... transmitted to the tribes of Europe,newly settled amid the rubble and ruined vineyards of the civilization theyhad overwhelmed." (Cahill, p.3) The theme of this book is that the scribes did ... burning books, the Irish who were just learning to read and write,took up the just labor ofcopying all of western literature - everything they could get theirhands on. These scribes then served ... did something unique, they saved civilization, not the masses ofpeople, but literature, the content of "classical civilization. " (Cahill, p.58) One reads of the time from Rome's...