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

Central to Cahill’s work is his assertion that Irish monks played an integral role in the revival of classical knowledge that fell into a period of decay when the Roman Empire dissolved in Western Europe. Cahill’s argument is not entirely original, because scholars of the early Middle Ages also study this revival, which they term the Northumbrian Renaissance or Golden Age. Carol L. Neuman de Vegvar, for example, published The Northumbrian Renaissance: A Study in the Transmission of Style in 1987.

Nonetheless, Cahill’s accessible writing highlights a history that is often overlooked in popular culture. Moreover, he draws a direct link between this revival and St. Patrick. Were it not for Patrick’s Christian mission in Ireland, which resulted in both literacy and tolerance for Irish culture, the Insular or Hiberno-Saxon art that is a defining feature of this revival would not have appeared. Likewise, Irish monks would not have copied and saved classical works. Although he omits the work of scholars in Toledo, Spain, for example, who also restored classical works to Western Europe through their translation from Arabic to Latin, Irish scholars' translation and preservation work also plays an important role in the dissemination of classical works in medieval Europe.

This revival of classical learning was centered in the early medieval kingdom of Northumbria, located in today’s England, where the Irish church held influence. Often, popular culture presents the Italian Renaissance, which began in the 14th century, as the only Renaissance. In fact, multiple medieval renaissances or "rebirths" preceded it, and Cahill importantly calls attention to this fact in his popular history.

The works copied as part of this revival include the Lindisfarne Gospels, an illuminated manuscript produced at the monastery of Lindisfarne on an island off the Northumbrian coast. Lindisfarne was a sister house to the Irish monastery of Iona in Scotland. Due to these multiple influences, the manuscript combines Irish designs, like the knots and spirals that decorate the beginning of Luke’s gospel, with English and Mediterranean influences. The Book of Kells, another gospel book, contains similarly-decorated initials and pages: Cahill writes, “[…] the Irish combined the stately letters of the Greek and Roman alphabets with the talismanic, spellbinding simplicity of Ogham [a script that recorded the early medieval Irish language] to produce initial capitals and headings that rivet one’s eyes to the page and hold the reader in awe” (165). Furthermore, the Irish developed a more readable script that influenced copyists on the Continent.

Though Viking raids targeting monasteries across Britain and Ireland caused this golden age to come to its conclusion, the Irish impact on European culture is historically significant. Without the work of these Irish scribes, Cahill says, Europe would have been left entirely without books. This claim is exaggerated, given that classical texts were preserved in other parts of Europe, the Byzantine Empire, and throughout the Islamic world; however, the Irish contribution to this larger preservation effort is significant. Cahill even asserts that without this revival, “[…] our own world would never have come to be” (4). This statement is also a bold one; one can only assume that by “our world,” Cahill means the modern West. Nevertheless, Muslim scribes and intellectuals also preserved classical knowledge, built upon it, and reintroduced lost works to Europeans through points of contact in places like Muslim-ruled Spain. Irish scribes are, thus, one group among many who contributed to the preservation of texts that might have otherwise disappeared.