a short time his pupil. Her monastery was famous for having
educated five bishops, among them John of Beverley, and
for giving birth, in Caedmon, to the father of English poetry.
"Religious poetry, sung to the harp as it passed from hand
to hand, must have flourished in the monastery of the abbess
Hild, and the kernel of Bede's story concerning the birth of
our earliest poet must be that the brethren and sisters on
that bleak northern shore spoke to each other in psalms
and hymns and spiritual songs.' "[1] of Melrose, an offshoot
of Aidan's foundation, the sainted Cuthbert was an inmate.
At Lindisfarne, where "he speedily learned the Psalms and
some other books," the great Wilfrid was a novice. Of his
studies, indeed, we know little: he seems to have sought
prelatical power rather than learning. But he and his
followers were responsible for the conversion of the
Northumbrian church from Columban to Roman usages, and the
introduction of Benedictinism into the monasteries; and
consequently for bringing the studies of the monks into line
with the rules of Benedict's order.

[1] Camb, Eng., Lit., i. 45.


Such progress would have been impossible had not the
rulers of Northumbria from Oswald to Aldfrith been friendly
to Christianity. Aldfrith had been educated at Iona, and
was a man of studious disposition. His predecessor had
advanced Northumbria's reputation enormously by giving
Benedict Biscop (629-90) sites for his monasteries of Wearmouth
and Jarrow.[1] We know enough of this Benedict to