Along with the books he brought a great number of pictures and coloured images. By introducing these images from Rome to Northumberland, Benedict Biscop has written one of the most curious, and, at the same time, forgotten pages in the history of art. The Venerable Bede, who speaks with enthusiasm of the expeditions of his master and friend, leads us to suppose that he brought back with him only portable pictures, but it may be supposed that the abbot of Wearmouth brought back with him both painters and mosaic-workers, to work on the spot at the decoration of his churches. How can it be otherwise explained, how pictures on wood, brought even by water from Rome to England, should have been large enough to cover the walls and arches of the two or three churches of which Bede speaks. However this may be, the result was that the most ignorant of the Christians of Northumbria found, on entering these new monastic churches, under a material form, the attractive image of the instructions which the monastic missionaries lavished on them. Learned and unlearned could contemplate and study with delight, we are told, here the sweet and attractive form of the new-born Saviour, there the Twelve Apostles surrounding the Blessed Virgin; upon the northern wall all the parables of the Gospels; upon the southern, the visions of the Apocalypse; elsewhere, a series of pictures which marked the harmony between the Old and New Testaments; Isaac carrying the wood for his sacrifice opposite to Jesus bearing His Cross; the brazen serpent opposite Jesus crucified, and so on.[41] All these Bede, who had seen them, describes with great delight. After Latin and Greek books, after art, it was the turn of music. On his return from his fifth voyage, Benedict brought back with him from Rome an eminent monk, called John, precentor of S. Peter's, to establish at Wearmouth the music and Roman ceremonies with entire exactitude. As soon as he had arrived at Wearmouth, this learned abbot set out in writing the order of the celebration of all feasts for all the year, of which he soon circulated numerous copies. Then he opened classes, at which he taught, _viva voce_, the liturgy and ecclesiastical chants. The best singers of the Northumbrian monasteries came to listen to him, and invited him to visit their communities.