borne, formerly erected by the kings of the country, surrounded by strong and lofty walls, and endowed with competent revenues. Of these, one was designed for the clergy, the other for females; but neither, (for such was the law of their foundation), was ever entered by any person of the other sex. No woman could obtain permission to come into the monastery of the men; nor any of the men to come into the convent of the women, with the exception of the priests, who entered to celebrate Mass and withdrew the moment the service was over. If a female, desirous of quitting the world, asked to be admitted among the sisterhood, she could obtain her request, be she who she might, on this condition only, that she should never seek to go out, unless it were on some extraordinary occasion, which might seem to justify such indulgence. Even the abbess herself, if it were necessary that she should receive advice or give orders, spoke to men through a window; and so desirous was she to remove all opportunity of conversation between the Sisters and persons of the other sex, that she refused entrance into the convent, not only to laymen and clergymen, but even to the bishops themselves."

It is unquestionable that, at first, both clerics and nuns who had dedicated themselves solely to the service of God bore, as a rule, the highest reputa

tion for chastity, self-denial, charity, and devotion ; but in the course of time abuses crept in, and a system which, originally, was of the greatest service to the people at large, became later, the cause of gross scandal to the Church. The besetting sin of the Anglo-Saxon men was excessive drinking; although it is well to remember, in using this expression, that the common beverages of the Anglo-Saxon, the mead, the ale, and the wine were innocent compared with the strong alcoholic beverages of to-day. The besetting sin of the Anglo-Saxon women was, naturally, an excessive love of dress and admiration, and these national failings intruded themselves, at length, within the sacred enclosures of the monastery.

By the Council of Cloveshoe (747) all inmates of monasteries, both clerics and monks, were forbidden to drink to excess themselves, or to encourage such excess in others; they were to be content with sober cheer, and to exclude from their religious houses, delicate meats and coarse, unseemly amusements; to devote their cells to silence, study, and prayer, and never to allow them to become the resort of poets, gleemen, harpers, and buffoons, [poetarum, citharistarum, musicorum, et scurrarum]. With respect to convents of nuns, it was enacted that more attention should be paid to study and prayer, and less to the

wearing and embroidering of works of vanity; and that the cells of the Sisters should be closed against lay society, superfluous visits, and private feasting. In short, they were forbidden to be flammeæ puellæ or women of fashion.

It is certain that the double monastery, even in its purest days, found but little favour with many of the Roman hierarchy. Pope Gregory, in one of his extant epistles, applauds Januarius for declining to establish a monastery for men adjoining a nunnery. Even some of the abbesses seem to have felt the grave responsibility which such an institution involved. The Abbess Eangyth, in the eighth century, writes to Wynfrith of the weighty care "universarum commissarum animarum promiscui sexus et ætatis." The Venerable Beda in an extant letter to his friend and patron the Abbot Albinus, St. Aldhelm, and others, notable in the Anglo-Saxon Church, denounced in no measured terms, the wrongdoings of these double conventual establishments; until finally, at the second Council of Nicæa, [A.D. 787], the system was authoritatively condemned by a canon forbidding the creation of double monasteries and enjoining the suppression of those already in existence.*

The story of Cædmon's life, however, carries us

* Vide Note F.

back to the "double monastery" in its purest and best days, and presents a picture of the actual life of the religious of that time, as chaste and earnest and devout, as even pure fancy might have depicted it.

We do not propose to spoil the quaint, tender narrative of Beda, by attempting a synopsis of his account, but we shall give the story in full, as it has come down to us, making such changes only as may be necessary in translating the Latin original.

"In the year following, that is, in the year of the Incarnation of our Lord 680, the most devoted servant of Christ, Hilda, abbess of the monastery that is called Streoneshalh [Whitby], as we have before related, after having performed many heavenly works during her earthly life, passed thence, to receive the rewards of the life eternal, on the 17th of November, at the age of sixty-six years; the first half of which she spent most nobly, living in the secular habit, and more nobly still, dedicated the remaining half to our Lord in the monastic life; for she was nobly born, being the daughter of Herericus, nephew to King Edwin, together with which King, she also embraced the Faith and Sacraments of Christ at the preaching of Paulinus, of blessed memory, the first bishop of the Northumbrians, and kept the same

undefiled till she was worthy to attain to the Beatific Vision.

Resolving to quit the secular habit and to serve Him alone, she withdrew into the province of the East Angles, for she was allied to the King; being desirous to pass over from thence into France, to forsake her native country and all she had, and so live a stranger, for our Lord's sake, in the monastery of Cale, that she might with more ease attain to the eternal kingdom in heaven; because her sister Heresuid, mother to Aldwulf, king of the East Angles, at that time living in the same monastery under regular discipline, was waiting for her eternal reward. Being led by her example, she continued a whole year in the aforesaid province, with the design of going abroad; afterwards, Bishop Aidan, being recalled home, he gave her the land of one family on the north side of the river Wear; where for a year she also led the monastic life together with a few companions.

After this, she was made abbess of the monastery called Herutea, which monastery had been founded, not long before, by the devoted servant of Christ, Heiv, who is said to have been the first woman that, in the province of the Northumbrians, took upon her the life and habit of a nun, being consecrated by Bishop Aidan; but she, soon after she had founded