My recent trip to Ireland has gotten me interested in Irish history and culture. I recently picked up Thomas Cahill’s How the Irish Saved Civilization. Cahill’s thesis is that the Irish monks of the 6th-8th Centuries saved Western Civilization by preserving latin and greek literature through the discipline of the scriptorium. If all you know of early Irish Christianity is St. Patrick, this book provides a lively introduction to key figures such as Columcille and Columbanus.
The book’s central thesis, however, seems overstated, and at times the author’s prejudices show through, as in this passage:
It is a shame that private confession is one of the few Irish innovations that passed into the universal church. How different might Catholicism be today if it had taken over the easy Irish attitudes toward diversity, authority, the role of women, and the relative unimportance of sexual mores.
Well, yes, and how different it might have been if Roman Christianity had simply adopted the mores of pagan Romans. Different, but not better.
On the whole, then, this is an engaging introduction to some important aspects of early Irish Christianity, but not a text to be taken too seriously.