Introduction Summary and Analysis

How the Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill shows how humane evangelists prepare in remote, Stone Age Ireland the corps of literate "White Martyrs" that reintroduce to medieval Europe eleven centuries of culture that fall along with the Roman Imperium. Without this effort, now forgotten outside Ireland, modern civilization would be markedly different.

"Irish" is seldom coupled with "civilization", but without Ireland, still a Stone Age culture in the fifth century, neither Renaissance nor Enlightenment would have occurred. While barbarians are looting Europe and burning books, the Irish are learning to read, write, and copy anything they can get their hands on, and then transmit back to Europe its great Greco-Roman and Judeao-Christian heritage. Without this "Service of the Scribes", the world would be different today.

This story has gone, thus far, untold because historians inevitably write from their own cultural...