To the Editor:

When the Roman Empire fell and the world became fractured, in the dark ages, a group of Irish monks got to work. While literacy plummeted, they became obsessed with preserving the seeds of culture, beauty and thought.

They didn’t just copy texts verbatim. They wanted to make them beautiful. So they used gold leaf. They felt that if their civilization were to truly be saved, it had to be beautiful. They called this process “illumination.”

March 25, 2026