St Benedict of Nursia
Benedict (480-543) was born into a family of the Roman nobility but in his early adulthood he left the city to become a hermit in the Italian hills. He was approached by some monks who wanted him to lead their abbey but his ideas about the monastic life and theirs did not mesh. He was so strict an abbot that his monks tried to poison him and he eventually returned to a life of solitude. He founded a string of other abbeys and eventually developed the moderate Benedictine Rule, a regulated lifestyle which, as well as mandating the three-fold oath of “Poverty, Chastity and Obedience”, concentrated on prayer (7 daily services including the 2 a.m. vigil) and useful work. Monks had little private property but were well-fed by their own labours. The monasteries, or abbeys, had to be self-sufficient so that monks became their own physicians, weavers, farmers, bee-keepers and brewers. Monasteries thus were led to conduct agricultural research, medical care, hospitality in a world of violence and insecurity and, perhaps most importantly for civilization, the preservation of learning by the copying of books. Monks also led many of the missions which converted the barbarians who had destroyed the Christian Roman Empire to Catholic Christianity: Augustine of Canterbury, converted the Anglo-Saxons of England while St Boniface carried the gospel to the Germans.
Benedict’s influence through his monastic example was enormous: thousands of houses were founded based on his Rule. He is he patron saint of Europe, architects, monks, spelunkers, students, agricultural workers, civil engineers and coppersmiths and can be called upon by sufferers of gall stones, fever, kidney disease, nettle rash and poison.
A recent book, Rod Dreher’s The Benedict Option, proposes Benedictine solutions for today’s ills.