ed the Roman usages. The
Scots were admirable missionaries, holy and self-devoted, and building
partly on Roman foundations and elsewhere breaking new ground, they and
their English disciples, as Ceadda (St Chad), bishop of the Mercians,
and Cuthbert, bishop of Lindisfarne, who were by no means inferior to
their teachers, almost completed the conversion of the country. But they
practised an excessive asceticism and were apt to abandon their work in
order to live as hermits. Great as were the benefits which the English
derived from their teaching, its cessation was not altogether a loss,
for the church was passing beyond the stage of mission teaching and
needed organization, and that it could not have received from the Scots.

Organization of the English Church.

Its organization like its foundation came from Rome. An
archbishop-designate who was sent to Rome for consecration having died
there, Pope Vitalian in 668 consecrated Theodore of Tarsus as archbishop
of Canterbury. The Scots had no diocesan system, and the English
bishoprics were vast in extent, followed the lines of the kingdoms and
varied with their fortunes. The church had no system of government nor
means of legislation. Theodore united it in obedience to himself,
instituted national synods and subdivided the over-large bishoprics. At
his death, in 690, the English dominions were divided into fourteen
dioceses. Wilfrid, who had become bishop of Northumbria, resisted the
division of his diocese and appealed to the pope. He was imprisoned by
the Northumbrian king and was exiled. While in exile he converted the
South Saxons, and their conversion led to that of the Isle of Wight,
then subject to them, in 686, which completed the evangelization of the
English. After long strife Wilfrid, who was supported by Rome, regained
a part of his former diocese. Theodore also gave the church learning by
establishing a school at Canterbury, where many gained knowledge of the
Scriptures, of Latin and Greek, and other religious and secular
subjects. In the north learning was promoted by Benedict Biscop in the
sister monasteries which he founded at Wearmouth and Jarrow. There Bede
(q.v.) received the learning which he imparted to others. In the year of
Bede's death, 735, one of his disciples, Ecgbert, bishop of York, became
the first archbishop of York, Gregory III. giving him the _pallium_, a
vestment which conferred archiepiscopal authority. He established a
school or un