How the Irish Saved Civilization

Chapter I: The End of the World: How Rome Fell—and Why

• 406 BCE: The Rhine River froze solid. On one side, the Roman legions; the other, the "barbarians" (Germanic peoples).
• Romans: hair was cut with thought to the shape of the head, clean-shaven to show jaw-line, dress is designed with form and movement in mind, hard physiques, homogeneous.
• Barbarians: hair was unkept, bearded, bodies disguised by ornament and paint, no discipline, heterogeneous.
• "We live around the sea, like frogs around a pond."—Socrates
• Rome turned its back on the European mainland, instead focusing on the Mediterranean.
• Prophesy of the Twelve Eagles: the end of the Roman Empire would occur twelve centuries after its founding.
• The "fall" of Rome was gradual, so gradual that most Romans didn't even notice it.
• Edward Gibbons' first volume of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776) argued that "the decline of the Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness", but also stated the introduction, or at least the abuse of, Christianity had something to do with it.
• The move from nomadic-hunter to agrarian also had some effect.
• William McNeill suggests "the Roman state... was destroyed by the same forces that had created it."—i.e. an agrarian culture, new to the world, spreading out because of the population boom the nomadic-hunter/agrarian transition causes.
• "Civilized life... lies in doing well what has been done before."
• Republican Rome: 2 consuls, for checks and balances, elected for one-year terms to prevent dictatorship.
• Battle of Actium (31 BCE): Octavian defeated fellow consul, Mark Antony, and seized imperial power. Octavian became Augustus Caesar and the consuls became ornamental positions.
• Curialis: tax collector.
• Roman Senators paid no taxes.
• The curialis would be small land-owners and they would have to collect from the large land-owners who were the same people from whom they borrowed. If the small land-owners defaulted on a loan, their land would be added to the larger estate.

  Is this the beginning of the feudal system?

  Could economics (i.e. too many taxes) have caused the downfall?

• With the curialis disappearing, the Roman state became stratified rich to poor. The middle class, never embraced by Roman society, began to disappear.
• The Germanic land-owners would welcome the fleeing curialis without any of the strings Roman society attached.
• "With the moral decay of republican resolve, the army became more and more a reserve of non-Romans, half-Romanized barbarian mercenaries and servants sent in the stead of freemen who couldn't be bothered."
• 409 BCE: Slaves were permitted, if not encouraged, to enlist in the Roman army. At this point, it is sometimes difficult to tell Romans from barbarians along the frontier.
• 387 BCE: Gaulish Celts suprisingly sack Rome.
• In 410 CE, Alaric, king of the Visigoths, stood outside the walls of Rome. Rome sent envoys out to negotiate, stating an attack would be foolhardy with Rome's invicible strength and innumerable ranks of warriors. Alaric replied, "The thicker the grass, the more easily scythed." When the envoys asked the price of his departure, he replied that his men would sweep through the city, taking all gold, silver, and anything of value that could be moved. "But what will that leave us?" To which Alaric announced, "Your lives."
• This marked the end of Roman security.

• Between the sack of Alaric in 410 CE and the death of the western emperor in 476 CE, the Empire became increasingly unstable.
• By the end of the 430^s CE, North Africa was lost to the Vandals who had already captured all or large parts of Gaul and Spain.
• By 410 CE, all British Roman soldiers had been withdrawn, leaving Britain exposed to the Angles, Saxons, Picts, Jutes, Celts, and any other organized tribe.
• "Barbarians" would use slavery as their weapon and the Irish were the most fierce and feared.
• Augustine of Hippo was the last great classical man and the first medieval man. He was the bishop of Hippo and is responsible for large portions of modern Catholicism.
• In 401 CE, Austine of Hippo wrote the first autobiography, being the first to use "I" as we do today.
• Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tanguant.
  "These are the tears of things, and the stuff of our mortality cuts us to the heart."—Virgil
• Throughout the Dark Ages, Catholic bishopry would remain.

  Is this the shining light through the dark tunnel?

