BENEDICT, saint, founder of the Benedictines.
Medal. - IV. The Rule.
I. THE LIFE AND MISSION
Around 480, St. Benedict was born into a noble family "ex provincia Nursiae." His first formation was shaped by the famous examples of the revered ascetics of the region and by the domestic example of his sister Scholastica, who had consecrated herself to God in the very years of her childhood and was thereafter to remain so closely united to Benedict.
He was sent to Rome to complete his studies there, entrusted to the watchful care of his nurse. But he soon withdrew from it, and, accompanied this time too by his nurse, he took refuge at Enfide, present-day Affile, among the Simbruini Mountains, and there, near the church of St. Peter, he perhaps continued his studies, alternating them with the fervent practice of asceticism (c. 500). He did not remain there long, for, faced with the danger of an unwanted popularity, he headed for the not distant and deserted locality of Subiaco, near the ancient Neronian villa. A monk, Romanus, clothed him in the monastic habit and helped him in the first steps of his new life. Above all he was faithful in keeping his dwelling hidden, so that for three years, solitary in his cave, "in Superni Spectatoris oculis habitavit secum." But he could not remain hidden for long. As his fame grew with time, he was in fact invited to take charge of a nearby monastery, Vicovaro, where the abbot had died and the community was in decline. The attempt to recall it to a new and more fervent life broke against the obstinate will of the monks, who even tried to poison him, and he returned "ad locum dilectae solitudinis."
Very soon the need to make himself a master of the disciples, who flocked to him in ever greater numbers, and to adapt himself to their needs, forced him once again, but this time forever, to renounce the eremitic life, which had formed his original, ardent ideal. He would always retain such high esteem and deep love for it that even in the Rule, written for cenobites, he would point to it as the supreme summit of monastic asceticism. But in his new system he did not depart from the imitation of the great Egyptian examples, and, like St. Pachomius, he distributed his disciples into groups: there were twelve of them, each with its own abbot, in as many houses, while he reserved for himself the formation of certain chosen recruits. Among these were Maurus and Placidus, the best known of his monks, whom their parents, like many others of the Roman nobility, had wished to entrust to him. But through contact with daily experience the legislator's ideal gradually changed, orienting itself toward ever more completely cenobitic forms, closer to the Basilian model.
The persecution, stirred up against him by the jealousy of a priest of the surrounding area, seemed to drive him definitively to carry out the new plan, and, in the vigor of his full maturity, he abandoned Subiaco, heading toward the ancient city of Cassino. The decision was not one of those made suddenly. Benedict in fact built his new house, the definitive expression of the ideal matured over long years of experiment, on a mountain that had once been a military acropolis and at that time was still frequented in its various temples by the worshippers of idols. He took up residence there as a master and without any delay tore down its altars and cut down its sacred groves, while with assiduous preaching (according to some authors he would have ascended to the priesthood) he devoted himself to the conversion of the still pagan part of the population. All this, given the well-established requirements of civil and canon law, certainly could not have happened without a specific mission, or at least a permission from the competent authorities. And what the Gregorian source, on this as on so many other points, does not say, tradition allows us to glimpse in the various ways in which it reports it: from the divine mission, which the most ancient authors recall, to the donation of Tertullus, a patrician, which even amid legendary alterations presents a substratum of truth; from the relations with the Roman milieu to the approval and encouragement of the Apostolic See. Thus on the summit of the mountain arose the new monastery, complete in itself, the typical model of the most perfect cenobitism to be practiced under the immediate and continuous direction of a single father. Almost to signify the new orientation, the two oratories built on the citadel were dedicated in honor of St. John the Baptist, father of the monks of the New Testament and precursor of the Gospel, and of St. Martin of Tours, the monk apostle of the Gauls. The construction of the buildings, of which Benedict was the wise architect, and the organization of the new life undoubtedly required time. The date of 529, traditional for more than seven centuries, is probably to be understood as a terminus "ad quem." From then on that new "company of monks, who read, cultivated the land, practiced the arts in the midst of the great society that was decomposing through barbarism, prepared the seed of the future civilization and recomposition of peoples" (L. Tosti).
