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BENEDICT PATRON OF EUROPE ‘Messenger of Peace’, ‘Founder of Monastic Life in Western Europe’, ‘Architect of Unity’, ‘Herald of Faith’, & ‘Master of Civilisation’.
by J.B. Midgley
All booklets are published thanks to the generous support of the members of the Catholic Truth Society
CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY PUBLISHERS TO THE HOLY SEE
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CONTENTS Introduction ................................................................3 The Life of Benedict ...................................................5 Benedict’s Rule .........................................................20 Benedict’s Legacy .....................................................32
This book is dedicated to His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI (Elected on 19th April 2005)
Acknowledgements English translation of St Benedict’s Rule, Rome, 1895. Christian Monasticism, D. Knowles, London, 1969.
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INTRODUCTION Benedict’s answer to the problems of living in an age of change, even turmoil, was to commit himself entirely to God, and demonstrate a love of social order and justice from which contemporary society still learns as it contemplates the future and preserves what is of lasting value. So too, his monastic Rule written long before Christianity became divided, remains a powerful guide for all who seek the unity for which Our Lord prayed. In 1964, when Pope Paul VI named Benedict ‘Patron of Europe’, he reminded the world how the saint and his followers have preserved classical tradition in the cause of education and the advancement of learning, disseminated cultured habits of life, inspired a love of social order and justice, and joined human work with prayer and praising God. The dawn of a new millennium offers an opportunity to reassess personal, family, and community priorities for the benefit of this and future generations, as moral and spiritual values are inculcated at home, in school, and by positive example. May St Benedict, who preached the Gospel of Hope with his followers, and introduced multitudes to Christianity, still help the Church for the well-being of all people. (Downham Market, April 2005)
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God our Father, you made St Benedict an outstanding guide to teach us how to live in your service. Grant that by preferring your love to everything else, we may walk in the way of your commandments. Stir up, O Lord, in your Church the spirit with which St Benedict was animated, that filled with the same spirit, we may learn to love what he loved and practice what he taught. Through Christ Our Lord. On the Feast of St Benedict: 11th July
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THE LIFE OF BENEDICT Benedict’s biographer St Gregory the Great (540-604) founded six monasteries in Sicily, and one in Rome on the Coelian Hill where he was a member of the community until Pope Benedict I made him one of the seven Cardinal Deacons of Rome. He was appointed ambassador to Byzantium by Pope Pelagius II and, after six years’ distinguished service, he returned to Rome and was elected Pope in 590. When temporal authority broke down, he found himself the country’s ruler and proved to be a brilliant reformer and administrator. He was also a prodigious writer whose most enduring work, ‘Pastoral Care’ on the spiritual development of the clergy, is of exceptional beauty and inspiration and became a text-book for mediaeval bishops and their successors. He was an ideal pastor, who shared St Augustine’s concern that Christ should occupy first place in the interior life, and that the graces needed for priestly perfection must be obtained by prayer. Though it was some time before the designation ‘Benedictine’ came into use, the monks and nuns of the period are rightly regarded as Benedict’s spiritual sons and daughters, and Gregory as the first Benedictine monk to be elected Pope.
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The Feastday of St Gregory, Pope and Doctor of the Church, is 3rd September. It is to the Second Book of The Dialogues of Gregory that we owe most of what is known about Benedict’s life. It is more a series of miraculous incidents than a chronological sequence of events, but he was confident in his sources who were Benedict’s contemporary disciples: Constantinus, his successor at Monte Cassino; Valentinian, Abbot of the monastery at the Lateran Basilica, the episcopal seat of the Bishop of Rome; Simplicius, third Abbot at Monte Cassino; and Honoratus, Abbot of Subiaco when The Dialogues were written. Early life In 480, Benedict and his twin sister Scholastica were born in Nursia, a small town near Spoleto, fifty miles from Rome in the Italian province of Umbria. His patrician parents moved back to Rome when he was of school age so that he would receive the best possible education and, by all accounts, the young noble was a gifted and industrious student for whom a glittering legal career was in prospect. In his later teens, he was disenchanted by the moral decay, licentious behaviour and pagan practices rampant in the city, and by the unedifying, institutional troubles besetting the Church. He decided to renounce the world “with the only desire to be agreeable to the Lord.” Gregory says that by this time he already possessed a
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mature wisdom, had experienced the emotions of young love, and was old enough to make a decision which involved sacrificing a comfortable home, a respected career, and an enviable inheritance. Enfide His intention was not so much to be a hermit, as to escape the evils of a large city and, sad though his parents were, they must have given their blessing because his old nurse went with him as a servant. After a demanding journey of forty miles to the Sambrucini mountains, they reached Enfide which stood fortress-like on a ridge and, judging by the inscriptions found there, was an important town. The residents received them warmly, arranged their accommodation near a church dedicated to St Peter, and Benedict soon became associated with “a company of virtuous men” who shared his views on life and how best they could serve God. He worked his first miracle here, when he restored to perfect condition an earthenware wheat-sifter which Nurse had accidentally broken. This, however, attracted unwelcome attention so he decided to go to more remote Subiaco two miles away, but without Nurse who probably returned to the family home. He was now determined to live a life of poverty sustained by his own efforts, and “for God’s sake he deliberately chose the hardships of life and the weariness of labour.”
