ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



Durham is concerned he was actually anticipated by Benedict Biscop, otherwise 

 Biscop Baducing." Biscop was a thegn of Oswy. He is the first Durham 

 personage after Hild and Heiu to emerge partially from the obscurity of the 

 time. His is a truly great name, but our knowledge of the details of his life 

 is disappointingly meagre. Passing to the Continent with Wilfrid in 653 he 

 pushed on to Rome, and returned to Northumbria before his companion came 

 back. No doubt he spread those ritual scruples which Wilfrid imbibed at 

 Rome, and disseminated after his return, scruples which were only set at 

 rest, if they were set at rest, in the synod of Whitby, 664. The Whitby 

 decision marked the triumph of the Roman as against the Celtic model, and 

 is a matter of considerable importance. ^^ After a second journey to Rome in 

 665, and a residence of some years abroad, Biscop came back, in company 

 with Theodore, in 669. From a third journey he returned to Northumbria 

 about 672 to find Oswy dead and his son Egfrid occupying the throne. A 

 friendship now sprang up with Egfrid which had great effects on religion 

 and learning. The king bestowed on Biscop a large gift of land, probably in 

 the actual neighbourhood of Heiu's first convent, but certainly on the northern 

 bank of the Wear. Here he founded in 674 a monastery which was signifi- 

 cantly dedicated to St. Peter." Of this famous house Stubbs says : 'The 

 learning and civilization of the eighth century rested on the monastery which 

 he founded, which produced Bede, and through him the school of York, 

 Alcuin, and the Carolingian school on which the culture of the Middle 

 Ages was based.' 



Commencing his foundation at Wearmouth in 674, Biscop journeyed next 

 year to Gaul, and brought back masons who built the house in the Roman 

 fashion dear to him, as Bede tells us ; and then he sent for glaziers, who not 

 only did their own work, but taught their craft to the Northumbrians. The 

 church, at all events, was ready for use within a year, and part of the ancient 

 porch, it is probable, survives as an evidence of the builder's skill. In this 

 counterpart to the work of Wilfrid recently erected in York, Hexham, and 

 Ripon, we see the amazing progress of architecture and civilization which 

 the span of a very few years witnessed. It is probable that the father of Bede 

 was born and brought up as a heathen. His son, who was born on Wear- 

 mouth land, perhaps a year before the monastery was founded, lived to see 

 an enormous advance of civilization and religion, and to prove the depositary 

 of all known learning. 



But Bede, to whom we are thus introduced, was still more closely con- 

 nected with a second great Durham monastery which was erected by the 

 same Biscop at Jarrow." A fourth visit of Biscop to Rome was concluded in 



'° Bede has worked the facts of Biscop's life into Hist. Eccl. v, 19, so far as they are connected with Wilfrid, 

 and has left a memoir of Biscop. See Bishop Stubbs's article, ' Benedictus Biscop ' in Did. Christ. Biog. i, 308. 



" For the Whitby decision the original authority is Bede, Hist. Eccl. iii, 25 ; cf. Early Engl. Ch. Hist. 

 223-31 ; Diet. Christ. Biog. i, 309. 



" The early history of the Wearmouth Monastery, until its devastation by the Danes, is given in Surtees' 

 Hist. ofDur. ii, 2. 



" Bede is again our original authority. Hist. Eccl. v, 21, 24, with Hist. Abbat. passim. W. Bright, Early 

 Engl. Ch. Hist. 365, sqq. gives a full summary and appreciation of all known facts about Jarrow. See, too, 

 Surtees, Dur. ii, 67. For Bede's literary influence, J. R. Green, Making of England, 399-404 ; Hodgkin, 

 Italy and her Invaders, vi, 422. The important paper of J. R. Boyle in Arch. Ael. x, 195, on the 'Monas- 

 tery and Church of St. Paul, Jarrow,' gives a full rcsumi of the foundation of the house, with a discussion 

 of its archaeological remains. These are particularly a series of inscribed stones, the most important of which 

 records the dedication of the church. 



