In one case an aged chief arose in an assembly of warriors and said:  “O king, as a bird flies through this hall in the winter night, coming out of the darkness and vanishing into it again, even such is our life.  If these strangers can tell us aught of what is beyond, let us give heed to them.”

But, as Bede informs us in his history of the English CHurch (S99), some of the converts were too cautious to commit themselves entirely to the new religion.  One king, who had set up a large altar devoted to the worship of Christ, set up a smaller one at the other end of the hall to the old heathen deities, in order that he might make sure of the favor of both.

45.  Christianity organized; Labors of the Monks.

Gradually, however, the pagan faith was dropped.  Christianity was largely organized by bands of monks and nuns, who had renounced the world in order to lead lives of self-sacrifice and service.  They bound themselves by the three vows of obedience, poverty, and chastity, and the monastic law forbade them to marry.  Monasteries existed or were now established in a number of places in England.[1]

[1] For instance, at Lindisfarne, or Holy Island, off the coast of Northumberland (see Scott’s “Marmion,” Canto II, 9-10), at Wearmouth and Jarrow in Durham, at Whitby on the coast of Yorkshire, and at Peterborough in Northamptonshire. (See map facing p. 38.)

The monasteries were educational as well as industrial centers.  The monks spent part of each day in manual toil, for they held that “to labor is to pray.”  They cleared the land, drained he bogs, plowed, sowed, and reaped.  Another part of the day they spent in religious exercises, and a third in writing, translating, and teaching.

Each monastery had a school attached to it, and each had, besides, its library of manuscript books and its room for the entertainment of travelers and pilgrims.  In these libraries important charters granted by the King and important laws relating to the kingdom were preserved.

46.  Literary Work of the Monks.

It was at the monastery of Jarrow[2] that Bede wrote in rude Latin the Church history of England.  It was at that in Whitby that the poet Caedmon composed his poem on the Creation, in which, a thousand years before Milton, he dealt with Milton’s theme in Milton’s spirit.

[2] Jarrow, Whitby, etc.; see note 1, above.

It was at the great monasteries of Peterborough and Canterbury that the “Anglo-Saxon Chronicle” was probably begun (S99).  It was the first history of England written in English, and the one from which we derive very important knowledge of the period extending from the beginning of the Christian era down to a time nearly a hundred years after the Norman conquest of the island.  Furthermore we find that the history of the country was written by the monks in the form of independent narratives, some of which are of very great value as sources of information.[1]