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.'
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How beautiful, O Sion, are thy courts!
The following hymns are from the Office for the Consecration of a Church.
St. Fursey.
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'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.
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