Cahill - How the Irish saved civilization : the untold story of Irelands heroic role from the fall of Rome to the rise of medieval Europe

The beginning of the Christmas story in Matthews Gospel, as contained in the Lindisfarne Gospels, completed in 698. Note the two languages: in red letters at the top of the page, we read the Latin, Incipit evangelium secundum Mattheum (Here begins the Gospel according to Matthew); above the Latin, in small, dark brown letters, a scribe has added a translation in early English, Onginneth Godspell The rigidity of the subsequent letters derives from the example of Ogham, a primitive Irish form of the Latin alphabet, but the riot of stylized animals and other interlocking forms has its origins in prehistoric Irish art forms.

This decorative page lists the genealogy of Jesus as found in Lukes Gospel. The scribe has left us a jaunty picture of himselfwith palette and brush (and, as if to illustrate the theme of generation, his own modest erection)in the bottom right corner.

International acclaim for THOMAS CAHILLs

How the Irish Saved Civilization

Engagingly provocative. Illuminating. Cahill is an impressive, even lyrical prose stylist who seems incapable of a slack sentence or a tired description.

The Philadelphia Inquirer

Lively, readable. Cahill possesses the fabled Irish gift of storytelling.

The Hartford Courant

Quite fascinating. An erudite, charming and flamboyant romp through one of the more obscure interstices of history. Cahill tells a terrific story. Enthralling.

The Globe & Mail

Wonderfully audacious. Scholarly, compassionate and humane.

The Indianapolis Star

An utterly absorbing and entertaining chronicle of a virtually neglected episode in the annals of Western civilization.

Booklist

Elegant. Cahills sweepingly confident overview is surely more entertainingly told than in any previous account.

Sunday Telegraph

The hinges of history

We normally think of history as one catastrophe after another, war followed by war, outrage by outragealmost as if history were nothing more than all the narratives of human pain, assembled in sequence. And surely this is, often enough, an adequate description. But history is also the narratives of grace, the recountings of those blessed and inexplicable moments when someone did something for someone else, saved a life, bestowed a gift, gave something beyond what was required by circumstance.

In this series, THE HINGES OF HISTORY , I mean to retell the story of the Western world as the story of the great gift-givers, those who entrusted to our keeping one or another of the singular treasures that make up the patrimony of the West. This is also the story of the evolution of Western sensibility, a narration of how we became the people that we are and why we think and feel the way we do. And it is, finally, a recounting of those essential moments when everything was at stake, when the mighty stream that became Western history was in ultimate danger and might have divided into a hundred useless tributaries or frozen in death or evaporated altogether. But the great gift-givers, arriving in the moment of crisis, provided for transition, for transformation, and even for transfiguration, leaving us a world more varied and complex, more awesome and delightful, more beautiful and strong than the one they had found.

T HOMAS C AHILL

THE HINGES OF HISTORY

VOLUME I
HOW THE IRISH SAVED CIVILIZATION

T HE U NTOLD S TORY OF I RELANDS H EROIC R OLE FROM THE F ALL OF R OME TO THE R ISE OF M EDIEVAL E UROPE

This introductory volume presents the reader with a new way of looking at history. Its time periodthe end of the classical period and the beginning of the medieval periodenables us to look back to our ancient roots and forward to the making of the modern world.

VOLUME II
THE GIFTS OF THE JEWS

H OW A T RIBE OF D ESERT N OMADS
C HANGED THE W AY E VERYONE T HINKS AND F EELS

This is the first of three volumes on the creation of the Western world in ancient times. It is first because its subject matter takes us back to the earliest blossoming of Western sensibility, there being no West before the Jews.

VOLUME III
DESIRE OF THE EVERLASTING HILLS

T HE W ORLD B EFORE AND A FTER J ESUS

This volume, which takes as its subject Jesus and the first Christians, comes directly after The Gifts of the Jews, because Christianity grows directly out of the unique culture of ancient Judaism.

VOLUME IV
SAILING THE WINE-DARK SEA

W HY THE G REEKS M ATTER

The Greek contribution to our Western heritage comes to us largely through the cultural conduit of the Romans (who, though they do not have a volume of their own, are a presence in Volumes I, III, and IV). The Greek contribution, older than Christianity, nevertheless continues past the time of Jesus and his early followers and brings us to the medieval period. Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea concludes our study of the making of the ancient world.

VOLUMES V, VI & VII

These three volumes, to be published in the first decade of the twenty-first century, will investigate the making of the modern world and the impact of its cultural innovations on the sensibility of the West.

The series may be read in whatever order you like, since each volume is substantially complete in itself. In addition to the obvious orderstarting with Volume I and continuing in numerical sequencethe author suggests that those who began with Volume II may find it convenient to continue with Volumes III and IV before reading Volume I.

TO SUSIE

first and fairest best and dearest:
Thine be ilka joy and treasure,
Peace, Enjoyment, Love, and Pleasure

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love.

REINHOLD NIEBUHR

INTRODUCTION :
How Real Is History?

I: THE END OF THE WORLD :
How Rome Felland Why

II: WHAT WAS LOST :
The Complexities of the Classical Tradition

III: A SHIFTING WORLD OF DARKNESS :
Unholy Ireland

IV: GOOD NEWS FROM FAR OFF :
The First Missionary

V: A SOLID WORLD OF LIGHT :
Holy Ireland

VI: WHAT WAS FOUND :
How the Irish Saved Civilization