Benedict of Nursia

Benedict of Nursia (2 March 480 – 21 March 547), commonly called Saint Benedict, was an Italian monk who established the Order of Saint Benedict. He is venerated in the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Lutheran Churches, the Anglican Communion, and Old Catholic Churches. In 1964, Pope Paul VI named him a patron saint of Europe. Benedict set up twelve communities for monks at Subiaco in what is now Lazio, Italy, east of Rome, and later moved to Monte Cassino in central Italy’s mountains. The Order of Saint Benedict as it exists today was formed later and is not a typical order but a confederation of independent congregations. His key work, the Rule of Saint Benedict, is a set of guidelines for monks. Influenced by John Cassian’s writings and closely related to the earlier Rule of the Master, it stands out for its spirit of balance, moderation, and reasonableness. This rule was so widely adopted by religious orders in the Middle Ages that it became one of the most influential in Western Christendom, leading Giuseppe Carletti to call Benedict the founder of Western Christian monasticism.

The only ancient account of Benedict’s life, aside from a short poem by Mark of Monte Cassino, comes from the second volume of Pope Gregory I’s four-book *Dialogues*, written around 593, though its authenticity is debated. Gregory’s work is not a modern biography but a spiritual portrait of a gentle, disciplined abbot. In a letter to Bishop Maximilian of Syracuse, Gregory described his *Dialogues* as a *floretum*—an anthology or “flower garden”—of striking miracles by Italian holy men. He did not aim for a chronological, historical narrative but relied on direct testimony from what he considered reliable sources: Benedict’s disciples Constantinus, who succeeded him as abbot of Monte Cassino; Honoratus, abbot of Subiaco when Gregory wrote; Valentinianus; and Simplicius. In Gregory’s time, history was not a separate field but part of grammar or rhetoric, and his *Dialogues*, Book Two, is a medieval hagiography framed as a conversation between the Pope and his deacon Peter, meant to teach spiritual lessons.

Benedict was born around 480 to a Roman noble of Nursia, now Norcia in Umbria. He was sent to Rome for studies but grew disappointed with what he found there. Leaving the city, he went with his nurse to Enfide, identified by Subiaco tradition as modern Affile, in the Simbruini mountains about forty miles from Rome and two miles from Subiaco. Near Enfide, a narrow valley leads to Subiaco, where a cave with a large triangular opening, about ten feet deep, sits above what was then a lake. On his way there, Benedict met a monk named Romanus of Subiaco, whose monastery was above the cave. Romanus gave him a monk’s habit, and on his advice, Benedict became a hermit, living in the cave for three years.

Gregory tells little of Benedict’s later life, now referring to him as a man of God rather than a youth. Romanus served him, visiting frequently and bringing food. During those three years of solitude, broken only by Romanus’s visits, Benedict matured in mind and character, gaining respect from those around him. When the abbot of a nearby monastery died, the community asked him to become their abbot. Benedict knew their ways differed from his and predicted they would not agree, but he eventually consented. The experiment failed; the monks tried to poison him. They first poisoned his drink, but when Benedict made the sign of the cross over the cup, it shattered as if struck by a stone. He told the monks to find an abbot of their own kind, left, and returned to his cave at Subiaco. A priest named Florentius, moved by envy, then attempted to kill him.