10/13/21, 3:52 AM Saint Benedict Biscop, Abbot of Wearmouth & Jarrow

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Saint
Benedict Biscop,
Abbot of Wearmouth &
Jarrow
 (†690)
Source:
 http://logismoitouaaron.blogspot.com/2010/01/namesake-
of-blessednessst-benedict.html

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Ancient Church who lived and who propagated the Faith in the British Isles
and Ireland during the first millennium of Christianity and prior to the
Great Schism is being attempted in our website  in our desire to inform our
readers, who may not be aware of the history, the labours or the martyrdom
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Apostolic Church of our Lord.

"The Church in
The British Isles
will only begin
to grow when
she begins to
venerate her
own Saints"    
(Saint Arsenios
of Paros †1877)

Today, 12 January on the Church’s calendar, we celebrate the memory of

the Holy Benedict Bischop (628-690), Abbot of Wearmouth and Jarrow,
Northumbria, England. The great historian, Christopher Dawson,
observes that St Benedict, ‘above all, devoted himself to the development
of religious art and learning’, [1] and  The Oxford Dictionary of
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Saintsdescribes him as ‘founder and first abbot of Wearmouth, scholar,

and patron of the arts’. [2] Here is the account of his life in the 2010  St
Herman Calendar:

St Benedict Biscop was born in Northumbria of a Christian family. He

made numerous pilgrimages to Rome, later spending two years taking
monastic instruction at Lerins, from 665 to 667, where he was
tonsured with the name ‘Benedict’ (blessed). He accompanied St
Theodore of Tarsus, the Greek archbishop, back to Canterbury, where
Benedict was appointed abbot of the community of Sts Peter and Paul.
He was invited by King Egfrith to build a monastery at Wearmouth in
674, and later erected a sister monastery at Jarrow. St Benedict made
his final trip to Rome in 679 to bring back holy books and relics, as well
as masons and craftsmen for the completion of the monasteries,
creating a dual community which was to serve as a model for monastic
life in England. He died in 690, surrounded by his monastic brethren,
and was succeeded as abbot by St Ceolfrith (Geoffrey), who continued
his spiritual work. [3]

Of St Benedict’s blessed repose, his most renowned disciple, the

Venerable Bede, writes, ‘Benedict, who so nobly vanquished sin and
wrought the deeds of virtue, yielded to the weakness of the flesh, and
came to his end. Night came on chilled by the winter’s blasts, but a day of
eternal felicity succeeded, of serenity and of splendour.’ [4]

Aside from the full account of his life I have just quoted, The Lives of the
Abbots of Wearmouth & Jarrow, St Bede also speaks movingly of his
spiritual father in his homily for today. It is good and just that St Benedict
is so often praised for his liturgical and aesthetic enrichment of the
English Church, and even for the enormous library he bequeathed to
English monasticism. But in this passage, commenting on the verse ‘And
everyone who has left house or brothers or sisters or father or mother or
wife or children or lands for my name’s sake will receive a hundredfold,
and will come into possession of eternal life’ (Mt 19:29), St Bede reminds
us that St Benedict left an even more important legacy in the people that
he brought together and guided to Christ:

And it should not seem tedious to any of you, brothers, if we speak of

things which are well-known, but instead you should judge it
delightful that we speak the truth when we tell of the spiritual deeds of
our father, to whom the Lord by a manifest miracle fulfilled what he

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10/13/21, 3:52 AM Saint Benedict Biscop, Abbot of Wearmouth & Jarrow

promised to his faithful ones, that ‘everyone who has left home or
brothers etc. . . .’ He left his relatives when he departed from his
fatherland; he received a hundredfold, for not only was he held in
deserved veneration by everyone in this land, on account of the
diligence of his virtues, but even in Gaul, and in Italy, in Rome too,
and in the islands of the sea, he was loved by everyone who was able to
know him . . . The homes and lands which [Benedict] had possessed he
left for the sake of Christ, from whom he hoped to receive the land of an
ever-verdant paradise, and a home not made by hands but eternal in
heaven. He left wife and children—not, to be sure, that he had taken a
wife, and had children born of her, but out of love of chastity he
scorned taking a wife from whom he could have children, preferring to
belong to that hundred and forty-four thousand of the elect who sing
before the throne of the Lamb a new song which no one except they can
sing. . . . He received home and lands a hundredfold when he secured
these places where he would build his monasteries. He gave up having
a wife for Christ’s sake, and in this he received a hundredfold, because
undoubtedly then the value of charity between the chaste would be a
hundredfold greater on account of the fruit of the Spirit, than that
between the lascivious, on account of the desire of the flesh, had once
been. The children which he had disdained to have in a fleshly way he
deserved to receive a hundredfold as spiritual children. The number one
hundred, indeed, as has often been said, figuratively speaking, denotes
perfection. Now we are his children, since as a pious provider he
brought us into this monastic house. We are his children since he has
made us to be gathered spiritually into one family of holy profession,
though in terms of the flesh we were brought forth of different parents.
We are his children if by imitating [him] we hold to the path of his
virtues, if we are not turned aside by sluggishness from the narrow
path of the rule which he taught. [5]

In conclusion, here is the doxasticon at the end of Matins from Reader

Isaac Lambersen’s Akolouthia for St Benedict Biscop:
 

Come, ye Christians of these latter times, and though lacking in all zeal
and every virtue, let us praise the venerable Benedict, the namesake of
blessedness, who, having toiled unceasingly for his Master, hath
received from Him the promised reward for his faithful service, and
dwelleth now in the habitations of the just, from whence he sendeth aid
upon the wretched and afflicted, and by his mediation obtaineth for us
the remission of sins and great mercy.
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[1] Christopher Dawson,  Religion & the Rise of Western Culture(Garden City, NY: Image,
1958), p. 60.

[2] David Farmer, The Oxford Dictionary of Saints, 5th ed. (Oxford: Oxford U, 2004), p. 50.

[3]  St Herman Calendar 2010: Orthodox Saints of Anglo-Saxon England  (Platina, CA: St
Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 2010), p. 5.

[4] From The Lives of the Abbots of Wearmouth & Jarrow, trans. J.A. Giles (here).

[5] St Bede the Venerable, Homilies on the Gospels, Book I: Advent to Lent, trans. Lawrence T.
Martin & David Hurst, OSB (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1991), pp. 129-31.

Article published in English on: 22-2-2011.

Last update: 22-2-2011.

UP

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