On the mountain there was a continuous thronging of people: from the humble, who went there to invoke the protection and help of father Benedict, to ecclesiastical dignitaries, such as the bishop Sabinus from distant Canosa, to the powerful of the age, such as the king of the Goths Totila, who asked the Saint for words of life and comfort. Once a year the old man himself would leave the monastery to go meet his sister Scholastica and spend time with her in sweet spiritual conversations. In the place where, according to tradition, the meeting took place, recent excavations (1939), although not carried to completion, have nonetheless brought to light the remains of a small single-apsed church, dating, at least in part, to a remote antiquity.
The last visit, according to the Gregorian source, had to be prolonged throughout the whole night, against Benedict's will: the violent storm, obtained by his sister's prayers and love, forced him to remain. Three days later, from his tower, he saw her soul fly to heaven in the form of a white dove, and he had her body carried to the tomb that on the summit of the mountain, in the shrine of St. John the Baptist, he had prepared for the two of them.
Not much time passed before Benedict joined her in eternity. Six days before his death he had the tomb opened, then, feeling that the hour had come, he wished to be carried into the oratory, where, fortified with the body and blood of the Lord, in the arms of his disciples, praying, he gave up his spirit to God. It was March 21: the year, especially from the way in which Benedict and St. Sabinus spoke to each other of the ruin impending over Rome through the work of Totila, seems unable to be earlier than 547. This date therefore, as indeed almost the whole chronology of St. Benedict's life, remains only approximate.
The biography as Pope Gregory has traced it for us cannot answer all our needs; not through any culpable defect, but because of the exclusively edifying purpose the writer set himself and because of the nature of the hagiography of those times. Nor do we find in it reliable elements for reconstructing the physical appearance of the Saint.
And yet we have quite clear his spiritual image as it springs from the candid Gregorian narrative and from the immortal pages of the Rule. He is a man of firm and decided character. In the profound sincerity of his own being, solicitous to please God alone, he turns to seek him and consecrates himself to his service. This single purpose gives unity to his whole life, which he spends in the presence of God, in justice and truth. The natural gifts of his disposition — reflective, serious, loving order and peace, endowed with an exquisite sense of balance and discernment — are thus fused and ennobled in the practice of the love of God, to whom he prefers nothing, and of neighbor, upon whom in his pious and paternal teaching he pours out his treasures of intelligence and experience to bring him ever closer to God. Thus his natural qualities cooperate with grace in making him fit to carry out the gigantic mission for which Providence had chosen him. Living in the times of Italy's deepest depression, while the ancient Roman world was falling into ruin, with his creation he prepared its reconstruction. By saving Western monasticism through the adaptation of the vital principles of the East to the Roman mentality, with his sacred code he transmitted to the new peoples the traditions of the fathers and the highest practical commentary on the Gospel life. He thus furnished the Church with laborers for the breaking of the immense field of work that opened before it and prepared the new times.
If, therefore, one considers that «not only in the final catastrophe of the Western empire did he personify with rare purity the true Roman spirit, but he was also one of the last executors of the mission assigned by Providence to the spirit of Rome in the history of humanity... we may well say that he was the last Roman» (I. Herwegen). But if we bear in mind that he was one of the architects of European unity, the true father of the peoples made brothers in the sacred name of Christ and in the august name of Rome, we may equally hail him as «the first of the new Romans, of those especially who grafted the virtue proper to the Roman stock onto the plant that was later to give to this, in the Italian nation, its glorious daughter..., as he whose name and whose work form one of the firmest threads around which, from beginning to end, the unity of Italy's national history is woven» (C. Calisse, S. B., in Nuova Antologia, 1929, IV, p. 11 ff.
