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Wearmouth–jarrow And The Context Of The Codex Amiatinus 1

Chapter 1 Wearmouth–Jarrow and the Context of the Codex Amiatinus

Part 1. The Wearmouth–Jarrow Bibles

1 Wearmouth, Jarrow, and Ceolfrith’s Last Journey

In c.673, the Northumbrian noble turned monk Benedict Biscop (c.627–89) founded the monastery of Wearmouth near the mouth of the River Wear and the North Sea. King Ecgfrith of Northumbria (d. 685) donated the land. This is the religious house to which the relatives of the Venerable Bede (672/73–735), the most famous Latin scholar of early medieval England, offered him when he was seven. Bede received his first education from Abbot Biscop before being placed under the tutelage of the Wearmouth prior, Ceolfrith (or Ceolfrid; c.642–716). In c.681, Ceolfrith became abbot of a second religious house for which Ecgfrith again gave land to Biscop. That foundation was Jarrow near the south bank of the River Tyne, about six miles northwest of Wearmouth, some sixty miles from the present-day border between England and Scotland.1 Biscop provided the two houses with stone architecture built “in the Roman manner” (iuxta Romanorum … morem), according to Bede’s Historia abbatum,2 along with fine furnishings and many books and other items brought back on trips that Biscop made to and from Rome. Ceolfrith participated in one of

1 The main near-contemporary narratives of the two houses’ early histories are Bede’s Historia abbatum (hereafter cited as HA) and the anonymous Vita Ceolfridi (hereafter cited as VC). All references to these texts and Bede’s homily on Biscop (hereafter cited as Hom. 1.13) follow the editions in Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow: Bede’s Homily I. 13 on Benedict Biscop, Bede’s History of the Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow, the Anonymous Life of Ceolfrith, Bede’s Letter to Ecgbert, Bishop of York, ed. and trans. Christopher Grocock and Ian Wood (Oxford, 2013; hereafter cited as Grocock and Wood, Abbots), pp. 21–75, 77–121, 1–19 respectively. For analysis, see Grocock and Wood, Abbots, esp. pp. xiii–lxiv; for the date of Wearmouth’s foundation as 672/73, pp. xxv–xxvi; a date of 674 is given in Abbots, p. 73, n. 195, however. Bede recalls his entrance into Wearmouth and education in Historia ecclesiastica 5.24, in Venerabilis Baedae Historiam ecclesiasticam gentis anglorum, Historiam abbatum, Epistolam ad Ecgberctum una cum Historia abbatum auctore anonymo, ed. Charles Plummer, 2 vols (Oxford, 1896), 1:5–360 (hereafter cited as HE), at 357. Page numbers in this edition are indicated only with references to short passages in longer chapters. 2 HA 5. Translations from Latin in the present and following chapters are my own unless other- wise indicated.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004391321_002 2 Chapter 1 those journeys, in c.678. The Historia abbatum and the Vita Ceolfridi, written by an anonymous monk likely living at Wearmouth (hereafter “the Anonymous”),3 report that on this occasion the archcantor (archicantor) John (d. c.679) trav- eled with Biscop and Ceolfrith. John was abbot of St. Martin’s Rome, one of the monastic communities that performed the Divine Office in the Vatican basili- ca of St. Peter. The title archicantor, apparently invented by Bede, probably signals that John was a director of liturgical chant in the basilica.4 Biscop’s Ro- man acquisitions and the visit of the Roman archcantor promoted Wearmouth and later Jarrow as “romanizing” monasteries – establishments that culturally and intellectually, as well as through architecture and other material posses- sions, demonstrated their allegiance to the church of Rome. When Biscop lay dying at Wearmouth in 688, he advised the brethren of both Wearmouth and Jarrow to accept Ceolfrith as his successor and their ab- bot, a decision that effectively united the two foundations into a single twin monastery. Ceolfrith served as sole abbot of both Wearmouth and Jarrow from Biscop’s death in January 689 until, in June 716, he gave up the abbacy in order to join a party of monks taking gifts to Rome.5 Although the Historia abbatum and Vita Ceolfridi refer to the transport of multiple offerings on this journey, the only such item identified in either text is a biblical “pandect” or full Bible – that is, a manuscript comprising every Old and New Testament book accept- ed by its makers as canonical and written in a single campaign or series of co- ordinated campaigns. The Historia abbatum states that the Bible sent to Rome contained the “new translation” (noua translatio), meaning the Vulgate: the translation from the scripture’s original languages, mainly Hebrew for the Old Testament and Greek for the New Testament, that was primarily the work of the patristic scholar, linguist, and exegete Jerome (d. 420).6 Ceolfrith died 25 September 716 outside Langres, in France, without having reached his destination, but after his death some of his brethren continued toward the papal city. Other brethren stayed for a time in Langres, while a third group of monks returned to Wearmouth–Jarrow with news of the abbot’s last

3 VC 5 and nn. 26, 29. 4 Jesse Billett, “Wilfrid and Music,” in Wilfrid, Abbot, Bishop, Saint: Papers from the 1300th Anniversary Conferences, ed. N.J. Higham (Donington, UK, 2013), pp. 163–85, at 167; Éamonn Ó Carragáin, Ritual and the Rood: Liturgical Images and the Old English Poems of the Dream of the Rood Tradition (London, 2005), pp. 87–88. On the journey of Biscop and Ceolfrith and their return with the archcantor: HA 6; VC 10; Hom. 1.13.9. Also see HE 4.16 (18) and below, Part 2.5 of the present chapter. 5 HA 13–16; VC 16–21. 6 HA 15; VC 20, 37. On the composition of the Vulgate: Frans van Liere, An Introduction to the Medieval Bible (Cambridge, 2014), pp. 80–81, 87–89.