Benedictine Order . Order founded by Saint Benedict , made up of men and women who wish to dedicate themselves to the search for Christian perfection in the style of the monks.
Foundation of the Benedictine Order
Founded by Saint Benedict of Nursia, who lived between the years 480 and 547. Born in Nursia (Italy) to a noble family, he studied in Rome . After completing his studies he left Rome to become a hermit monk, settling in a grotto far from the world. His fame as a saint soon spread and he was named abbot of a nearby monastery.
He founded eleven monasteries; among them, the monastery of Subiaco and Monte Cassino . From the latter he wrote the Regula monjerum, which he soon spread to the monasteries that were founded throughout Europe . Although it was written only for men, this rule was soon also applied to women who wished to dedicate themselves to the search for Christian perfection according to the style of the monks .
Tradition says that it was Saint Scholastica , sister of Saint Benedict, who managed to impose the Rule in female monasteries. At present there are 1,075 monasteries, inhabited by some 23,800 nuns. In Spain there are 29 Benedictine monasteries where about 760 nuns live. Founder of the Benedictine Order, called Patriarch of the monks of the West and Father of Europe. B. in 480. In 500, he went to Rome to pursue his studies. In 529 he founded the great abbey of Monte Cassino . D. sanctified in 547. Within this period of years great political and religious upheavals developed in Italy , which the saint witnessed and attempted to remedy.
Saint Benedict and Nurcia
Saint Benedict was born in Nursia, today Norcia , in the province of Umbria, in the foothills of the Apennines, about 100 kilometres from Rome . It was a strong city with thick walls from ancient times, and Vespasian, Martial and Sertorius also saw their birth here. Ancient writers say that its inhabitants were of a strong character (Virgil, Aeneid, VII, V, 715), very fond of freedom (Suetonius, Divus Augustus, 12) and of unwavering courage in the defence of their freedom (Strabo, Geographica, V, 3, 1).
The Apennines with their high peaks seem to isolate them from the corruption of the cities, thus preparing them to better receive the seed of the Gospel. This took place in the 3rd century , when the bishop of Foligno, St. Felician , came to communicate the good news to them. Around the year 149 BC, In 495, a certain Stephen appears as Bishop of Nursia, to whom is attributed the administration of Baptism and Confirmation to Benedict and his sister Scholastica . Monastic life was also already flourishing in the region at that time, for St. Gregory tells us of two holy monks who were contemporary with B.: Eutychius and Florentius, as well as of Abbot Spes of a nearby monastery. This undoubtedly contributed to imbuing his childhood with piety. But there was another factor that was even more important: his own family.
Family
Of B.’s parents we know almost nothing, although a later tradition names them Eupropius and Abundance. St. Gregory tells us that they were of a good social class, or at least of a better than ordinary kind: liberiori genere. They were, then, a provincial nobility, notable for the number of their servants, one of whom was their nurse Cyril. This position of his parents is confirmed by the fact that they sent their son to study in Rome. B. had a twin sister and only one: St. Scholastica. Few people have loved each other as much as these two holy brothers, as can be seen from the last conversation they had a few days before the saint’s death. His nurse Cyril became like a second mother to B..
Student in Rome
Benedict’s parents, who had spared no means to help their son grow in piety, also tried to provide him with everything in their power to help him succeed in his studies. St. Gregory says that they sent him to Rome for a liberal education: Romae liberalibus litterarum studiis traditus fuerat . These words imply that he had already completed his elementary education in Nursia. The ancient writers distinguish the Magister primus, which teaches reading and writing, from the Grammaticus, which explains the belles lettres: Rhetoric formed the foundation of this teaching. The Roman school was, above all, a school of eloquence which taught speaking and persuading. The beautiful exhortation which constitutes the prologue of the Benedictine Rule is an example of this rhetorical formation.
