Introduction
INTRODUCTION
The life of St. Benedict is related to us by Pope St. Gregory the Great, who, being a relative of the great Patriarch and a member of his Order, was particularly qualified for this task. Pope Gregory was not personally acquainted with St. Benedict (c.480-c.547), as the latter died when Gregory (540-604) was but a young child. But he lived and associated with St. Benedict’s disciples and was informed by them, as faithful eyewitnesses, of the life and deeds of this great man. Those who contributed to the facts recorded by Pope Gregory are the following: Abbot Constantine, first successor of St. Benedict in the monastery of Monte Cassino; Abbot Valentinian, who directed the monastery of the Lateran; Simplicius, third Abbot of Monte Cassino; and finally, Honoratus, who was Abbot of Subiaco at the time of St. Gregory. These are the commanding authorities to which he refers in portraying to us the life of the Patriarch of monks.
The Downfall of the Roman Empire
With regard to Church and State, never was the condition of Europe so sad and deplorable as at the time when St. Benedict was born. A total downfall of existing conditions had taken place; all bonds of order seemed dissolved, and civil laws and authorities done away with. More than ever was the Church infected with heresy and schism. The greater number of the European nations adopted the heresies of Arius, Nestorius and Eutyches. Some countries, such as Germany and England, were still in the darkness of paganism. The Roman empire, that gigantic union of two hundred million people under Emperor Augustus, was overthrown amid the invasions of the barbarous hordes from the North, who, penetrating into the heart of Europe, devastated the entire country and, spreading to the South and West, brought about that immense movement known in history as the migration of nations. In Italy alone, the Ostrogoths had founded a kingdom which was effectually governed by several kings, such as Theodoric the Great, Totila and others.
A Prey to Heresy and Barbarism
These unsteady conditions and ever-changing circumstances were most detrimental to the Church. The new barbarous tribes, it is true, embraced Christianity; nevertheless, they were to a great extent given to the Arian heresy, and thus the countries in which the first disciples of Christ had preached the Gospel became a prey to heresy and barbarism. It was, therefore, necessary that the world should be reconquered for Christ. And this enormous work of conversion was in great measure effected by St. Benedict, through the organization of his renowned Order of monks in the West. This holy Order God had chosen for His Church, in establishing the Christian world upon the ruins of the dilapidated Roman empire and in instructing and civilizing the new tribes unto Christ and Christian society. “It is wonderful,” says a historian, “how Divine Providence has manifested its care for the Church by calling St. Benedict for this great work. Because at the very time when all Italy, France, Spain and the northern coast of Africa were in the possession of the Goths and Vandals, and almost the entire East was infected with heresy, in this frightful darkness, so bright a light shone forth from St. Benedict and his Order, that the whole world was thereby illumined.”
St. Benedict of Noble Family
St. Benedict was born in the year 480, at Nursia, a city in southern Italy. He was descended from the Anicians, a noble Roman family which numbered among its members most renowned men: senators, generals and even saints. His father’s name was Eupropius, his mother’s Abundantia; his pious and holy twin sister, whom he cherished with tender affection his life long, was called Scholastica. Regarding the early years of St. Benedict and St. Scholastica little is known, but we rejoice in the possession of a beautiful “vision” of Anne Catherine Emmerich, which contains a very touching description of the childhood years of the twin brother and sister. For the edification and instruction of the reader, it is inserted here.
The Vision of Anne Catherine Emmerich
“Through the relics of St. Scholastica, I saw many scenes in her life and that of St. Benedict. I saw their paternal home in a great city, not far from Rome. It was not built entirely in the Roman style. Before it was a paved courtyard whose low wall was surmounted by a red latticework, and behind lay another court with a garden and a fountain. In the garden was a beautiful summer-house overrun with vines, and here I saw Benedict and his little sister Scholastica playing as loving, innocent children are wont to amuse themselves. The flat ceiling of the summer-house was painted all over with figures, which at first I thought sculptured, so clearly were their outlines defined.
“The brother and sister were very fond of each other and so nearly of the same age that I thought them twins. The birds flew in familiarly at the windows with flowers and twigs in their beaks and sat looking intently at the children, who were playing with flowers and leaves, planting sticks and making gardens. I saw them writing and cutting all sorts of figures out of colored stuffs. Occasion ally their nurse came to look after them.
“Their parents seemed to be people of wealth, who had much business on hand, for I saw about twenty persons employed in the house; but they did not seem to trouble themselves about their children. The father was a large, powerful man, dressed in the Roman style; he took his meals with his wife and some other members of the family in the lower part of the house, while the children lived entirely upstairs in separate apartments. Ben edict had for preceptor an old ecclesiastic with whom he stayed almost all the time, and Scholastica had a nurse near whom she slept. The brother and sister were not often allowed to be alone together, but whenever they could steal off for a while, they were very gleeful and happy. I saw Scholastica by her nurse’s side, learning some kind of work. In the room adjoining that in which she slept stood a table on which lay in baskets the material for her work, a variety of colored stuff, from which she cut figures of birds, flowers, etc., to be sewed on other larger pieces. When finished they looked as if carved on the groundwork.
