Robaird O’Cearbhaill
Hong Kong correspondent
Medieval Irish missionaries saved European civilization and education, restoring and widely evangelizing Catholicism for centuries.
After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, from 410-476 A.D. , with Europe in chaos, the unexpected, very successful reintroduction of schooled knowledge and restoration of Christianity to twelve European countries began for a 500 – 600 year period. It was the “Irish Miracle,” as 20th century French historian and author Henri Daniel-Rops described the impressive, renaissance of those fervent, wandering monks, who founded around 80 monasteries, the foremost of which were the prime centres of learning in a swathe of countries in Europe.
Another Early Middle Ages scholar, modern Yale University professor, Daniel Kingsley Porter, in the same vein wrote: “The success of the Celtic (Ireland and Irish Scots) Church was a religious and political event of the same magnitude.”
Both these exalted experts, and other renowned scholars of these early times, often known as the Dark Ages, see the Irish as a crucial, renovating force. After the highly developed, unified Roman Europe, they conclude that if it were not for the Irish missionaries, neither the Church nor core Greek and Roman civilization would have survived.
Therefore, without this return to knowledge and eventual stability in Europe, these specialists believe it would not have blossomed as it did in the Middle Middle Ages. They say European culture and Christianity’s wide presence, much diminished after Roman power, was highly precarious, surviving mostly by the Irish re-introduction of classical learning, such as in maths, logic, rhetoric, and theology, their supremacy in developed maths and astronomy and wide broadening of Latin, the only language of learning in Europe as well as classical Greek.
In those Early Middle Ages Ireland’s pivotal role was well known, hence the country was named as the land of “Saints and Scholars.” A Current writer about the significant, Irish, emigrant, monks period, Italian Enzio Farinella, quoted the 19th century, liberal Catholic, politician and medieval history writer Charles-Forbes-Rene, Count de Montalembert, praising the Irish missions: “It has been said and cannot be sufficiently repeated, Ireland was then regarded by all Christian Europe as the principal center of knowledge and piety – superior to anything that could be seen in any country in Europe.” Farinella quoting Card. Thomas O’Fiaich, a former professor of history and Primate of All Ireland, said that “achievement…culturally and religiously, borders on the incredible.”
Farinella, an Italian, a former diplomatic cultural attaché, an international public speaker on Europe and the Irish Monks, and an author of the subject, summarized the impact. “We knew the Celts founded the first Europe but very few are aware that Irish monks had a very important role in Medieval Europe. Irish Monasticism was an important part of history, equal to the one of Greece, centuries before, civilizing Rome, the conqueror, or to the later one of the Italian Renaissance.” He says too that Europe’s values originated from these monks civilizing force: “…of the person with his/her freedom and supreme dignity in a world of justice, solidarity and peace, all equal as human beings, united by the deep-rooted sense of belonging to a common intellectual and spiritual tradition, respecting diversity.”
Why did a newly baptised, non-Roman, and at the distant edge of Europe Island become such a cultural regenerative power? Isolation and inspiration from the monks’ mission Peregrinatio pro Christo (travelling for Christ) were very influential, as well as practical skills, as we will see in Part 2. (Image: St Brendan the Navigator)
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