In the West we must give thanks to the Irish monasteries, where manuscripts were preserved that were lost in the rest of Europe to the chaos of the Völkerwander

In the West we must give thanks to the Irish monasteries, where manuscripts were preserved that were lost in the rest of Europe to the chaos of the Völkerwanderung, and to Charlemagne, whose advisor Alcuin brought the knowledge back from his Islands. Heinrich Böll called Ireland "Europe's burning heart". Nonetheless, the amount of literature lost in Late Antiquity is staggering.