Sacred Ireland by Jon Michael Riley Ireland1 | Page 16

T

he church established important centers of learning
and worship that soon became the wealthiest
communities and important repositories of libraries
and scholarship. Then towards the end of the 8th century,
the Vikings arrived. The contributions of Irish monks
in saving civilization from them cannot be overstated.
Through their efforts the Book of Kells, Darrow and
Armagh, as well as many others like the Annals of the
Four Masters, a gigantic compendium of world history,
were saved from the ransacking Vikings. Irish monks
took this stupendous body of learning with them as they
traveled across Europe.
After years of Viking raids, monasteries