The exact age of B. at this time is not known, but is thought to have been around 500, that is, at the age of 20. He was accompanied by Cyril, his faithful nurse (Dialogi s. Gregorii, I). Rome was then still flourishing. It is true that the Goths and Vandals had filled it with ruins, but the principal monuments were still standing. However, Rome was no longer the capital of the Roman Empire ; one after another, it had lost its provinces. Finally, Italy itself fell to Odoacer, king of the Heruli, who was in turn killed by a new invader, Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths in 493, under whose reign Benedict’s stay in Rome took place. He had just arrived in the city when he had the opportunity to witness a striking scene. In 500, the king, who until then had his residence in Ravenna, left it to make his triumphal entry into the capital of the Empire. The Pope, the Senate, and the entire clergy came out to meet him with extraordinary pomp. Although an Arian, he was anxious to win the sympathies of the crowd, and went to prostrate himself at the tomb of St. Peter, and then in the Forum he addressed the people, promising to respect their rights and laws. On this day B. was able to experience the splendour of the world, which he was soon to renounce. The situation of the Church was also very turbulent. In November 498, Pope Anastasius II died, and the electors of his successor were divided into two groups. The Romans decided on Symmachus and installed him in the Lateran, but the Byzantine party acclaimed Pope Lawrence at St. Mary Major . For nearly three years the city was the scene of savage scenes. There were murders even among the clergy and monks
Hermit in Subiaco
It is not known how long Benedict’s stay in Rome lasted. It was doubtless long enough to acquire a good culture, especially in the sacred sciences, the Holy See, and patristic and monastic literature, as is shown by the Rule. But he did not finish his studies. St. Gregory gives the reason: “Seeing many of his companions plunging into the abyss of vice, fearing for himself what he saw in others, he resolved to withdraw from the world the foot he had barely set foot in it.” Rome, which had just embraced Christianity, was still pagan in its customs. As for the dangers that young people ran into in Rome shortly before Benedict, St. Paulinus of Nola , writing to Lucentius , who had had St. Augustine as his rhetoric teacher , says: “Rome today, alas, is a bad counselor, capable of bringing down the strongest. But my son, I beg you, always keep Father Augustine before your eyes in the midst of the corruption of the city; “Thinking of him, you will safely overcome the thousand dangers of this fragile life” (Epist., 46). In this environment, Benedict felt an overwhelming desire to leave the world and retire to the service of God. On the other hand, news of the austerities to which many Christians were subjected in the deserts of Egypt and Palestine were reaching him. Caravans set out from Rome and other parts of the West to witness such events and spread the word on their return.
Benedict, having heard of this news, decided to follow the example of these holy anchorites. There, just a stone’s throw from the city, was the desert, and one day, instead of taking the usual route of his class, he turned and headed for Tivoli along the Via Nomentana. His faithful nurse followed him, who was not willing to leave him alone, and together they reached a village called Enfide, today Enfile. Here he stayed for a while in the midst of a colony of ascetics.
A miracle he performed to console his nurse made him flee secretly, for he did not want to be considered a saint (Dialogi s. Greg., I). Perhaps he also encountered some disappointments there. These communities of ascetics were not without certain defects. The saint would later describe in his Rule these monks who lived two by two, or three by three, in their own houses, without following any rule and living as they pleased. It seems to be a personal experience.
He left Enfida, and at a distance of about 10 km found the ruined palace of Nero , near an artificial lake formed by the waters of the Anio . There, in the rocks that dominate the landscape, he discovered a cave that he liked, which was to serve as his home for three years. It was Subiaco. This picturesque spot had long ago attracted lovers of solitude, and in the valley were numerous huts occupied by hermits.
One day he met one of them, named Romanus, who was to train him in the principles of monastic life; after placing the habit and tonsure on him, he undertook to instruct him in spiritual things, and to provide him with regular food. He was also discovered by some shepherds, and many of them passed from a life of animals to a life of piety, under the influence of his word, which vibrated ardently when he spoke to them of God. His name became famous in the surroundings, and the attendance at the holy cave grew ever greater.
The news reached Rome and made a deep impression, because Rome had not forgotten B., that distinguished young man from the Anicio family, who had disappeared from its midst overnight. After a few years of silence, he made his voice heard, preceded by the aura of virtue and the gift of miracles. From then on, many Roman nobles gave him their children to be educated in the law of God; with them he was able to form 12 monasteries with 12 monks each and their corresponding prelate, thus creating a new organization in the history of monasticism. It was a middle ground between the great cenobium of St. Pachomius and the lauras of St. Anthony the Abbot .
Among his disciples were two favourites, Placidus and Maurus, who also achieved sainthood. Both, like him, came from Rome and had come from a patrician family. But not everything was a success; in the desert he also had his trials to finish forging his soul and give it the necessary temper for the mission to which he was destined and which he was about to begin. At the request of the monks of the neighbouring monastery of Vicovaro, he agreed to be their abbot, but the firmness with which he observed the rule provoked serious murmurings and even an attempt at poisoning him, which failed by a miracle (Dialogi s. Greg., III). He took leave of them and returned to his retreat. On another occasion, it seems that it was the devil who directly tried to make him give up his intentions of sainthood, suggesting a strong carnal temptation that he overcame by throwing himself into a bramble bush. Another time was the hostility of a neighbouring parish priest named Florentius, who, envious of his work, tried to corrupt the virtue of his disciples (Dialogi, VIII).
