Isle of the Saints

the long version

"This book uses Irish hagiography to explain the monastic world, focusing on the major monasteries that produced the 'vitae'. It examines the relationships among saints, monks, and lay people, and the monastic interpretations of those relationships. If it sometimes mixes historical reality with monastic perceptions, then it successfully straddles the most forbidding boundary of all: the great chasm between our world and that of the Middle Ages." -- Preface.