The Orthodox Veneration

Why and how the Eastern Orthodox Church venerates St Benedict of Nursia — a saint who lived, wrote, and died in the undivided Church, five centuries before the schism of 1054, and is therefore received by the East as one of its own pre-schism Western fathers. The file sets out the principle of pre-schism sainthood; the Eastern feast on 14 March and the troparion; the early channel by which Benedict entered Greek consciousness (the eighth-century Greek translation of Gregory’s Dialogues); the modern recovery of the ancient Western saints in the Orthodox world, associated above all with St John of Shanghai; and the modern critical scholarship — Adalbert de Vogüé, Terrence Kardong, and the RB 1980 edition — that has refounded the study of Benedict and his Rule and that is the backbone of this entire collection.

Tradition: Pre-Schism Western (Latin) / Orthodox reception

A Saint of the Undivided Church

Benedict belongs to the Orthodox Church by the simplest and strongest of titles: he was a saint of the one, undivided Church. He was born around 480 and died around 547 — five centuries before the mutual excommunications of 1054 that mark the conventional break between East and West. In his lifetime there was no “Roman Catholic” and “Eastern Orthodox”; there was the one Church, with its Latin West and its Greek East in communion. The saints of those undivided centuries — Western and Eastern alike — are the common inheritance of all who hold the faith of that Church, and the Orthodox Church venerates the pre-schism saints of the West as fully its own: Ambrose and Augustine, Leo and Gregory, Martin of Tours, Patrick of Ireland, Genevieve of Paris — and Benedict of Nursia among the greatest of them (on the principle, see The Pre-Schism Church). To venerate Benedict is not, for the Orthodox, to borrow a “Western” saint; it is to claim a father who was theirs before the division ever was.

There is, moreover, a particular fitness in the Orthodox veneration of Benedict, because his monasticism is so deeply rooted in the Eastern tradition (see East and West Monasticism). The man who called Basil “our holy father” and sent his monks to Cassian and the desert fathers is no stranger to the Christian East; he is its Latin son. The Orthodox who reads the Rule finds the desert he knows — the renunciation of self-will, the ladder of humility, the warfare against the passions — in a Latin key.

The Feast and the Troparion

In the Orthodox calendar, St Benedict of Nursia is commemorated on 14 March (Old Style; the corresponding New Style date varies). This is distinct from the principal Western dates: the older Roman calendar kept 21 March, the traditional day of his death, while the post-1969 Roman calendar moved his feast to 11 July, a date associated with the translation of his relics (see The Death of Benedict and Patron of Europe). The Orthodox 14 March commemoration is the one under which he is honored in the Orthodox Church in America, the Greek Orthodox calendars, and the Russian tradition.

The Orthodox liturgical texts for the feast — troparion and kontakion — celebrate Benedict in the language proper to a venerable monastic father: they play, as Gregory himself did, on his name (Benedictus, “blessed,” the “son of benediction”), praise his ascetic labors and his gift of wonderworking, and hold him up as a “rule and model” of the monastic life for all who would follow it (troparion and kontakion to St Benedict of Nursia, 14 March; texts in the OCA Menaion and service books). The Orthodox Church thus receives him exactly as Gregory presented him — the man of God, the wonderworker, the father of monks — and gives him the honor it gives its own great ascetics of the East.

How Benedict Reached the East

Benedict entered the consciousness of the Greek-speaking Church early and by a clear channel: Gregory the Great’s Dialogues, including Book II (the Life of Benedict), were translated into Greek by Pope Zacharias (himself of Greek background) in the eighth century. Through that translation, the figure of Benedict — the Latin vir Dei of the Dialogues — became known and loved in the Byzantine world, where Gregory was honored as “Gregory the Dialogist” precisely on account of this work. The veneration of Benedict in the East is therefore not a modern revival but a continuity reaching back to the early medieval reception of the Dialogues in Greek. The same book that gave Benedict to the West gave him, in Greek dress, to the East.

