Gradually, however, the pagan faith was dropped. Christianity was
largely organized by bands of monks and nuns, who had renounced the
world in order to lead lives of self-sacrifice and service. They
bound themselves by the three vows of obedience, poverty, and
chastity, and the monastic law forbade them to marry. Monasteries
existed or were now established in a number of places in England.[1]
[1] For instance, at Lindisfarne, or Holy Island, off the coast of
Northumberland (see Scott's "Marmion," Canto II, 9-10), at Wearmouth
and Jarrow in Durham, at Whitby on the coast of Yorkshire, and at
Peterborough in Northamptonshire. (See map facing p. 38.)
The monasteries were educational as well as industrial centers. The
monks spent part of each day in manual toil, for they held that "to
labor is to pray." They cleared the land, drained he bogs, plowed,
sowed, and reaped. Another part of the day they spent in religious
exercises, and a third in writing, translating, and teaching.
Each monastery had a school attached to it, and each had, besides, its
library of manuscript books and its room for the entertainment of
travelers and pilgrims. In these libraries important charters granted
by the King and important laws relating to the kingdom were preserved.