BENEDICT BISCOP, an English ecclesiastic of the 7th c., who exercised a most impor tant influence on Anglo-Saxon civilization and learning. He was born about the year 6:2, of a noble Northumbrian family (his patronymic. according to Eddins. being Badu cing), and until about his Myth year, was a courtier of °swill, of Northumberland. About that time, he gave up his court-life, and accompanied Wilfred to Rome (654), where lie spent about ten years is study, and from which he seems to have returned soon after the synod of Whitby in 664. In 653. lie was in Rome a second time, being sent on a by Alchfrid, king of Northumbria. After a stay at Rome of a few men ths, he proceeded to Lerins, in Provence, where he became a monk, received the tonsure, and spent about two years, thus acquiring n knowledge of monastic discipline. He returned to Rome in 668, came to England with Theodore and Adrian, and was made ., abbot of the monastery of St. Peter (afterwards that of SL Augustine) in Canterbury. I This he resigned two years after, and went to Rome for a third time, for the purpose of bringing home the titerary treasures which be had already collected. lie returned about 673, bringing with him a large collection of valuable books, and repaired to Nor thumbria, where king Eegfrid gave him land near the mouth of the Wear, on which ho founded the famous monastery of Wearmouth. Workmen were brought from France to build and glaze the church and monastery, this being one of the earliest instances of the use of glass for windows in England. Ile also introduced from Gaul and Rome (which he visited again in 67S) church utensils and vestments, relics, pictures, images, and again a vast number of books. He also brought with him John, arch-chanter of St.
Peter's, who introduced the Roman choral service. On his return from this visit to 'Ionic, king Eegfrid presented him with more land on the other side of the 'Wear, at a place called Girwi, on which he built a second monastery, dependent on Wearmouth. B. made his fifth and last journey to Rome in 085. and. as on former occasions, came home loaded with books and pictures, bringing with him also, according to Bede, two silk palls " of incomparable workmanship." Shortly after his return from Rome, about 687, he was seized with palsy, under which he languished three years. dying on the 12th Jan., 690. During his long illness, he often anxiously exhorted his monks to look carefully after his books, and preserve them from loss or injury.
The benefits conferred by B. on Anglo-Saxon civilization, which was then only in its dawn, and the impulse given by his labors to Anglo-Saxon learning, were greater than can now be estimated. It is not certain that he wrote any books, and those ascribed to him are of little value; hut by his personal teaching, and especially by his founding at Weal-mouth such a valuable and, for the time, extensive library, lie implanted in the nation a taste for literature and learning, which soon was fruitful iu results, and continued to be so for many centuries. Bede. who was his pupil, has writ ten a life of B., and the numerous works of this "venerable" author are the best proof of the extent and variety of information to which he had access in the monastery of Wearmouth.—See Wright's Rhigraphia Britanniea Literaria.