II. ICONOGRAPHY
Equal to the historical importance and the breadth of St. Benedict's work has been the cult with which the peoples have shown him their grateful devotion, comparable only to that of the Apostles; in recent centuries, however, after the ruins accumulated by errors and political upheavals, it has been notably reduced. Nevertheless, numerous also in Italy are the localities and churches that preserve the name of the Cassinese patriarch, as well as the works of art that glorify his image and the episodes of his life. Let us recall here only the oldest painting of the 8th century (Rome, S. Ermete on the Via Salaria vetus) and the celebrated pictorial cycles of Subiaco (Sacro Speco, 12th-15th cent.), of Florence (S. Miniato al Monte, Spinello Aretino, 14th cent.), of Naples (S. Severino, A. Solario known as lo Zingaro, 16th cent. and F. De Mura, 18th cent.), of Monte Oliveto Maggiore (Sodoma, 16th cent.), of Montecassino, irreparably lost due to the nefarious diarruption of the abbey (Luca Giordano, 17th cent., and Scuola Beuronense, 19th cent.); to these is to be added, notable also for the history of custom, the series of miniatures by the Cassinese monk Leo (11th cent., cod. Vat. lat. 1202).
III. MEDAL
A characteristic form of devotion to St. Benedict is still today that of the medal, which enjoys a widespread popularity among the faithful, second only to that of the Virgin. Its historical origins are obscure, but they must undoubtedly be connected with what St. Gregory relates concerning the efficacy of the cross used by St. Benedict. Its specific element is in fact a square cross reproduced on the reverse with some initials, and the cross is likewise in the hand of the Saint
whose figure is reproduced on the obverse. Between the arms of the cross are arranged the four letters C.S.P.B., that is Crux sancti patris Benedicti; on the vertical arm: C.S.S.M.L.; on the horizontal: N.D.S.M.D.; around: V.R.S.N.S.M.V. S.M.Q.L.I.V.B. These last three series are the initials of words that form six rhymed hemistichs, containing invocations to the cross and the renunciation of Satan, from whom the cross has freed us, namely: Crux sancta sit mihi lux; Non draco sit mihi dux; Vade retro Satana; nunquam suade mihi vana; sunt mala quae libas; ipse venens bibas. The medal has in the Roman Ritual a special formula of blessing and enjoys many indulgences, which are more numerous for that particular type struck at Montecassino in memory of the fourteenth centenary of the birth of St. Benedict (1880).
IV. THE RULE.
- Besides the Gregorian Dialogues, another source for knowing the intimate life of St. Benedict and his psychology is the Rule. The holy man, as Gregory himself testifies, could not teach otherwise than as he lived, and his teaching, his mission, « omnes magisterii illius actus », is continued precisely in the Rule which the biographer lists among the other miracles of the Saint.
1) The history of the text. - Since the Rule is the expression of the legislator's mature thought and summarizes his final experience, the decisively cenobitic one, its definitive redaction was undoubtedly made at Montecassino. Therefore that sacred mount was considered by all monastic tradition as the place from which, according to the beautiful image attributed to Urban II, the venerable institution of the monastic Order flowed forth as from a paradisiacal spring, and it was willingly compared by medieval writers to Sinai.
That the Rule is the work of St. Benedict no one has ever seriously doubted. Contrary to the traditional thesis, in recent years a Benedictine of Solesmes, A. Genestout (La Règle du Maître et la Règle de st Benoît, in Revue d'ascétique et de mystique, 21 [1940], pp. 51-112), has held it to be later than the Regula Magistri, on which it would therefore depend for the prologue and the first seven chapters. This theory, however, would not diminish the legislative importance of St. Benedict, who in his code would also have assimilated these elements, as well as others pre-existing, fusing them into the originality of his conception. But the new hypothesis needs more complete demonstration and has met with numerous opponents (among them we recall, for all, B. Capelle, Cassien, le Maître et st Benoît, in Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale [1939], pp. 110-18). That it was written by the patriarch at the express commission of the Apostolic See, desirous of giving a codification to the monastic life, just as almost contemporaneously through the work of Justinian and of Dionysius the Little civil life and clerical life received one, is what d. Chapmann and, independently of him, also Card. Schuster have recently maintained.
