After Aldhelm's death much of the community's history is obscure for several centuries, although there is some evidence that the monastery continued to function in a recognisably ‘Aldhelmian’ manner for a while. The key source for understanding the period 710–50 is the correspondence of Lullus, later archbishop of Mainz and a missionary, with St Boniface, to the German people. Lullus was a student at Malmesbury in the early 730s before setting off on a journey that took him first to Rome and ultimately to Germany. Letters to and from Lullus, together with other documents with Malmesbury connections, were preserved by Lullus and survive in a ninth-century codex held in Vienna. This manuscript is famous for its collection of the letters of Boniface, but it also provides vital clues for an understanding of life in Malmesbury in the first half of the eighth century. The Vienna codex contains an undated letter sent to Lullus in Germany many years after he had left England, perhaps in the 750s, and written by an anonymous Malmesbury monk, who reminisced about the ‘good old days’ of the early 730s when he and Lullus had both been young members of the Malmesbury community.

This letter implies that Abbot Eaba's relationship with Lullus in the 730s had been fundamentally educational, and the reference to ‘fostering’ is similar to the language used decades earlier by Æthilwald when he described his relationship with Aldhelm and his time at Malmesbury. In the 730s, as in the 690s, it seems that some students joined the Malmesbury community temporarily for ‘fosterage’ or temporary educational purposes and did not make a lifelong commitment to the place. The correspondence of Lullus also reveals that before he came to Malmesbury he was a member of an entirely different monastic community, headed by an abbess called Cyneburg. In a letter dated to 739–41, Lullus and two friends wrote from Germany to one Abbess Cyneburg, thanking her for her role in their early education and promising that if they ever returned to Britain they would re-join her community and offer her their obedience and loyalty.