Benedict means “the blessed,” and the patriarch of Western monasticism was indeed blessed as few men have ever been. At first, however, the fruits of the divine bounty were hidden from men's eyes. In his own century Benedict went almost unnoticed, nor did a single contemporary so much as take the trouble to commit his name to paper. Pope Gregory I, two generations later, was the first to write an account of the prodigious events of Benedict's life. Gregory devoted the second book of his Dialogues to the story of Benedict, and this, together with the rule, are our only sources for Benedict's life. Gregory, moreover, as he remarks in his preface, had not personally known Benedict: “All the notable things and acts of his life I could not learn; but those few, which I now mind to report, I had by the relation of four of his disciples.”
It is often objected that what Gregory tells us consists, in the main, of tales of miracles that clearly follow the biblical pattern. And the value of Gregory's account as a strictly historical piece of writing is certainly open to question. However, this objection is of no great consequence, for what Gregory set out to write was not biography in the modern sense of the word, but a portrait of the “man of God,” of the fabulous wonder-worker. And the portrait reflects the reaction of Benedict's immediate disciples and their successors to the life and person of their spiritual father.
Owing, however, to the nature of Gregory's account, we are able to reconstruct Benedict's life only in very summary form, without any indication of the whys and wherefores of his action. His personality remains for the most part shrouded in obscurity; occasionally, and only momentarily, it stands out in clear view, and then it is again lost to sight. But the mystery about him only serves to make him more attractive. We cannot trace the path of his psychological development; all we have is individual scenes from his life, separated by long intervals of silence. The portrayal of the essential Benedict is a task that challenges every generation anew.
Benedict came of an honorable family of Nursia, in the Sabine country. When he was still very young, he was sent to Rome to complete his studies, but the Eternal City held no attractions for him. Instead of admiring the ancient monuments, he was appalled at the mounting evidence of social and moral disintegration which surrounded him, and feared, as Gregory writes, lest he too should fall headlong into “the dangerous and godless gulf” if he remained there longer. Accordingly, he broke off his studies and, “instructed with learned ignorance, and furnished with unlearned wisdom,” he fled to the solitude of the Sabine hills. There he sought out a cave and entered upon the life of a hermit, “desiring rather the miseries of the world than the praises of men,” as Gregory significantly adds.
Contrary to the usual notion, Benedict's first spiritual kinship was with the desert fathers of the East, and even in the subsequent phases of his life he observed the strictest seclusion from the world. His solitary life in an inhospitable region soon turned the youth of gentle birth into something more like a wild creature than a man. In the thickets near his cave, shepherds once caught a glimpse of him clothed in matted skins, and took him at first for an animal. One can hardly avoid a sense of revulsion at the young hermit's utter deprivation. And the animal-like figure of the youthful Benedict seems to have little enough in common with the poised and dignified patriarch of Western monasticism as he is usually portrayed. Benedict was far indeed from what he was later to become. Nor was his withdrawal from society merely external; he had cut himself off so completely that he no longer knew the day on which Christendom celebrated Easter. In his total seclusion he had lost sight even of the life of the Church. The man with whose name we associate the most fruitful liturgical development was no longer mindful even of the day of the Lord's resurrection.
Like the desert fathers of old, Benedict had to endure the most frightful temptations in his cave. The world that he had abandoned stirred within him, and he was haunted, in particular, by the image of a woman he had once seen. The more his imagination busied itself with the sweet memory, the greater grew his desire, and he was on the point of abandoning his self-imposed solitude and returning to the world when, at the last moment, “seeing many thick briers and nettle bushes to grow hard by, off he cast his apparel, and threw himself into the midst of them, and there he wallowed so long that, when he rose up, all his flesh was pitifully torn: and so by the wounds of his body he cured the wounds of his soul, in that he turned pleasure into pain.” Only in this barbarous way could he master temptation.
The father of Western monasticism was a model of balance and control, but his serenity came to him neither from his temperament nor as a free gift; it was the fruit of iron self-discipline and an untiring struggle with his own nature. It was there, in the thorny briers, that he laid the foundations for what he was to become. This contest unto blood was necessary that he might achieve holiness. Gregory writes: “From which time forward, as himself did afterward report unto his disciples, he found all temptation of pleasure so subdued that he never felt any such thing.”
Despite his retirement from the world, rumors of his unusual life were bruited about the countryside and earned him high regard. It was thus that the monks of a neighboring monastery, whose abbot had died, came to ask him to accept that office. At first he refused, because he was eager to pursue his solitary way of life, and it was only after repeated requests that he finally agreed.
But this first experiment in cenobitism was to end in abrupt and unexpected catastrophe. The monks, living in an age of general decay of manners and morals, were unaccustomed to any kind of monastic discipline, and Benedict's strict governance was not at all to their taste. They looked upon it as an intolerable restraint, and rebelled.
