Benedict Biscop

Benedict Biscop, an Anglo-Saxon monk, was born in 628 of Northumbrian parentage. He made three pilgrimages to Rome, on his way home from the second entering the Benedictine monastery of Lerins in Provence, where he assumed the tonsure. In 647 receiving a grant of land between the Wear and the Tyne, he founded a monastery which he profusely endowed with books, pictures, and relics collected during his journeys to Rome. In 682 he founded a second monastery at Jarrow, where the Venerable Bede was a monk.