Report of Meetings for 1888. By J. Hardy. 197 



burgh. Fame being transformed from the name of the latter 

 stream, Lindisfarne was therefore simply the land that lay 

 between the Lindis and the Waren. The christianising of 

 Scotland was begun by Columba, who came from Ireland and 

 founded a monastery at Iona. It was the monks at Iuna who 

 founded Lindisfarne, and he believed the island was selected 

 because of its resemblance to Iona itself. King Oswald was the 

 means of Christianity coming here. He had imbibed tbe 

 Christian faith, and when he came to rule over his own kingdom 

 of Northumbria he brought in Christianity through Aidan. 

 When Lindisfarne church was built we did not know. There 

 was a wooden church in the time of Aidan, but we could not tell 

 how long that remained. The stone church was said to have 

 been built during the time of the third bishop, after the Con- 

 quest, and it was built of stones brought from the mainland. 



An adjournment was now made for luncheon. About two 

 o'clock, the company having again collected within the ruins, Mr 

 C. C. Hodges, Hexham, delivered, to a very large audience, a 

 succinct and graphic description of the erection of the monastic 

 buildings. He alluded first to the origin of monks and monas- 

 teries. In the first three centuries of Christianity, he said, we 

 read of men who devoted themselves to living entirely alone, and 

 spent their days in absolute solitude. After a time such a large 

 number of men resorted to the custom of living in solitude that 

 it became inconvenient, and man began to live instead in com- 

 munities. The earlier monasteries were often a series of huts or 

 cells, where each monk lived, but after a time this was changed, 

 and men began to live in one house. It was built round a court, 

 and in one part the monks lived, and in the other they worshipped. 

 There were a great number of different rules with regard to the 

 different orders. Though each order followed its own rules, 

 however, there was not that great dissimilarity which people 

 supposed. Generally speaking their buildings followed one 

 particular plan. The plan was supposed to have been derived 

 from the Roman house— a courtyard in the middle, and the 

 apartments ranged all round it. This plan remained until the 

 eleventh century, when architecture received a new lease of life 

 and everything conaected with it flourished. The rise of the 

 monastic system dated from the year 1000, and it continued to 

 rise in popularity until the 12th century, and from that period it 

 began to dwindle away. In the two centuries preceding, 500 



