On July 11, the Catholic Church celebrates the feast of Saint Benedict of Nursia, the sixth-century abbot who gave Christian monasticism its lasting foundation in Western Europe. For his historic role ...

"The good of all concerned, however, may prompt us to a little strictness in order to amend faults and to safeguard love." The first monks who tried to live under Benedict's direction hated his ...

This expansive illustrated guide to Christian monasticism offers a history of various monastic traditions and shows the rise of monasticism in different parts of the world. Although the text can be ...

The monastic alternative, at least in the West, has become so deeply unfashionable that most people no longer consider the possibility, but there is, at least to me, something deeply appealing about ...

Commemorated March 14/27 Saint Benedict, founder of Western monasticism, was born in the Italian city of Nursia in the year 480. When he was fourteen years of age, the saint's parents sent him to Rome ...

St Benedict’s creation of the Benedictine order led to his recognition as the ‘father of western monasticism’ Little is known with absolute certainty about the life of St Benedict of Nursia (a town in ...

When Judith Valente, a Benedictine oblate, leads contemplative retreats both online and in monasteries around the country, she has been noticing that laypeople — whether Catholic or ...

Many Catholics and Protestants are looking back to Benedict for the community and spiritual intensity they can’t find in modern culture. Christians struggling for sanctity in a too-comfortable world ...

The monastic alternative, at least in the West, has become so deeply unfashionable that most people no longer consider the possibility, but there is, at least to me, something deeply appealing about ...