Saint Benedict

Benedict was born around the year 480 to a Roman family of the minor in Nursia. He was born at a time when the world seemed to be unravelling. The Western half of the Roman empire had been plundered by repeated Germanic invasions for more than a century. The empire had converted to Christianity in the 300s and was rocked by theological quarrels for decades. The last Roman emperor in the West, Romulus Augustulus, had been deposed a few years before Benedict was born. Thus, Benedict was born into a classical world that was rapidly disappearing, and the new culture that would take its place was struggling to be born.

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Benedict, like other Romans of his day, sought out education as a means to advance in life. His family sent him to Rome to study, but he quickly became disillusioned there, finding nothing but vice and empty ambition in the once-great capital city.

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At the age of twenty, he fled Rome to live a simple life in the countryside near Subiaco, Italy, a place where he could practice his Catholic faith in peace. He met another man there, Romanus, who had also fled the world, and who trained him to follow the way of life of the earliest Christian monks. Benedict spent three years as a religious hermit.

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Over time, word of his way of life and his sanctity spread. When the abbot of a neighboring monastery died, the monks begged Benedict to come rule over them as abbot. He reluctantly agreed, but the experiment failed. The monks tried to poison Benedict instead! He decided to leave and become a hermit once more.

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Word of his sanctity continued to spread throughout the region, and many moved to live near him to learn his way of life. He decided to organize his followers, drafting a set of rules for their lives, the Rule of St. Benedict. He founded a dozen monasteries and organized his followers to live according to his Rule. In 530, he founded the great monastery of Monte Cassino, which still stands today. He died there around 547.

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His Rule is of lasting importance for the development of Western Civilization because St. Benedict specified that his monks and nuns be able to read and write. They preserved learning from the classical world through the manuscripts that they copied and shared with other monasteries and convents. Almost everything that we know about the classical world has come to us from manuscripts preserved by Benedictine monks and nuns. Because of this, St. Benedict was made the patron saint of Europe.

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Saint Benedict, pray for us.