Publisher's Synopsis
Stimulated by the research resulting in his first book on the Celts (In Search of the Celts) the author follows this dynamic race's progress through the first centuries of the Christian era. Targeting primarily teenagers and young adults seeking basic facts on their Christian inheritance, the author briefly summarizes the early development of Christianity in Western Europe. The book is an assembly of sketches on the main movers and shakers, integrated with the astonishing story of the dedicated Christian priests and supporters - all mainly "Irish" - who spearheaded the miraculous revival of Christianity in Western Europe and the British Isles through the fourth to tenth centuries by reconverting a population who had relapsed back into paganism in the face of the vicious Viking assaults of that period. The amazing story tells how a country considered to be backward and illiterate became to be regarded, almost overnight, as offering all young people (male and female alike) the world's best literary and Christian education available in the whole of Western Europe, a reputation it maintained for some eight centuries until the Benedictine and Carthusian monks assumed the crown in the thirteenth century.This book is testimony to the courage, dedication and self-denial of thousands of Irish Celtic Christian priests and their army of supporters.
