…The Benedictine order owed its existence to the apparent folly of a young man who, instead of doing the proper sensible thing, which was to go through the Roman schools and become an administrator under the Gothic Emperors, went away and for three years lived alone in a hole in the mountains. When he had become ‘a man of much orison’ he emerged, founded monasteries and composed a rule to fit the needs of a self perpetuating, hard-working contemplatives. In the succeeding centuries, the order civilised North Western Europe, introduced or re-established the best agricultural practice of the time, provided the only educational facilities then available and preserved and disseminated the treasures of ancient literature. For generations Benedictinism was the antidote to barbarism. Europe owes an incalculable debt to the young man who, because he was more interested in knowing God than in getting on, or even ‘doing good’ in the world, left Rome for that burrow in the hillside above Subiaco
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taken from:
Grey Eminence page 253
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