Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
Bookworm on Mar 17 2007 at 9:01 am | Filed under: Uncategorized
Happy St. Patrick’s Day to all of you. And, if you haven’t already, be sure to read Thomas Cahill’s How the Irish Saved Civilization
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3 Responses to “Happy St. Patrick’s Day!”
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That was a wonderful book. To think Western Civilization was preserved by Irish monks transcribing documents for centuries because they loved words and learning…
The story of the patron saint of Ireland, Saint Patrick, was well recounted in this book as well. Abducted into slavery from Britain, escapes and goes back to Britain, and then the Church in Britain sends him back to convert the Irish! He does! And from the actions of one monk flows the blossoming of Western Civilization.
Remarkable…
Can I recommend also Cahill’s ‘The Gifts of the Jews’? One of my fav quotes: Democracy . . . grows directly out of the Israelite vision of individuals, subjects of value because they are images of God, each with a unique and personal destiny. There is no way that it could ever have been ’self-evident that all men are created equal’ without the intervention of the Jews.’
I do remember being told that monks preserved a lot of knowledge during the Dark Ages. This is of course, compared with Persian translations of Greek documents they captured.
You know what else this reminds me of? Babylon 5. After they portrayed the Ranger wars which sort of sent Earth back to medieval technology levels, and you had this scene where the monks are preserving knowledge and a little surprise in the closet.