So that, when one after another we read of Gaulish, Celtic, and Teutonic abbeys that were intellectual capitals and centres of far‐reaching and all‐embracing knowledge, we must always remember that these words, grown trite at last from frequent use, have as varied a meaning as the collective name of Milky Way, which stands for countless worlds of unknown stars. As Christianity spread in the early part of the middle ages, these monastic centres were multiplied like the posterity of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Lindisfarne, the Iona of the eastern coast of England, soon rivalled her Scottish predecessor, and retained much the same impress of Celtic learning, while Melrose served as a supplementary school and novitiate. The Teutonic element now began to make itself felt. Caedmon, the Saxon cowherd, transformed into a poet and a monk by a direct call from God, sang the creation in strains “which,” says Montalembert, “may still be admired even beside the immortal poem of the author of _Paradise Lost_.” Wilfrid, the S. Thomas à Becket of the seventh century, vigorously planted Roman traditions and customs in the Saxon monastery of Ripon, and perpetuated the name of S. Peter in his other magnificent foundation of Peterborough, the poetic “Home among the Meadows,” or Medehamstede.(46) Theodore, the Greek metropolitan of England, in 673 introduced into the Anglo‐Saxon schools “an intellectual and literary development as worthy of the admiration as of the gratitude of posterity; the study of the two classic tongues (Greek and Latin) chiefly flourished under his care.... Monasteries, thus transformed into homes of scientific study, could not but spread a taste and respect for intellectual life, not only among the clergy, but also among their lay‐protectors, the friends and neighbors of each community.”(47)