Benedict of Nursia Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Cuthbert Butler

Critical Essay by Cuthbert Butler

SOURCE: "St. Benedict" and "St. Benedict's Idea" in Bendictine Monachism: Studies in Benedictine Life and Rule, Longmans, Green and Co., 1919, pp. 1-10; 23-34.

In the following excerpt, Butler surveys St. Benedict's life and monastic ideals.

St Benedict

One morning, in the early spring of the first year of the century, I was standing at a cave, looking out into the darkness that still enshrouded the scene. And as I looked the first streaks of dawn began gradually to lift the shroud of night and to reveal, first the rugged mountains across the ravine that lay beneath my feet; and then the cruel naked rocks, with never a tree or shrub to soften their austerity, surrounding the valley on all sides; and at last the wild grandeur of the scene in its solemn simplicity and solitude. And as the features of the landscape gradually took shape, my thoughts went back to a...
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