The observance of the monastic rule, dominated by the daily performance of the Opus Dei and varied by periods of manual labour and the reading of sacred books, constituted the life lived by the monks of Wearmouth and Jarrow, as of a great many other foundations widely spread throughout the greater part of England in the seventh and eighth centuries. It was one of the functions of this life, perhaps more readily seen in retrospect than by contemporaries, to serve as the prime agent in creating an educated and literate element in that pagan society which had possessed the former British provinces of the Roman empire. The task which it had to face was not merely the teaching of the simplest elements of the Christian faith to a rustic population, but also the training and educating from an early age of those who would in time be able to teach others and to hold office as bishops, abbots or priests. It is the particular distinction of Wearmouth and Jarrow that from the first their founder, Benedict Biscop, set out to endow them as richly as he could with the means which would enable them to become centres of educational and intellectual studies.