But it cannot be held that it came forth entirely in one burst from the author's pen: it is instead a code that was gradually formed and modified, on the basis of the needs of daily practice. Probably therefore some parts, such as, for example, the one that orders the liturgical cursus and the one that forms the penitential code, had an independent existence, even prior to the rest, to which they were later joined. The autograph of the Regula (with the addition, at most, of the adjective sancta, as the original title seems to have been) has been lost for several centuries. The Cassinese, repairing to Rome after the first destruction of their monastery (577), carried it with them. Restored by Pope Zachary (ca. 742) to the community re-formed on the holy mountain, it was carried off again by the monks who escaped the devastating slaughter of the Saracens (883) and perished in the fire of the monastery of Teano (896), where they had taken refuge. Only a fragment was preserved for many centuries more at Montecassino as a relic and disappeared in the disturbances of the end of the 18th century. The manuscripts that currently remain to us can be reduced to three types or families: those that reproduce the pure text, those that give an interpolated text, those finally that have a mixed text. The first go back to the original text, which perished at Teano, through a copy made from the exemplar that the abbot of Montecassino, Theodemar, sent in 787 to Charlemagne. This copy, preserved in a transcription executed around 820 at Aachen by two monks of Reichenau, is contained in the
BENEDICT, saint - Medal of St. Benedict.
codex of St. Gall (914) and was reproduced at Montecassino in 1900 by d. Germano Morin, who made use of the previous studies of d. Ambrogio Amelli. Likewise the group of codices that constitutes the Cassinese tradition goes back to the original text, but independently of the manuscript of St. Gall. Alongside this text, another slightly modified one soon came to be formed for practical reasons, that is, for adaptation and elucidation, and it is the one found reproduced in the oldest manuscript of the Rule that has come down to us: Hatton 48, of the Bodleian Library of Oxford, written at Canterbury around 700. To this same epoch goes back the third group of the text called « receptus ». It appears in fact as early as the 8th century in the commentary of Paul the Deacon and was generally used until our own days, since it offered the advantage of correcting the original text, rendering it more intelligible.
The Rule was deliberately written under the influence of vulgar Latin, without therefore « that polish which would have been possible to the author in conformity with his culture » (A. Lentini). But it, which St. Gregory rightly calls « discretione praecipuum, sermone luculentam », in the classical rhythmic cadences of the cursus reveals the scholar who must spontaneously « have felt in his ear those various types of close of periods and of meters to which the school had accustomed him from boyhood ». This therefore, more than doubtful classical reminiscences, betrays the culture of the author, who in the public schools must have completed at least the studies of grammar and rhetoric, and forms a sure criterion to be kept in mind in the choice among the various readings of the codices.
2) The content. - Because of the manner in which it was gradually formed, one cannot demand from the Rule a rigorous logical order in the succession of the individual chapters: one can instead distinguish in it some broad lines.
Having laid the foundations of the cenobitic and ascetic life in the prologue and in chapters I-VII, in the following chapters VIII-XVIII are the norms of liturgical and common prayer, while chapters XIX-XX indicate the spirit that must vivify it together with private prayer. Having thus settled the spiritual life, one passes to establishing the ordering of the monastery. Chapters XXI-XXX order the house in its general lines, while chapters XXXI-LVII regulate its material regime. From chapter LVIII to LXI recruitment is treated. The following group, chapters LXII-LXVII, arranges the hierarchy and the order of the community, its relations with the outside. The remaining chapters, from LXVIII to LXXII, are later additions, intended to elucidate particular points of discipline or ascetics, in relation especially to community life. Chapter LXXIII constitutes the epilogue.
Closing what he calls the «minimam inchoationis regulam», St. Benedict refers the disciple desirous of further perfection to the doctrines of the Holy Fathers and of Sacred Scripture. His code, in the expression of Bossuet, is the compendium of the Gospel, of Christianity. The phrase of St. Gregory, who recognizes in him the spiritual heir of all the just, must be understood in the broadest sense. Not only did he reproduce in his life, as the biographer gives proof of, the virtues and the prodigies of the ancient fathers, but in his Rule he recapitulated the ascetic doctrines of his predecessors, adapting them to the Latin world. What was vague and imprecise in earlier monastic legislation received from him a definitive and authoritative systematization. Though moving within the great traditional lines, he succeeds in creating an original work: materials that were already scattered come to constitute an organic edifice. And so that this may be open to all, in his spirit of discernment and balance, he rejects everything that can be excessive. He legislates therefore solely for cenobites, but he intends that their life be truly common, with the exclusion of every manifestation of individualism, often a sign of that egoism which he wishes totally banished. To the arbitrary will of the head of the monastery he substitutes the authority of a stable code. Even in permitting other customs, he requires that they not be at variance with the fundamental principles and that the choice be withdrawn from the arbitrariness of individuals so as to remain reserved to the abbot.
