St. Benedict

St. Benedict was born around 480 in Nursia (modern Norcia) in the mountains of central Italy, the twin brother, according to tradition, of St. Scholastica. Nearly everything known of his life comes from the second book of the Dialogues of Pope St. Gregory the Great, written within decades of his death; while it is a work of spiritual biography rather than modern history, it preserves the essential arc of his life. Sent to Rome for studies as a young man, Benedict was repelled by the moral disorder of the city and withdrew to seek God alone. He lived for about three years as a hermit in a cave at Subiaco, east of Rome, where his holiness gradually drew disciples. After a bitter experience as abbot of an unruly community, he organized his followers at Subiaco into small monasteries, and around 529 he moved with a band of monks to Monte Cassino, midway between Rome and Naples, where he established the great monastery with which his name is forever linked. At Monte Cassino, Benedict composed his Rule for monks, a document of remarkable moderation, balance, and spiritual depth. Ordering the day around common prayer, sacred reading, and manual work, and asking of the monk obedience, stability, and humility under an abbot who holds the place of Christ, the Rule became the foundational charter of Western monasticism. Through the Benedictine monasteries that spread across the continent, it preserved learning, cultivated the land, and shaped the Christian culture of medieval Europe. Benedict died at Monte Cassino around 547 and was buried, according to tradition, in one grave with his sister Scholastica. Venerated as a saint long before formal canonization processes existed, he was proclaimed patron of Europe by Pope St. Paul VI in 1964, and his feast is kept on July 11. Monte Cassino, rebuilt after its destruction in the Second World War, remains a major pilgrimage site, while the Abbey of Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire at Fleury in France also claims his relics, a rivalry of long standing. The Church continues to honor him as the father of Western monasticism and a patron of monks and students.