SOME SAXON SAINTS OF WIMBORNE. 207 



Arbiter omnipotens, solus qui cuncta creavit, 

 In regno patris semper qui lumine fulget, 

 Qua jugiter flagrans sic regnat gloria Christi, 

 Inlesum servet semper te jure perenni. 



May the Almighty Judge, Who made the earth, 

 And glorious in His Father's kingdom reigns, 



Preserve your chaste fire warm as at its birth, 

 Till time for you shall lose its rights and pains." 



Upon this Bishop Browne remarks, "It is sad to have to 

 say that although Lioba declares that she has not done this 

 audaciously, it is an audacious piece of copying from the 

 treatise on the construction of Latin verse by * Aldhelm of 

 Malmesbury. Both in her prose letter and in her verse she 

 copies wholesale." 



t Somewhere between the years 742 and 746 a letter was 

 written by Boniface to some of the sisters in Wimborne 

 which appears to have put into their minds the idea of going 

 out into the mission field : " To my dearest sisters, to be 

 venerated and loved, Leobgytha, Tecla, and Cynehild, and all 

 the lovable sisters dwelling with you, greeting of eternal 

 dearness." And then he goes on to beg for their prayers lest 

 he the last and most unworthy of those who were sent out 

 to preach the Gospel should have no fruit of his labour, and 

 should pass away not leaving spiritual sons and daughters in 

 his stead. Nay worse than that, some, of whom he had 

 felt sure that they were sheep who would have in the 

 end a place on the right hand of Christ, had turned out to 

 be stinking butting goats, who must be placed on the left 

 hand. 



Later on, when Boniface wrote to Tetta asking that 

 helpers might be sent to him to Germany, at his special 



* Boniface of Crediton and his Companions, p. 81. 



t Epistles of S. Boniface, Jaffe, 67. of. Montalembert, Monks of the 

 West, English Edition (London, Blackwood, 1867), Vol. V., pp. 317, 

 318. 



