The Morpeth Missionary (NZ195864)

Robert Morrison, the first Protestant Missionary to China and the man responsible for translating the Bible into the Chinese language, was born at Buller’s Green, Morpeth, in 1782. He was the youngest of eight children born to a Scottish father and an English mother. Little is known of his early life in the town, his family moving to Newcastle when he was three years of age.

Details of his Morpeth days may be sparse, but the Nothumberland town does receive a mention in the man’s lengthy and highly descriptive epitaph. From his memorial in the Old Protestant Cemetery in Macau, China:

Sacred

to

the memory

of

Robert Morrison DD.,

The first protestant missionary to

China,

Where after a service of twenty-seven years,

cheerfully spent in extending the kingdom of the blessed Redeemer

during which period he compiled and published

a dictionary of the Chinese language,

founded the Anglo-Chinese College at Malacca

and for several years laboured alone on a Chinese version of

The Holy Scriptures,

which he was spared to see complete and widely circulated

among those for whom it was destined,

he sweetly slept in Jesus.

He was born at Morpeth in Northumberland

5 January 1782

Was sent to China by the London Missionary Society in 1807

Was for twenty five years Chinese translator in the employ of

The East India Company

and died in Canton 1 August 1834.

Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth

Yea saith the Spirit

that they may rest from their labours,

and their works do follow them.

The house in which Morrison was born no longer stands, having been demolished and replaced in the Victorian era. A suitably engraved stone slab marks the spot over an archway in North Place.

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‘St.Peter-in-Chains’, Thornaby (NZ450164)

© Copyright Mick Garratt and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

What an odd name for a place of worship: St.Peter-in-Chains Church, Thornaby. Well, it’s actually known by its Latin moniker, St.Peter ad Vincula, if the truth be known – but how many locals know the story behind the strange dedication?


The church in question is the settlement’s original place of worship, the site having had a religious edifice of some description since at least the eleventh century. The existing building has its roots in the twelfth century and was originally dedicated to St.Mary Magdalene, but fell from use after the construction of a new church (St.Paul’s) in 1858. However, the old building was renovated in the Edwardian era, after which it became known by its unusual name – though no one seems to quite know why it was chosen.


The term ‘St.Peter-in-Chains’ is derived from the Bible’s ‘Liberation of Saint Peter’ (Acts 12:3-19) which tells of how the Apostle Peter was imprisoned by King Herod, but was freed by an angel the night before his trial. In time, the relic of the Chains of St.Peter were taken to Rome where a church (San Pietro in Vincoli – or St.Peter in Chains) was built around them in the 430s AD. That’s not the whole story, but it’s near enough.


The idea (for the name, that is) kind of caught on thereafter – including among the good folk of Edwardian Thornaby some 1,400 years or so later.

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The Codex Amiatinus (NZ402578… possibly!)

  

One of the world’s greatest historical treasures, the Codex Amiatinus is the oldest surviving one-volume Latin Bible in the world. One of three Anglo-Saxon Bibles produced by the twin monastery of Wearmouth-Jarrow, it is the only survivor, and dates from the early 8th century. It is likely that the Venerable Bede himself was involved in its compilation.

Now in the Laurentian Library in Florence, it is considered one of the globe’s greatest artistic artefacts. It is a huge tome, with over 2060 vellum pages, made from 515 animal hides and weighing in at an incredible 75lb. Written by several scribes, the original three-Bible project was a mammoth task – most other monasteries were, at the time, reproducing just the four Gospels or the Book of Psalms. The surviving copy was intended as a gift for Pope Gregory II from the then head of the Wearmouth-Jarrow monastery, Bishop Ceolfrith. However, on his way to Rome to deliver the goods, Ceolfrith died in France in AD716 – though his followers completed the task in his honour.

Much of the book’s history thereafter is unknown, though it eventually surfaced at a monastery at Monte Amiata in Italy. Highly prized, it was for many years thought to be a 6th century Italian work; its true origins only being discovered after close scrutiny following its move to Florence after the monastery closed. By this time it had been given the name ‘Amiatinus’ after the religious house where it had spent so much of its time.

The Codex Amiatinus is perhaps the North-East’s greatest ever creation, and something of which we should all be very proud. But was it produced in Wearmouth or Jarrow, or both? Truth is, I don’t think anyone will ever really know for sure. Oh dear, another Tyneside/Wearside dispute.

See here for a much fuller (and very entertaining) history of the manuscript.

(Monk)Wearmouth Church (NZ402578)

 

 

[text from The Monthly Chronicle of North-Country Lore & Legend, November 1891 - author J.R.Boyle FSA]

 

 

The tower and the west wall of St.Peter’s Church, Monkwearmouth, are now the only portions remaining of the monastic establishment founded at this place in the year 674 by Benedict Biscop, and immediately endowed with great liberality by King Ecgfrith. Before the sister house at Jarrow was founded, seven years later, Monkwearmouth was the home of Bede, who has left a valuable record of the early history of the twin monasteries in his ‘Lives of the Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow.’

The early churches founded in the North were chiefly built of timber, ‘after the manner of the Scots’; but Biscop built his churches of stone, ‘after the manner of the Romans.’ And it is interesting to find that the same great founder of churches also brought makers of glass from France, who not only, as Bede tells us, glazed the windows of Benedict’s churches, but taught their art, which till that time had been unknown in Britain, to the natives.

The sight of a structure which has withstood the storms and changes of more than twelve centuries is always impressive; but especially is this the case when, as at Monkwearmouth, that structure is linked with an event of absorbing interest in the early history of our country. Biscop and Bede were great men. The former was a great builder, a man of large and liberal views, and a generous patron of literature and the arts. The latter was the great scholar of his age. Jarrow and Wearmouth were the principal seats of learning, not in the North alone, not in Britain alone, but in the whole of Western Europe. The perishing sculptures which adorn the sides of the entrance of this ancient tower may seem rude to us, but no one can fail to see in the baluster shafts which are built into the same doorway, and which also occur in the little windows high up in the west wall of the nave, evidence of genuine and refined art. And it must not be forgotten that the famous Codex Amiatinus, the most valuable MS now in existence of the ancient Latin version of the Bible, with its beautiful calligraphy and its gorgeous illuminations, was certainly written either at Jarrow or at Monkwearmouth.

We have only space to add that the lower portion of the tower is of much earlier date than the upper part. This lower part was originally not a tower, but a porch, the ‘porticus ingressus’ as it is called by Bede. The gable line of its original roof may be seen rising to a point between the second and third string courses.