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Dear catholic.com visitors: This Catholic Answers website, with all its free resources, is the world’s largest source of explanations for Catholic beliefs and practices. We receive no funding from the institutional Church and rely entirely on your generosity to sustain this website with trustworthy, accessible content. If every visitor this month donated $1, catholic.com would be fully funded for an entire year. If you’ve never made a gift, now is the time. Your donation will be matched dollar for dollar this week only. Thanks and God bless.

Benedict of Peterborough

Abbot and writer (d. 1193)

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Benedict of Peterborough, abbot and writer, place and date of birth unknown; d. 1193. He was educated at Oxford, and was appointed in 1174 chancellor to Richard, Archbishop of Canterbury, and in 1175 became Prior of Christ Church, Canterbury. As Abbot of Peterborough from 1177 to his death in 1193, he was a learned and able executive. He restored the abbey finances to a sound basis, and was active till his death in completing and beautifying the buildings. Through his personal favor with Richard I he secured for his abbey various rights and privileges. He has been sometimes confused with Benedict of Sansetun, later Bishop of Rochester, vice-chancellor during the absence of King Richard. He had the library enriched by transcriptions of standard works in theology, exegesis, law, science, and poetry. He wrote a history of Becket’s “Passion”, preserved in part in the work on Becket known as “Quadrilogus”, and also, a first-hand account of Becket’s “Miracles” (Robertson, “Materials for the History of Thomas Becket”, Rolls Series, 1876). He was formerly regarded as the author of “Gesta Henrici II”, which Stubbs would identify with the lost “Tricolumnis” of Richard Fitz-Neal, author of the “Dialogus de Scaccario”.

J. V. CROWNE


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