ST. BENEDICT OF NURSIA

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Founder of western monasticism, and an influential pastoral theologian, born at Nursia, c. 480; died at Monte Cassino, 543. 

The only authentic life of Benedict of Nursia is contained in the  Dialogues of St. Gregory the Great, Book 2, The Life and Miracles of St. Benedict.  [Editor's note: This is a dated translation, but has the virtue of being in the public domain.]  The Dialogues are a character sketch than a biography and largely consists of a number of miraculous incidents.  Although  they illustrate the life of the saint, they give little help towards a chronological account of his career.  St. Gregory's authorities were the saint's own disciples, viz. Constantinus, who succeeded him as Abbot of Monte Cassino; and Honoratus, who was Abbot of Subiaco when St. Gregory wrote the Dialogues.

Benedict was the son of a Roman noble of Nursia, and tradition makes him a twin with his sister Scholastica.  His boyhood was spent in Rome, where he attended school until he had reached his higher studies. Then he left his father's house with a mind to serve God.  He was between 14 and 20 at the time, but old enough to understand the  dissolute and licentious lives of his companions, and to have been deeply affected himself by the love of a woman.  He was capable of weighing all these things in comparison with the life taught in the Gospels, and chose the latter.  He gave up a career as a Roman noble.  If we accept the date 480 for his birth, we may fix the date of his abandoning the schools and quitting home at about A.D. 500.

Benedict does not seem to have left Rome for the purpose of becoming a hermit, but only to find some place away from the life of the great city; moreover, he took his old nurse with him as a servant.  They settled in Enfide, outside of Rome, in some kind of association with "a company of virtuous men" who were in sympathy with his feelings and his views of life. At Enfide, Benedict worked his first miracle by restoring to perfect condition an earthenware wheat-sifter or sieve that his old servant had accidentally broken. The notoriety which this miracle brought upon Benedict drove him to escape still farther from social life, and "he fled secretly from his nurse and sought the more retired district of Subiaco."  

On his way to Subiaco, Benedict met the monk Romanus, whose monastery was nearby. Romanus discussed with Benedict the purpose which had brought him to Subiaco, and gave him a monk's habit.  By his advice Benedict became a hermit and for three years, unknown to men, lived in this cave above the lake. The monk apparently visited him frequently, and brought him food.

During these three years of solitude, broken only by occasional communications with the outer world and by the visits of Romanus, Benedict matured both in mind and character, in knowledge of himself and of his fellow-man, and at the same time he became respected by those about him.  On the death of the abbot of a monastery in the neighbourhood (identified by some with Vicovaro), the community came to him and begged him to become its abbot. 

Benedict was acquainted with the life and discipline of the monastery, and was skeptical but at length agreed.  The experiment failed; the monks tried to poison him, and he returned to his cave. From this time his miracles seen to have become frequent, and many people, attracted by his sanctity and character, came to Subiaco to be under his guidance. 

For them he built in the valley twelve monasteries, in each of which he placed a superior with twelve monks. In a thirteenth he lived with a few he thought would profit more and be better instructed by his own presence.  He remained, however, the abbot of all. He also established of these monasteries he began schools for children.

The remainder of St. Benedict's life was spent in realizing the ideal of monasticism which is in his Rule, which, as St. Gregory says, is St. Benedict's real biography.

This article taken largely from the Catholic Encyclopedia, 1917