The Modern Recovery of the Western Saints

In modern times, the Orthodox veneration of the ancient Western saints — Benedict among them — received fresh emphasis through the labors of twentieth-century Orthodox in the West, and is associated above all with St John (Maximovitch) of Shanghai and San Francisco (1896–1966). As a ROCOR bishop in Western Europe, St John actively sought out, restored to the calendars, and promoted the veneration of the pre-schism saints of the lands where his flock now lived — the saints of Gaul, of Britain, of Italy — insisting that the Orthodox in the West should honor the Orthodox saints of the West (see St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco). This recovery has made Benedict, and figures like St Claudius of Besançon (see St. Claudius of Besançon) and the many local Western saints, a living part of the devotion of Orthodox communities far beyond their original homelands — a reclaiming of the common patrimony of the undivided Church.

The Modern Scholarship

A source-faithful treatment of Benedict — the kind this collection has attempted — is possible only because of a revolution in the critical study of Benedict and his Rule carried out in the twentieth century, and it is right to name the scholars whose work is the backbone of this guide:

• Adalbert de Vogüé, OSB (1924–2011), the towering figure of modern Benedictine scholarship. His critical editions, with commentary, of the Rule of Benedict (Sources Chrétiennes 181–186, 1971–1972), the Rule of the Master (SC 105–107, 1964–1965), and Gregory’s Dialogues (SC 251, 260, 265, 1978–1980) are the indispensable foundation. It was de Vogüé, above all, who established the priority of the Rule of the Master (see The Regula Benedicti) and who defended the Gregorian authorship of the Dialogues against Francis Clark (see The Source Problem). Nearly every chapter of this collection rests on his editions.
• Terrence G. Kardong, OSB (1936–2019), whose Benedict’s Rule: A Translation and Commentary (Liturgical Press, 1996) is the standard English verse-by-verse commentary — the work that makes the Rule’s text accessible chapter by chapter, with full attention to its sources and its meaning.
• The RB 1980 edition — RB 1980: The Rule of St. Benedict in Latin and English with Notes, edited by Timothy Fry, OSB, and a team of scholars (Liturgical Press, 1981). This is the standard English study-edition of the Rule, with the Latin text, a careful translation, and extensive introductory and appended studies on the sources, the date, the conversatio morum question, the Office, and the Rule’s transmission. It is the single most useful one-volume tool for the Rule, and a constant reference throughout this collection.

These works share a common virtue that makes them congenial to the discipline of this guide: they distinguish rigorously between the Rule (a text in Benedict’s own words), the Dialogues (a hagiography fifty years later), and the modern reconstruction — exactly the distinctions on which a born-compliant treatment depends. The Benedict the Orthodox Church venerates and the Benedict modern scholarship studies are not two men but one, seen from two angles; and the honest task, which this collection has tried to discharge, is to let the veneration and the scholarship illumine each other without confusing the icon with the chronicle.

See Also

• The Pre-Schism Church — the framework for venerating a Latin saint of the undivided Church
• Patron of Europe — the parallel Western reception and the calendar dates
• East and West Monasticism — Benedict’s Eastern roots, which make the Orthodox veneration so fitting
• The Source Problem and Reading the Dialogues — the source-discipline the modern scholarship makes possible
• St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco — the modern champion of the ancient Western saints in Orthodoxy
• St. Claudius of Besançon — another pre-schism Western saint in Orthodox reception

References

• Venerable Benedict of Nursia. Orthodox Church in America (oca.org), Lives of the Saints, 14 March. (The Orthodox commemoration on 14 March; the life summary; the gift of foresight and wonderworking; troparion and kontakion referenced.)
• Benedict of Nursia. OrthodoxWiki and the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese calendars. (The 14 March feast; the Orthodox veneration as a pre-schism Western saint; used to locate the calendar and liturgical data.)
• de Vogüé, Adalbert. La Règle de saint Benoît (SC 181–186, 1971–1972); La Règle du Maître (SC 105–107, 1964–1965); Grégoire le Grand, Dialogues (SC 251, 260, 265, 1978–1980). Paris: Cerf.
• Kardong, Terrence G. Benedict’s Rule: A Translation and Commentary. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1996.
• Fry, Timothy, ed. RB 1980: The Rule of St. Benedict in Latin and English with Notes. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1981.
• On the Greek translation of the Dialogues by Pope Zacharias (eighth century) and Gregory as “the Dialogist” in the East: standard reference works on Gregory the Great (e.g., the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, s.v. “Gregory I”), used to locate the transmission.