While Benedict's foundation was gathering strength the 6th century is full of the labors of the Irish monks. Zimmer declared °The Irish missionaries were instructors in every known branch of science of the time, the pioneers who laid the corner stone of Western culture on the continent.° The greatest of them is Columba of Iona (521-597). Scarcely less great is Co lumbanus of Bobbio, though the work for which he is best known was done in the next century. Columba left Ireland in his 44th year, landing at Iona on the eve of Pentecost 563. From here he began the conversion of the Northern Picts. He wandered far and wide on foot through the land and is said never to have spent an hour without study, prayer, writing or some similar occupation. He himself transcribed many books. In spite of incessant labors, fast ing and vigils, sleeping his scanty sleep often on a stone pillow, like so many other of the in tensely hard workers of human history, Columba lived to the round old age of nearly 80. He was not only a great missionary saint who won a whole kingdom to Christ, but he was °a statesman, a scholar, a poet, the founder of numerous churches and monasteries when monasteries corresponded to our colleges, and his name is dear to Scotsmen and Irishmen alike.° To him we owe a famous decision as to books that the owner of an original had the right over the copies, for °to every cow its calf,° which represents the basis of copyright.
The end of the century witnessed the instal lation of Saint Augustine (Austin) as arch bishop of Canterbury (598). He was a Roman who became a monk and a personal friend of Pope Gregory the Great. In his desire to carry out a great missionary project among the Angles, or English,— the Britons had Chris tianity before this,— Gregory sent Augustine to England and gave him jurisdiction over all the bishops on the island. His mission was emi nently successful. Aethelbert the king, who had married the daughter of Charibert of Paris with the condition that she should be allowed to exercise her Christian religion freely, was con verted and his people soon followed him. Quite
contrary to the spirit sometimes displayed, Bede tells us that it was part of the king's °to compel no man to embrace Christianity. On Christmas Day 597 more than 10,000 per sons were baptized by the first archbishop of the English. England was thus placed once more in touch with Roman culture. °The civilization, art, letters, which had fled before the sword of the English conquerors returned with the Christian (Green).
When Augustine landed he brought with him Roman customs and as certain traditions had grown up in the British and Celtic churches not in accord with those of Rome, particularly as to the date of Easter and the form of ton sure, jealous rivalry ensued and it seemed for a time as though there might be actual division. A synod was called at Whitby (7th century) and through the influence of the king the dis pute was brought to an end and England was won to the Roman side.
The characters of the men among whom Columba and Augustine had to do their mis sionary work is well illustrated in the poem known as (Beowulf,' the first English epic which was written probably some time toward the end of this century. Beowulf was a kins man of Hygelac who appears in Gregory of Tours' Gesta Regum Francorum. He lived in the early part of this century and the myths that gathered around Beowulf's name were probably put intb nearly the form in which we now have them in immediately succeeding generations and represent our earliest Old English literature. The epic is pagan and bar baric, full of the lust of blood, and yet it has a stirring appeal to deep human interests that ac counts for its survival. The prose writers of this first century of the Middle Ages whose works have come down to us are more numer ous than might be thought. Procopius, a Roman historian, is often spoken of as the last of the classic writers. The end of the century saw such well-known historians as Gregory of Tours, the father of French history, Gildas the first British historian, Evagrius ecclesiastical historian, and Cassiodorus of Ravenna, the min ister of Theodoric.