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...