Man of Blessing - Hardcover

This is a timely biography of the original St. Benedict, patron saint of Europe, father of Western monasticism, and inspiration to our new pope. Towards the close of the fifth century, when young intellectual elites at the finest rhetoric schools in Rome were mastering the art of saying-the-expected-thing-in-the-right-way and squandering their free hours in self-indulgent partying and drunkenness, Benedict left behind a life of privilege to live in a cave and learn how to be silent. There, he also learned how to walk the way of truth and be God's friend. Set against the bloody backdrop that was Italy in mid-first-millennium, Benedict's life charts a course far different from the violent struggles of his day. In a time of war and want, this monk and abbot aimed to establish and nurture community, cultivate the wilderness, and feed the poor. He also left us his famous Rule, seventy-three short chapters that are the foundation for Western monasticism and remain a spiritual classic. "Man of Blessing: answers these questions: Why did Pope Benedict XVI choose the name "Benedict"? What other popes have been named Benedict? What were the important events in the life of St. Benedict? What are St. Benedict's lasting legacies? What is in St. Benedict's Rule? A brief chapter-by-chapter summary of St. Benedict's Rule is presented. It includes one map of "Benedict's Italy".

Carmen Acevedo Butcher has spent the last twenty years studying and teaching ancient and medieval Christianity. She is also the editor of Incandescence: 365 Readings with Women Mystics, and Associate Professor of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Shorter College in Rome, Georgia. She earned her doctorate in Medieval Studies from The University of Georgia, and recently spent a year as a Fulbright Lecturer in Sogang University in Seoul, Korea. She lives in Rome, Georgia, with her husband and two children.