Isle of the Saints
Monastic Settlement and Christian Community in Early Ireland

Lisa M. Bitel (Author)

9780801424717

Hardback, published 16 October 1990

288 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.7 cm, 0.907 kg

Bitel's book is exceptionally well researched and very well written. It sums up a huge amount of work done on Irish monasticism over the past fifty years.

Isle of the Saints recreates the harsh yet richly spiritual world of medieval Irish monks on the Christian frontier of barbarian Europe. Lisa Bitel draws on accounts of saints' lives written between 800 and 1200 to explain, from the monks' own perspective, the social networks that bound them to one another and to their secular neighbors.