SOURCE: "St. Benedict and His Foundation" in Benedictinism through Changing Centuries, translated by Leonard J. Doyle, St. John's Abbey Press, 1958, pp. 11-7.

[In the following excerpt, originally published in German in 1950, Hilpisch comments on St. Benedict's life and the organization of his monastery at Monte Cassino.]

Benedictine monachism, customarily called the Benedictine Order in later times, is the oldest monastic community of the Western Church, its origin dating all the way from Christian antiquity. Its founder, teacher and lawgiver, St. Benedict, was born about the year 480 in the Sabine mountains, in the old Italian province of Nursia. His parents belonged to the free, land-holding class, and were probably leading a retired life, far removed from the capital of the world empire, in a province whose people were famed for their austerity and tenacity. They were open-minded enough, however, to send their son Benedict to Rome at an early age to pursue his studies. There is proof of his family's Christian spirit in the fact that they offered their daughter Scholastica to God even as a child, by having her join the ranks of the consecrated virgins.

Young Benedict arrived at a Rome that still showed the magnificence and splendor of the old Roma in the architecture of the ancient times, but had started to adorn itself with the glories of the new Christian era. Already prominent were the great basilicas of the Lateran, of the Vatican over the grave of St. Peter, and the one outside the walls over the grave of the Apostle Paul.

Yet the city showed signs of decay. The transfer of the imperial residence to Constantinople had demoted Rome to a provincial capital. Besides, the city bore the marks of plunder by the barbarians, and want and privation had beset the people for some time. In still more deplorable state were the affairs of the Church. After the death of Pope Anastasius II in the year 498, a double election had followed. To the pope lawfully elected and also recognized by King Theodoric the Great, another group opposed the presbyter Laurentius, and now two popes strove for the chair of St. Peter. Passions rose so high that blood was shed in the churches, and it was to be years before peace was restored in the Roman community.

Living in Rome at this time, young Benedict was so depressed by this and other events in his immediate surroundings that he left the city, gave up his studies, and proceeded to Enfide (now Afile), a small place in the Sabine mountains, where he joined a community of ascetics who had their house by the church of St. Peter. The members of this community followed a religious life but were not bound by a rule, and each was free to order his life as he saw fit. We do not know how long Benedict stayed here. He left this community of ascetics, however, and resolved, in spite of his youth, to lead a hermit's life, evidently seeking a stricter form of asceticism.

In the solitude of Subiaco he found a cave where he led a life of renunciation far from the company of men. He had received the monk's garb from the monk Romanus and was thus accepted as a God-seeking servant of Christ. For three years he lived in the cave in complete solitude, devoting himself entirely to prayer and to converse with God.

By and by he became acquainted with other hermits who were joined in a loose union with an abbot at the head. After the abbot's death they begged Benedict to take over their guidance, and he finally agreed, after first declining the invitation. He might even then have been engrossed in plans for the kind of reorganization of monachism that he had probably envisioned during the years of his solitude, which were filled with the reading of holy Scripture, the fathers of the Church, and monastic literature; and it appears that he intended to carry through his plans with these hermits whose life was a combination of the solitary and the community life. He ventured to introduce a stricter order and the regular mode of cenobitic life for the hermits. But they had their own idea of an abbot: they saw him as a teacher and spiritual father, but not as their lord and lawgiver. Benedict's attempt encountered the unanimous and determined opposition of the community, who went so far as to try to remove the innovator by poison.

Benedict left the hermits, deeply disappointed and yet enriched by a new experience. He now knew different forms of contemporary monachism, which, after not quite 200 years of existence, showed obvious signs of decay. About such monastic life he wrote later in his Rule: "It is better to pass it over in silence than to speak of it," and again, "Their tonsure marks them as liars before God."

Returning to his cave, he now began to form the monastic life as he had envisioned it, with disciples who had joined him, some from Rome itself. The influx was so great that he was able to erect twelve cells in the valley of the Anio, in each of which a number of monks lived under a superior, while he himself directed the whole community and introduced the young monks to the monastic life. This mode of life corresponded somewhat with the traditions of Pachomius.

