nd Welsh, Malmesbury, which trained S. Aldhelm, showed that
the Irish love of letters was capable of transplantation into a land
now most prominently Teutonic. But the Roman influence and the
influence of the East were still more effective. [Sidenote: in
learning,] Benedict Biscop brought back with him to Northumbria the
traditions and rules of Italian art and learning, and Theodore of
Tarsus brought a wider influence, which was Greek as well as Latin. He
himself founded a school at Canterbury, and taught it; and in distant
times Dunstan, at Glastonbury and at Canterbury, was his worthy
successor. In the north Bede was at {116} Jarrow a writer of great
power and wide scope, and the school of York was a nursery of classic
studies which produced the great scholar Alcuin. Thus the community of
scholarship brings the Churches together.

[Sidenote: in missionary work.]

More prominent was the zeal for the conversion of the heathen. The
work of Columban and of S. Gall had its origin in the Irish schools,
and there was no more fruitful influence on the Europe of the Dark Age.
The work of Columba and his followers was to begin in the north of
Britain what Roman missionaries undertook in the south. For more than
thirty years Columba, who landed in Iona in 563, taught the Picts and
Scots. His Life by his disciple Adamnan is one of the most beautiful
memorials of medieval saintliness that we possess. The monastery which
he founded lasted till the eighth century. His school did a famous
work in North Britain in the seventh; King Oswald of Northumbria was
trained there, and S. Aidan, his fellow-helper, the typical saint of
Northumbria. From the same source came Melrose, the great Scottish
monastery, and S. Chad, the apostle of the Middle English.

[Sidenote: Scotland.]

A century of intermittent strife swept over the northern lands.
Scotland became Christian slowly and with little connection with the
south. Heathen onslaughts ravaged the Christian lands, and yet, in
spite of all, monasteries for men and women sprang up in the north.
The influence of S. Aidan (died 651) was continued by S. Cuthbert and
S. Hilda, typical parents of monks and nuns. In 664 (Synod of Whitby)
at last came union with the Church of the English, who appealed to the
authority of Rome and {117} of S. Peter in favour of their customs, and
the Northumbrian king, Oswin, ratified the union of the Celtic and the
English Churches. Early in the eigh