Irish monks preserved Roman written artifacts and spread Christianity after the fall of Rome. They also continued to Christianize areas that had not been reached. Irish Catholicism became stricter in the 17th century. The claim that the Irish saved civilization must be qualified as they notably preserved Roman thought, but civilization would have existed in some form without them.
It is commonly said that the Irish saved civilization, and this is partly true. The idea became particularly popular with Thomas Cahill’s book How The Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe. Cahill details the crux or pivotal factor, where Irish monks protected and reproduced Rome’s written artifacts, managing to preserve many concepts of Roman civilization and actively continuing the spread of Christianity after the fall of Rome.
After the fall of Rome, the European world suffered one onslaught after another of invasions by Germanic tribes. These were mostly land invasions, so Ireland was a relatively safe place. Not everything could be salvaged in Central Europe and written material was one of the things that was often lost, burned or left behind.
While this was happening, St. Patrick’s efforts to Christianize Ireland paid off well. He had founded many monasteries throughout Ireland and the monks who lived there assiduously copied all the texts and drafted some of the first illuminated manuscripts. Because these manuscripts preserved and captured the thinking of the Roman Empire, and Roman Catholicism in particular, they would later emerge to form important ways of thinking in medieval and Renaissance times. In this way, the Irish saved civilization, in the sense of preserving Roman Catholic civilization.
In addition to preserving Roman thought, Irish monks continued to work actively to Christianise areas that had not been reached. So not only did the Irish preserve civilization from a philosophical perspective, they also continued to spread Christianity. Ireland became a stronghold of Christianity, although it cannot be said that Christianity died completely in Central Europe.
Cahill’s book is interesting, it details a point in history where much of philosophy was on the verge of being lost forever. An interesting point in Cahill’s book is that the earliest form of Irish Christianity was more humanitarian. Later, Irish Catholicism would become much stricter and women’s roles would be greatly reduced. Concern about the sinful nature of women and their inherent corruption occurred largely with the adoption of theories presented by Cornelius Jansenius Yprensis, who lived in the 16th century.
His theories would later be considered heretical by the Catholic Church and were called the Jansenist heresy. But the idea that women were sinful by nature and of little value took hold in Ireland, largely under the influence of the writings of St. Augustine, which had been well preserved. Irish Catholicism became much stricter in the 17th century and remains one of the stricter interpretations of Catholicism. Prior to this, Irish Catholicism and how Irish civilization saved civilization arose primarily from the humanistic beliefs and principles espoused by St. Patrick.
The claim that Irish saved civilization must be qualified by saying that it notably preserved Roman thought, which was later “rediscovered” and influenced some of the greatest theories to emerge from the Renaissance. But civilization, with or without the Irish, would have existed in some form if we had lost every Roman manuscript that ever existed. When the term civilization or the idea of civilized behavior applies to just one idea of civilization, it’s a little too exclusive. Civilization does not just involve the Roman world, but any large and coordinated group of people.
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