Saint Benedict of Anian
Abbot (750-821)
Feast – February 12
In 751 Pepin the Short, the younger son of the Frankish prince Charles Martel, became King. Educated by the monks from the Abbey of Saint Denis, he reigned over Francia jointly with his elder brother Carloman. The brothers were active in suppressing revolts led by the Bavarians, Aquitanians, Saxons and the Alemanni in the early years of their reign. In 768 following Pepin’s death, his eldest son Charles the Great (Charlemagne) became king of the Franks as co-ruler with his brother Carloman I, until the latter’s death in 771. As sole ruler, he continued his father’s policy towards the papacy and became its protector by removing the Lombards (Germanic people, mostly Arian heretics, or pagans who in the 6th century took control of most of the Italian Peninsula.) from power in northern Italy and lead an incursion into Muslim Spain. He also campaigned against the Saxons to the east and Christianized them. Charlemagne united the majority of western and central Europe and is the first recognized emperor to rule western Europe since the fall of the Western Roman Empire around three centuries earlier.
In times like these, times of peace and prosperity, easygoing lukewarmness is the greatest danger people face. It is especially devastating to society if it spreads among the clergy and religious groups which are supposed to be setting an example of piety. The Holy Mass slowly loses its sacrificial character, being transformed into a social gathering. Over time fewer and fewer attendees remember to offer their prayers, sacrifices, pains, works and appreciation on the altar in union with the sacrifice of Jesus to Almighty God.
During the days of King Charles the Great, a monk and monastic reformer known as St. Benedict of Anian, was the one setting a good example. His conduct exhibited the path to piety for religious and nonreligious, leading some to call him the Second Benedict.
Born about 750 to Aigulf, the Count and Governor of Languedoc, St. Benedict was educated at the Frankish court of King Pepin, entered the royal service as a page, and continued serving Pepin’s son King Charles. Serving under two great kings he enjoyed great honors and possessions, at the same time he saw greed, pride, jealousy, selfishness, and the manipulations normally surrounding kings. At the age of twenty he decided to seek the kingdom of God. Without relinquishing his place at court, he lived there a very mortified life for three years. In 773 he took part in Charlemagne’s campaign against the Lombards where he almost drowned in the Ticino River near Pavia. This narrow escape from drowning made him vow to renounce the world and live the monastic life. Returning to Languedoc, he was confirmed in his resolution by the pious advice of a hermit of great merit and virtue, called Widmar. He went to the Abbey of St. Seine, seventeen miles from Dijon, sent back all his attendants and became a monk there. He spent two years and a half in wonderful abstinence, treating his body as a furious wild beast, to which he would show no other mercy. He took no other sustenance on any account but bread and water; and when overcome with weariness, he allowed himself nothing softer than the bare ground whereon to take a short rest, thus making even his repose a continuation of penance.
In reward for St. Benedict’s heroic austerities in the monastic state, God bestowed upon him the gift of tears, and inspired him with a knowledge of spiritual things. At Saint-Seine, he was made cellarer, responsible for the provisioning of food and drink, he was very solicitous to provide for others whatever St. Benedict’s rule allowed and had a particular care of the poor and of the guests. He was elected abbot, but realizing that the monks would never conform to his strict practices he left and returned to his father’s estates in Languedoc, where he built himself a little hermitage at Aniane where he lived in great solitude and poverty practicing all the severest observances prescribed by the rules of St. Pachomius and St. Basil. Some solitaries, and with them the holy man Widmar, put themselves under his direction. They earned their livelihood through labour and lived on bread and water, except on Sunday and solemn festivals, on which they added a little wine and milk when it was given in alms. The holy superior did not exempt himself from working with the rest in the fields, either carrying wood or ploughing; and sometimes he copied good books.
Fame of his sanctity drew many souls to him. In 780 he founded a monastic community based on Eastern asceticism. This community did not develop as he had intended, so in 782 he founded another monastery based on Benedictine Rule at the same location. Within a short time three hundred monks gathered around him. His success there gave him considerable influence, which he used to found and reform a number of other monasteries. Louis the Pious who became King of Aquitaine in 781 asked St. Benedict to reform the monasteries in his territory and later as Emperor, he entrusted him with the coordination of practices and communication among the monasteries within his domains. First, St. Benedict drew up with immense labor a code of the rules following the instructions of the first Saint Benedict, his patron, which he collated with those of the chief monastic founders, showing uniformity of the exercises in each. Secondly, he minutely regulated all matters regarding food, clothing, and every detail of life. Thirdly, by prescribing the same regimen for all, he precluded jealousies and ensured perfect charity. When Felix, bishop of Urgel, had advanced that Christ was not the natural, but only the adoptive son of the eternal Father. St. Benedict most learnedly opposed this heresy, and in 794 assisted at the council assembled against it at Frankfort. He employed his pen to confute the heresy in four treatises. In a Provincial Council at which he was present, held in 813 under Charlemagne, it was declared that all monks of the West should adopt the rule of St. Benedict of Anian.
He was the head of a council of abbots which in 817 at Aachen created a code of regulations, or “Codex regularum,” which would be binding on all their houses.
This great restorer of the monastic order in the West, worn out at length with mortification and fatigues, suffered much from continual sickness the latter years of his life. He died with extraordinary tranquility and cheerfulness, on the 11th of February, 821, being then about seventy-one years of age, and was buried in the Kornelimünster Abbey also known as Abbey of the Abbot Saint Benedict of Aniane and Pope Cornelius, the monastery Emperor Louis had built for him to serve as the base for Benedict’s supervisory work, located in Aachen in North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany.
References and Excerpts:
[1] “Saint Benedict of Anian, Abbot.” https://sanctoral.com/en/saints/saint_benedict_of_anian.html (accessed Jan. 31, 2022).
[2] “St. Benedict of Anian, Abbot | EWTN,” EWTN Global Catholic Television Network. https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/st-benedict-of-anian-abbot-5278 (accessed Jan. 31, 2022).
[3] “Benedict of Aniane,” Wikipedia. Jan. 02, 2022. Accessed: Jan. 31, 2022. [Online]. Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Benedict_of_Aniane&oldid=1063342515