St Benedict of Nursia: A Man who Changed the Catholic Church

St Benedict at a glance
Born: March 2, 480, in Nursia (now Norcia), Italy
Died: March 21, 547, (aged 67) at Mons Casinus (now Monte Cassino), Italy
Canonised: 1220 by Pope Honorius III
Feast: July 11
Patronages: People in religious orders, poisonings, against curses and witchcraft, temptation, students, agricultural workers, Europe, inflammations, fever, kidney and gall diseases, cavers, engineers, dying people

By founding the Benedictine Order and writing its Rule in the 6th century, St Benedict of Nursia set the framework for Western monasticism.

He is considered the founder of Western monasticism through the Rule he wrote for the Benedictine order, which he founded. St Benedict of Nursia is a patron saint of Europe, but his influence has persisted to this day throughout the world, including South Africa, where members of his order are active especially in northern KwaZulu-Natal and Limpopo.

Benedict was born around 480 as the son of a wealthy family of Roman nobility in Nursia, today’s Norcia in the central Italian region of Umbria. His twin sister was St Scholastica.

After his schooling, Benedict’s parents sent him to Rome to study. But the young man was horrified by the decadence of life there. Rome lay in ruins — ecclesiastically, politically, economically, culturally as well as morally — and he saw no future in the city.

After a short time, Benedict joined a group of hermits in the Sabine hills near Rome. When even that became too crowded for him, he retreated to a cave near Subiaco, east of Rome. He lived there in solitude for three years.

Every day his mentor, a monk named Romanus (now also a saint) from the monastery of Vicovaro, lowered bread to the cave on a rope, with a bell attached to it to alert the hermit. Legend has it that one day the devil threw a stone at the bell and it broke. Benedict faced many temptations from the devil; he warded them off by rolling himself in thorns.

First assassination attempt

Benedict’s reputation as a holy man grew, and many people came to see him. When the monks of Vicovaro asked him to become their abbot, he accepted and set about reorganising the life of the community. Some of the monks, however, objected to the severity of his regimen — so much that some tried to kill him with poisoned wine. But, according to legend, when Benedict blessed the cup with the sign of the cross, it broke and the poison escaped in the form of a snake.

Benedict left the monastery and returned to the Holy Grotto in Subiaco as head of a hermit community of students who had joined him. He introduced an order based on the Rule of Pachomius, with 12 monks each living in a dozen small monasteries.

Again he faced opposition and a  wicked priest named Florentius even tried to poison him. This time, according to tradition, a raven carried away a loaf of poisoned bread, just after Benedict had blessed it. His assassination attempt foiled by a bird, Florentius tried to corrupt Benedict’s monks with prostitutes.

To get away from all the corrupting influences, in 529 Benedict and a small group of loyal followers moved to Monte Cassino, 80km southeast of Rome, and founded a monastery on the hilltop. On the site of an old pagan temple he built a church dedicated to St Martin and an oratory to St John. The monastery, destroyed and rebuilt several times since, is still the heart of all Benedictine monasteries today.

The Rule of St Benedict

Around the year 540, Benedict issued his famous “Regula Benedicti”, the Benedictine Rule which still applies today. The Rule reflects St Benedict’s personal characteristics: striving for order and discipline, love of God and neighbour, willingness to show mercy for the weak, a strong pastoral concern, and common sense.

According to the monastic Rule, monks are forbidden to own any property; meals are eaten together and unnecessary conversations are avoided. Prayer and work (Ora et Labora) and obedience were and still are the main pillars of communal life in the Benedictine order. The phrase “Ora et labora” does not actually go back to the order’s founder himself — it appeared only in the late Middle Ages — but it describes the spirit of Benedict’s Rule perfectly.

By combining meditative, contemplative concerns with active, productive elements, Benedict founded a form of monastic piety that was revolutionary. The basic rule of all the monasteries of the Benedictine Order spread across Europe, with future orders modifying and adopting it.

Benedict’s Rule was also a response to the degeneration of society in late antiquity. Benedict inverted the moral decay and uncertainties of the times — which is why it became permanent. It offered stability, a break in times of migration and brutal invasion.

Crucially, all people were accepted into the monasteries as equals; there was no distinction between “civilised” Romans and “barbaric” Germanic people. The Benedictine Rule became a model for a Christian society in which people should treat each other fraternally and coexist in community. The Benedictine monasteries thus exerted great influence on the ideals in the renewal of general society, especially once the erstwhile Barbarian colonists were converted to Christianity.

Locally, Benedict was very popular with the people. He distributed alms and food to the poor. Healings and raising the dead are also attributed to him.

Death during prayer

According to tradition, Benedict died on March 21, 547 — shortly after the death of his sister, Scholastica — of fever during prayer at the altar of the church of Monte Cassino, standing with his arms raised. More recent research suggests that he died around 560.

Benedict was buried at Monte Cassino. After the abbey was abandoned following its destruction by the invading Lombards in 570, his remains were supposedly taken to the Benedictine abbey of Fleury, near Orléans in France, where they are still venerated today. The date of the relics’ supposed translation was July 11, 673 (or 703), which is now St Benedict’s feast day. Relics are also kept in the Benedictine monasteries of Einsiedeln in Switzerland and Benediktbeuern in Bavaria, Germany.

After the third destruction of the Monte Cassino abbey by bombardment by the Allies in World War II, the double grave of St Benedict and his sister St Scholastica were rediscovered under the high altar in 1950.

Their birthplace, in the crypt of the 14th-century basilica of St Benedict in Norcia, was partially destroyed in an earthquakes in 2016. An oratory had been built there in the 8th century as a site of pilgrimage.

There have been 16 popes who took the name Benedict. In 589 the first Benedictine monastery in Rome was established at the basilica of St John Lateran, the cathedral of the pope. The following year, Gregory the Great became the first Benedictine pope.

Our entire knowledge of St Benedict’s life is based on the writings of Pope Gregory, which includes many pious legends which were likely intended to be understood as allegories. Predictably, in absence of other documentation, some historians absurdly suggest that there never was a Benedict. Even if Gregory didn’t write a biographical account as we understand it today, the scholarly pope based his accounts on direct witness testimony from named people who knew St Benedict. He couldn’t possibly have invented a fictional figure at a time when the subject of his writings died within living memory.

The Benedictine order today numbers around 7500 monks and around 13000 women religious.

Published in the July 2024 issue of The Southern Cross magazine