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First Steps of the English
in Civilization
Aidan, Whitby monastery was established on the Irish
double monastery plan, "Mother Hilda" presiding over
both. 1
Several of the Irish foundations in Gaul were double
monasteries. Examples were Remiremont, Soissons,
Jouarre, Brie, Chelles and Andelys ; the last three, as Bede
female con-
tells us, being especially favored by English
verts. Boniface introduced the feature in Germany, where
the establishments were in several cases presided over by
nuns trained at Wimborne. It was the example of Hilda's
sister Heresuid, mother to Aldwulf, king of the East
Angles, who lived at Cale, or Chelles in France, that
led her to desire to live there. 2
From the first these double monasteries flourished in
the Irish church, perhaps because they were a feature
of the clan system when men and women alike belonged
to the same religious community. In Ireland the head
of such monasteries was usually a man ;
but in the Irish
monasteries of England, especially in those founded by
relatives of the native rulers, and in Columbanus's double
monasteries in Gaul and Belgium, the monastery of
clerics or priests, which was generally placed at the gates
of the convent, was ruled over by the abbess. The singular
inversion of the normal relationship was due probably
to the fact that in such cases the real center or original
foundation was the convent, but that for the spiritual
needs of the nuns as well as for the oversight of their
lands and estates there grew up a smaller dependent
monastery of priests and lay brethren. But in some
monasteries the monks were in the majority. Among
the double monasteries in England, most of them Irish
foundations, Bardney, Barkney, Ely, Whitby,
i See N. B. Workman, Evolution of Monasticism, pp. 177-8.
2Eccl. Hist. IV, XXIII.
223
and Cold