• By the fifth century CE, shadowing the will and opinion of the people, bishops had begun to promelgate their own, due to the unreliability of the commons. Thus began the running of the Catholic church, even to this day.
• Augustine of Hippo formulated the doctrines of Original Sin, Grace, and Holy Trinity.
  • Doctine of Original Sin: man was thrown out of the Garden of Eden because of his use of Free Will and will forever be banished from this "Heaven on Earth"; our hardships here are due to the Sin of Adam.
  • Doctine of Grace: God's love is a gift, given to all men freely and equally, regardless of merit.
  • Doctine of the Holy Trinity: there is a love between the Father and his Son so strong that it forms another person, the Holy Spirit.

• "For the Great Gaels of Ireland,
  Are the men that God made mad,
  For all their wars are merry,
  And all their songs are sad."—G.K. Chesterton
• Celts entered historical records roughly about 600 BCE. Two main branches of the Celtic tribe settled in differenty areas, one in France (the Gauls) and the other on the Iberian Peninsula (these were the ones who may have visited New Hampshire). Around 200 BCE, the Celts invaded the Greek world, settling in present-day Turkey (the Galatians). Siblings of the Gauls crossed to Britain as early as 400 BCE (the Britons) who nine centuries later would be pushed by the Angles and Saxons into Cornwall (the Cornish) and Wales (the Welsh).
• Around 350 BCE, Celtic tribes reached Ireland and were most likely the Iberian Celts, now referred to as the Irish. Their language belonged not to the Brythonic branch, like Breton and Welsh, but to a Celtic branch called Goidelic (Irish and Scot Gaelic).
• Irish legend has these Iberian Celts fighting a tribe already living in Ireland known as the Tuatha De Danaan, the people of the goddess Danu. Legend also has these others being defeated and becoming the "little people".

  Are these the leprechauns?

• From 400 BCE to 500 CE, Ireland was oral and, as far as we can deduce, was:
  • a warrior culture,
  • semi-nomadic,
  • illiterate,
  • aristocratic, and
  • living in the Iron Age
• "[The Celts were] urged on by the infernal skirl of pipers, they presented to the unaccustomed and throbbing Roman sensorium a multimedia event featuring all the terrors of Hell itself."
• Warp-spasm: Irish heroes were possesed when they met their enemies and their appearances could alter considerably.

  Why would this pseudo-historical belief be passed down to us?

• The Irish were totally unlike the "refined" Romans when it comes to language and style. It reflects their upfront attitude and brusqueness.
• Women played a huge role in Irish legend.

• Patricius was a Roman taken as a shepherd-slave by the Celts. After constant prayer, he reportedly received an epiphany.
• Patricius would become Patrick, the fabled Saint of Ireland.
• Ireland in the early fifth century:
  
  
• Patrick placed bishopries next to the kings in order keep a running tally on their actions.
• British Christians did not recognize Irish Christians as full-fledged because they were not Roman.
• Remember: Patrick was originally Roman, but only thought of himself as Irish.

• For the first three centuries of its existence, Christianity would get you killed; from about 300 CE on, it was the "in" thing.
• There has always been an Irish duality—they were brave, but frightened. This dilineation caused societal confusion. Patrick allowed them to be both, for he was courageous and at peace with his emotions.
• Shape-shifting is a natural, normal, regular excercise to the Irish.
• The Irish believe there is no stoicism or predictabilty; there is a constant and eternal fluidity.
• To the Irish, every corner or turn held some fate, some pitfall.
• Patrick mixed the magic of Druidism with Christianity—there is magic in the world, and God put it there.
• Patience and vindication are major points made by Patrick.
• According to Patrick, God is not in an unattainable Heaven. The Earth is proof He exists and lives among us. All living things are created by Him and, thus by default, are Himself.
• The Irish have always held the entire Earth is holy.
• Human sacrifice began to lose popularity as there was a transfer of beliefs.
  • Human sacrifice gives the idea of a penalizing God—"Take him (the one we are killing) instead of me." or "I will sacrifice myself for the good of the people." (If I give myself, God will leave my people alone.)
  • In Christianity, Jesus has done the sacrificing for us, allowing a change from penalizing God to God sacrificing for us.
  • This dichotomy can be seen in the Gundestrup Cauldron and the Ardagh Chalice.
    • Gundestrup Cauldron: dates to between 100 and 200 BCE; depicts a violent God.
    • Ardagh Chalice: dates to between 700 and 800 CE; depicts a God sacrificing for man.

