In the end, after many failures, Wilfrid, Archbishop[81] of York, was successful in bringing Northumbria under the supremacy of Canterbury and Rome. In 664 a great Council was held at Whitby in the presence of the Northumbrian King Oswiu. Bishop Colman, the successor of Saint Aidan at Lindisfarne, represented the Celtic Church and the authority of Saint Columba, while Wilfrid appeared to support the authority of Saint Peter and the Bishop of Rome. After hearing that Saint Peter possessed the keys of Heaven and Hell, while Saint Columba could claim no such marvellous power, King Oswiu decided in favour of the Roman Supremacy. This decision, though based on such fanciful grounds, was a fortunate one for the English Church, since, in the main, learning, culture and established order generally were on the side of the Italian Church. The practical result of this Roman victory at the Synod of Whitby in 664 was that a classical influence gradually extended itself in all the English centres for the production of illuminated manuscripts. It has already been noted that the splendid manuscripts of Lindisfarne and other Northumbrian monasteries, though of Celtic origin, show a distinct Roman influence in the improvement of the drawing of their figures of Saints. By degrees the Irish element in the illuminations grew less and less; though the interlaced patterns and fantastic dragon and serpent forms lasted for many centuries in all the chief countries of western Europe and form an important decorative element till the thirteenth century[82]. _Baeda of Durham._ One of the chief schools of English manuscript illumination, that of the Benedictine Abbey at Durham, was raised to a position of European importance by the Northumbrian monk Baeda, afterwards called the Venerable Bede, who was born in 673, a few years after the Synod of Whitby. As the author of a great _Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation_, Baeda ranks as the Father of English History; he did much to foster the study of ancient classical authors, was himself a skilful writer of manuscripts, and made the Abbey of Jarrow, where he lived till his death in 735, an active centre for the production of richly illuminated manuscripts of many different literary classes. _Northumbrian school._ _Celtic and Classic styles._| In the eighth century the schools of illumination in the Abbeys of Jarrow, Wearmouth and York in Northumbria, and of Canterbury and Winchester in the south were among the most active and artistically important in the world[83]. In these schools of miniature painting was gradually created a special English style of illumination, partly formed out of a combination of two very different styles, that of the Irish Celtic illuminators and that of the Italian classical scribes.