The Bernician king evidently conceived of heaven as of a Northumbrian palace hall: and not unnaturally he, who knew his hands to be stained with the blood of his gracious kinsman Oswin, desired to enlist the sympathies of the most powerful patron possible on his side against the day when he should have to plead for entrance therein. Oswy’s decision was, of course, final. All over Northumberland the Roman customs as to Easter and the tonsure now prevailed. Bishop Colman, who could not reconcile himself to the new ways, abdicated his see and returned to Iona, accompanied by all the Irish monks from Lindisfarne and by thirty Anglian brethren who shared their opinions. From Iona he afterwards went to Ireland and founded a monastery on an island off the coast of Mayo, which had not a very successful career. Cedd, bishop of the East Saxons, who had acted as interpreter and to some extent as mediator between the two parties, accepted the decision of the synod, and returned to enforce it in London and the rest of his diocese. Everywhere now throughout Teutonic Britain unity with Rome was established, and little more than a century elapsed before all the Celtic communities in Iona, in Ireland, even in sturdy recalcitrant Wales, had adopted the Roman Easter and the coronal tonsure.[74] The change was one which probably ought upon the whole to be considered beneficial. Unity was the thing now most needed, both politically and ecclesiastically, and unity had to be achieved by the State through the Church. It was, therefore, well that this pebble, which broke the full flow of the stream towards unity, should be removed out of the way by the synod of Whitby. It was well, also, that there should be no hindrance to free and full intercourse between the ecclesiastics of England and those of the continent. True, the civilisation of Italy and Gaul in the seventh century was nothing to boast of. To Cicero or to Marcus Aurelius it would have seemed like barbarism: but it was superior to the barbarism of the Saxon, perhaps in some respects superior even to the undoubtedly high civilisation, at this time, of Celtic Tara and Armagh. Still it was not all gain that resulted from the decision of the synod of Whitby and the rupture of the spiritual bond that had bound Lindisfarne to Iona. Even Bede, with all his loyalty to Rome and abhorrence of the Celtic Easter, seems to feel this fact; else why does he introduce just at this point an eloquent panegyric on the simple life of Colman and his predecessors, their genuine poverty and the faithfulness with which they at once handed to the poor any money which they received from the rich? “At that time the religious habit was held in great veneration, so that wheresoever cleric or monk appeared, he was joyfully welcomed by all as the servant of God; those who met him on the road with bent necks rejoiced to receive the blessing of his lips or of his extended hand: they listened eagerly to his words of exhortation.