History until 1810
Founding and Growth
Seal of the Monastery of San Benedetto
The Rule of St. Benedict
Life of St. Benedict
The town of Norcia dates from pre-Roman days.
St. Benedict’s father was likely a civil magistrate and for this reason had his lodgings adjacent to the Basilica (in the Roman sense where matters of government took place).
St. Benedict and his twin sister St. Scholastica were born there in 480. As Benedict’s fame grew, an oratory was built to commemorate the place of his birth in the 8th century.
Monks came to Norcia in the 10th cent. and remained in one form or another until 1810, when they were forced to flee under Napoleonic laws.
...some reminiscences from the founder, Fr. Cassian
After several years of preparation, the monastery was founded in Rome on September 3, 1998.
For two years we lived in a rented novitiate building, which was really just a glorified apartment in which one room had been changed into a chapel. I vividly remember the barking dogs under the chapel window. Since there wasn't enough room for all of us, we renovated the garage and I moved in there. It was humid, and then there was that unpleasant incident with a rat... We were poor, but zealous and on fire with the monastic ideal.
Two years later, toward the end of the Great Jubilee Year, after searching vainly for a more suitable place to live, we were offered the possibility of moving to Norcia, the birthplace of St. Benedict.
Here we were, a community with no monastery; while Norcia had an empty monastery but no community.
After many negotiations involving abbots and bishops and cardinals, the deal was made. We rented a van and moved our few belongings, to be welcomed with huge enthusiasm by the clergy of the diocese and the people of the town, First Vespers of the First Sunday of Advent, in the Jubilee Year 2000.
Since then we've tripled in size, and we're starting to run out of room...| top |
The monastery seal was designed for us by Fabio Iambrenghi, a native of Norcia who is passionately interested in local history.
It is divided into two sections:
As the prophet Isaiah says: "There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots" (Is 11:1). This image has always been a sign of hope.| top |
Renewal in the Church often comes about by returning to the sources of faith and spirituality. The Vatican II document on religious life, Perfectae Caritatis, urged religious to return to the sources to find new life and vitality.
For Benedictines, the primary source, after the Sacred Scriptures, is the Rule of St. Benedict, a document which for us, is a gift of the Holy Spirit.
In it, St. Benedict reveals himself as a wise guide who understands all the ways of the human heart. In the Rule, he provides a sound and balanced way of life for his disciples, a "school of the Lord's service".
St. Gregory the Great, in Book Two of his Dialogues, gives us all the information we have about St. Benedict. St. Gregory's intention was to inspire hope in his dejected flock by demonstrating that saints still existed in the midst of the dramatic breakdown of the society of that time. In four books, St. Gregory gives heroic examples of sanctity from all over the Italian peninsula. He devotes an entire book to St.Benedict and describes his monastic vocation, his many trials, and the miracles which God enabled him to perform.
However, St. Gregory is not writing a history in the modern sense, and therefore leaves out many details that we would like to know about. At the end of Book Two, St. Gregory acknowledges that the reader might be expecting more, and says: "If anyone wants to know more fully the way of life of the saint, he can find in the instruction of the Rule all the documents of his teaching, because this man of God certainly did not propose any teaching without first having put it into practice in his own life" (Book II, 36).
