Saint Benedict of Nursia – patron saint of Europe

“It is much appropriate that we celebrate St. Benedict, the abbot, as the announcer of peace, creator of unity, teacher of social traditions, and especially, herald of the Christian faith, and the founder of the monk lifestyle in the West.”
(Apostolic letter of the Pope Paul VI.)
Accounts on St. Benedict of Nursia (480-547) come from two sources: from his own Regula, written for the monks of the first half of the 6th century, and from the biography found in the second book of Dialogues by the Pope Gregory the Great. Regula of St. Benedict was in its time one of the many monk regulations in the world.
St. Benedict was originally from a wealthy family from Nursia. He began his studies in Rome, but later abandoned them in order to lead the life of a hermit. He settled in the Sabin Mountains, in a cabin near Subiak, east of Rome, with students starting to accompany him. Tradition links this period of his life to the founding of twelve monasteries in the areas around Subiak.
St. Benedict would later move to Monte Cassino hill where, accompanied by his students, he founded a monastery in a paradise that until then had still been pagan. It was there, where he wrote his Regula. As time passed, the monastery of the Monte Cassino hill was destroyed on numerous occasions; however, it has remained to be a place of a unique cult of St. Benedict and his sister St. Scholastic. Other significant sites of this cult include the Saint-Benoit-sur Loire Abbey in France.
This venerable patriarch, to whom many monasteries owe their name and life energy, would preserve through his pen, or the spiritual culture, and his efforts the ancient monuments of record keeping. These he would later pass on to next generations, thus contributing to the development of science. Lastly, it was through a plow, or the soil tilling and other attempts, that he turned the void and desolate fields into the fields of grain and beautiful orchards. In connecting physical labour with prayers, following the motto: “Ora et labora” (“Pray and work”), he showed a high respect for human work.
The title of the patron saint of Europe becomes still more understandable in relation to a special care that the Popes of the 20th century gave to the issue of cultural and spiritual Europe. It was the Pope Pius XII., who in 1947 called St. Benedict “the father of Europe”, thus labelling him the patron saint of the movement for unity in its initial stage after the experienced atrocities of the war, and in the midst of the threat of the communist expansion. The Pope Paul VI., in the second year of his pontificate during the council, decided to declare St. Benedict the patron saint of Europe. The Pope John Paul II. completely took from his predecessors the patronage over the European unity. Besides St. Benedict, the Pope also declared St. Cyril and Methods other patron saints. In the same manner, the Pope mentioned and accentuated the life of St. Benedict at the 1500th anniversary of his birth, which was celebrated in 1980, at the beginning of the Pope’s pontificate.

Saint Benadict of Nursia is a patron saint of Europe, together with Saint Cyril and Method, and the saint women – Brigit of Sweden, Katarina of Siena, and Edith Stein. Gradual expansion of the Benedictine order, which he had founded, played a significant role in spreading Christianity over the whole continent. Saint Benedict has therefore been highly respected in Germany, especially in Bavaria; he has been a pillar of the European unity, as well as a strong reference to the unalienable Christian roots of its culture and civilisation.
Biography of St. Benedict of Nursia (about 480 – 547 AD)
Saint Benadict, patriarch of the western tradition of monks, and the main patron saint of Europe, was born in Nursia (today’s Norcia in Umbria, Italy) around the year 480 AD, to a family of noble descent. Not much written work about his personal life has been preserved. The basic source we have about his spiritual view is his famous Regula, which St. Benedict himself wrote in the monastery that he had founded on the Monte Cassino hill, in the late 6th century. Second source is his own life portrayed in the book called Dialogues, written by the Pope St. Gregory the Great. The time of St. Benedict was a period of the big crisis of the West Roman ancient culture, whose greater part had already been destroyed by the invasions of tribes from the East and the North. As St. Gregory writes, St. Benedict was sent to study in Rome. Seeing the moral corruption and intellectual decadency, he abandoned his studies, contemplating the life of a monk. First, he would live as a hermit in a cabin near Subiaco, in central Italy. Later, he was in charge of a near monastery in Vicocaro that, after some of the society revolted against him, he left, accompanied by a group of his faithful students, to found his own monastery. After many difficulties, he finally settled on the Monte Cassino hill. Regula, written shortly before his death (he probably died on March 21, 547), was the fruitage of his life-long search. In his work, he draws much on the contemporary monk movement back then, as well as regulas and policies that had already been created. He masterfully composes and modifies them so that they reflect his vision as a man and show the way that leads him to a more intimate knowledge of God and spiritual love. It was a vision, as was later shown, reaching far beyond the time of St. Benedict.