I had assumed we all knew about the Irish monks, because it was a part of my childhood, so why wasn’t it part of yours?
Well, well—you never got the Irish monks, or at least you weren’t in the Poet’s Passage last Tuesday night, when I was there. Because I bind books while people recite poetry, or give stand-up comedy routines, or sing songs. I get up on the stage, most nights, and talk about what I’m binding, and a bit about the author.
So I assumed that the reference could be glancing—I would invoke the Irish monks, and we would all get it. We don’t forget those monks, who first appeared in my life at Midvale Elementary School in the 1960’s. The dudes were important because they…
…SAVED WESTERN CIVILIZATION!
Like all true stories, it wasn’t particularly accurate. True, Rome had fallen sometime in the 5th century (or sixth—anyway, a long time ago). Europe had entered what we called the Dark Ages (which to my Midvale Elementary mind meant that people were walking around, for five or six centuries, in a never-ending night.) The glorious light that shone from the works of the great classical writers had dimmed, as books and manuscripts were lost, burned, drowned, and crumbled. All that was left was our beloved Catholic Church, shining like a beacon through the darkness.
History, at Midvale, was linear and it was going up. Granted, there were dips—those moments when we regressed, when the footpads on the highway overran things. But the Irish monks had it under control. They were waking, shuffling reverentially to the scriptorium, and getting down to the task. Their brethren had killed the calves (one Bible in the 8th century took 515 calf skins) to make the vellum. Somebody else down the production-line would sew the manuscript together, and stick a couple of boards on top of the text block for covers. But the real work, for which we all should be grateful, was done by those long-suffering monks who sat on wooden benches and sharpened their quills which they would dip into an ink made of oak galls (which, unsurprisingly, was the work of another monk.) The vellum doesn’t yellow and disintegrate, as does paper. As for the oak gall ink, I’m not sure that anyone knows when it will fade and disappear—it hasn’t yet, even on manuscripts from the 5th century.
What were the Irish monks doing?
Well, we know that they were preserving Western Civilization for us to enjoy and enhance, before we destroyed it. But the monks may have seen it differently. They were reading text from a manuscript that they either had in their library or they had borrowed, often by sending a monk out to get the manuscript from another monastery. Given that the roads were horrible, diseases were rife, goods were routinely stolen, and that violence was everywhere—well, getting a manuscript to copy must have been a challenge.
And the Irish monks hadn’t made it easier on themselves. They were not sitting on top of one of the seven hills of Rome, or a stone’s throw away from the Acropolis. No, they were sitting on remote islands in the Irish Sea—in their stone monasteries, far away from everybody and everything. None of it was easy, in order to save Western Civilization. But Christ had taken himself away to the desert, and the monks were in their isolated, frigid monasteries.
I was a simple child, as I am a simple man. Joseph Campbell hadn’t come up with the monomyth theory yet (or they weren’t teaching it at Midvale). When I heard about it later, it made sense. Every hero evolves until he can stand the world no more. He retreats, meditates, struggles with his demons. He returns transformed to the world, which is forever changed by the bravery of a man who has finally fought his demons and won. I needed a hero, because children do—and the Irish monks were my heroes.
I knew that there were other monasteries in other countries. I knew that my teacher—was she Miss Ryan or Miss O’Connor?—had some skin in the game (or it could have been Flanagan). I later found out that there were also professional scribes, even in those days, who did their part. But the Irish monks were as much a part of my childhood as George Washington crossing the Delaware.
We think of history as something inevitable, something that cannot be changed and could never not have happened. Rome fell, and we ascribed reasons for the fall (they were heathens, they were too proud and powerful, or maybe they had just had their day and were done for). The Irish monks had stepped in and saved many of the works we value and pretend to have read today. They rescued Western Civilization for us, and we had to be grateful. But we could forget about them, when we left the classroom.
I now know: we’re living in history. It’s all around us, and it’s shifting, and whatever we do makes it and changes it, at least potentially. It’s a dicey proposition, and we ignore it at our peril.
I had my marching orders, last Tuesday, after my mother had stepped in to tell me to clean my room (that part never changes, however embedded in her afterlife she might be) and to print the indictment of Donald John Trump.
I was gonna be one of the damn monks.
Bravo!
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