Montecassino
Taking the southern route along the Via Latina, Benedict reached Cassino, where the leading figures of the Roman Republic had once had their villas, such as Mark Antony and Cato. On the hill overlooking the town, the saint found remains of idolatry, evangelised and converted its inhabitants, tore down the idols, and on the ruins of a temple dedicated to Jupiter he built the monastery that was to be the cradle of the Benedictine Order. In the pages left to us by St. Gregory, we see how monastic life developed there. The saint is shown working with his monks, sitting at the monastery door, praying even at night, governing and directing his monks, alleviating the suffering of the poor during the famine of those calamitous times and receiving visits from illustrious figures, such as King Totila, to whom he announced his imminent death after reproaching him for his excesses. But there is one fact that dominates them all: there he wrote the Rule < http://www.sanbenitoelcerro.com/rsb.htm >after having been lived and practiced, a rule that made him the legislator of the West, since it displaced the others that were then disputing hegemony: that of St. Pachomius, that of St. Basil and that of Cassian. He owed this success to the great discretion that is his characteristic, adapting it to the conditions of Western life and to the postulates of time and place.
The Rule consists of a prologue and 73 chapters, the content of which can be classified into four points: a moral code, which points out three duties mainly: self-denial, obedience and work; a liturgical code, which organizes the divine office, to which, he says, nothing should be put before because it is the service of God, servitutis officium; a disciplinary code, in which he introduces the great innovation of the vow of stability, which constitutes the monastery into a family, in which he suppresses the great corporal austerities of the previous rules and imposes no other norm than that of avoiding gluttony and excess; and a political code, in which he establishes an absolute, permanent and elective authority, who is called abbot. The time of its composition is believed to have been ca. 540, that is, towards the end of his life.
His language is rough, full of grammatical errors; it is the one commonly used by the people at a time when Latin was beginning to be corrupted to give way to the formation of the Romance languages. It is not that he was ignorant of the classical Latin of the good times of Rome , but that, being a practical man above all, more than a literary work he intended to make it accessible to the conditions of the time in which he lived. In this sense it is a document of great personal value. Various comments have been made about it, of which we will only mention a few. The series is opened by Paul the Deacon, a monk of Montecassino in the 8th century .
It is interesting to learn about the life of the monastery. Tritemio, in the 17th century , and Antonio Pérez, General of the Congregation of Valladolid in the 18th century, comment on it from the point of view of piety; Mege, whose commentary is a response to Rancé’s book (Devoirs de la vie monastique) in which he maintained the obligation to observe the Rule in the literal sense; Martene, Calmet, one of the best, and finally, the most modern of all, Delatte: Commentaire sur la Regle de Saint Benolt. There is a critical edition by Cutbert Butler: S. Benedicti Regula monachorum, Fribourg 1912. Gregorio Arroyo, a monk of Silos, has given us a concordance of the same: Concordantia S. Regulae, Burgos 1947 .
Physiognomy of the saint
St. Gregory, in his dialogues, often takes pleasure in showing us the character of St. Benedict. He was serious, thoughtful, and in his judgment above his years, corgerens senile, aetatem moribus transiens. This doubtless came from his Sabine race and his Christian upbringing. This character was expressed on the outside in a serene, peaceful, serious face: vultu placido.
This way of being made him strongly condemn jokes and jeers: aeterna clausura in omnibus locis damnamus, immoderate and boisterous laughter and idle words; he detested the frivolity and disorder of his fellow students; in the government of his monks he showed himself to be a man of authority, an authority that sometimes took on a certain harshness proper to those times; he loved order above all, as can be seen in various details of the Rule. However, alongside this authority and gravity, one discovers in him goodness and understanding, which led him to mitigate to a great extent the austerities of the previous Rules.
His intelligence was rather practical, methodical; his will was firm, unbreakable, which led him to radical resolutions. In the supernatural order, his characteristic, what guided his whole life, was the virtue of religion. St. Gregory defines him as the man of God, vir Dei. For him, God is everything; if he leaves the world it is to please God: soli Deo placere cupiens; he founded a monastery to be a school of divine service, divini schola servitii; his preferred occupation is Opus Dei: divine praise; he admonishes the master of novices to carefully inquire whether his disciples sincerely seek God; he wants his monks to work in everything for the glory of God, and he orders the procurator to sell whatever he has to sell at a lower price than the lay people: ut in omnibus glorificetur Deus, so that God may be glorified in everything.
Finally, he gave his disciples the imperious motto: nihil amori Christi praeponere, put nothing before the love of Christ. Saint Benedict was born on 21 March 547, according to the most common opinion, and was buried in the oratory of Monte Cassino, next to the remains of his saintly sister Scholastica, who had died shortly before. His body was transferred in 673 to the monastery of Fleury sur Loire, and in the 11th century, its abbot granted some of his relics to the monks of Monte Cassino who had come to claim them.