On the margin of the first page of Saint Matthew's Gospel an interesting note has been written about the year 850 by the owner of the Gospels, an English Ealdorman named Aelfred; this note records that the manuscript had been stolen by Norse robbers and that Aelfred had purchased it from them for a sum in pure gold in order that the sacred book might be rescued from heathen hands. Aelfred then presented it to the Cathedral Church of Canterbury, and new gold covers appear then to have been made for this _Textus_, as there is another note in a ninth century hand requesting the prayers of the Church for three goldsmiths, probably those who replaced the original gold covers which the Viking pirates had torn off[79]. _The two Churches in Britain._ Returning now to the manuscripts of the Celtic Church in Northumbria, in order to understand the gradual introduction into Northern England of the Italian or classical style of painting it is necessary to remember the struggle which took place during the seventh century between the adherents of the older Celtic Church and those who supported the Papal claims for supremacy throughout Britain. On the one hand the See of Canterbury, founded by the Roman Saint Augustine, claimed jurisdiction in the north as well as in the south of Britain, in opposition to the Celtic Abbot of Iona, who was then the real Metropolitan of the Church in the north of England. _Long struggle._ Wilfrid of York and Benedict Biscop of Jarrow spent many years in a series of embassies, between 670 and 690, backward and forward between Northumbria and Rome striving to introduce the Papal authority, by the aid of imported books, relics and craftsmen skilled in building stone churches in place of the simple wooden structures which at that time were the only ecclesiastical buildings in Northumbria[80]. Very large numbers of illuminated manuscripts were brought to England during the many journeys of Wilfrid and Benedict Biscop; and important libraries were created at York and at Jarrow which led to these places becoming literary and artistic centres of great and European importance. _Synod of Whitby._ _Defeat of the Celtic party._