While Christianity was growing in (what is now called) Ireland, the European continent suffered wave upon wave of invasion as the Roman Empire fell apart. By 500 A.D. there were no more emperors, and provincial officials were on their own against invaders. Classic literature was almost destroyed and libraries vanished.
But Ireland, unreached by those invasions, was experiencing spiritual and intellectual explosion. The first Chistians were also the first literates. Monasteries filled with monks who dedicated their lives to teaching the faith to all seekers - and to copying texts.
medievalists.net
Magnificently decorated manuscripts of scripture are priceless artifacts of the period 500-900 A.D., like the page above from the Lindisfarne Gospels.
In addition to scripture, those monks copied everything they could get their hands on, including the Roman and Greek texts brought by a "never-ending stream of visitors" fleeing invaders. Latin writers Homer and Virgil and the works of many others were saved.
Irish monasteries fanned out over continental Europe, bringing their books. "Wherever they went they brought their love of learning and their skills in bookmaking. In the bays and valleys of their exile, they re-established literacy and breathed new life into the exhausted literary culture of Europe.
"And that is how the Irish saved civilization."
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