St. Benedict

When the Abbey of Monte Cassino was bombed last week, it was not only the destruction of the 1,400-year-old religious and cultural monument that stirred the world. It was the thought that the Abbey of Monte Cassino, a unique beacon of the spirit lit at the very onset of the Dark Ages, was being demolished by the military necessities of a civilization closer to the brink than any other has been since that earlier human crisis.

Disgust in Rome. The man who lit the beacon was St. Benedict of Nursia. The facts of St. Benedict's life were all but lost in Europe's long cultural night. The little that is known comes from the Dialogues of St. Gregory. According to St. Gregory, St. Benedict was born (at Nursia in Umbria) about 480.

As a young man, he was sent to school at Rome. But Rome's licentiousness shocked him as it was to shock Martin Luther ten centuries later. St. Benedict fled into the bleak wastes of the Abruzzi. Later he went to the ruins of Nero's villa near Anzio. In the rocks opposite the ruins he found a cave, where he lived forgotten by the crumbling world.

Austerity in Solitude. In this cave St. Benedict spent three years in solitary prayers, meditation and austerity. He dressed in the skins of the wild animals that once more began to multiply in Italy. Shepherds first coming upon St. Benedict mistook him for a wild beast. He preached to them, performed miracles, converted them to Christianity.*

The monks of the local monastery begged St. Benedict to become their abbot. But they were dissolute, and when he tried to discipline them, they tried to poison him. He returned to his cave. But disciples followed him.

The Hospitable Deserts. When Roman civilization collapsed, gentle spirits tried to flee the almost hopeless world by becoming solitary hermits in the wastelands. Later groups of hermits gathered together for security and company in loose associations.

St. Benedict was the first to bring discipline and order to these monks. From among his disciples he formed twelve monasteries of twelve monks each (in memory of Christ and His twelve Apostles). St. Benedict lived in a 13th abbey with "a few, such as he thought would more profit and be better instructed by his presence."

When a hostile priest intrigued against him, St. Benedict and his small band of followers emigrated to Cassino. About 529 St. Benedict and his monks built the Abbey of Cassino with their own hands. The Abbey, on the summit of Monte Cassino, has been partially destroyed in four earlier wars. But St. Benedict's tower has been saved each time and incorporated into the rebuilt structures.

It was in this tower that the abbot wrote his famed work: the Rule of St. Benedict. This Rule shaped Western monasticism. The Rule brought order into the chaotic monasteries.

The Benedictine Rule. St. Benedict's treatise for his monks is concerned with three things: labor, prayer and self-denial. Work is the first step toward holiness. Monks are to be "wearied with labors for God's sake." Prayer should be brief "and with purity of heart, except it be perchance prolonged by the inspiration of divine grace." The whole Psalter must be recited each week, "for we read that our holy Fathers were strenuous enough to fulfil in a single day this task which I pray that we lukewarm folk may complete in the whole week." St. Benedict does not demand strict fasting but recommends that food and drink be cut to a healthy minimum.

St. Benedict also set an ideal for himself and future abbots: "It beseemeth the abbot to be ever doing some good for his brethren rather than to be presiding over them. He must, therefore, be learned in the law of God, that he may know whence to bring forth things new and old; he must be chaste, sober, and merciful, ever preferring mercy to justice, that he himself may obtain mercy.

"Let him hate sin and love the brethren. And even in his corrections, let him act with prudence, and not go too far, lest while he seeketh too eagerly to scrape off the rust, the vessel be broken. Let him keep his own frailty ever before his eyes. . . . And by this we do not mean that he should suffer vices to grow up; but that prudently and with charity he should cut them off, in the way he shall see best for each, as we have already said; and let him study rather to be loved than feared."

*The old Roman faith lingered longest in the countryside. Hence the word pagan, from the Latin pagani (country people).

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