Benedict St

Benedict, St., founder of the order of Benedictines, was born in 480 in Nursia, Umbria. While still a mere youth he fled from Rome, where he had been attending school, to escape the wickedness of the capital, and lived in a secluded grotto near Subiaco about 40 miles from the city. When he had spent about three years in this solitude, subjecting himself to the severest discipline, he was invited by the monks of a neighbouring monastery to become their head. His rule, however, proving too strict, he awakened only resentment in the breasts of his inferiors against him and was obliged to leave. Meanwhile his fame only spread the more and crowds flocked to see him, from the wealthy Roman patrician to the wild Goth. After founding twelve monasteries in the valley of the Arno, the vicinity of his retreat, he removed to Monte Cassino near Naples, and there established the monastery that afterwards grew to be the richest and most famous in Italy. Here Totila, the Gothic king, though Rome and Italy-were at his feet, sought an interview with this holy man, and here the rules that he afterwards drew up for monks and which became general to Western monasticism, were first introduced. To the merely religious exercises of monasteries he added manual labour, the instruction of the young, and the copying of manuscripts - this last having been the means of preserving many ancient literary remains. He is said to have died standing in 513.