§ 7. Thus King Æcgfrid, delighted by the virtues and zealous piety of the venerable Benedict, augmented the territory which he had given, on which to build this monastery, by a further grant of land of forty hides, on which, at the end of a year, Benedict, by the same King Æcgfrid’s concurrence, and, indeed, command, built the monastery of the Apostle St. Paul, with this condition, that the same concord and unity should exist for ever between the two; so that, for instance, as the body cannot be separated from the head, nor the head forget the body by which it lives, in the same manner no man should ever try to divide these two monasteries, which had been united under the names of the first of the Apostles. Ceolfrid, whom Benedict made abbot, had been his most zealous assistant from the first foundation of the former monastery, and had gone with him at the proper time to Rome, for the sake of acquiring instruction, and offering up his prayers. At which time also he chose priest Eosterwine to be the abbot of St. Peter’s monastery, that with the help of this fellow soldier he might sustain a burden otherwise too heavy for him. And let no man think it unbecoming that one monastery should have two abbots at once. His frequent travelling for the benefit of the monastery, and absence in foreign parts, was the cause; and history informs us, that, on a pressing occasion, the blessed St. Peter also ordained two pontiffs under him to rule the church at Rome; and Abbot Benedict the Great, himself, as Pope Saint Gregory writes of him, appointed twelve abbots over his followers, as he judged expedient, without any harm done to Christian charity — nay, rather to the increase thereof.