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XV. LEARNING AND
EDUCATION
i. Anglo-Saxon Period
WHENAugustine made Canterbury the head/
quarters of Pope Gregory's mission to the Eng/
lish, he and his fellow monks had from the
outset to apply themselves to a great educational
undertaking. They had to make intelligible a religion, the
scriptures, theology, and service/books of which were written
in a foreign tongue.What provision Augustine made for the
instruction of converts is not recorded. It must have been,
however, partly
to serve an educational need that the monks
sent by Gregory in 60 1 to reinforce his mission brought with
them a large number of books. Thomas Elmham, the
fifteenth/century historian of Augustine's abbey of SS. Peter
and Paul, outside Canterbury, termed these volumes with
some truth l&rorum totius eccksiae
'primitiae Anglicanae. The
existence of a school at Canterbury prompted Bishop Felix
in 631 to ask Archbishop Honorius for pefagogi and maestri
with whom to staff the one that he wished to set up at Dun/
wich for the benefit of his East Anglian converts. As this
request was for professional teachers and masters, it may be
inferred that at Canterbury, in accordance with the growing
practice of western Christendom, there was already an arch/
bishop's school in addition to the cloister/school for novices
which Augustine's monks must have instituted. The work of
Irish missionaries soon proved no less important than that of
the Roman in transforming the pagan culture of the English
peoples. The need for the re/establishment of Christianity in
Northumbria after the fall of King Edwin and the flight of
Paulinus gave Irish missionary enterprise its greatest oppor/