Viking Raid on Wearmouth Monastery 794
Who Fought
History & Significance
The Abbey Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, Monkwearmouth–Jarrow, known simply as Monkwearmouth–Jarrow Abbey (Latin: Monasterii Wirimutham-Gyruum), was a Benedictine double monastery in the Kingdom of Northumbria, England.
Its first house was St Peter's, Monkwearmouth, on the River Wear, founded in AD 674–5. It became a double house with the foundation of St Paul's, Jarrow, on the River Tyne in 684–5. Both Monkwearmouth (in modern-day Sunderland) and Jarrow are now in the metropolitan county of Tyne and Wear. The abbey became a centre of learning, producing one of the greatest Anglo-Saxon scholars, Bede.
Both houses were sacked by Viking raiders and in the 9th century the abbey was abandoned. After the Norman Conquest of England in the 11th century there was a brief attempt to revive it. Early in the 14th century the two houses were refounded as cells of Durham Priory. In 1536 they were surrendered to the Crown and dissolved.
Since the dissolution the two abbey churches have survived as the parish churches of Monkwearmouth and Jarrow. The two sets of conventual buildings fell into ruin. At Jarrow substantial ruins survive next to St Paul's Church.
The site of each house is a scheduled monument. On the Monkwearmouth site St Peter's Church is a Grade I listed building. On the Jarrow site both St Paul's Church and the monastery ruins are Grade I listed buildings. In 2011 the United Kingdom nominated the entire Monkwearmouth–Jarrow Abbey site for UNESCO to grant designate as a World Heritage Site.
Benedict Biscop founded St Peter's Monastery at Monkwearmouth in 674 on land given by King Ecgfrith of Northumbria. He sought to build a model monastery for England, sharing his knowledge of the experience of the Roman traditions in an area previously more influenced by Celtic Christianity stemming from missionaries of Melrose and Iona. A papal letter in 678 exempted the monastery from external control.
In 682 the king was so pleased at the success of St Peter's that he gave Benedict land in Jarrow, where he urged him to build a second monastery. This was established in 685 as St Paul's. Benedict appointed Ceolfrith as its superior, who took with him to Jarrow monks from Monkwearmouth, including the young Bede.
The two monasteries were some of the first stone buildings to be built in an English kingdom. England had no masons, so Benedict brought masons from Francia. Benedict wanted glass windows, which were also then unusual in England, so he brought glassmakers also from Francia. The glassmakers had a workshop at Monkwearmouth, on the River Wear near the monastery.
Benedict was well travelled in mainland Europe, and brought books and other materials from Rome and Lérins Abbey. He also persuaded John, arch-cantor of St Peter's Basilica in Rome, to come to teach plainsong at the abbey.
The ground they fought on
The site of Viking Raid on Wearmouth Monastery 794 lies on Zechstein Group, bedrock that formed in the Late Permian. The rock here is dolomitised limestone and dolomite.
The Viking raid of 794 struck Monkwearmouth-Jarrow just one year after the notorious sacking of Lindisfarne Priory in 793, demonstrating that the raiders were deliberately targeting the great monastic houses of Northumbria in swift succession; the abbey that had once housed 600 monks and produced the Codex Amiatinus, the oldest surviving Vulgate Bible in the world, was set on a path towards abandonment that was completed by the close of the 9th century.
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- Monkwearmouth–Jarrow Abbey · Wikipedia
- List of monastic houses in England · Wikipedia