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Subiaco From Enfide, Benedict took the path which crossed the River Arno, past the ruins of Nero’s villa and the adjacent Roman baths. He followed its steep rise on the side of a ravine overlooking a lake until he came across a cave with a triangular opening and ten feet deep which he decided to make his home. A monk called Romanus from a monastery on the summit above the cave called to see him, and after discussing what had brought Benedict to Subiaco, and what he intended to do with his life, he clothed him with the religious habit, then the equivalent to the profession of vows. For three years in this rocky cell, like other monks he observed the Liturgy of the Hours, the Divine Office of Readings and prayers for morning, daytime, evening, and night. He praised God, sanctified the day with manual labour, and immersed himself in the Holy Scriptures while the Holy Spirit prepared him for a work which would be both traditional and innovative. At first, Benedict’s solitude was interrupted only by visits from the kindly Romanus who brought him food on specified days, and communications with the outside world were few and far between, but already Gregory can identify the “man of God” who is mature in mind, character, and the understanding of himself and others. He was acquiring a reputation for wisdom and sanctity, so it would seem that wider human contact was inspired
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more by God than by any ambition on his part. First to arrive was a priest who had received a vision which prompted him to come to Benedict for advice, to exchange thoughts of the Spirit, and pray together. On Easter Sunday they shared a celebratory meal and rejoiced together in Christ’s triumph over sin and death. Next to arrive were some curious but well-meaning shepherds who brought provisions and, in return, received spiritual comfort and instruction. When the Abbot of the monastery at neighbouring Vicovero died, the community came and asked Benedict to be their new Abbot. He was reluctant because he was already aware that their behaviour and discipline left much to be desired, but gave way to their entreaties. Unfortunately, they were not impressed by his attempts to introduce a more appropriate regime, and even tried to kill him with a goblet of poisoned wine. Benedict miraculously shattered this with the Sign of the Cross to which he was devoted, and sensibly returned to his cave without delay. The twelve monasteries From this time, his miracles increased in frequency, and his reputation for preaching and counselling grew so that others were drawn to Subiaco to benefit from his holy guidance. Using the federated Greek model, he built twelve small monasteries for them, with twelve monks in each under the care of a superior. He himself lived in a
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thirteenth with a few whom he thought would benefit more from his own presence, but he retained the position of “Father and Abbot of all,� though he was still only twenty-five years of age. For the next thirty years he devoted his energies to making his twelve monasteries models of monastic life. From his own experience, his study of monastic history, and from the example of Saints Anthony and Basil, he had concluded that individual development and spiritual maturity depend more on the social instincts of obedience and work than on solitude and austerity, and that evil is not avoided by a distressed body and spirit. So, at Subiaco there were no solitaries or hermits, no great austerity, only men gathered in organised communities for the purpose of leading good lives. They did household work, carried water from the lake up the steep cliff, built twelve cloisters, cleared the ground, planted gardens, taught children, preached to the country people, welcomed strangers, admitted and trained novices, and chanted the Liturgy of the Hours which is the Opus Dei, and read and studied for about four hours a day, so Benedict had opportunity to read the works of the Fathers and monastic writers more widely than was possible alone in his cave. Community life and work at Subiaco, as well as Benedict’s own personality attracted many to the monasteries, including the sons of wealthy Roman parents but, with increasing numbers and growing
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influence, came inevitable jealousy and persecution. A local priest, bitterly resentful of Benedict’s reputation, made another attempt on his life with a poisoned loaf which was miraculously intercepted by a raven. Then, he imported naked women to dance in the monastery courtyard hoping that they would seduce the monks. Benedict concluded that the animosity was directed to him personally so, rather than jeopardise the well-being of the twelve monasteries and their communities, and to protect them from persecution, he left Subiaco with a few of his monks in the year 530. Monte Cassino The intrepid travellers arrived at Monte Cassino, eightyseven miles south-east of Rome, just off the Via Latina near Naples, and seventeen hundred feet above sea level. The Roman imperial army had built fortifications in Cassino town, where there was also a temple and altar to Apollo whom the local people worshipped “like the Gentiles of old”, and believed the surrounding woods were the homes of demons to whom the misguided offered sacrifices. Benedict immediately saw a rich opportunity to evangelise a rural population which had not yet been introduced to Christ and His Good News. He converted Apollo’s Temple into an oratory which he dedicated to St Martin of Tours and, where Apollo’s altar had stood, built another oratory in honour of St John the