• Edict of Milan (313 CE): Formal declaration of Christianity being legal in the Roman Empire.
• In the eleventh century CE, Brian Boru routs the Vikings.
• Medieval gods can be described as vengeful, powerful, and fearsome. After Christian conversion, they resemble powerless gods who are scared to enter into the open because of their frailty.
• Freud once remarked the only people who could not be helped by psychoanalysis were the Irish.
• Christianity entered Ireland without blood or turmoil and this troubled the Irish, so they devised "green martyrdom", whereby you would live alone in the wild. This is viewed as pre-monasticism.

  Could this have caused the isolationist Irish character?

• The wished-for extremes of green martyrdom were soon replaced by monasticism.
• These monastic establishments quickly became the hubs of population.
• Christianity, and thereby Patrick, lit the fire under the the Irish for knowledge and learning.
• Irish monastic universities turned no one away.
• Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto.
  "I am a human being, so nothing human is strange to me."
• The Irish did not believe in censorship.
• Ogham: a prehistoric alphabet of lines.
• Literacy swept Ireland with ease and secret societies began to create different grammars.
• The Irish would soon develop two written hands: half-uncial (majiscule) and miniscule.
• The theme for most early-Irish artistic writing was balance in imbalance.
• Codex: book.
• Irish books are found all over the world.

  How are Irish books found all over the world?

• Columcille, prince of Clan Conaill, was born in Gartam. His given name was Crimthann, meaning "fox". Columcille means "dove of the church" and was his monastic name. It was later Romanized to Columba.
• Columcille takes arms against King Diarmait and is excommunicated for fighting him. He is then expelled, never allowed to return to Ireland again. Thhs is the beginning of his journey.
• Irish confession was exclusively private and this was unheard of at this time. Practically speaking, the only sin unforgiveable for the Irish was divulging a confession. The confessor was chosen according to their holiness, generosity, and other traits. Confessors would not be limited to just priests, as it was too important for that. An anmchara was chosen confessor, a "soul-friend".
• Arian: a debased, simple-minded form of Christianity in which Jesus is given a similar status to that of Mohammed in Islam.
• "To go to Rome
  Is little profit, endless pain;
  The Master that you seek in Rome,
  You find at home, or seek in vain."
• Western Europe in the early sixth century:
  
• In the sixth century, Ireland was the world's only "printing press".
• While Rome and the Empire are fading and the main continent of Europe had fallen into illiteracy, culture is blooming on the "Celtic fringe". Only a final step was needed for the circle to close, for mainland learning to be re-ignited. That step was Columcille.
• Columcille did the hardest thing for an Irishman—he left Ireland forever. This introduced white martyrdom. "To sail with the white morning and never return." This was the most prestigious for the Irish.
• In late antiquity, and through the Middle Ages, the Irish were called Scotti or Scoti in Latin. Scottus at the end of a name denoted Irish ancestry.
• Ireland was called Hibernia, sometimes Scotia in Latin.
• Scotia Minor, the name applying to the Irish colony in Northern Britain, was eventually shortened to Scotia or Scotland.
• The idea of a warrior-priest emerged from Columcille and spread Christianity. By default, literacy, wisdom, culture, and education was spread as well.
• Irish was the first vernacular literature to be codified.
• Between 650 and 850 CE, over half of all biblical commentaries are Irish in origin.

• At the Pentacost of 597 CE, a British king was baptized in Canterbury by a Roman librarian whom Pope Gregory the Great sent to evangelize the English. This is the first instance of a papal mission to the "pagans".
• British Celts would have never thought of trying to teach or convert the invading Angles and Saxons, so they were pushed to the outer fringes of Britain (i.e. Wales and Scotland). The Irish Celts held no inhibitions.
• The stricter Roman Christianity, centered at Canterbury, was doomed to meet the Celtic Christianity.
• At a synod in 664 CE, at the Abbey of Whitby in Northumbria, the Northumbrian king ruled in favor of the "Roman party". The main issue was the correct date of Easter. The Celts sided with Columcille, the Romans with Peter.
• Irish tonsure: shave the head from ear to ear, letting the hair grow longer int he back.
• The Saxons absorbed all things Irish.
• The British often viewed the Celts and Irish as the "older brethren".
• In the Dark Ages, with Greek influence almost completely lost, the world was not of thoughts, but of images. It was a move from the Socratic method to imagery.
• Communication was simple during Pax Romana, but barbaric fiefdoms broke out and there was little communication, if any. From the middle of the fifth century to the end of the sixth, there was no formal communication between Rome and Ireland.
• By the 750^s CE, English Christians, following in the footsteps of their Celtic brothers, had truly spread the Gospel.
• 25 December 800 CE: Charlemagne, king of the Franks, is crown the Holy Roman Emperor. He would preside over the first Renaissance, but this re-birth of learning would only barely outlive his rule.
• By the middle of the ninth century CE, there are only two people who could still read Greek that lived in Western Europe: John Scotus Eringena and Anastasius. The former was probably a layman and the first philosopher of the Middle Ages. The latter was a papal librarian.
  • Eringena preached God was not in all things, but was all things.
  • "Every authority that is not confirmed by true reason seems to be weak, whereas true reason does not need to be supported by any authority."—Eringena

