16 quotes
Ireland is unique in religious history for being the only land into which Christianity was introduced without bloodshed.
How the Irish Saved Civilization (1995)
If we are to be saved, it will not be by Romans but by saints.
How the Irish Saved Civilization (1995)
More than a billion people in our world today survive on less than $370 a year, while Americans, who constitute five percent of the world's population, purchase fifty percent of its cocaine.
How the Irish Saved Civilization (1995)
More than half of all our biblical commentaries between 650 and 850 were written by Irishmen.
How the Irish Saved Civilization (1995)
The high abbesses... had the power to heal, ...almost certainly heard confessions, probably ordained clergy, and may even have celebrated Mass.
How the Irish Saved Civilization (1995)
This swaggering behavior has confounded historians, prompting them to wonder if Columbanus was a little off his rocker. But I think we may chalk up this attitude to his Irishness.
How the Irish Saved Civilization (1995)
Beowulf grappling with the monstors was a type of Christ grappling with Satan.
How the Irish Saved Civilization (1995)
The Irish... developed a form of confession that was exclusively private and that had no equivalent on the continent.
How the Irish Saved Civilization (1995)
Whether or not Freud was right when he muttered in exasperation that the Irish were the only people who could not be helped by psychoanalysis, there can be no doubt of one thing: the Irish will never change.
How the Irish Saved Civilization (1995)
Patrick... understood that, though Christianity was not inextricably wedded to Roman custom, it could not survive without Roman literacy.
How the Irish Saved Civilization (1995)
Whereas elsewhere in Europe, no educated man would be caught dead speaking a vernacular, the Irish thought that all language was game—and too much fun to be deprived of any part of it. They were still too childlike and playful to find any value in snobbery.
How the Irish Saved Civilization (1995)
Latin literature would almost certainly have been lost without the Irish, and illiterate Europe would hardly have developed its great national literatures without the example of the Irish, the first vernacular literature to be written down.
How the Irish Saved Civilization (1995)
Lacking cities, Ireland didn't quite see the point of bishops, and gradually these were replaced in importance by abbots and—in a development that would make any self-respecting Roman's blood run cold—abbesses.
How the Irish Saved Civilization (1995)
The pages of most books were of mottled parchment, that is, dried sheepskin, which was universally available—and nowhere more abundant than in Ireland, whose bright green fields still host each April an explosion of new white lambs. Vellum, or calfskin, which was more uniformly white when dried, was used more sparingly for the most honored texts.
How the Irish Saved Civilization (1995)
For a century and a half—from the middle of the fifth century to the end of the sixth—there had been... no formal communication between Rome and the Christians of Britain, nor had there been any between Rome and Ireland...
How the Irish Saved Civilization (1995)
Never interested in impressive edifices, Irish monks preferred to spend their time in study, prayer, farming—and, of course, copying. ...a little hut for each monk... a refectory and kitchen; a scriptorium and library; a smithy, a kiln, a mill, and a couple of barns; a modest church—and they were in business.
How the Irish Saved Civilization (1995)