1. The term “Benedictine” applies in a general sense to all monks who live communally according to the rule of Benedict of Nursia (ca. 480-ca. 547). More narrowly Benedictines are members of a Benedictine confederation set up in 1893 by Pope Leo XIII (1878–1903). To this group belong 21 autonomous congregations with some 9,000 male members and 18,500 female members under an abbot primate in Rome (Catalogus monasteriorum OSB 17 [1990]).

2. Benedict composed the rule that would decisively shape Western monasticism originally for ¶ his own monastery at Monte Cassino (after 529). Af…