was sent from Gregory’s own monastery in Rome. His most influential successor,
Theodore (Archbishop from 664), was a Syrian Greek from Tarsus, who in twenty-
six years at Canterbury organized the Church in England, and made it a learned
Church. His chief helper Hadrian came from Roman Africa, which had been invaded
by the followers of the religion of Mohammed. Theodore sent Benedict Biscop to
Northumbria to found the monastic communities of Wearmouth (674) and Jarrow
(681). Benedict built these monasteries and visited Rome six times, furnishing them
with the magnificent library which made Bede’s learning possible. Throughout the
Anglo-Saxon period, clerics from Ireland and England travelled through western
Europe, protected by the tonsure which marked them as consecrated members of a
supranational church with little regard to national jurisdictions.
English literature, as already noted, is both literature in English and the literature
of England. In the 16th century, England became a state with its own national
Church. Before this, English was not always the most important of the languages
spoken by the educated, and loyalty went to the local lord and church rather than to
the state. Art historians use the term ‘Insular’ to characterize British art of this
period. Insular art, the art of the islands, is distinctive, but of mixed origins: Celtic,
Mediterranean and Germanic. The blended quality of early English art holds true
for the culture as a whole: it is an Anglo-Celtic-Roman culture.
This hybrid culture found literary expression in an unmixed language.
Although Britannia was now their home, the English took few words from the
languages of Roman Britain; among the exceptions are the Celtic names for rivers,
such as Avon, Dee and Severn, and the Roman words ‘wall’ (vallum) and ‘street’
(strata). Arriving as the Roman Empire faded, the Saxons did not have to exchange
their Germanic tongue for Latin, unlike their cousins the Franks, but Latin was the
language of those who taught them to read and write. As they completed their
conquest of Britain, the Saxons were transformed by their conversion to
Catholicism. Gregory’s mission rejoined Britain to the Judaeo-Christian world of
the Latin West.
Aldhelm, Bede, Cædmon
Although Cædmon is the first English poet whose words survive at all, the first
known English poet is Aldhelm (c.640–709). King Alfred thought Aldhelm
unequalled in any age in his ability to compose poetry in his native tongue. There is
a tradition that Aldhelm stood on a bridge leading to Malmesbury, improvising
English verses to the harp in order to attract his straying flock. Aldhelm’s English
verse is lost; his surviving Latin writings are exceedingly sophisticated.
Aldhelm, the monastic founder of Malmesbury, Frome and Bradford-on-Avon,
was the star pupil of Hadrian’s school at Canterbury, and became Bishop of
Sherborne. His younger contemporary Bede wrote that Aldhelm was ‘most learned
in all respects, for he had a brilliant style, and was remarkable for both sacred and
liberal erudition’. Aldhelm’s brilliance is painfully clear, even through the dark glass
of translation, as he reproaches an Englishman who has gone to Ireland:
The fields of Ireland are rich and green with learners, and with numerous readers,
grazing there like flocks, even as the pivots of the poles are brilliant with the starry
quivering of the shining constellations. Yet Britain, placed, if you like, almost at the
extreme edge of the Western clime, has also its flaming sun and its lucid moon ...ORIENTATIONS 17