    How is this similar to John Locke's idea of Natural Law, untutored reason?

  • Eringenus used Paul's "God will be in all" to bolster his argument and further declared that, at the end, everything would be saved because God was everything.
  • Eringenus' beliefs were written down in De Devisione Nature, the Divinity of Nature. In 1225, Pope Honorius III ordered all copies of the book burned.
  • In the early and middle 800^s CE, the Vikings began their exploits of Ireland.
  • The Viking atrocities set Ireland back so far in cultural leadership, pushed them once again to the fringe, that they would never be able to come back.
  • Subsequent invaders took different paths:
    • The Normans included themselves in the society so much that it was often said they were Hibernis Hibernioves, that they were more Irish than the Irish.
    • In the sixteenth century, colonizing Elizabethans contemplated genocide.
    • The seventeenth century Calvinists tried genocide.
    • The eighteenth century saw England passing the Penal Laws denying Catholics of the right of citizenship.
  • Almost one million Irish died from 1845 to 1851 and another million and a half emigrated, many dying on the journey.
  Irish Timeline
  

  c. 3000 BCE	Stone Age settlers (Celts?) began to construct elaborate Irish passage-graves, as at Newgrange.
  900s BCE	In Greece, Homer composes the Iliad and the Odyssey.
  753 BCE	Founding of the city of Rome.
  400-300 BCE	Greece's Golden Age: a flowering of Athenian democracy under Pericles and the time of Sophocles, Socrates, and Plato.
  387 BCE	The Celts sack Rome.
  c. 350 BCE	Celts cross into Ireland, displacing earlier inhabitants.
  70 BCE-14 CE	Rome's Golden Age: Cicero, Horace, Virgil, Ovid.
  31 BCE	Octavian becomes the first Roman emperor and takes the name Augustus Caesar.
  401 CE	Patricius is taken into slavery.
  406-407 CE	Largest Germanic invasion of the Roman Empire.
  409 CE	Romans abandon Britain.
  410 CE	Alaric the Goth sacks Rome.
  432 CE	Bishop Patrick arrives in Ireland.
  461 CE	Patrick dies.
  475-476 CE	Reign of Romulus Augustulus, the last Roman emperor. He was deposed by Odoacer the Barbarian, marking the end of the Roman Empire in the west.
  597 CE	Columcille dies, Augustine baptises the English king of Kent in Canterbury.
  793 CE	First Viking attack at Lindisfarne.
  1014	Brian Boru decisively defeats the Vikings at the Battle of Clontarf.
  1170	Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland.
  1556	Elizabethan plantation of Ireland begins.
  1649	Cromwell arrives in Ireland and begins his massacre of Catholics.
  1690	Battle of the Boyne: the Catholic (Stuart) cause is decisively lost to William of Orange. The Flight of the Wild Geese begins.
  1692	Catholics are excluded from office for the first time.
  1695	Penal Laws are enacted, depriving Catholics of all civil rights.
  1829	Daniel O'Connell, the "Liberator", forces Catholic Emancipation on the British Parliament.
  1845	The First Famine hits.
  1893	Douglas Hyde forms the Gaelic League to revive Irish culture.
  1916	The Easter Rising: the Irish Republic proclaimed.
  1919-1921	The Irish War of Independence.
  1922	Britain and Ireland sign a treaty establishing the Irish Free State (26 southern counties), excluding the 6 northern most Irish counties.

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  All information contained in this page is either interpreted or directly taken from Thomas Cahill's book How the Irish Saved Civilization: the Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe (New York: Double Day, 1995).

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