As much as the march of history may appear to have steadily progressed towards the present, this is a false impression created by the ways in which we learn of our past. We are taught that history is linear, an impression re-enforced by the memorizing of dates and events, people and politics. We're told of the milestones in humanity's development, moments in time in which we came to key truths that helped us to achieve the now and that, without which, the now would not exist. But this assumes that the now was not only the goal all along -- absurd given that no one in our past could have imagined our present --, but that the now which we enjoy is somehow better, or more valorous than the alternative, that we should be rooting for the now that we have over the now that we'll never know. History is a muddle, full of incidents and forces which grind together to grudgingly, and eventually, produce the present. Unfortunately, this is not a view of history shared by Mr. Cahill.
When, in the fifth century, the Roman Empire in the west fell to the Germanic hordes, civilization in Europe was all-but extinguished. The city of Rome, which had been, for a thousand years, the spiritual home of the most advanced society west of China, was sacked and burned, its treasures stolen, its people vanquished, its temples toppled. A light that had shined over Europe since the height of the ancient Greeks had gone out, plunging into a wild and savage darkness a continent of people who would be generations dead before Charlemagne, in the eighth century, ould restore something like order to a world gone to seed.
Three centuries is an eternity, far too long for ancient writings to survive and be handed down to a civilization restored. Such works would have quickly rotted away, consigning their troves of knowledge to the illegible tides of time. Who, then, preserved those works of ancient literature? Who preserved for Charlemagne and his descendents, Cicero and Caesar, Plato and Aristotle? Who kept undammed the river of culture forged by the ancients for the betterment of man? According to Mr. Cahill, this honor goes to Irish monks who, inspired by St. Patrick, toiled fearlessly and relentlessly, in stony scriptoriums perched on the edge of the Northern Sea. Charged by faith and the hunger for knowledge, they devoted their lives to letters and illuminations, labors that would eventually gift to a revived Europe the wisdom of antiquity.
In How the Irish Saved Civilization, Mr. Cahill, an American historian, contends that our civilization would not exist were it not for the efforts of a band of Irish monks to preserve ancient thought. He points out that, had Europe stayed any longer in its self-imposed darkness, it might well have become Islamic, unable to stand up to the existential threat from the east. But while this may have been a possible consequence of losing the knowledge of the ancients that was then used to fuel a European revival, it is an argument that also supposes that ours is the proper civilization. It rejects the idea that another, better civilization might not have risen to take its place. Moreover, it depends upon the idea that this ancient knowledge could not have come from another source, like, say, Byzantium where efforts were also made to preserve ancient knowledge.
Mr. Cahill believes in the idea that history has nexus points, consequential moments in which history is profoundly shaped. And though this theory has merit, it is a stretch to apply that view to this case. The author assumes that this preserved knowledge was vital to a European revival when this is impossible to know. And if we cannot know the degree to which such knowledge influenced Europe in centuries subsequent to its preservation, then we cannot properly value the preservation itself. Yes, the preservation of knowledge is invariably to the good. For it takes time and good fortune to have profound realizations about the world. Preserving those revelations is vital if subsequent generations are to be able to fly higher than their ancestors. But How The Irish Saved Civilization doesn't make this argument. It goes well beyond to make a point for which it has little evidence.
How The Irish Saved Civilization is not without merit. It is an entertaining biography of Augustine and St. Patrick, throwing in for good measure a summation of the fall of the Romans and the rise of Charlemagne. But its failure to convince us of the validity of its central conceit hamstrings the work. Interesting but challenged... (2/5 Stars)
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