Benedict was born in
Norcia, Italy. What is known of
this Christian hero is
drawn almost entirely from his
biographer, (St.)
Gregory the Great, who records the
life and miracles of
the great monastic founder in the
second book of his
Dialogues. Although Benedict began
higher studies at Rome,
the depraved lives of his
fellow students led him
to abandon the city and to seek
solitude in the nearby
mountains of Subiaco. For three
years he lived in a
cave as a hermit until disciples came
and a community
eventually formed around him. Gregory
relates that the
community grew into 12 monasteries
of 12 monks each.
The jealousy of a
neighboring priest, however, forced
Benedict to leave
Subiaco and to establish a monastery
at Monte Cassino (c.
523 c.e.). The hill on which this
monastery was
established is at a strategically impor-tant position beside the road that
leads from Rome to Naples. Since no one
could have occupied such a site without government
approval, Benedict must have had
connections at court.
His fame also spread to the invading
barbarians, as we learn
from the story of his meeting
with Totilla, the king
of the Goths, who stopped to
visit the man of God on
his way to sack Rome. Totilla
was impressed by the
holiness and prophetic gifts of the
abbot, which may
account for his subsequent entrance
into the Eternal City
without destroying it. When Benedict
fi rst took possession
of Monte Cassino, he found at
the summit a temple to
Apollo, whom the local inhabitants
at the foot of the
mountain were still worshipping.
The holy abbot tore
down the altar to Apollo, turned
the temple into a
chapel dedicated to the famous saint
Martin, and converted
the local inhabitants.
Gregory also relates
that Benedict had a sister, (St.)
Scholastica, who—also
consecrated to virginity—would
visit him once a year.
When she died, Benedict laid his
sister to rest in a
tomb he had prepared for himself and
which he would soon
(within 40 days) come to share
with her in death (c.
547). Benedict’s greatest gift to
posterity is his Rule,
which outlines a way of life founded
on the Holy Scriptures
and on several monastic rules
prior to Benedict.
Benedict’s life spanned a time of political
upheaval in Italy, as
the barbarian tribes slowly
gained control of the
peninsula. Within 30 years of his
death the Lombards
destroyed Monte Cassino. (The
monastery would undergo
several destructions and rebuildings
in its history, down to
a famous World War II
bombing and subsequent
reconstruction.)
The Rule of St.
Benedict was followed in other
monasteries at fi rst
in a mixed form, alongside other
monastic rules. It
began, however, slowly to supersede
other rules, due
primarily to its intrinsic wisdom and
moderation but also to
its relation to Gregory the Great
and thus to Rome and to
the authority of the pope. This
was the case in
England, which has the oldest extant
copy of the Rule dating
to the fi rst half of the eighth
century. And it was
also an Anglo-Saxon, the missionary
Boniface, who promoted
the Rule of St. Benedict in
the Frankish kingdom at
the “German Council” of 743
on the continent. A
year later Boniface founded the abbey
of Fulda in Bavaria,
which is the fi rst known abbey
to follow only the Rule
of St. Benedict.
Its rise to universal
prominence, however, was the
work of Benedict of
Aniane who convinced Emperor
Charlemagne—who was
looking for a way to unify and
reform the monasteries
of his realm—that Benedict’s
Rule was the most
balanced and moderate of all the existing
rules, capable of being
adapted by each monastichouse, and had in its commitment to the scriptures and
the liturgy the
cultural element Charlemagne needed
for his reform. The
emperor and his successor, Louis
the Pious, then imposed
the Rule of St. Benedict on all
the monasteries (c.
816). Benedictine monasteries fl ourished
and spread throughout
the world.
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