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.