Benedict Biscop, Abbot of Wearmouth
12 January -- Commemoration
If celebrated as a Lesser Festival,
Common of Religious, page 494
Born a Northumbrian nobleman in 628, Benedict Biscop served
at the court of King Oswiu of Northumbria until he joined
Wilfrid of York on his pilgrimage to Rome to the tombs of
the apostles. He made a second trip accompanied by the
King's son and on his way home was clothed a monk at the
Benedictine house of
Lérins. It was on his third trip to Rome that he met
and returned to England with Theodore, the newly-appointed
Archbishop of Canterbury, who made him Abbot of St
Augustine's in 669. Five years later, he was permitted to
make his own foundation at Wearmouth, which he had built in
the Roman style and endowed with a huge library. He
encouraged the development of the Uncial script which also
acted as a vehicle for the propagation of the Roman Rite.
His own scholarship, and that promoted through the religious
houses he founded, played a large part in the acceptance of
the primacy of Roman over Celtic practice throughout
northern England. Benedict Biscop died on this day in 689.