[Page 39]. At Ely, Elmham, and beside the Cam.
In the reign of Sigebert, Felix, Bishop of East Anglia, founded schools respecting which Montalembert remarks: 'Plusieurs ont fait remonter à ces écoles monastiques l'origine de la célèbre université de Cambridge.'
[Page 44]. How beautiful, O Sion, are thy courts!
The following hymns are from the Office for the Consecration of a Church.
St. Fursey. [Page 67].
How one with brow
Lordlier than man's, and visionary eyes.
'Whilst Sigebert still governed the kingdom there came out of Ireland a holy man named Fursey, renowned both for his words and actions, and remarkable for singular virtues, being desirous to live a stranger for Our Lord, wherever an opportunity should offer.... He built himself the monastery (Burghcastle in Suffolk) wherein he might with more freedom indulge his heavenly studies. There falling sick, as the book about his life informs us, he fell into a trance, and, quitting his body from the evening till the cockcrow, he was found worthy to behold the choirs of angels, and hear the praises which are sung in heaven.... He not only saw the greater joys of the Blessed, but also extraordinary combats of Evil Spirits.'—Bede, Hist. book iii. cap. xix. 'C'était un moine irlandais nommé Fursey, de très-noble naissance et célèbre depuis sa jeunesse dans son pays par sa science et ses visions.... Dans la principale de ses visions Ampère et Ozanam se sont accordés à reconnaître une des sources poétiques de la Divine Comédie.'—Montalembert, Les Moines d'Occident, tome iv. pp. 93-4.
[Page 116]. 'None loveth Song that loves not Light and Truth.'
This is one of the poetic aphorisms of Cadoc, a Cambrian prince and saint, educated in the Irish monastery of Lismore, and afterwards the founder of the great Welsh monastery of Llancarvan, in which he gave religious instruction to the sons of the neighbouring princes and chiefs.