This edifice receives cohesion and a guarantee of security from the vow of stability. It is with this that St. Benedict takes a decisive position against vagabondage and individual arbitrariness, the evils that afflicted and threatened the monasticism of his times. With it the monk remained fixed as if by a spiritual anchor in his path of perfection, in the holy resolve to persevere in the monastery until death. And the Benedictine cenobium thus assumes that juridically stable physiognomy which, while it makes it the model of the religious life, offers souls a firm shelter. In this little society, in itself a complete and autonomous image of that greater union of the faithful which is the Church, every soul desirous of living the Christian life more intimately finds the conditions to be able to develop in safety the supernatural germs deposited in itself with Baptism. Without proposing determinate and particular external ends, the legislator intends to prepare for these souls, who set out in search of God, from whom they had strayed through the disobedience of sin, a school, a militia, an association. There they will be able to learn and, at the same time, to practice the divine service, almost in a true paedagogium of the coeleste palatium. But above all this environment is a family, whose individual members work to reproduce in themselves the image of the Son of God, under the guidance of a father, who represents the divine paternity, and in the practice of the great Christian precept of love for one's brothers. He who is the center and hinge of this family, the abbot, takes the place of Christ, and unites in his person the offices of teacher and of father. In this eminently Christocentric Rule, the word so dear to the moderns, "superior," is ignored: he who presides over the monastery, in the place and in the name of Christ, has the character and the functions of a father from A. Saco, Atlante paleografico e diplomatico, Naples 1929
BENEDICT, saint - Rule of St. B. (12th cent.).
Benevento, codex of the Capitular Library.
(abbas = father), not of a feared authority; and his office, more than a rigid custody of discipline and maintenance of order, is the care of souls. Chosen by the community and canonically installed, his charge is in itself perpetual, like that of the pastors of the Church and of natural fathers, with no other limits than those willed by the law of God, by the dispositions of the Church and by the Rule itself.
If paternal authority gives consistency and character to this family, recollection and separation from the world ensure the necessary conditions of environment so that in it one may without impediment attend to the search for God. Every soul in fact, for its part, must procure this, tending, in the imitation of Christ, to a complete adherence of its own will to that of the Lord, through obedience; to the knowledge of itself, in the exercise of humility; to a total renunciation of its own self and of every private material good, with chastity and the most complete personal poverty, for which it must hope for what is necessary from the providence of the father of the family, with the practice also of fraternal love, which will be the vivifying element of this environment from which every egoism is fundamentally banished. In a word, the disciple will hold himself in a continual disposition to live in the presence of God, in a perfect self-denial.
This life of union with God is translated into prayer, especially into that which forms the principal occupation, not the end, of the monk, the work of God, that is, liturgical and common prayer, the expression of the perfect community of life. Even in this case St. Benedict let himself be advised by discretion and notably reduced it in comparison with the ancient monks. It will divide the monk's day together with work, another essential element, which the legislator ennobles and extends, so that ora et labora will thereafter be through the centuries the synthetic motto of his Rule. And if work will assume the most varied forms according to times and places, it will however always be such as to safeguard the one concern of the Saint, that of leading souls to God. In view of this exclusive end, the house, as a vera domus Dei, will be «wisely administered», so that «no one in it be saddened or disturbed». It will therefore be necessary that the abbot, not being able to do everything himself, entrust to others «a part of his burdens». If the number of monks is great, they will be divided into groups of ten entrusted to the immediate care of deans; one of them, with the name of provost, may, if it is truly deemed necessary, directly assist the abbot and take his place. The Rule likewise enumerates other offices, whose officials at present also discharge the attributions of the ancient deans: the cellarer, who will have care of all temporal goods «as a father for the whole community»; the master of novices, «a senior full of solicitude» in examining the dispositions of the candidates; the guest-master «whose soul will be full of the fear of God»; the infirmarian, he too furnished with the fear of God; the porter, «a wise old man whom age prevents from wandering about».
