University:
California State University, Northridge
Course:
RS 345 | Christianity
Academic year:

2010
Views:

114

Pages:

1
Author:

Fachtitelb00

St. Benedict (Benedict of Nursia, 480-547 A.D.) is a tremendously important, but almost unknown figure in the history of the Western Church and society. "Authentic" personal details are principally found in the Second Dialogue, written by Pope Gregory the Great (Pope from 590 to 604 A.D.), but these are so mixed in with the fantastic and mythological as to make any statement of fact hazardous. Gregory, needless to say, did not know Benedict, though there was a group of his followers living in Rome in a monastery on the Caelian Hill by his time. It seems that Benedict was the son of a local prominent family at Nursia. He was sent to Rome for an education, where he was distressed by easy living and lack of serious purpose among his fellow students. He removed himself from his studies and became a solitary, at Subiaco, where he soon began to attract favorable attention from like-minded penitents and serious Christians. Even his sister (St.) Scholastic eventually joined him there, and Benedict became abbot of a community. He died of fever in 547. The autograph manuscript of the Rule of Saint Benedict was destroyed in a fire at the monastery of Trano in 896 A.D. Luckily copies had been made, though these are very corrupt. The most important, in the Library of the Monastery of St. Gallien near Konstanz in Switzerland, claims to be a copy of a copy of the original, done by two monks, Grimault and Tatto, from a text which Charlemagne had commissioned for his Court Library at Aachen (Aixla-Chapelle, in Germany near the Dutch border).