Saint Benedict of Nursia

Benedict was born in Norcia in 480, the twin of Scholastica, to a family of the local nobility. At twelve he was sent to Rome to study, and he didn’t stay in Rome: Gregory the Great, who wrote his life in the Dialogues, says that, appalled by the city’s dissolute ways, “he drew back the foot he had just set on the threshold of the world.” He went to Subiaco and lived three years in a cave. Then some monks sought him out to lead them; he accepted, and they ended up trying to poison him because he was too strict. He left. He founded twelve small monasteries in the Aniene valley, and finally, around 529, he climbed a mountain above Cassino where a temple of Apollo still stood. That is where Montecassino was born. What he left behind is not a building but a text: the Rule. Seventy-three short chapters, written in simple Latin, that say how to live together — how much to sleep, how to eat, how to welcome a guest, how to treat a monk who goes wrong, how to choose the abbot and how he may be contradicted. The word that keeps coming back is *discretio*, a sense of measure. It is a text of government of rare intelligence, and for fifteen hundred years it has held monastic Europe together. He died at Montecassino on March 21, 547. His memorial is celebrated on July 11. Paul VI proclaimed him principal patron saint of Europe in 1964. If your name is Benedict or Benedetta, today is your name day.