Who was St. Benedict?
Almost everything we know about Benedict comes from one book, the second of the Dialogues of St. Gregory the Great. The Catholic Encyclopedia calls it the only authentic life and then warns that it is "rather a character sketch than a biography," offering "little help towards a chronological account." Benedict XVI, in a 2008 audience, said the same: it is not a classical biography but a book written to show, through Benedict, the ascent toward contemplation. So the dates below are approximate, and the Encyclopedia says the only certain one is 543, the year the Gothic king Totila visited him.
Benedict was born around 480 at Nursia, now Norcia, in central Italy, into a family with money, and was sent to Rome to study. He left early. Franciscan Media says he found that a small town was no quieter than the city, and he went to Subiaco and lived three years alone in a cave, the place Benedictines now call the Sacro Speco. There, Benedict XVI says, he overcame three temptations: self-assertion, sensuality, and anger that wants revenge. Monks asked him to lead them and then found his strictness hard to live with. He founded twelve small monasteries at Subiaco, and after trouble there moved south to Monte Cassino, overlooking three valleys north of Naples, in 529 according to Benedict XVI. It was there, most likely, that he wrote his Rule.
His sister Scholastica, whom a tradition accepted by Bede makes his twin, died three days after their last meeting; Gregory says Benedict saw her soul rise as a dove. Benedict's own death is dated differently by the sources used here. The Catholic Encyclopedia gives 543, Benedict XVI gives March 21, 547, and Franciscan Media writes "c. 547." The abbey he founded was destroyed in 1944, in the Second World War, rebuilt, and consecrated again in 1964. On that occasion Paul VI named him patron of Europe.
Why Catholics pray to St. Benedict for protection, work and study
Three things bring people to Benedict: the Medal, the Rule, and Europe.
The St. Benedict Medal carries letters that puzzled people for centuries, until a manuscript of 1415 was found at the Abbey of Metten in Bavaria in 1647 and showed them to be the initials of a prayer against Satan. The Order of St. Benedict explains them. Along the cross on the back: Crux sacra sit mihi lux, Nunquam draco sit mihi dux, "May the holy Cross be my light, may the dragon never be my guide." In the corners, C S P B, "the Cross of our holy father Benedict." Around the rim: Vade retro Satana, Nunquam suade mihi vana, Sunt mala quae libas, Ipse venena bibas, "Begone, Satan, never tempt me with your vanities; what you offer me is evil, drink the poison yourself." Above the cross, PAX, peace, a Benedictine motto for centuries. On the front, around the figure of Benedict: "May we be strengthened by his presence in the hour of our death." The design now in use is the Jubilee Medal struck at Montecassino in 1880 for the 1400th anniversary of his birth. The Benedictines call it "a prayer of exorcism against Satan," a prayer for strength in temptation and for peace, and they add that religious articles are not to be treated "as if they were mere charms."
The Rule is the second reason. Benedict XVI quotes its description of the monastery as "a school for the service of the Lord" and its command that "nothing be preferred to the Work of God," meaning the hours of prayer. Chapter 48 begins, "Idleness is the enemy of the soul," and orders set times for manual labor and for prayerful reading; it adds that when monks live by the labor of their hands, as the fathers and the apostles did, then they are really monks. The motto "ora et labora," pray and work, is how people sum this up, but Subiaco Abbey, quoting the Benedictine historian Terence Kardong, points out that the phrase is found nowhere in the Rule and appears in Benedictine history only in the nineteenth century, from a book by the German abbot Maurus Wolter. The thing itself is older than the slogan. A worker who has lost the rhythm of the day, a student who cannot start, a household with no order left in it: these are what the Rule was written for, and why Franciscan Media lists him as patron of schoolchildren.
The third reason is Pacis nuntius, Paul VI's letter of October 24, 1964. It says Benedict brought Christian civilization to the peoples of Europe by the cross, the book and the plow: the cross meaning the law of Christ, by which he strengthened private and public life; the book meaning the ancient literature his monks preserved with careful diligence and handed on; the plow meaning the wild, desolate lands they turned into fields. That is a declared patronage, the only one the sources used here record.
How to pray to St. Benedict
His memorial is July 11. Pray the nine days before it, or any day. If you have a Medal, the Benedictines say there is no prescribed way to use it: wear it, keep it in a pocket, put it in the house or the car, and let it call down God's blessing and protection through Benedict's prayers. If you can travel, Subiaco and Montecassino are the two places of his life.
Say the prayer below once and then do the next piece of work. That is the Benedictine way of praying about work: the prayer and the task belong together, each at its hour. Pair it with Mass and Confession, with a doctor if the sleeplessness or the temptation has a medical side, and with an honest timetable if the problem is a scattered day. Benedict did not promise his monks victory over the dragon. He promised them a school, and a Master who had already won.