Monkwearmouth–Jarrow Abbey
The Abbey Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, Monkwearmouth–Jarrow, known simply as Monkwearmouth–Jarrow Abbey, was a Benedictine double monastery in the Kingdom of Northumbria, England.
St Peter's Monkwearmouth. View showing the Saxon tower which was built from late 7th to the 10th century.
Monastery remains at Jarrow in front of St Paul's Church
An illumination of Christ in Majesty, surrounded by the Four Evangelists, at the start of the New Testament in the Codex Amiatinus written at Monkwearmouth-Jarrow
A page of the Saint Petersburg Bede written at Monkwearmouth-Jarrow. National Library of Russia, St Petersburg.
A double monastery is a monastery combining separate communities of monks and of nuns, joined in one institution to share one church and other facilities. The practice is believed to have started in the East at the dawn of monasticism. It is considered more common in the monasticism of Eastern Christianity, where it is traceable to the 4th century. In the West the establishment of double monasteries became popular after Columbanus and sprang up in Gaul and in Anglo-Saxon England. Double monasteries were forbidden by the Second Council of Nicaea in 787, though it took many years for the decree to be enforced. Double monasteries were revived again after the 12th century in a significantly different way when a number of religious houses were established on this pattern among Benedictines and possibly the Dominicans. The 14th-century Bridgittines were purposely founded using this form of community.
Fahr Convent in Switzerland, still part of a double monastery with Einsiedeln Abbey, though not sharing a site