Partly because of the enmity of a neighboring priest, the saint after some years left Subiaco and moved with some of the monks to the hill of Monte Cassino that towers over the plains of the Campagna. At the summit of the mountain he built a monastery on the site of an old fort and a former temple. Upon this mount with its wide view, there came into existence the Rule in which St. Benedict explained his thoughts about the life of Christian perfection and in which he clearly outlined the practice of the monastic life as he saw it.

Here Benedict espoused with full determination the cenobitic mode of life under an abbot, with an exact, stabilized rule binding all the monks of the monastery. He rejected the free asceticism and was just as much opposed to the tramp monks and the semi-anchorites. In the hermit's life he saw a high ideal, but only for those with a special vocation who had prepared themselves in monastic community life and had proved their aptitude for this extraordinary ascetical form. For the average he regarded the cenobitic life as the only fitting form of monasticism.

To St. Benedict, being a monk means living according to the demands of the gospel, complying with the divine will, participating in the Lord's Passion, and being filled with the Spirit of God. The monastic virtues he considers to be silence, obedience, humility, and brotherly love. The daily life of the monk is characterized by prayer, first by the psalmody rendered in common at night and at the day hours sanctified by the Church's tradition; then by the silent prayer of the heart, as also by reading and manual labor. Thus prayer, work and study are to establish the rhythm of the day and of the year.

The monastery is separated as far as possible from the outside world and takes care of the greater part of its necessities by itself; hence it has landed property, gardens, vineyards, mills and workshops where the necessary things are made. While property for the community is lawful, private property is banned in every way and is viewed by St. Benedict as a particularly detestable evil, endangering brotherly love and contradicting the community spirit exemplified by the pioneer community at Jerusalem.

Leading the monastic community is the abbot, whom the whole community elects and who bears full responsibility for all the monks and the whole monastery. As the representative of Christ he exercises full authority, to which all in obedience submit. He is bound by the Rule, but Benedict gives him far-reaching powers to modify certain things according to conditions of time and place, so that a just agreement between constancy and growth may be found.

Even though the abbot makes the final decisions and has full freedom to act, yet he is to appoint experienced brethren as his assistants for the conduct of particular functions; he shall also be assisted by a council composed of older brethren and solicit the opinion of all brethren in important matters. His assistants in the government of the monastery are the prior, the cellarer (under whose care are all material things), the master of novices, the porter, the infirmarian, and the choirmaster. The fundamental principle is that in the house of God all things should be handled wisely and by wise men.

In addition to the oratory and the monks' residence, the monastery shall have a separate house for the reception of guests, a house for the sick brethren, one for the novices, and a room for the library.

Benedict eliminated austerities of the old monastic tradition and espoused a prudent moderation in which his demands were high, but always with regard for the weakness of individuals. He wanted to arrange everything in the monastery as the strong ones desired it, but in such a way as not to discourage the weak. Thus wisdom, kindness, and fimmess are joined together in wonderful harmony in the Rule.

The saint displays a certain severity only where he treats of private property and of murmuring against authority, for he sees in these a threat to the foundations of the cenobitic life and of true monasticism. But in no way does he intend privation for his monks, nor does he see the ideal in absolute poverty: the monk may have for his use all that is necessary, may ask it of the abbot, and the abbot shall give it to him; yet nobody shall have the right of free disposal or claim anything as his property.

St. Benedict's work was clearly conceived by him as a new formulation of the monastic ideal and a new organization of the monastic life; for he had witnessed more than once in his life a caricature of the true meaning and content of the monastic state. Up to his time Westem monachism had not reached any historic importance at all; in fact, there was yet no Western monachism, properly speaking, however numerous the monasteries in the West might be, in Italy, Gaul and Spain. Fundamentally it was Eastern monachism that was practiced in the West, without the prerequisites, however, that were present in the East. There was no rule to expound and regulate the high ideals of monasticism in a manner which would appeal to the people of the West. Lacking, too, were the spiritual transformation of the monk's life, and occupations for the hosts of monks who crowded the monasteries.

