Vigils Reading – St Benedict of Aniane

ST BENEDICT OF ANIANE

From Butler’s Lives of the Saints

◊◊◊

Benedict was the son of Aigulf of Maguelone and served King Pepin and

his son, Charlemagne, as cupbearer. At the age of twenty he made a resolution

to seek the kingdom of God with his whole heart. He took part in the campaign

in Lombardy, but, after having been nearly drowned in the river Tesino, near

Pavia, in endeavoring to save his brother, he made a vow to quit the world

entirely.

Upon his return to Languedoc he was confirmed in this determination by

the advice of a hermit called Widmar, and he went to the abbey of Saint-Seine,

fifteen miles from Dijon, where he was admitted as a monk. He spent two and a

half years here learning the monastic life and bringing himself under control by

severe austerities. Not satisfied with observing the rule of St Benedict, he

practiced those other points of perfection which he found prescribed in the

Rules of St Pachomius and St Basil. When the abbot died, the brethren were

disposed to elect him to fill the post, but he was unwilling to accept the charge

because he knew that the monks were opposed to anything in the shape of

systematic reform.

Benedict accordingly quitted Saint-Seine and, returning to Languedoc,

built a small hermitage beside the brook Aniane upon his own estate. Here he

lived for some years in self-imposed destitution, praying continually that God

would teach him to do His will. Some solitaries, of whom the holy man Widmar

was one, placed themselves under his direction, and they earned their livelihood

by manual labour, living on bread and water except on Sundays and great

festivals when they added a little wine or milk if it was given them in alms. The

superior worked with them in the fields and sometimes spent his time in

copying books. When the number of his disciples increased, Benedict left to

build a monastery in a more spacious place.

In a short time he had many religious under his direction, and at the same

time exercised a general inspection over all the monasteries of Provence,

Languedoc and Gascony, becoming eventually the director and overseer of all

the monasteries in the empire; he reformed many with little or no opposition.

In order to have him close at hand, the Emperor Louis the Pious obliged

Benedict to dwell first at the abbey of Maurmünster in Alsace and then, as he

wanted him yet nearer, he built a monastery upon the Inde, later known as

Cornelimünster, near Aachen, the residence of the emperor and court. Benedict

lived in the monastery yet continued to help in the restoration of monastic

observance throughout France and Germany. He was the chief instrument in

drawing up the canons for the reformation of monks at the council of Aachen in

817, and presided in the same year over the assembly of abbots to enforce the

restoration of discipline…

This great restorer of monasticism in the West, worn out by

mortifications and fatigues, suffered much from continual sickness in the latter

part of his days. He died at Inde with great tranquility in 821, being then

seventy one years of age.