" Perhaps if this abbey exists and if we still speak of the Holy Roman Empire, we owe it to the Irish. At that time, the rest of Europe was reduced to a heap of ruins; one day they declared invalid all baptisms imparted by certain priests in Gaul because they baptized 'in nomine patris et filae' [In the name of the Father and of the Daughter]--and not because they practiced a new heresy and considered Jesus a woman, but because they no longer knew any Latin.... Vikings from the Far North came down along the rivers to sack Rome. The pagan temples were falling into ruins, and the Christian ones did not yet exist. It was only the monks of Hibernia in their monasteries who wrote and read, read and wrote, and illuminated, and then jumped into little boats made of animal hide and navigated towards these lands and evangelized them as if you people were infidels, you understand? "