Livre d'Or

I know very little about Celtic Christianity, I freely admit.

I haven't got enough close to the top of my head to give a really detailed portrayal; would recommend Cahill's How the Irish Saved Civilisation as a summary for the interested non-specialist, modulo Cahill's somewhat odd worldview. Most significant difference IMO is how it absorbed elements of the Brehon Laws and so was a sight more progressive than Rome on such issues as women's rights.

Maybe you'll tell us that that was really Celtic Christians and Rome just took the credit after they'd eliminated anyone whose version might have disagreed?

That would be a serious simplification but not a grossly inaccurate one.

I'm more inclined to think of this value of survival of civilisation as under the auspices of Pallas Athena myself.
*blinks* It would never even occur to me to take Pallas Athena seriously as a shaper of history. Which just shows that I have deeply ingrained monotheist reflexes, not something that is terribly surprising, really.

I can see that. I'm finding myself in recent years far more comfortable with non-monotheistic values of deity than monotheistic ones, at least for pantheons with which I am familiar.

I would argue that Classical culture (including the respect for learning that was so integral to it) has largely been transmitted to us through the filter of Islam and Christianity, though. The fact that the Greeks valued literacy and tried to preserve texts would hardly have been relevant in post-Roman Europe had not contemporary Christian culture taken up those values, you know?

Agreed entirely.

But the Vatican (as opposed to Christianity generally, which as you point out might be some other, non-Roman branch) has managed to amass a vastly important collection of art treasures and manuscripts and so on. In this sense I think we do owe something directly to the Catholic church for the richness of our present connection with historical culture. Not because no other institution or individual tried, but because only the church was secure enough for long enough to actually succeed in acting as an effective repository.

Agreed that it has practically done so, but not that this was a necessary outcome of the Christian belief system; it only takes contemplating the Library of Alexandria or viewing the damage done the Elgin Marbles to suggest that the balance between destruction and preservation could have been better than it has turned out to be.