Rome that at least harmonises well with evidence of a better kind emanating from Ireland.
Thus our knowledge of early British culture is scanty, It rests largely upon conjecture and inference. It is not so with the first beginnings of learning among the English. Whereas no English scholar or writer can be named before 668, the next half century produces two who would be remarkable in any age – Aldhelm and Bede. Nor is there any room for doubt that these men owe their learning to Theodore and Hadrian. For, even if there be a Celtic strain in Aldhelm's education, as there surely is in his style, we must remember in the first place that the very fact of an Englishman's taking to literary pursuits is a novelty; and in the second place that we have this Englishman's own testimony (in his letter to Eahfrid) to the enormous influence of Theodore and Hadrian in the work of education: an influence not confined to England, for it was potent enough to attract the scholars of Ireland. In Bede no admixture of Celtic influence is traceable: he is simply the supreme product of the normal teaching of his day. What, then, did Theodore and Hadrian bring with them to this country? They brought the permanent equipment of learning in the shape of books. They also brought the knowledge and enthusiasm which secured that the books should be used to profit. In these two men the culture of East and West was concentrated. Theodore of Tarsus had studied in the schools of Athens, and very little of his life had been spent in Italy. Hadrian was of African extraction and abbot of a monastery near Naples: he had absorbed all that Italy could furnish, and was possessed of Greek as well. Through him we are linked with the ancients. The Institutions of Cassiodorus are responsible for the existence of a man with such qualifications. Unproductive of written monuments as Italy was at this time, its monks had not, thanks to Cassiodorus, lost all touch with the education of an earlier day. It is to Hadrian that we must attribute the greatest share of achievement in the educational work which now began in England. Less could be done by Theodore, occupied as he was with administration and organisation, and often absent on journeys to distant parts of the island.
With them an Englishman must be joined in our grateful remembrance – the man who spent his life and substance in the labour of bringing to us the actual palpable treasures of art and learning – Biscop, surnamed Benedict, Abbot of Wearmouth. It was he who accompanied Theodore and Hadrian to England; he was himself returning from his third journey to the tombs of the Apostles. On every subsequent expedition (and he made four more) he brought back in quantities books of every kind[1], pictures, and vestments, to say nothing of the masons and the musicians whom on several occasions
- ↑ The only book of a secular kind specified – indeed, the only one specified at all except a Bible – was a book on cosmography of admirable workmanship which
