Saint Benedict of Nursia

Saint Benedict of Nursia was an abbot, the founder of the monastery of Monte Cassino, and the author of the Rule, which spread throughout the West. The Roman Martyrology calls him the patriarch of monks in the West, and Paul VI proclaimed him patron of Europe. The Church commemorates him on July 11.

The most important source for his life is the second book of the “Dialogues” of Pope Gregory the Great, written about half a century after Benedict’s death. He was born around 480 in the province of Nursia, into a respected and well-to-do family. His parents sent him to study in Rome, but, put off by the dissolute life of many of his peers, he abandoned his studies because, as Gregory writes, he wished to please God alone.

He settled at Subiaco, in the mountains east of Rome, and for three years lived alone in a cave, around which the monastery of the Sacro Speco later grew. When the fame of his holiness spread, the monks of a nearby monastery persuaded him to become their abbot, but they could not bear his demands and gave him poisoned wine. According to Gregory, the vessel shattered when Benedict made the sign of the cross over it. He returned to solitude, and in time he gathered so many disciples that he founded twelve monasteries in the area, each with twelve monks.

According to tradition, in 529 he moved with a few monks to Monte Cassino. On the mountain there still stood a temple of Apollo, worshiped by the local people. Benedict smashed the idol and overthrew the altar, turned the temple into an oratory of Saint Martin and built an oratory of Saint John the Baptist where the altar had stood, and preached the Gospel to the inhabitants. Thus arose the abbey, the cradle of the Benedictine family.

There he wrote the Rule. Gregory praised it for its discretion and clear language and added that the saint could not teach otherwise than he lived. The Rule calls the monastery a school of the Lord’s service and bids the monks prefer nothing to the love of Christ. It joins common prayer, called the Work of God, with reading and manual labor, and it bids them receive guests, the poor, and the sick as Christ himself.

Benedict foretold to his disciples the day of his death. Six days beforehand he had his grave opened and was seized by a fever. On the sixth day he had himself carried into the oratory, received the Body and Blood of the Lord, and, supported by his disciples, gave up his spirit standing, with his hands raised toward heaven. According to tradition he died on March 21, probably around 547. He was laid in the grave where he had earlier buried his sister, Saint Scholastica.

He has been venerated as a saint for centuries, long before the process of canonization existed. Because of Lent, his memorial was moved from March 21 to July 11, a day dedicated to him in some places since the early Middle Ages. On October 24, 1964, while consecrating the rebuilt basilica of Monte Cassino, destroyed in 1944, Paul VI proclaimed him principal patron of all Europe.