Philobiblon

p. 34 It is, moreover, notable that women appear to have played a significant role in literature and learning throughout the period, whether as recipients of complex and challenging Latin works, such as Aldhelm’s twin work in both prose and verse on virginity, sent to the nuns of Barking, or as teachers of ppetry and producers of their own verse, such as Eadburh, abbess if Minister-in-Thanet (d. 751) and her younger contemporaries Leofgyth and Berhtgyth, both of whom have left poems associated with Boniface’s mission to Germania. Powerful women in the late 7^th century also fostered learning and literature in the north, notably Abbess Hild of Whitby (614-680), whose monastery was the setting, Bede says, of the first Christian poetry in traditional Old English metre, by the illiterate cowherd Caedmon. Bede is uncharacteristically shy  about asserting that Caedmon reported his first faltering verses to Hild herself, and it seems likely that the supposed event took place in the time of her successors, Eanflaed (d. c. 685) or Aelflaed (654-714), respectively the sister and niece of King Aldfrith of Northumbria (r. 685-705), who himself had a well-documented interest in verse in several languages, including both Latin and Irish.”