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Baptist. The remains of the old Roman fort provided the basis for the structure of the monastery which, with St Martin’s Oratory, was called the Torreta. His choice of Monte Cassino, and the way in which he appropriated and developed the site, suggests he had been assigned the property by one of the Roman patricians who had admired him at Subiaco. Instead of the Subiaco arrangement of a number of houses with small communities in each, Benedict accommodated all his monks in one monastery governed by a Prior as first monk after the Abbot, and deans for every ten monks, all of whom were under the care of the one Abbot. This structured organisation is an indication that he wrote his Rule not at Subiaco, but over a number of years at Monte Cassino, probably between 535 to 540. The change in situation and local conditions brought a corresponding modification in the work undertaken by the monks. Access to Subiaco tucked away in the mountains had not been easy, but Cassino was near one of the great Italian highways convenient for Naples and Capua. Consequently, the new monastery was more accessible to the outside world, and soon became a fruitful influence in a district with a large population, several dioceses and a number of other monasteries. Abbots came to Benedict for his advice, and he counted among his friends people of every station and from all walks of life, including nobles and bishops. In due time, he founded a daughter-house at
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Terracino, forty miles away on the coast, and this reminds one that brief references to the establishment of monasteries, with accompanying land-reclamation and building, must not obscure the enormity of the physical tasks which never deterred him and his monks. Their confidence in God was born of their spiritual lives, and the ingenious courage of their projects to honour Him were accomplished at a speed which defies human capability. Conflicts beyond Meanwhile in 537, further problems beset the Church with the dubious election of Pope Vigilius after he had forced Pope St Silverius to abdicate. He associated himself with the opinions of the empress Theodora, wife of the emperor Justinian, who favoured the Monophysite theory that Our Lord possessed only the one Divine Nature, was not therefore truly Man, and only appeared to be so. His ambivalence regarding the conclusions of the Council of Chalcedon caused consternation in the West, and led to his excommunication and death in mysterious circumstances in 555. In the tranquil pages of his Rule, Benedict gives no hint of the political and ecclesiastical conflicts which were the background of life both at Subiaco and Monte Cassino. He never interfered in either but, through his foundations, he fostered and preserved Christian life and culture, and many miracles are attributed to him as he alleviated the famine and suffering
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which characterised difficult and dangerous times. His belief in Jesus Christ was not that He was God disguised as man, but that He is God walking among men and women, the Son who reveals the loving face of the Father who chooses that “through Him all good things come” to His children. Gifts Gifts of prophecy and second sight were now added to Benedict’s saintly virtues and the wisdom which emanated from his long experience of communion with God. Gregory tells a story about Totila, King of the Goths who stopped at Monte Cassino as he marched through Campania on his way to Naples in 542. Benedict took him to task for his wicked deeds and told him what was going to happen. “Every day you are very wicked and you have committed many grave sins. You will enter the city of Rome and you will cross the sea. You will reign for nine years and you will leave this mortal life in the tenth.” Totila was so thoroughly alarmed that, before he left, he asked Benedict to pray for him, and from then on he was more merciful to others. However, not long after his arrival in Rome, he sailed for Sicily where he was killed in the tenth year of his reign. Gregory notices Benedict’s striking characteristics of deep humanity and moderation. In his sympathy and solicitude for all his monks, he once spent the night on the
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mountain, praying that they would be spared the labour of carrying water up from the lake, and asking God to “remove from their lives a just cause of grumbling”. On another occasion, he spent three days in a monastery persuading an errant monk “to remain quietly at his prayers in the chapel like the other monks” instead of wandering about “busying himself with earthly and transitory things.” He heeded Our Lord’s advice to Martha and Mary that one must avoid being so busy about many things that no time is left to listen to God’s word and allow His love to come into one’s heart. His sensitivity extended to all God’s creation, and he used to feed a crow from a neighbouring wood which joined the community at their mid-day meal. (cf. Lk 10:38-42). Two sons whom their Roman parents had entrusted to Benedict for their education and entrance to the monastery at Subiaco were Placid and Maurus. Benedict was always preoccupied with the well-being of who were absent from the monastery, and one day as he sat at the desk in his cell, he was suddenly aware that Placid had fallen into the lake and was about to drown. He told Maurus, a model of unquestioning obedience, to go immediately and save Placid, and this he did by running over the water’s surface without realising it. Benedictines celebrate the Feast of Saints Maurus and Placid, the Patron of Novices, on 5th October, the date Placid is believed to have been martyred in Sicily by Saracen pirates.
