Historic conquests and oppressive English rule do not begin to recount the bloody slaughter, poverty, Penal laws, and famine visited on the people who now are widely acknowledged as having saved civilization. When the Roman Empire was visited by wave after wave of barbarians, libraries were burned and institutions of learning disappeared. The ancient Greek and Roman literature, even the Bible, would have been lost but for intrepid journeymen, possibly Greek, who transported the ancient history of Western civilization through the Middle East, across Africa to the Iberian Peninsula, and eventually to Ireland. There monks living in tiny huts of stone, shaped like a beehive, dedicated their lives to faithfully transcribing the texts. When relative security returned to Europe, the holy men of Ireland began a pilgrimage to Rome and reintroduced a continent to its ancient literature, thus saving civilization. The Irish held on to one of the more richly illustrated tombs - the Book of Kells. The Book of Kells (Leabhar Cheanannais) is an illuminated manuscript in Latin, containing the four Gospels of the New Testament and transcribed by Celtic monks ca. 800. The illustrations and ornamentation of the Book of Kells surpass that of other Insular Gospels in extravagance and complexity. Kells Abbey was plundered and pillaged by Vikings many times in the 10th century, and how the book survived there is not known.