All these charges are to be exercised according to the directives given by the abbot, who can remove each one from office, should he deem it. Besides these helpers, the abbot has that of a twofold category of counselors. For although it falls to him to regulate and dispose everything in his own monastery, St. Benedict nevertheless wishes that everything be done with counsel so as not to give occasion for vain regrets. Therefore in ordinary cases the abbot will ask the opinion of the seniors among the brothers, who constitute, as it were, the senate of the monastery. But in graver questions all, as is natural in a family, will be called to counsel. Thus the discretionary and paternal power of the abbot is supernaturally tempered and the form of cenobitic government, fundamentally familial, appears as a happy balance between the monarchical, oligarchical and democratic.
No age, no condition, no race is excluded from this society: the Goth and the Roman, the noble and the slave, the old man and the child, all may find a place in it, since "in Christ we are all one." Before the profession, publicly made in the oratory with the explicit promise of stability, obedience and conversion of manners, or conversation (the other vows are included in these), a year of novitiate must be prefaced, in a separate room, and the Rule shall be read there three times in full. Children (oblates) are offered by their parents. Among characters and persons so diverse, discipline is guaranteed more by love than by servile fear. The very penitential code that St. B. had to adopt for the good of the community, to protect and preserve its charity, is beyond comparison milder than the other monastic rules of the time.
What medieval painting places in the Saint's hand does not appear to be a rod, as some modern authors nevertheless maintain, but an instrument for indicating the signals of the hours. This delicate task, and in those times not an easy one either, is reserved by the Rule to the abbot. Everything must be done at the appointed hours, according to the schedule that is fundamentally modeled on the division of the Roman day and, like it, variable so that every action may take place in the light of the sun. To sleep are assigned on average more than eight hours, including the afternoon nap in summer, but the Rule is unaware of any interruption of nighttime sleep by the recitation of the Office. The rest of the time is divided among prayer, reading and work. Among the exercises of the common life, an important place is held by meals, in which St. B., contradicting the particularism of other rules, wants all to participate together: silence shall be observed there, paying attention to the reading done aloud. The brothers capable of performing this office shall succeed one another in weekly turns, just as in the service of the table and the kitchen. Meals too are regulated by that spirit of discretion that becomes all things to all men, in order to gain all for God. It is this common principle of love, in its twofold form toward God and toward neighbor, that fuses the two aspects of the monastic community — that is, of a school of divine service and of a family — into a single society whose true center is Christ.
The diffusion of these societies, that is, the propagation of the Benedictine Rule, was enormous (v. BENEDETTINI). This little code, which in the centuries of printing had so many editions that they could be surpassed only by those of Holy Scripture and of the Imitation of Christ, soon became the "Regula sancta," the "Regula patrum," the Rule par excellence, on whose model and along whose lines all religious life in the West subsequently moved. And the influence was so great in all fields and under all aspects as to justify the assertion of Viollet-le-Duc (Dictionnaire raisonné de l'architecture française du XIe au XVIe siècle, I, Paris 1854, p. 242): "The Rule of St. B. is perhaps the greatest historical fact, even considered from the philosophical point of view alone." - See Plates LXXVII-LXXVIII.
Bibliography4 works
Among the Italian translations: [G. Fornari], La Regola dei monaci, Montecassino 1921; P. Lugano, Rome 1929; S. Vismara, S. B. nella sua vita e nella sua Regola, Milan 1929; ancient vernacular translations have been edited, among others, by G. De Luca, S. B., vita e Regola, Florence 1923. A copious bibliography is also given by R. Bourreiss, Bibliographie der Benediktinerregel, in Studien und Mitt. zur Geschichte des Benediktiner-Ordens, Reigerri bei Brünn 1940, pp. 3-20.
