh century, however, Patrick had converted enough men into being Christians and scribes that many ancient Greek and Roman books were preserved in Ireland, even as the originals crumbled elsewhere. The preservation of ancient texts is a fascinating theme upon which to relate a history, but alas, the majority of the book concerns how awesome Plato is. Seriously, there is a three page quote from Plato, followed by a good fifty page digression about what all that philosophy means. First off, I don't much like Plato--his logic is fuzzy and his arguments are based on premises that are easily proven false. So telling me that the Irish saved some Plato texts doesn't impress me all that much. Plus, it seems like many of these texts were saved elsewhere anyway, so its not like we would have no ancient philosophy at all without Irish monasteries. Second, two-thirds of this book is a recounting of Greek and Roman philosophy and ways of thinking, one-third has to do with the conversion of the Irish to Christianity, and about three pages actually address scriptoriums and scribes and all the rest of that good stuff. Not as advertised! I assumed we'd get at least a few pages on how copying out manuscripts actually worked, with maybe a little information about early monasteries, but Cahill is too busy endlessly telling us how super-cool Greek philosophers are to recount any actual scholarship. This is particularly frustrating because the little tidbits Cahill does share about early Irish scholars are fascinating: the punny poems in margins of manuscripts, the fights with European Christians over everything from tonsures to orthodoxy, the melding of pagan and Christian ways of thinking into something new and unique. We only get about a sentence on each of these things, though, and then the book abruptly ends.
    • 3/5
      The titular question of Thomas Cahill’s first Hinges of History book is one that gets people interested in picking it up. Yet the length of How the Irish Saved Civilization brings into question on if Cahill adequately answers his own question with such a slender book that promoted becoming a bestseller.Cahill’s focus is on the end of the Western Roman Empire and how the literary tradition, in fact literacy itself survived the end of the Roman era and begin in the new Germanic aftermath of the fall of Rome. The survival of literacy in Europe is thanks to the efforts of the newly Christianized Irish, the people not considered worth the conquest by Rome that keeps the legacy of Rome alive in Western Europe. The Irish through the missionary effort of the future St. Patrick turn from a non-literate oral society into a literate and learning center in less than a century. The proud warrior-centered culture became “warriors” for learning that attracted scholars all over Europe to learn and read at the many monasteries, but then the Irish started spread away from their island home first across the Irish Sea to Great Britain than all across Europe founding monasteries as they went to continued their tradition.Cahill attempts to create portraits of the Irish before and after their conversion to display how their culture changed, but also how it stayed the same and influenced the Celtic Christian tradition of the British Isles. In contrast, Cahill portrayed the Roman worldview and culture including how it influenced Roman Christianity. Although both these attempts were somewhat successful, the result in the book came off as a little disjointed in cohesion. The lack of firm historical data or sources for some of Cahill’s depiction of St. Patrick, acknowledged in the book’s bibliographic sources hurts of the quality of the overall work as well.How the Irish Saved Civilization is a nice history for the general reader, however unlike later installments of the Hinges of History series it is lacking in a quality connected structure and solid sources. Cahill should be praised in giving readers understanding in how the society of Western Europe both changed and stayed the same with the fall of Rome and the beginning of the early Middle Ages, however the quality of the book is only so-so.
    • 1/5
      The premise sounded interesting, how the isolated Irish monks saved books and learning through the dark ages – but the author lost me when he went back to the fall of Rome, and long quoting of Roman poets… I just couldn’t see the point, I’m sure there was one, but I wasn’t willing to wait around for it. I suspect this is another one of those subjects that could have been covered in a longish magazine article.
    • 4/5
      I read this while I was taking a coach tour through Ireland. It was the perfect time and place to read it. Cahill makes a very convincing case.
