Abstract Bede highlighted the Lindisfarne bishoprics of Fínán and Colmán (651–664) as a time when Anglo-Saxon students travelled to Ireland for free education. That period in the middle of his reign (642–670) suggests that Bede was identifying King Oswiu’s educational policy for his recently converted subjects. Oswiu was bilingual and bi-cultural, and ‘considered that nothing was better than what they the Gaels had taught’ ( HE 3.25). The Gaelic learning available to Anglo-Saxon students in the middle third of the seventh century can be illustrated through the Paschal letter by a certain Cummian ( c . 632), texts composed by contemporary sapientes such as Laidcenn (†661), Cuimmíne Fota (†662), and Ailerán (†665), and includes anonymous texts used by Bede in his works on computus and chronology, among other topics.
Colin Ireland (Wed,) studied this question.