Among the commentaries on the Rule, very numerous from the 8th century to our own day, we cite only: P. Delatte, Commentaire sur la Règle de St Benoît, Paris 1913, with continual reprints:
I. Schuster, La Regula monasteriorum, 2nd ed., Alba 1945, and the recent one by G. Herwegen, Sion und Geist der Benediktinerregel, Einsiedeln 1944, rich in erudition but with views too particularly personal. For the style of the Rule, besides the Linderbauer, S. Benedicti Regula mon. philologisch erklärt, Metten 1922, it is indispensable to keep in mind A. Lentini, Il ritmo prosoico nella Regola di s. B., in Miscellanea cassini, 23 (1942); id., S. B., la Regola, testo versione e commento, Montecassino 1947, constitutes an excellent manual for the various needs of readers.
For a synthetic exposition of the principles of the Rule: M. Wolter, Praecipna ordinis monastici elementa, Bruges 1880, Italian trans. and abridgment by T. Leccisotti, Montecassino 1937; C. Butler, Benedictine monachium, 2nd ed., London 1924 (French trans. by C. Grolleau, Paris 1924); C. Marmion, Il Cristo ideale del monaco, Italian trans. by M. Galli, Praglia 1931; G. Morin, L'ordine monastico e la vita della società cristiana nei primi secoli, Italian trans., Sorrento [1934]; D. Gorge, A l'école de St Benoît. La vie intérieure pour notre temps, Paris 1937; Anon., Un giorno nella casa di s. B., 2nd ed., Montecassino 1938; A. Stolz, L'ascesi cristiana, Brescia 1943, which frames the Rule within the general asceticism of Christianity.
2) St. Gregory the Great, Dialogorum liber II. It is entirely dedicated to St. B.; essentially a work of edification, it is nevertheless substantially worthy of belief, even in the judgment of modern critics. The most notable edition of our times is that of U. Moricca, in Fonti per la storia d'Italia (ed. Istituto Storico Ital., LVII), Rome 1924. Many other editions, including of Book II alone. Italian translations, besides those already cited under the names of De Luca, Lugano, Vismara; A. Fiorini, Vita e miracoli di s. B., 2nd ed., Montecassino 1924; V. Bartoccetti, Fioretti degli antichi padri, Milan 1925 (all the dialogues).
3) Another source, independent of the Gregorian collection, is the Carmen de s. Benedicto of the poet Marcus, who is said to have been a disciple of the Saint. Some moderns would instead have it a more recent composition, perhaps of the 8th century. But the traditional thesis still has authoritative supporters; among them M. Galdi, Il Carmen di Marco poeta e l'apoteosi di s. B., Naples 1929, with the text and Italian translation, in verse. Another edition: PL 80, 183-84.
II. - For a first introduction to St. B. and his work we recommend: C. Butler, op. cit.; S. Vismara, op. cit.; Ph. Schmitz Histoire de l'ordre de St Benoît, I, Maredsous 1942. Among the biographies: L. Tosti, S. B., Montecassino 1892, which although critically outdated, always retains its character as a notable work of art; J. Herwegen, S. B., Italian trans. from the 3rd German ed., Montecassino 1932, which is the most interesting modern study on the figure and character of the Saint; L. Salvatorelli, S. B. e l'Italia del suo tempo, Bari 1929, which, despite the author's rationalistic tendencies, is among the most notable historical reconstructions; J. Chapmann, St. Benedict and the sixth Century, London 1929, a work of value, but with personal views not always acceptable; I. Schuster, La storia di s. B. e dei suoi tempi, 2nd ed., Milan 1943, which almost in the form of a commentary on the Gregorian account masterfully frames it within the era lived by the Saint: this reworking, rather than a new edition, of the work in the sumptuousness of the binding and the abundance of photographic illustration forms almost a monumental corpus for the history of St. B.
III. - On the medal, the latest and most complete study is that of B. Danzer, Die Benediktus-Medaille, Ihre Geschichte, Gebrauch und Wirkungen, St. Ottilien 1928; see also G. Fournier, Sur les origines de la médaille de St Benoît, in Revue liturgique et monastique, 16 (1930-1931), various articles for a study that remained unfinished because of the author's death.