HE was nobly descended, and one of the great officers of the court of
Oswi, the religious king of the Northumbers: he was very dear to his
prince, and was beholden to his bounty for many fair estates, and great
honors; but neither the favors of so good and gracious a king, nor the
allurements of power, riches, and pleasures, were of force to captivate
his heart, who could see nothing in them but dangers, and snares so much
the more to be dreaded, as fraught with the power of charming. At the
age therefore of twenty-five, an age that affords the greatest relish
for pleasure, he bid adieu to the world, made a journey of devotion to
Rome, and at his return devoted him wholly to the studies of the
scriptures and other holy exercises. Some time after his return to
England, Alcfrid, son of king Oswi, being desirous to make a pilgrimage
to the shrines of the apostles, engaged Biscop to bear him company to
Rome. The king prevented his son's journey; nevertheless our saint
travelled thither a second time, burning with an earnest desire of
improving himself in the knowledge of divine things, and in the love of
God. From Rome he went to the great monastery of Lerins, then renowned
for its regular discipline; there he took the monastic habit, and spent
two years in the most exact observance of the rule, and penetrated in
every exercise with its true spirit: after this he returned to Rome,
where he received an order of pope Vitalian to accompany St. Theodorus,
archbishop of Canterbury, and St. Adrian, to England. When he arrived at
Canterbury, St. Theodorus committed to him the care of the monastery of
SS. Peter and Paul, near that city, which abbacy he resigned to St.
Adrian upon his arrival in England. St. Bennet stayed about two years in
Kent, giving himself up to religious exercises and sacred studies, under
the discipline of those two excellent persons. Then he took a fourth
journey to Rome, with a view of perfecting himself in ecclesiastical
discipline, and the rules and practice of a monastic life; for which
purpose he made a considerable stay at Rome and other places: he brought
home with him a choice library, relics and pictures of Christ, the
Blessed Virgin, and other saints. When he returned to Northumberland,
king Egfrid (in whose father's court St. Bennet had formerly lived)
bestowed on him seventy ploughs or families of land for building a
monastery;[1] this the saint founded on the mouth of the river Were,
whence it was called Weremouth. When the monastery was built, St. Bennet
went over to France, and brought back with him skilful masons, who built
the church for this monastery of stone, and after the Roman fashion; for
till that time stone buildings were very rare in Britain, even the
church of Lindisfarne was of wood, and covered over with a thatch of
straw and reeds, till bishop Eadbert procured both the roof and the
walls to be covered with sheets of lead, as Bede mentions.[2] St. Bennet
also brought over glaziers from France, for the art of making glass was
then unknown in Britain. In a fifth journey to Rome, St. Bennet
furnished himself with a larger stock of good books, especially the
writings of the fathers, also of relics and holy pictures, with which he
enriched his own country.
His first monastery of Weremouth was entitled from Saint Peter, prince
of the apostles; and such was the edification which it gave, that the
same {132} king added to the saint a second donation of lands,
consisting of forty ploughs; on which Biscop built another monastery, at
a place called Girwy, now Jarrow, on the Tine, six miles distant from
the former, and this latter was called St. Paul's; these two monasteries
were almost looked upon as one; and St. Bennet governed them both,
though he placed in each a superior or abbot, who continued subject to
him, his long journey to Rome and other avocations making this
substitution necessary.[3] In the church of St. Peter at Weremouth he
placed the pictures of the Blessed Virgin, the twelve apostles, the
history of the gospel, and the visions in the revelation of St. John:
that of St. Paul's at Jarrow, he adorned with other pictures, disposed
in such manner as to represent the harmony between the Old and New
Testament, and the conformity of the figures in one to the reality in
the other. Thus Isaac carrying the wood which was to be employed in the
sacrifice of himself, was explained by Jesus Christ carrying his cross,
on which he was to finish his sacrifice; and the brazen serpent was
illustrated by our Saviour's crucifixion. With these pictures, and many
books and relics, St. Bennet brought from Rome in his last voyage, John,
abbot of St. Martin's, precentor in St. Peter's church, whom he
prevailed with pope Agatho to send with him, and whom he placed at
Weremouth to instruct perfectly his monks in the Gregorian notes, and
Roman ceremonies for singing the divine office. Easterwin, a kinsman of
St. Bennet, and formerly an officer in the king's court, before he
became a monk, was chosen abbot before our saint set out for Rome, and
in that station behaved always as the meanest person in the house; for
though he was eminently adorned with all virtues, humility, mildness,
and devotion seemed always the most eminent part of his character. This
holy man died on the 6th of March, when he was but thirty-six years old,
and had been four years abbot, while St. Bennet was absent in the last
journey to Rome. The monks chose in his place St. Sigfrid, a deacon, a
man of equal gravity and meekness, who soon after fell into a lingering
decay, under which he suffered violent pains in his lungs and bowels. He
died four months before our saint. With his advice, two months before
his death, St. Bennet appointed St. Ceolfrid abbot of both his
monasteries, being himself struck with a dead palsy, by which all the
lower parts of his body were without life; he lay sick of this distemper
three years, and for a considerable time was entirely confined to his
bed. During this long illness, not being able to raise his voice to the
usual course of singing the divine office, at every canonical hour he
sent for some of his monks and while they, being divided into two
choirs, sung the psalms proper for the hour of the day or night, he
endeavored as well as he could to join not only his heart, but also his
voice, with theirs. His attention to God he seemed never to relax, and
frequently and earnestly exhorted his monks to a constant observance of
the rule he had given them. "You must not think," said he, "that the
constitutions which you have received from me were my own invention,
for, having in my frequent journeys visited seventeen well-ordered
monasteries, I informed myself of all their laws and rules, and picking
out the best among them, these I have recommended to you." The saint
expired soon after, having received the viaticum on the 12th of January,
in 690. His relics, according to Malmesbury,[4] were translated to
Thorney abbey, in 970, but the monks of Glastenbury thought themselves
possessed at least of part of that treasure.[5] The true name of our
saint was Biscop {133} Baducing, as appears from Eddius-Stephen, in his
life of St. Wilfrid. The English Benedictins honor him as one of the
patrons of their congregation, and he is mentioned in the Roman
Martyrology on this day. See his life in Bede's history of the first
abbots of Weremouth, published by Sir James Ware, at Dublin, in 1664.
Footnotes:
1. A plough, or family of land, was as much as one plough, or one yoke
of oxen could throw up in a year, or as sufficed for the maintenance
of a family.
2. Hist. l. 3, c. 25.
3. The abbeys of Weremouth and Jarrow were destroyed by the Danes. Both
were rebuilt in part, and from the year 1083 were small priories or
cells dependent on the abbey of Durham, till their dissolution {}th
of Henry VIII.
4. Malmes. l. 4, de Pontif.
5. See Monast. Ang. t. 1, p. 4, and John of Glastenbury, Hist. Glasten.