February 11th St. Caedmon, poet-monk of Whitby (Yorks.) (d. 680).

Caedmon was a local herdsman who joined the abbey of Whitby and enjoyed a great fame as a singer and poet. His poems (which, apart from a fragment recorded by Bede in his Church history, have not survived) presented the life of Christ and stories from Genesis and the Exodus and in an age of illiteracy and non-availability of the Bible seem to have been as formative of popular faith as wall-paintings and stained-glass windows in early churches.