Saint Benedict of Aniane

Feast February 11

Model of Monastic reform in France
Birth: 747 – Death: 821

Born in 747 to a family of noble decent, Benedict of Aniane was originally known as Witiza, or the Second Benedict. Benedict was trained and sent to serve as a cupbearer to King Pepin III and Blessed Charlemagne.

At the age of 26, Benedict joined Charlemagne in his 773 Crusade against the Lombards, a Germanic tribe settled in Italy.

Benedict then left King Pepin and Charlemagne to enter into the religious life. Joining the monastery of St. Sequanus, he officially took the name “Benedict,” and survived for two and a half years on bread and water alone while sleeping on the ground and going barefoot.

Benedict returned home to Aniane in 779, where he established a monastery under the Benedictine rule in honor of his patron and name sake.

In time, Benedict’s monastery grew, and eventually became a model of the monastic reform in France.

Benedict died in 821 in Aachen, Germany of natural causes after assisting Charlemagne’s son, Louis the Pious, with the monastic reform.

Benedict is directly responsible for much of the monastic reform, and is considered to have had a great impact on the religious practice of the Carolingian Empire (Europe).

References:

• Butler’s Lives of the Saints – Concise Edition, Harper and Row
• Catholic Online
• Catholic Encyclopedia Online