But some time before this, Irish missionaries had been working their way across the northern borders, establishing Celtic institutions and exerting considerable influence over individual rulers. Cuthbert’s own monastery of Lindisfarne was founded as a west-coast satellite of Iona. This important Celtic monastery had been established by St Columba in AD 563 – decades before Augustine arrived in Kent. All along the northern part of England, Irish missionaries were making inroads and setting up monasteries that were different to the Benedictine ones spread by the papacy.
