one little island in a very dark ocean

Soon, the priest spoke at length of his fears, while the hermit, mender of tents, listened patiently until the sun had begun to leak through the chinks in the west wall to paint glowing shafts in the dusty air.
      “Since the death of the last civilization, the Memorabilia has been our special province, Benjamin. And we’ve kept it. But now? I sense the predicament of the shoemaker who tries to sell shoes in a village of shoemakers.”
      The hermit smiled. “It could be done, if he manufactures a special and superior type of shoe.”
      “I’m afraid the secular scholars are already beginning to lay claim to such a method.”
      “Then go out of the shoemaking business, before you are ruined.”
      “A possibility,” the abbot admitted. “It’s unpleasant to think of it however. For twelve centuries, we’ve been one little island in a very dark ocean. Keeping the Memorabilia has been a thankless task, but a hallowed one, we think. It’s only our worldly job, but we’ve always been bookleggers and memorizers, and it’s hard to think that the job’s soon to be finished—soon to become unnecessary. I can’t believe that somehow.”

—Walter M. Miller, A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959)