It would be lazy and a bit out of place for a non-Christian to characterize ours as a “fallen world.” If it’s possible, though, to shift that from a spiritual term to an intellectual concept, speaking of a context in which traditional values and virtues have been diminished, distorted, or disregarded completely, then it feels unfortunately relevant. The ongoing discourse related to virtue signaling is illustrative of the phenomenon. On one hand, it’s easy to see the nub of a valid point at the core of early criticism; the performative, often Internet-based pronouncements of purity tended to be scolding, smarmy, or judgmental in tone, and often smacked of hypocrisy to boot. That said, a functional society relies upon virtue signaling–the public assertion and reinforcement of norms that hold the social contract together, that allow us to coexist with some measure of harmony. And somewhere along the way, the condemnation of “virtue signaling” became conflated with a rejection of virtue itself, a mutually-assured cynicism that tends toward a belief that there are two kinds of people: tough realists and suckers. If the world has fallen, what is the fate of the virtuous person? A speedbump, a mark, a victim-in-waiting.
These two stages centered on what is probably the most important Benedictine site on the Cammino, the town of Subiaco. Norcia and Montecassino might seize the headlines, as the monk’s birthplace and final resting spot respectively, but Subiaco is where he did the bulk of his life’s work. Getting there, at least from Collepardo, was a lot of work. I spent the morning tromping up and down through the hills, passing through the attractive towns of Vico nel Lazio, Guarcino, and Trevi nel Lazio along the way. Guarcino, in particular, captured my imagination, preserving as it does its historic role as a military checkpoint. As I rounded through the narrow streets, passing gate after gate, it was easy to imagine how disorienting it might be to invade this place, and how fiercely it might have been defended. The most evocative part of the walk, though, stood between Guarcino and Trvi nel Lazio, at the high point of the stage. Somewhere around 970m is the Arco di Trevi, a pre-Roman arch sitting at an isolated location in the hills. Nobody is sure why it’s there or what purpose it served. Part of a long-destroyed aqueduct? A prehistoric border gate? Today, the giant stone arch has a rickety, modern stick-and-barbed wire fence passing along its base, to restrict the movements of cows, not people.
After Trevi, the landscape smoothed out a bit, as I passed into the narrow Aniene River valley, which would become my close companion through the rest of these two stages, leading me all the way to Vicovaro. I wouldn’t be the only one making that much easier walk between Subiaco and Vicovaro, but we’ll come back to that.
Benedict wasn’t the first famous man to establish himself in Subiaco. On the contrary, about as contrary as you can get, it was the Emperor Nero, who favored this quiet, cool, scenic spot as a summer getaway–the same Nero who believed that no man, past or present, was pure and good, and instead of struggling against those limitations reveled in them. He ordered the landscape transformed to suit his interests, having the river dammed at multiple points to create a series of artificial lakes, and building a sprawling villa at the base of the hill upon which–much higher up–Benedict would later go to work. In his colorful account of a visit here in 1890, F.W. Farrar writes of Nero, “in the orgies of despotism and luxury, in the mingling of all the blood and mud of natural viciousness, during a career in which, as on Solomon’s mount of corruption, ‘lust was hard by hate,’ degraded humanity, plunged himself into horrible retribution, and shook down the bases of empire.” More than a millennium after Nero’s death, earthquakes triggered the collapse of those artificial lakes and a flood that swept away most of what remained of his villa. Precious little remains to be seen today.
By contrast, Benedict’s presence is everywhere. Alas, the Cammino di San Benedetto won’t take you directly past the greatest parts of that legacy; the Santo Speco monastery, built atop the grotto that was his isolated hermitage when he first retreated here, is a handful of kilometers off route. That would make for a delightful off-day stroll, but proved too much to manage after completing my walk at 4pm. Subiaco, more than any other town so far, is the place I regret not dedicating more time to. Nonetheless, I didn’t miss out completely; on the contrary, I spent the night in another of his monasteries, dedicated to his sister Santa Scolastica.
