This revised volume contains Bede's 'Life of Cuthbert' and 'Lives of the Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow'; Eddius's 'Life of Wilfrid; the Voyage of St. Brendan' and new to this editions, 'The Anonymous History of Abbot Ceolfrith. Each work is set in the sixth or seventh century-- a period that witnessed the clash between the Roman episcopal orthodoxy and the monasticism that was spreading over Ireland and Northern England. Brendan's whimsical travelogue shows us Celtic monasticism before it was challenged; Bede describes its canalization into missionary activity by Cuthbert at Lindisfarne; Eddius tells of Wilfrid's enforcement of decisions made by the Synod of Whitby, while Bede's 'Lives of the Abbots' and the anonymous 'History of Abbot Ceolfrith' give us mutually contemporary views of the same reality, unmatched by any contemporary continental account.
