Free The Story of Britain: From the Romans to the Present by Rebecca Fraser Page B

classical education, which had survived in Ireland because it had been left undisturbed by the German migrations. Irish Christianity was a markedly scholarly movement because its monasteries had been the preservers of a significant part of the European classical heritage that had perished in Italy and France under the onslaught of the German tribes. Classical manuscripts, many of them the legacy of Greek civilization to the Romans, once the common reading matter of Roman citizens, continued to be copied in Ireland by industrious monks.
    When Oswald returned to Northumbria he brought with him the Irish-educated monks from Iona to re-establish Christianity in his shattered kingdom. St Aidan was made the bishop of the Northumbrians. In typically ascetic Irish and Scots fashion he chose to build his episcopal seat, cathedral and monastery off the Northumbrian coast on the small tidal island of Lindisfarne, or Holy Island, just south of Berwick-on-Tweed. Despite St Aidan’s importance as head of the Northumbrian Church, the buildings on Lindisfarne had thatched roofs of reeds, after the Irish fashion.
    Under St Aidan’s influence, King Oswald’s court became known throughout the rest of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms for its higher way of life. The nature of the Anglo-Saxon rulers and ealdormen began to change, guided by their priests into better behaviour. Many of the nobility began to copy St Aidan’s example of fasting on Wednesdays and Fridays. Instead of an ethic based on the rule of the strong, which was the code of the Anglo-Saxons, Oswald became notable for his care of the poor. Bede tells many stories of the great novelty of the king’s selfless generosity, such as giving away his Easter lunch, a silver dish full of dainties, to the poor in the streets.
    When Oswald was succeeded by his formidable brother Oswy, who regained the bretwaldaship for Northumbria, the Christian way of life established under St Aidan and Oswald was exported with even greater momentum. Oswy made a point of encouraging missionaries from Northumbria to visit other kingdoms. Thanks to the activities of the Northumbrian monk St Ceadda or Chad, the population of Penda’s famously heathen Mercia also began to turn Christian, including Penda’s own son Peada. By 700 the whole of England had been converted to Christianity. The missionaries’ origins varied: in East Anglia it was the inspired preaching of a Burgundian which did it, while in Wessex it was a Roman from Kent. But in the main the impulse was coming from Northumbria, from Lindisfarne and from Iona. The Yorkshire monk Wilfrid of Ripon converted the South Saxons, while Cedd, who was Chad’s brother, reconverted the East Saxons.
    By 698 the new monastery on Lindisfarne had produced an extraordinary monument to the new Northumbrian Christian civilization in the form of the Lindisfarne Gospels. This was a version of the Four Gospels of the New Testament but was decorated with beautiful illuminated letters and patterns, patterns which mingle Celtic designs and the sort of Anglo-Saxon shapes found on the buckles of the East Anglian Raedwald.
    The Lindisfarne Gospels were made by monks living in communities which were becoming very much the rule in England by the end of the seventh century. Irish Christianity was notable for its monks’ austere way of life. The earliest Irish and Scottish monasteries tended to be sited in remote places like islands or on hills, and the monks’ cells would be beehive shaped, pleasant in summer and freezing cold in winter. But with the spread of Christianity, as a result of intermarriage between English rulers and of the energy of the Northumbrian and Irish missionaries, monasteries of a more sophisticated kind were built. They grew into large, powerful institutions, with many different rooms such as the scriptorium, where manuscripts were copied, and herb gardens outside. They provided schooling and were increasingly important communities in themselves. They