The young Benedict arrived in Subiaco filled with despair, or at least the legends surrounding his life–pretty much all we have to work with–would have us believe. The Christian Church, steeled in hardship under Roman persecution, had gone soft following its elevation. And by the time Benedict was born in 480, the (Western) Roman Empire had fallen four years earlier. Nonetheless, Rome remained the center, and so a young Benedict ventured there in pursuit of higher learning; instead, he was confronted with lower character, and the unseemly behavior of so many around him raised alarm bells. What drove him off, though, was an even more tawdry matter: celebrity. After his nurse accidentally broke a borrowed wheat sifter, she was despondent, prompting Benedict to pray on her behalf. The sifter was restored, the first–and, on the surface, at least, pretty mundane–miracle of Benedict’s life quickly became known around Rome. Freaked out, Benedict literally headed for the hills, finding a cave near Subiaco within which he could escape the paparazzi.
Whereas Nero embraced his demons, entertained them with his fiddle-playing even, Benedict fought off his. Early in his time in Subiaco, demons interfered with his acquisition of bread, pestered him in the form of a blackbird, and distracted Benedict with the temptation of the flesh. To cure the latter, he flung himself naked into a sticker bush, permanently curing himself of lust. Congratulations? While I’m not the ideal audience for this narrative, the deeper point, I think, is that Benedict needed to test himself, test his temptations, test all the ways that he might fail to ultimately live up to the standard that he was preparing to set for himself and others. To do as he said, with unceasing consistency. Because, the reality was that even his isolation in Subiaco couldn’t last forever; already, word was beginning to circulate that this holy man was close at hand.
This is where Vicovaro comes in. The abbot of that town’s monastery died, creating an opening, and the monks came calling for Benedict. He warned them that they would not like his leadership of the abbey, but they were drawn to his fame, anticipating that his presence would aggrandize the monastery. Benedict was persuaded, but he was proved right in time, as the monks gradually learned that he was actually serious, very serious. Several monks conspired to rid themselves of this troublesome abbot by poisoning his drink, only to see the glass shatter as Benedict made the sign of the cross. He tossed his harshest insult at the monks–”May Almighty God have mercy on you!”–and returned to Subiaco. What followed was a prolific, remarkable run, during which Benedict founded twelve different monasteries, all filled with monks who were drawn to join him and follow his lead.
There’s nothing particularly exciting or dramatic about Benedict. We’re not exactly overflowing with sexy saints, but Benedict is about as unsexy as they come. Just look at his miracles in Subiaco. He had a monk who kept sneaking off during times of prayer; instead of disciplining the man, he discovered that a demon was spurring his misbehavior, and thus cured the man with prayer and a firm thwack from a rod. When the monks were spending hours daily porting water into the monastery, he identified three locations where he ordered the men to dig, and in all three locations they encountered miraculous springs that completely met their needs. On another occasion, a monk lost the blade from his sickle, as it flew off into a lake mid-swing. The poor man was every bit as despondent as Benedict’s old nurse. Well, Benedict stuck the handle into the lake and the blade miraculously rejoined it. These are all fairly banal, run-of-the-mill matters, but they speak to an earnestness and seriousness of purpose that runs through Benedict’s life.
The best example of the man, though, might come from the incident that ended his time in Subiaco. A nearby priest grew jealous of Benedict and decided to kill him with a poisoned loaf of bread. Benedict knew it was poisoned–somehow–but thanked the priest and then–again, for some reason–instructed a raven to dispose of the bread in an empty area. When the priest realized that the loaf didn’t cut it, he sent seven naked girls to tempt the monks in one of Benedict’s monasteries. Having realized the man’s determination, Benedict decided to leave Subiaco, because only then would his men be able to live unbothered. As it happens, the priest was struck down by God–the building he was in collapsed down upon him. When an excited monk rushed to inform Benedict, the latter chastised the monk for taking joy in such an event.
Maybe you’d rather have Nero at a party than Benedict. I can’t make any claim to the fact that the latter would be a good hang. But I’m struck by how closely he modeled many of those core Christian values, and the legacy that he left behind at Montecassino, the culmination of those busy years in Subiaco, shaped the Christian world for the better part of the next millennium.