St. Benedict brought about a great change and thereby saved the monastic institution from decline and stagnation. The West was far removed from the monachism which Antony and the fathers in the desert lived, which Cassian in his works had proposed as a high aim, and whose embodiment had been the holy monk-bishop, Martin; still greater was the distance from the monachism of St. Basil, who had united asceticism with the heritage of the ancient culture and so led it to a spiritual height.

Without higher culture, without a serious occupation, and without a strict discipline and proper guidance, the monks of the West lived as hermits or wandered about; and where they lived in community, they had no moderate yet rigid rule. Generally, each abbot made statutes for his house as best he could, following old traditions; and there were as many rules as monasteries.

Against these evils St. Benedict set a determined hand. He bound the monk to stability, thus to residence and perseverance in the monastery. By this means he did away with the practice of having monks wander about. This had once been a high religious ideal, on the plea of Christ's homelessness; but when great numbers followed this way of living, it degenerated into lack of discipline. Benedict led the monk to obedience to an authoritative Rule and to an abbot and thereby eliminated the state of the semi-anchorite and of the free ascetic, whose only law at that time was free choice. He demanded of the monk a life of virtue, prayer and work, for there were numerous monks who went to ruin in idleness and became harmful to the Church.

His first concern was to establish the individual monastery, to give it vitality and protect it against outside influences that might threaten it; his other concern was the spiritual formation of the monks. He wanted to create a livable rule for the monasteries of the West and also give the abbots of the individual monasteries permanent directions for guiding their monasteries and their monks in a manner pleasing to God. He had no thought of an order, a union of all monasteries under a central authority. What he wanted was monastic life and the existence of the individual monastery.

The basis was not a narrowly circumscribed religious ideal. The whole Christian life in general was demanded, in which man was simply placed before God and assigned to the service of God in prayer, virtue, and sacrifice. Much less had the saint intended a special objective for his foundation. The service of God left the monk free for all manner of tasks without binding him completely to any special one. Any task could be assumed in so far as it did not interfere with the essence of the monk's life. It was the saint's aim to realize in a community the life of the gospel, devotion to God and to His holy service. Of other outside tasks he had no thought. His monks were to praise God in the psalmody, and praise Him moreover by their whole life.

In his monastic Rule he happily combined the oldest traditions with new ideas, holding unconditionally to the supernatural, yet with consideration of the pure human element, clinging strictly to the basic essentials with wise consideration of individual weaknesses. Because of its inner strength and balance, the Rule gradually became the common law of Western monks and at length displaced the other monastic rules, not only the Eastern in so far as they had gained a foothold, but also the national, such as the Irish and Visigothic rules. In this diffusion his Rule enjoyed the support of the Apostolic See at Rome; St. Gregory the Great himself wrote the life of St. Benedict, in which the knowledge of his personality was spread throughout the Church and words of highest approval were found for his Rule.

St. Benedict did not live long enough to see the extensive influence that his Rule would exert. We know with certainty only of his first monasteries in the valley of the Anio and at Monte Cassino and the foundation at Terracina which he planned. Venerated as a prophet and wonder-worker filled with the Spirit of God, he died on March 21, probably in the year 547, lifting his hands to heaven in prayer before the altar of his oratory, and found his rest in the sanctuary of St. John the Baptist, which he himself had built.

His monastery at Monte Cassino was not to enjoy a long existence at first. Not quite 30 years after his death it was demolished by the Lombards, and the monks escaped, leaving the Saint's body behind on the mountain. Thus the place of his work was temporarily devastated, but his work was not destroyed; rather, it now found its great historic hour, for soon the diffusion of the Rule started throughout and beyond Italy.

Since St. Benedict left the individual monasteries their independence and created no all-embracing organization, the history of Benedictine monachism is above all the history of its monasteries. The individual monasteries became the agents of its development; they determined the direction and the manner in which the saint's work expanded, and in their history one can read of the bloom and decay of Benedictine monachism in the course of time.