Page:The golden days of the early English church from the arrival of Theodore to the death of Bede, volume 1.djvu/231

Rh fertilise and tranquillise these arid and desolate shores."

From this new abode Aidan, looking southward, could descry far off the rock and stronghold of Bamborough, where Oswald, like his grandfather Ida, had established his capital. At Lindisfarne Aidan planted his monastery, which was, of course, on the Scotic model, in which the bishop, so far as the discipline of the place was concerned, was subject to the abbot. The inmates consisted mainly, if not altogether, of the companions he had brought with him from Iona. The priests, deacons, choristers and other officials of the cathedral were all monks.

Such was the place where Aidan planted his lonely settlement which was to become a lighthouse for that larger part of England, from the Forth to the English Channel, that was still steeped in its primitive heathenism, or had reverted to it after the failure of the Italian missionaries. Thence it was to be again illuminated with the best that Christianity then had to give. It also rapidly became what the Italian mission had never hitherto been, or had the promise of becoming, a focus and centre where some of the highest art and the best literary culture of the period were cherished and cultivated.

It will be convenient and profitable to put together in a few sentences a picture of the kind of community presided over by Aidan, for the