11 July - Benedict was born around 480-491 to a noble Roman family from Nursia in Umbria. His childhood takes place in Nursia, where he lives with his parents and receives a good education. When he reaches adolescence, Benedict leaves his family, like most children of the Italian nobility, to study liberal arts.
enedict leaves with his governess and arrives in Rome around the year 495. The Roman way of life and the moral disorder in which his companions were sinking quickly shocked Benedict, who decided to flee with Cyrilla so that he could devote himself entirely to the Bible. His departure is motivated by the fear of "falling into the abyss of vices, ambition and sensuality". He chooses "the science of non-knowledge and learned ignorance". It is his deeply religious background that pushes Benedict to leave Rome and the career that was promised to him. They leave the city through the Tiburtine gate and walk south. They stop in Enfide, where they find refuge in the church of San Pietro. It is in this locality that Benedict's first miracle is said to have taken place: his maid having clumsily broken a sieve borrowed from a neighbour in half, Benedict prayed and the utensil was repaired without a trace of crack. This miracle leads to his sudden popularity and he decides to flee from all his entourage to "go to the desert" in the nearby town of Subiaco and lead a hermit's life there.
In Subiaco, Benedict meets a monk, named Romain, and asks him to show him a place that is not very visible and not easily accessible. The monk shows him a cave, at the foot of a cliff, where Benedict settles. The cave was later named the Sacro Speco, the Holy Grotto. The friendship between the monk and Benedict takes concrete form in material help: the monk regularly brings him food and texts with the help of a basket hung on a rope and a bell. It is this same Roman monk who gives Benedict his first religious clothes, receiving him in the minor orders. Benedict then follows the way of life of the anchorites.
It was around 510, that Benedict became abbot for the first time. He soon realized that his community in Vicovaro did not strictly respect the rule of St. Pacomo, who had organized the first religious communities. Benedict sought to restore order there, by re-establishing authority and penances. Very soon the monks regretted having elected him as abbot. They then try to poison him by mixing poisonous herbs into his wine. At the time of the blessing, Benedict makes a sign of the cross and his cup of wine breaks. Without violence, he decides to leave and return to the solitude of his cave.
While he lives withdrawn in his cave, he sees many disciples coming to him, eager to "serve with him the Almighty God". He left his cave and decided to settle with his disciples on the shores of a lake, in Subiaco, where he would stay for twenty to thirty years. For all these people he built twelve houses, with - for each one - twelve monks and an abbot. He himself, Benedict, lived in a thirteenth house, where he trained the young recruits.
From Subiaco, Benedict and his companions leave (in 529) for a village on the side of a mountain, in a more arid and less Christianized region, to settle in a place called Cassino, Mount Cassin. This place had been a camp of the Roman legion. In a nearby wood, there lived a hermit monk named Martin. To resist the lure of the world, he lived attached to a tree. When Benedict arrived there, he convinced him to untie his chains so that he could live for God out of love, not out of fear of the world. The hermit accepts and becomes one of his monks. The monks also spread Christianity to the people in the surrounding area.
Finally, in the year of his death (547), he predicted to some brothers the day of his death. Six days before, he had his tomb opened. When the fever takes him, he is taken to the oratory, receives communion, then, leaning his weakened limbs on the arms of his disciples, stands up with his hands raised to heaven and, in a last breath, whispers prayers. On that day, two brothers had a similar vision: that of a path strewn with carpets and shining with innumerable lights, which, straight to the east, goes from Benedict's cell to heaven. Benedict will be buried in the oratory of St. John the Baptist, which he had built on Mount Cassin, on the site of the temple of Apollo. The relics of St. Benedict are kept in the crypt of the abbey of Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire, near Orléans, and Germigny-des-Prés, where there is a Carolingian church, in central France.
His influence is considerable on monasticism in the West and in the world, as well as on the whole intellectual life of Christianity, especially thanks to the Rule of Saint Benedict. This rule proposes, at the same time as a journey towards God, an ideal of life in community. It is sometimes taken as an example for corporate organization. It was proclaimed patron saint of all Europe on 24 October 1964 by Pope Paul VI. Until the Second Vatican Council, Saint Benedict was venerated twice a year in the West: on 11 July (feast day), the anniversary of the translation of his relics to the Abbey of Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire, and on 21 March (memorial), the anniversary of his death. When the Roman calendar was reworked by Pope Paul VI in the wake of the Council, the date of 11 July was chosen.