Finally, in order to rid themselves of their obnoxious abbot, some of them put poison in his wine. Such crime was possible even among men who had fled the world to lead a life pleasing to God! As we see, Gregory did not choose to gloss over the incident.
Benedict triumphed sublimely over this murderous plot. As he made the sign of the cross over the vessel which, in accordance with monastic custom, had been presented to him for his blessing, the monk who was holding it was overcome by fear and dropped it. Benedict immediately realized what had happened. Rising from the table, he said to the assembled monks: “Almighty God have mercy upon you and forgive you. Why have you used me in this manner? Did not I tell you beforehand that our manner of living could never agree together? Go your ways, and seek ye out some other father suitable to your own conditions, for I intend not now to stay any longer amongst you.”
Here, for the first time, we hear the authority in Benedict's voice and glimpse something of that inner majesty of the humble man of God before which all opposition, like the poisoned cup, must fall to the ground. Those who would not suffer Benedict's rebuke, “I intend not now to stay any longer amongst you,” must show themselves worthy of his companionship.
The incident marked the close of his first attempt at community life. Even Benedict did not reach his goal in a day, and he had to endure bitter setbacks. But he went on steadfastly, whether his path led him through briers or into the hands of murderers. He returned to his solitude, meditating the lesson of his fateful experience.
And a little later he made a second venture into community living which differed very markedly from the first. He took care to avoid the mistake of joining an already existing community to whose ways he would have had to conform. Instead, he invited several young men who wished to lead a monastic life to join him in founding a new community. The partners in this enterprise would have to conform to his rule, and not he to theirs.
Benedict was now in a position to train his subjects after his own fashion. He was an inspired teacher of men, one of the greatest in the history of Christian spirituality. He possessed the power really to form young people, to make of them monks who would constitute a rampart against the destructive forces of the age. He knew exactly where he wanted to go and the way to get there.
In the year 529—the year in which Justinian closed the school of philosophy at Athens—Benedict moved with his disciples to Monte Cassino, midway between Rome and Naples. The year thus marked the end of one era and the beginning of another. And it was on the ruins of a neglected temple to Jupiter, set on the densely wooded mountaintop, that Benedict proceeded to lay the foundations of a Christian monastery.
The first task of the monks was to erect their buildings, and their difficulties were tremendous, for they had little experience in such matters. Once an inexpertly built wall collapsed, crushing one of the monks under the masonry. Benedict, however, by the miraculous power of his prayer, restored him to life.
On another occasion the head of a billhook was torn from its handle and fell into a near-by lake. Benedict, after causing it to rise from the bottom of the lake, comforted the monk to whom the mishap had occurred, saying to him: “Behold, here is thy bill again, work on and be sad no more.” A short enough phrase, yet typical of the Benedictine spirit, a gem to be prized for all times. Instead of wasting time in pointless reproach, Benedict invites the monk to work on with a carefree heart. If we ponder these simple words, we shall suddenly understand something of the grace that flowed from Benedict. They reflect an attitude as valid today as it was then; Benedict's way was to deal with a problem without fuss and quietly to proceed to the next thing. It was this composure which Benedict planted as a fruitful seed in the monastic foundation of Monte Cassino, and which made of the Benedictine monastery a focus of new life when Roman civilization was in its death throes.
Benedict's disciples could never quite explain their spiritual father. For all his humanity, he remained beyond their understanding, and they credited him with limitless powers. They intimated that he could read men's hearts and reveal what was hidden from men's eyes. Gregory's account of Benedict's dealings with the Gothic king, Totila, is illustrative of this belief.
If we regard this incident as no more than a literary invention of Gregory's, intended to celebrate an easy victory on paper over the hated Goths, we shall miss the point of this unusual encounter. The crafty Totila desired to see Benedict, and announced his arrival. But he wanted first to put the man of God to the test, so he decked out his sword-bearer in his royal attire, gave him the necessary escort, and sent him to Benedict. But hardly had the pseudo-king entered the monastic precincts when Benedict looked at him with penetrating glance and said: “Put off, my good son, put off that apparel, for that which thou hast on is none of thine.” The sword-bearer, finding himself unmasked, fell to the ground in fear, and at the same time Totila arrived in person. Benedict spoke to him in the fearless tones that true men of God have always dared use in the presence of the great ones of the world. He admonished the Gothic leader to desist from his wickedness and foretold his unhappy future.
Benedict could foresee the terrible times that were about to befall his country, in which his beloved monastery too was to be engulfed, and his prophetic vision filled him with deep sorrow. His disciples found him weeping in his cell as he looked upon these things. These tears were the unavoidable accompaniment of his terrible prophetic vision. There is no prophecy not linked with tears, for the future is nearly always heavy with nameless terror.
