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Benedict BiscopBenedict Biscop (628?-690), also known as Biscop Baducing, English churchman, was born of a good Northumbrian family and was for a time a thegn of King Oswiu. He then went abroad and after a second journey to Rome (he made five altogether) lived as a monk at Lerins on the Mediterranean coast of France (665-667). It was under his conduct that Theodore of Tarsus came from Rome to Canterbury in 669, and in the same year Benedict was appointed abbot of Ss. Peter and Paul's, Canterbury. Five years later he built the monastery of St Peter at Wearmouth, on land granted him by Ecgfrith of Northumbria, and endowed it with a library. A papal letter in 678 exempted the monastery from external control, and in 682 Benedict erected a sister foundation (St Paul) at Jarrow. Bede tells us that he brought builders and glass-workers from the Francia to erect the buildings in stone. It eventually possessed what was a large library for the time - several hundred volumes - and it was here that Benedict's student St. Bede wrote his famous works. He died on January 12 690. On March 24 2004 the City of Sunderland adopted St Benedict Biscop as its patron saint.
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