    • 2/5
      I do get why this book on "How the Irish Saved Civilization" was a bestseller. Not only is it the perfect gift for St Patrick's Day, it is entertaining and readable. But I also found it superficial and not reliable. It may be the contrast with some really fine histories and biographies I've read lately, but several things in this book made it suspect to me. Cahill isn't a historian. The short biography at the end says only that he has a MFA in "Film and Dramatic Literature" and that he has studied theology. His pro-Catholic bias is notable throughout. (He even takes gratuitous slams at Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses.) I don't claim a writer of a solid history has to be a historian--some of those great histories and biographies recently read were by journalists. And all writers have their take, from conservative to Marxist, that are evident to me. But notably, the good ones, whatever their background or worldview, have pages of sources and notes to back up their claims--this didn't. But the reason I ended up feeling the book was dubious was the actual content, starting with the title and the very premise: Irish monks saved civilization by preserving classical literature. Other reviewers have pointed out that the Western world isn't the whole of civilization. (Even as Cahill at one point conflates "the whole of the civilized world" with the Roman Empire. What about China, for instance?) And others preserved the old Latin learning. Not just in Europe, the Eastern Roman Empire remained in existence until 1453. Cahill though claims the Irish were more liberal in what they copied than those on the continent. And of the Eastern Romans, he claimed that the "literature of ancient Greece were well enough preserved at Byzantium, but Latin literature would almost certainly surely have been lost without the Irish." I find that hard to credit. They didn't read Vergil at Constantinople?I think part of why I also find it hard to swallow his encomium to Christianity as a preserver of classical Greek and Roman civilization is that it also did so much to destroy it. One poignant illustration of that is the fate of the works of Sappho. Cahill himself notes that among the treasures of antiquity lost were almost all her poetry. What he doesn't tell you is that her poems were preserved until nearly A.D 1000, at least according to A Book of Woman Poets, "when a wrathful church destroyed whatever it could find. In 1073 her writings were publicly burned in Rome and Constantinople by order of Pope Gregory VIII." So, I guess I wonder, why is it these "great gift-givers" of civilization didn't preserve her for us?But Cahill doesn't give me a good answer for this, especially because so little of the book even focuses on that part of the story. We don't get to Ireland at all until Part III starting on page 71. The section that tells us how the Irish saved this learning doesn't begin until Part VI on page 145--in a book of 218 pages. Between that we get a biography of St Patrick, who Cahill claimed was "the first human being in the history of the world to speak out unequivocally against slavery." And he'd be wrong by nearly a millennium--look up the "Cyrus Cylinder," called the "first charter of human rights" from the Persian king who ended the Jewish Babylonian exile--a biblical scholar such as Cahill should know better. Other things irked me. Particularly the comparison of the barbarian "hordes" that destroyed Rome to "the Mexicans, Haitians, and other dispossessed peoples seeking illegal entry" to the United States. It's a point he repeats at the end, and seemed all the more ironic considering Cahill's condemnation of the prejudice their fellow Catholics, the Irish, experienced in America. It's not that there weren't interesting points in the book I'd like to read more about. Such as the case for Augustine's Confessions as the first real autobiography and "story of a soul" and the indomitable Brigid of Kildare, an abbess with the power of a bishop. Cahill might even be right in his take on history--but I didn't find the case presented in his book convincing.
    • 4/5
      A great short read about early Irish history if one discounts the author's paranoid view of seeing the fall of Rome as a template for the impending demise of the United States of America, crushed by Mexican and Haitian "hordes". While the US will certainly become a less white country, immigration was and will never be the trigger of doom in this still largely empty country. It is truly strange that a descendant of the malnourished and poor Irish immigrants wants to shut the door to people in need. Although not helping "the least among you" fits the world view of US Christian Conservatives. Besides his conservative Catholicism, it is the author's dirty old man perspective that imbues the book with a pungent yet funny flavor. The heathen Irish had very catholic sexual mores. The unstoppable Irish libido later on shocked the English puritans.Too many pages of this rather short book are devoted to the fall of Rome, in which the author partly misinforms his readers. He largely follows the outdated Gibbonian Christian degeneration argument for the fall of Rome, using the prissy Saint Augustine as his key witness. This allows him to present the vibrant heathen Irish in the best of light (I have to learn more about the old Irish sagas) and turn Saint Patrick into a true hero. In an otherwise good account of the Irish saint's life, I wish he had included more information what made the Irish chieftain kings accept Christianity. The sudden spectacular conversion of most of the island remains a mystery to me.The author also fails to develop the economic successes of the Irish monasteries. After the destruction of the Roman large estates, it was the autonomous Irish monasteries that established engines of economic growth in the wilderness. This model was developed in Ireland where civilization and trade were notable by their absence. A fortunate side effect was the creation of scriptoria that preserved many Latin texts.The author's titular claim that the Irish saved civilization, however, is totally wrong. Firstly, can anybody today still limit the use of civilization to Western civilization? Secondly, there was the Rome that never fell, Constantinople as well as Alexandria. Many of the Latin authors also survived either via Greek or Arabian scribes. The Irish monks managed to re-establish pockets of civilization, often in remote spaces. It took others to recognize the value of what they had saved. Petrarca and the early humanists rediscovered the ancient manuscripts rotting away in the monastery libraries.Overall, an enjoyable and highly readable account of early medieval Ireland that is somewhat flawed by the author's prejudices that flavor the text to the detriment of accuracy.
    • 4/5
      Before reading this book I had heard from quite a few people that it was a great read. They were wrong; it was better than great! The description of St. Augustine and his later, unfortunate, influence on Western Christianity was spot on as was his juxtaposition of this influence with the (much more Orthodox) Christianity of St. Patrick and his Irish children. This book was an engaging, lively, and informative exploration of Celtic Christianity and its adherents who would later save civilization for Western Europe. I don't have any Irish in me, but by the end of this book I was certainly wishing I did! The only complaint I have is that I wish Cahill would have taken a closer look at the ties between the ancient Celtic Church and the Coptic Church, as I think (largely through the influence of Aziz S. Atiya's writing on the subject) that Coptic Christianity was a very significant influence on the Celtic Church. I recommend this book to anyone interested in the roots of the West.