Benedict's prophetic gift was directly linked with his mysticism. And although he said little about his mystical graces, he certainly received them. Gregory relates the following experience: “The man of God, Benedict, being diligent in watching, rose early up before the time of matins (his monks being yet at rest) and came to the window of his chamber, where he offered up his prayer to Almighty God. Standing there, all on a sudden, in the dead of night, as he looked forth, he saw a light which banished away the darkness of the night and glittered with such brightness that the light which did shine in the midst of darkness was far more clear than the light of the day. Upon this sight a marvelous strange thing followed, for, as himself did afterward report, the whole world, gathered as it were together under one beam of the sun, was presented before his eyes.”
This radiant vision of light, to which Gregory, in his Dialogues, attached a profound significance, belongs altogether to the world of mysticism. Only the greatest mystics have had a like experience of the divine; perhaps we might recall Jakob Böhme's fathomless vision of the center of things. To see “the whole world gathered as it were together under one beam of the sun” denotes a state of rapture in which the soul is incomprehensibly enlarged. To Benedict, apparently so sober and matter of fact in his approach to life, was granted the singular grace of direct vision of the heavenly light. It was Thomas Aquinas's considered opinion that Benedict must have seen God face to face, a grace granted only to Moses and Abraham before him. The understanding of the whole through a part is akin to angelic understanding, and is the aim of all mystical knowledge of being.
A truly delightful incident that Gregory narrates is Benedict's last meeting with his sister, Scholastica, who had also consecrated her life to God. Once a year the two would meet in the vicinity of Monte Cassino, and on this occasion, Gregory tells us, “the holy nun his sister entreated him to stay there all night, that they might spend it in discoursing of the joys of heaven.” Benedict was dumfounded at the suggestion that he should spend a night outside the monastery, and refused point-blank. Scholastica did not insist, but folded her hands, bowed her head, and prayed to the Almighty. At once a torrential rain began to fall, so that Benedict was unable to leave. Realizing the connection, he proceeded to reproach her, but she replied: “I desired you to stay, and you would not hear me; I have desired our good Lord, and he hath vouchsafed to grant my petition.” And so, Gregory concludes, Benedict, “being not able to go forth, tarried there against his will, where willingly before he would not stay. And so by that means they watched all night, and with spiritual and heavenly talk did mutually comfort one another.”
Scholastica died three days later, and Benedict did not long survive her. He had prophetic knowledge of his death, and gave his disciples due warning. Six days before he died, he asked that his grave be prepared; he wished to view the place where his body was to be buried. He was completely fearless in the face of the inevitable end; he himself had taught his monks that one of the “tools of good works” was “to keep death daily before one's eyes.” Then fever gripped him, accompanied by torturing heat. In his last hours, Gregory tells us, Benedict had himself carried into the church and, “having his weak body held up between the hands of his disciples, he stood with his own lifted up to heaven, and, as he was in that manner praying, he gave up the ghost.” The probable date was March 21, 547. The scene is rich in symbolism; the father of the monks of the West, standing in prayer to return his soul to his Maker, had become as a single flame soaring to heaven.
Gregory reports only isolated incidents in Benedict's life, yet, taken together, they make up a singularly impressive picture, which gains in depth if viewed against the historical background of the time. And there could hardly be a more somber background than that of the close of the fifth century, when Benedict was born. It was a time of frightful destruction, leading to a cultural decline without parallel. The decay had spread into every sphere, and threatened to destroy Western civilization altogether. The Roman empire, its strength already undermined, was falling before the onslaught of savage hordes from the East, and the wandering of the nations was as a second flood which, like the first, engulfed everything. Moral and social corruption was accompanied by epidemic disease and famine, which decimated populations and turned the countryside into something more like a wilderness. And, as in all periods of decline, the centrifugal forces were everywhere triumphant.
Against this fearful and widespread devastation, Benedict's constructiveness stands out all the more strikingly. The Abbot of Monte Cassino was a master builder; that is the basic conclusion we may draw from Gregory's hagiographical portrait of Benedict.
For our generation, groaning under the weight of new devastations, this view of Benedict opens up new horizons. We ask: what is the significance of the father of Western monasticism for our times? And we find that it is this: Benedict was, in the first place, the living embodiment of the divine will for man, which is that man should build and not destroy. It is both literally and figuratively true to say that Benedict, whose influence has survived the erosion of the centuries, was a spiritual architect. All his words and all his works were directed to the single purpose of building up the City of God on earth. Few other men have been so completely positive in their approach. And it was this approach that enabled him to find the new remedy which, quietly and imperceptibly, saved Western civilization.
The man of the pax Christi remained aloof from theological strife, which serves only to divide men. He refrained equally from controversy, believing it better “to be silent than to speak” of unpleasant matters, and to turn away from them, as he says, “leaving them on one side.” His sole concern in the midst of the general havoc was to build up again, to lay a new foundation upon the ruins of the old. The more closely we study him, the more clearly he appears as the saintly adversary of the diabolical nihilism of every century. And his example is of timeless value to all Christians, whose duty it has always been to restore what foul malice has destroyed.
