How Benedict Biscop brought Byzantium to Britain
The chapel of Bede’s monastery in Sunderland was full of the colours and sounds of the far-off Mediterranean world.
679
Anglo-Saxon Britain 410-1066
The chapel of Bede’s monastery in Sunderland was full of the colours and sounds of the far-off Mediterranean world.
679
Anglo-Saxon Britain 410-1066
In 678, the new Pope, a Sicilian Greek named Agatho, decided to continue a recent trend of introducing Greek elements into Roman worship. St Benedict Biscop, an English abbot who visited Rome for the fifth and final time the following year, brought the sights and sounds of the eastern Mediterranean back home.
IN addition, Benedict introduced the Roman mode of chanting, singing, and ministering in the church.* With that in mind, he obtained permission from Pope Agatho to take back with him John, the archchanter of the Church of St Peter and abbot of the monastery of St Martin, to teach the English.*
He also brought with him sacred pictures to adorn the church of St Peter, which he had built.** There was a likeness of the blessed Mother of God and Ever-Virgin Mary and of the twelve Apostles, which he intended to affix to the central vault, on boards reaching from one wall to the other.
There were also some stories from the gospels for the south wall, and scenes from the Revelation of St John for the north wall. He wanted every one who entered the church, even if they could not read, wherever they turned their eyes, to have before them the lovable faces of Christ and his saints.*
Sadly, we know very little about this music. Chant was rarely written down until the late 9th century, and in St Benedict’s day worship at Rome was modelled on Agia Sophia in Constantinople as never before or since. We can assume the music at Monkwearmouth was noticeably Greek, but beyond that point caution is required, because most of the chant heard in Greek churches today comes, at any rate in its present form, from after The Fall of Constantinople in 1453.
That is, choirmaster of the Basilica of St Peter in Rome, and abbot of the Monastery of St Martin that stood nearby. In ‘Byzantine Rome and the Greek Popes’, Andrew J. Ekonomou asserts that John was probably an Easterner, brought in under Pope Vitalian (r. 657-672) to help St Peter’s emulate the glory of Agia Sophia in Constantinople. That Agatho (r. 678-681) was willing to lend him to the English was almost as extraordinary as the fact that the English wanted to borrow him. See also The Synod of Hatfield, where John takes time off from teaching in Monkwearmouth to help the English support the Orthodox side in the Monothelite debate.
The Church of St Peter (Geograph Project) in Monkwearmouth, near modern-day Sunderland. The west wall and its tower (or at any rate the lower parts) are all that remains today.
Examples of Northumbrian iconography of this period can be seen in the Lindisfarne Gospels (British Library). The impact in little Northumbria of St Benedict’s Byzantine renaissance was echoed later on a much larger scale, and with much longer-lasting results, in Kievan Rus’ – see The Conversion of Vladimir the Great. In Northumbria’s case, the Vikings destroyed it; in Kiev’s case, the Vikings embraced it.
1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?
2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?
3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?
Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.