How the Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill

I've often seen this book on the shelves at the book store and have always tempted to buy it. I just never pulled the trigger. Recently, when I was back in the United States (for a weekend), I stepped into the local used book store with my niece and we both walked out with an armful of books (for very little cash). My stack of books included this one by Thomas Cahill.

So how exactly did the Irish save civilization? I'll try to summarize as best I can.

At the point in history when the Holy Roman Empire was collapsing, Ireland was converting to Catholicism under St. Patrick. Ireland's geographic location aided them in their ability to seclude themselves from the barbarians in France and Germany that were one of the causes of the fall of Rome.

As St. Patrick was evangelizing Ireland, a trail of abbeys were left in his wake. These abbeys, protected from the barbarians by geography, were the seeds of civilization that fell from the flower of Rome (which had in turn, preserved civilized thought from Greece). Without these abbeys copying texts and adding their own Irish form (writing down their own oral tradition in the margins) to the newly copied texts, books such as The Bible and Plato's Republic may not have survived. The Book of Kells is the oldest existing copy of The Bible and it sits on display at Trinity College in Dublin. What St. Patrick started and St. Brigit continued in Ireland was passed on for three hundred years and the evangelistic Irish monks reached all the way back to Rome, planting the seeds of civilization along the way.

That is . . . until the Vikings came. The arrival of the Vikings in Ireland began the downfall of the Irish influence on civilization as the bejeweled texts (housed in the abbeys) were highly desired loot by the Viking raiders. Thousands of books were stolen or destroyed as Vikings raided the abbeys along the rocky coasts of Ireland. The Book of Kells survived only by being moved further inland to the city of Kells from whence it receives its name. The Vikings eventially created coastal settlements in Ireland and came to influence the Irish culture in their own fashion, but that - as they say - is a story for a different day.

As for books, I found it very informative and pertinent to all of the Irish monastic sites that I've visited. However, if you didn't find the above intriguing, you can probably do without reading this book. This book gets a 6.5 (out of 10) on the HRputer book rating scale.

Kilmainham Gaol

Beth and I went down to the City Centre today for a couple of reasons. First off, Beth wanted to see the city. Secondly, I needed to help her get her bearings on how to get around in Dublin. Today's lesson involved riding the bus and the Luas (a light rail that runs through the city). The first destination we aimed for was Kilmainham Gaol.

Kilmainham Gaol (pronounced "jail") is an essential stop on a tour of Dublin - I'd even recommend that it is the first stop on your tour of Dublin. It really gets you familiarized with the history of the city and the country.

I'm not trying to say the country is full of convicts and that the history of the country revolves around the jail. However, the jail maps two important historical events of the country: The Potato Famine and The Easter Rising/Fight for Independence.

The interesting aspect to the Potato Famine is that to keep beggars off the street, they'd often incarcerate them at Kilmainham for some period of time. In the jail's history (over 100 years from the late 1700's through 1924 when it was closed), 800-1000 people were usually jailed per year. During the years of the Potato Famine, that number rose to over 9000 in one year. The meager rations they received in jail was more than they were getting at home. Kilmainham Gaol may well have saved hundreds/thousands of peoples lives.

The other piece of history that I referred to was The Easter Rising - which was the beginning of the country's fight for independence from England. In 1916, a group of Irish Republicans seized the General Post Office and other important landmarks in the City Centre and held off the British army for 1 week before they surrendered, unconditionally, to the army's overwhelming numbers.

This wasn't necessarily what caused the Irish movement for independence, though. There were uprising before, but they never were able to create the tidal wave of support that this movement eventually did. What really caused the support for independence was the execution of all the Irish Republicans at Kilmainham Gaol. In all 90 people were sentenced to death and 15 (mostly the leaders) were executed within a week of their sentence. The jail is a grim reminder of those executions as some of the cells have name placards over their doors commemorating the fallen heroes.

All in all, it was an excellent experience. However, we dropped out of the tour early because RJ was getting a little restless. A fun day for the family, but I think a little more walking than Beth was expecting.