“The ceilings of the rooms, like that of the summer-house, were covered with different colored pictures. The windows were not glass; they were of some kind of stuff on which were embroidered all sorts of figures, trees, lines, and pointed ornaments. Scholastica slept on a low bed behind a curtain. I saw her in the morning, when her nurse left the room, spring out of bed and prostrate in prayer before a crucifix on the wall. When she heard the nurse returning, she used to slip quickly behind the curtain and be in bed again before the nurse entered the room. I saw Benedict and Scholastica separately learning from the former’s tutor. They read from great rolls of parchment, and they painted letters in red, gold and an extraordinarily fine blue; as they wrote, they rolled the parchment. They made use of an instrument about as long as one’s finger. The older the children grew, the less were they allowed to be together.
“I saw Benedict at Rome, when about fourteen years old, in a large building in which there was a corridor with many rooms. It looked like a school or a monastery. There were many young men and some old ecclesiastics in a large hall, as if at a holiday feast. The ceilings were adorned with the same kind of paintings as those in Benedict’s home. The guests did not eat reclining. They sat on round seats so low that they were obliged to stretch out their feet; some sat on one side, back to back, at a very low table. There were holes hollowed in the massive table to receive the yellow plates and dishes; but I did not see much food, only three large plates of flat, yellow cakes in the center of the table.
“When all had finished, I saw six females of different ages, relatives of the youths, enter the hall, carrying something like sweetmeats and little flasks in baskets on their arms. The young men arose and conversed with their friends at one end of the hall, eating the dainties and drinking from the flasks. There was one woman about thirty years of age, whom I had once before seen at Benedict’s home. She approached the young man with an enticing mien; but he, perfectly innocent, suspected nothing bad in her. I saw that she hated his purity and entertained a sinful love for him. She gave him a poisoned, an enchanted drink from a flask. Benedict suspected nothing, but I saw him that evening in his cell, restless and tormented. He went, at last, to a man and asked permission to go down into the courtyard, for he never went out without leave. There he knelt in a corner of the yard, disciplining himself with long thorn branches and nettles. I saw him later on, when a hermit, helping this his would-be-seducer, who had fallen into deep distress precisely because she had sought to tempt him. Benedict had been interiorly warned of her guilt.
“Afterwards I saw Benedict on a high, rocky mountain, perhaps in his twentieth year. He had hollowed out a cell for himself in the rock. To this he added a passage and another cell, and then several cells, all cut in the rock; but only the first opened outside. Before it he had planted an avenue of trees. He arched them and ornamented the vaulted roof with pictures which seemed to be made of many small stones put together. In one cell I saw three such pictures: Heaven in the center, the nativity of Christ on one side, the Last Judgment on the other. In the last, Our Lord was represented sitting on an arch, a sword issuing from His mouth; below, between the elect and the reprobate, stood an angel with a pair of scales. Benedict had besides made a representation of a monastery with its abbot and crowds of monks in the background. He seemed to have had a foresight of his own monastery.
“More than once I saw Benedict’s sister, who lived at home, going on foot to visit her brother. He never allowed her to stay with him overnight. Sometimes she brought him a roll of parchment which she had written. Then he showed her what he had done, and they conversed together on divine things. Benedict was always very grave in his sister’s presence, while she, in her innocence, was mirthful and joyous. When she found him too serious, she turned to God in prayer, and he instantly became like herself, bright and gay.
“Later on, I saw her under her brother’s direction, establishing a convent on a neighboring mountain, distant only a short day’s journey. To it flocked numbers of religious women. I saw her teaching them to chant; they had no organs. Organs have been very prejudicial to singing. They make of it only a secondary affair. The nuns prepared all the church ornaments themselves in the same kind of needlework that Scholastica had learned when a child at home. On the refectory table was a large cloth on which were all sorts of figures, pictures and sentences, so that each religious always had before her that to which she was especially obliged. Scholastica spoke to me of the sweets and consolations of spiritual labor and the labor of ecclesiastics.
“I always saw Scholastica and Benedict surrounded by tame birds. While the former was yet in her father’s house, I used to see doves flying from her to Benedict in the desert; and in the convent I saw around her doves and larks bringing her red, white, yellow and violet-blue flowers. Once I saw a dove bringing her a rose with a leaf. I cannot repeat all the scenes of her life that were shown me, for I am so sick and miserable! Scholastica was purity itself. I see her in Heaven as white as snow. With the exception of Mary and Magdalen, I know of no Saint so loving.”
Thus far the “vision” of Anne Catherine Emmerich.
His Flight
The early years of Benedict were spent at the home of his parents. Even as a boy, he was distinguished for his earnestness and deep piety. St. Gregory relates of him that even in his youth he manifested the mind and disposition of a mature man, with morals far beyond his age; he despised the amusements of the world and never permitted his heart to be defiled by sensual pleasures.
When Benedict had passed his childhood years, his parents placed him in the schools of Rome to have him educated in the fine arts. But now came the turning point in his life. When he saw that many of his companions in the great metropolis were giving themselves up to vice and precipitating themselves into the abyss of destruction, he fled from the world and its corruption. God calling him to higher things and the dangers of the world prompting him to leave it, he quit Rome at the age of fourteen years to seek salvation and perfection in solitude.
Now let us hear what Gregory the Great relates.