Renaissance. To know, to meet and to dialogue with the various cultures is, today, necessary for the Europe of peoples and for the action of Christians in an always more globalized world, especially in this moment of crisis that the EU is experimenting.
In the meeting of these cultures we find the Culture as foundation of all values and then of the person with his / her freedom and supreme dignity in a world of justice, solidarity and peace, all equal as human beings, united by the deep-rooted sense of belonging to a common intellectual and spiritual tradition, respecting diversity.
The Irish monks, true missionaries, like St. Columbanus or St. Cathaldus, had an important task in promoting the reality of this Culture and in developing it during the snoozing of Middle Ages. To them we owe a lot, as an essential part of our DNA. Infact, immediately after the fall of the Roman Empire,
in 476 A. D., in a Europe, devastated by the lack of moral values, barbaric invasions and famine, a wave of re-evangelization and moral and cultural renewal, true work of spiritual and civic re-unification of the whole of Europe, starts from Ireland.
They brought an Irish style of Christianity to Europe and had an important role in preserving their indigenous cultural heritage. So, while the Roman Empire was fading, literary culture was blooming in Ireland in places such as Armagh, Inis More, Kildare, Clonard, Clonmacnoise, Bangor, Clonfert, Durrow, Derry, Glendalough, Lismore … that made Ireland, the land of“ Saints and Scholars”.
The secret of their work came from a small church at the centre of their monastery,“ where, over the white Gospel page, the Gospel candles shone”. The White learning, which made the Irish monks famous, was the learning and teaching based on the Bible. Meditation and concentration on the Word of God, studying and teaching it, assimilating and communicating it, became the soul of this White learning. The words of the Gospel: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He anointed me, to bring glad tidings to the poor. He sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blinds, to let the oppressed go free were St. Patrick’ s and later the Irish monks ' message.
The monastery became in this way a place for faith and of meeting people, scriptorium where to gather epic poems, love stories, elegies of everyday life, passed on generation to generation, and the Irish monastic centres developed, from the 5th century onwards, into villages, hostels for pilgrims, hospitals for the sick, university citadels, work places or cultural centres for all, true oases of peace and prayer, meditation and contemplation, learning and teaching.