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At another time, Benedict anticipated the dangers threatening some builders who were saved by his timely warning. When monks who were making a journey on behalf of their monastery stopped “to eat and refresh themselves”, they were conscious of his companionable presence in a way which was something more than spiritual. His friend Valentinian and another monk on their way from the community at Terracino, had exactly the same experience. Throughout Gregory’s narrative shines an invariably quiet, gentle, dignified, strong, peace-loving man who, by the power of his sympathy, is the centre of the lives and interest of everyone around him. We meet him in the church with his monks, at their spiritual reading, working in the fields and buildings, or in his cell patiently receiving frequent visitors who would often find him “weeping silently in his prayers” or, as Totila discovered him, “before the gates of the monastery, reading upon a book.” Scholastica Benedict’s twin sister Scholastica “had been dedicated from her infancy to the Lord”, and founded a convent at Plambariola about five miles from Monte Cassino. She and her brother met regularly in a house near the monastery to pray and discuss spiritual matters together. At their last meeting she begged Benedict to stay the night “to discuss the joys of heaven”, but he refused
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because “he would not be all that time away from his Abbey.” Scholastica said nothing but bowed her head in prayer. Suddenly, the weather took such a turn for the worse that “neither Benedict nor the monks who were with him could put their heads outside the door,” so they had no choice but to stay. Three days later, Benedict saw her soul winging its way to heaven in the likeness of a dove, and he rejoiced “to see her great glory and, with hymns and lauds, gave thanks to Almighty God.” With brotherly tenderness, he buried Scholastica in the tomb which he had prepared for himself in the Oratory of St John the Baptist. As the first Benedictine nun, she is the Patron of all Benedictine Convents, and following her inspiring example come a distinguished line of nuns and abbesses which includes Saints Walburga, Gertrude, Mildred, Etheldreda, Cecilia, Cuthburga, Hildegard, Winefrid, Benedicta, Hilda, Mechtildis, Adela, and Edburga. St Scholastica’s Feastday is 10th February. Towards the end Soon afterwards, Benedict was favoured with a remarkable vision in which he came as near to seeing God as is possible in this life. “In that light which is the Creator, he saw the whole world gathered together, as it were, under one beam of the sun, (for) all Creation is small to the soul that sees the Creator.” In 547, he contracted a fever while nursing the poor. As his condition deteriorated and he
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knew he was dying, he calmly asked his monks to prepare the sepulchre in St John’s Oratory where Scholastica’s body already lay. Six days later, his brethren carried him to St Martin’s Oratory and, after receiving Holy Communion, he went to his reward standing upright supported by his monks, his arms raised to heaven and a prayer upon his lips. His later years had been saddened by a prophetic intimation that Monte Cassino would be stormed and destroyed by the Lombards in 589. “All this monastery which I have built, and all the things I have provided for the brethren are delivered to the barbarians, and I could scarcely protect the lives of my monks.” As it happened, the community took refuge in Rome, with the happier consequence that the Rule became more widely known, appreciated and adopted. The Monastery would fall again to the Saracens in 884, require radical reconstruction in the eleventh century, suffer damage by earthquake in the fourteenth, be rebuilt in the sixteenth and seventeenth, and be reduced to rubble in the second World War. Benedict is happy that, after the seventh rebuilding in its history, his Monastery remains a symbol of the enduring Benedictine spirit in Europe and beyond. Final resting place As the seventh century dawned, the Abbot of the monastery in Fleury-in-the-Loire, was anxious that the relics of Benedict and Scholastica should not lie
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abandoned in the ruins. He is said to have translated them to Fleury which became a great centre of pilgrimage called St Benoit-sur-Loire, where they are still venerated in a splendid church. In 717, Abbot St Petronax restored Monte Cassino which, with its daughter-house at Tarracino, flourished with renewed vigour and, despite the disasters, still treasures two skeletons at the base of the high altar in the Basilica. Perhaps there was a retranslation from Fleury, or maybe the relics were shared, but it is heart warming to think that brother and sister are together in their restored monastic home. What is important is that conflicting claims need never alter the fact that, throughout the ages, people with hearts open to God’s grace find inspiration in those places which He allows faith to sanctify. Benedict’s determination to take the Gospel to the people of the plains below is still shared by his monks, and Cassino town with its neighbouring municipalities, remains under the Abbot’s pastoral care.