Benedict Biscop

BENEDICT BISCOP: First abbot of Wearmouth and Jarrow; b. of noble family about 628; d. at Wearmouth (on the north side of the Wear, opposite Sunderland, Durhamshire) Jan. 12, 689 or 690. Biscop was his Saxon name, his ecclesiastical name was Benedict, and he was also called Baducing as a patronymic. He was a thane and favorite of Oswy, king of Nothumbria, but in 653 decided to abandon the world and went to Rome. He became a monk at the monastery of Lerins about 665, and was appointed by Pope Vitalian to conduct Theodore of Tarsus to Canterbury in 668. In 674 be began to build the monastery of St. Peter at Wearmouth on land given by Egfrid, king of Northumbria. In 681 or 682 he founded the sister house, dedicated to St. Paul, at Jarrow (5 m. farther north, on the south bank of the Tyne). He made six visits to Rome, learned the Roman ecclesiastical usages and the rules of monastic life, and strove faithfully to introduce them in England; he also brought back a rich store of books, vestments, pictures, and the like. He induced John, the archchanter of St. Peter's at Rome, to accompany him to England and instruct his monks; and he brought skilled workmen from Gaul to build his monasteries, including the first glass-makers in England.

Bibliography: The source for a biography is the life by his great scholar Bede, Vita beatorum abbatum, chaps. 1–14, best and most accessible in the ed. of C. Plummer, i, 364–379, with notes, ii, 355–365, Oxford, 1896, Eng. transl, by P. Witcock, Sunderland, 1818; cf. also Bede, Hist. eccl., iv, 18, v, 19; Hom., xxv. Consult also C. F. Montalembert, Les Moines de l’occident, iv, 456–487, Paris, 1868; DNB, iv, 214–216.