Biscop Baducing was a thane of King Oswy of Northumbria before leaving his service and travelling to Rome with St Wilfrid. After a second visit there he became a monk at Lerins off Cannes, in AD 653, taking the name of Benedict. He returned to England with St Theodore of Canterbury and was abbot of St Peter's, Canterbury, 669-71. In 674 he founded a monastery at Wearmouth and another at Jarrow in 682, endowing both richly with books, thus making possible the work of St Bede, who was his pupil. He is also said to have introduced stone edifices and glass windows to England. Biscop probably organised the scriptorium in which was written the manuscript of the bible which his successor St Ceolfrid took with him as a present to Pope Gregory II. This is the famous Codex Amiatinus, identified in Florence in 1887.
Biscop was bedridden for his last three years and died at Wearmouth. At his death, the two monasteries he had founded possessed a store of books, relics and religious art unique in England.