BENEDICT'S GRIEF OVER AN ENEMY

Chapter 6 of Gregory's Dialogues Book II

Gregory begins this story by stressing the effect Benedict and his monks were having at Subiaco where they lived: "The land round about became fervent with the love of our Lord God, Jesus Christ." The communal mimetic process has advanced in a positive direction where almost everybody was following the example of Benedict, which is the example of Christ. There was, unfortunately, one exception. This was Florent, the priest in charge of a neighboring church. Gregory says that "the wicked are full of envy for the loveliness of virtue in other people, yet they take no trouble to acquire it for themselves," Here, the priest desires the holiness that Benedict has, that is, he desires the being of Benedict. However, Florent wants Benedict's holiness but he does not want to act in the way of Benedict. Moreover, what Florent probably understood instinctively was that he was the odd person out if, except for him, the land about was "fervent with the love of our Lord God." He was, then, in danger of being the communal scapegoat unless he could redirect the mimetic process. To that end, he denigrated Benedict's way of life, "to turn his visitors away from him if he possibly could."

These efforts failed. Florent could not "stop the progress, since the renown of [Benedict's] way of life kept on increasing." Florent's envy and "burning jealousy" grew steadily worse "because he strongly coveted the honor that came to Benedict from his way of life, although he himself did not want to live a life worthy of such honor." The sad irony here is that Florent could have had the same grace for himself by exchanging his pride for humility, but that was what he could not do. It seems that Florent did not want to share the virtue of another person, but rather felt the need to be the one and only superior person in his neighborhood. As a priest, Florent was likely a community leader when Benedict and his monks settled in the area. This position made him the most likely competitor with Benedict for influential power if he were to take the route of competition rather than that of sharing, which is what he did. Adalbert de Vogüé points out that for Gregory, as for most patristic authors, envy is an evil passion "that is essentially diabolical" because it was envy that led to serpent to tempt Adam and Eve to fall away from God.

Florent's envious desire to have the holiness he refuses to embody escalated to the point that, "blinded by this envy," he poisoned a loaf of bread and delivered it to Benedict. Either through of supernatural insight or a shrewd reading of Florent's character, "the poison hidden inside the bread did not escape" Benedict. When a crow whom Benedict had befriended came to for its daily handout, Benedict gave the loaf to the crow and told it to get rid of it for him. When the crow accomplished that errand, it received its treat. In sharp contrast to the priest's hatred of Benedict on account of his goodness, Benedict "felt the pain of this [envy], less for himself than for the priest." That is, Benedict reacts to Florent's hatred with love and sorrow. Most important, Benedict does not try to retaliate in any way, neither does he say anything to hurt the priest's reputation, no matter how much he deserved it.

Florent, however, remained consumed by his hatred. Having failed to kill Benedict, he "started to burn with desire to kill the souls of his disciples." To that end, Florent invited a group of dancing girls to entertain the younger monks during the middle of the night. That "this was done to inflame a perverse passion in their souls"indicates that Florent was trying to make Benedict's monks as depraved as he was himself. If he had succeeded, he would have been well on his way towards directing the communal mimetic process away from Benedict, ultimately isolating the holy man as the odd person out while everybody else fell behend Florent.

Benedict saw the danger but, still not willing to engage in rivalry with the priest, he withdrew without showing any rancor or ill will towards Florent. After appointing his most mature monks as priors over his places of prayer, he took the youngest and most susceptible monks and moved away. This action diffused what could have become a violent situation. Gregory stresses Benedict's unruffled reaction to Florent's hatred but stresses even more Benedict's love and concern for others. This action of leaving the area with his youngest disciples acts out this love and concern both for the priest and for his most impressionable monks. Benedict's restraint is all the more remarkable in that he could easily have led his local community in making Florent the communal scapegoat. With everybody else accepting Benedict's sense of values and rejecting those of Florent, Florent's actions would surely have alienated everybody if they were made known, which Benedict could have done quite easily. Florent's attempt to turn the mimetic process away from himself and against Benedict, then, would have brought upon himself the fate he most feared. The catch, of course, is that Benedict's sense of values did not allow for the encouragement of communal scapegoating, not even in the case of someone who had wronged him and richly deserved it. If that were to happen, the local society would have become organized, not around Benedict's virtue, but around the scapegoating of the priest. In leaving the area with his youngest disciples, Benedict appeared to have lost the battle with the evil priest. In terms of embodying the values of Christ, however, Benedict won hands down.

However, no sooner had Benedict "humbly slipped away from the hatred of his rival," then God struck the priest "in a terrible manner." At the very moment when Florent was "standing on the terrace, exulting at the news of Benedict's departure," the terrace collapsed, crushing the priest to death. The reader is likely to feel a sense of satisfaction at the poetic justice. If the narration ended here, we would be left with a vengeful God who gives his saint the grace to refrain from taking vengeance but lacks that very grace himself. But the narration does not end here. We would also be left with self-satisfied readers.

Benedict's greatest disciple, Maurus, acting like the typical reader, ran ten miles to catch up to Benedict and tell him how the priest who had persecuted him had come to a bad end. Far from rejoicing at the news, Benedict "began to grieve wholeheartedly" over the death of his enemy and he imposed a penance on Maurus who had "exulted over it." Benedict's reaction to Florent's death, inspired by divine grace, makes it clear that God was not in the business of killing wicked people and making merry over the deed. If Benedict grieved over the evil heart of this priest and then grieved over his death, then surely God shared that grief. Likewise, any reader who shares Maurus' reaction to Florent's death is rebuked as well.

Adalbert de Vogüé points out the correspondence between Florent's exultation over Benedict's departure and Maurus' exultation over Florent's death, suggesting, in Girardian terms, that these "two antagonistic exultations" have become mirror images or mimetic doubles. Rather than being caught up in this "squabble of which he is the object," Benedict avoids being entangled in the human passions swirling about him. More important, by being outside these passions, Benedict is in a position to pull Maurus out of the entanglement as well by imposing the penance that he does.

In the paragraph that follows, Peter the Deacon makes his famous summary of the biblical typology of Benedict's miracles. The other two miracles referred to here are Benedict's drawing water out of a rock as Moses did in the desert, and raising a heavy tool that was dropped into the water by a mistake to rise back to the surface, as Elisha did for one of his followers. Benedict's grief over the death of any enemy is likened to King David's grief over the death of Saul. What is most striking about this triad of miracles is that the first two entail supernatural actions that tamper with the natural order, but the third is a miracle of love, what Adalbert de Vogüé calls "a moral marvel of a purely spiritual order." Benedict reacts to the evil done to him by an enemy and that enemy's subsequent death with a love that seems to be beyond human capability, just as striking water from a rock seems to be beyond human capability. What Gregory is suggesting, however, is that God's grace can change both the laws of nature as we perceive them and, much more importantly, the "laws of nature" of the human heart. The reflex reaction of vengeance against an enemy and exultation over an enemy's fall can be transmuted into love and concern for the enemy and grief over the enemy's fall.

It is worth noting, however, that love is very much at the heart of the two miracles against nature as well. It is love for the monks who needed a convenient source of water that motivated Benedict to strike the rock and he did this privately in the middle of the night, unlike Moses who struck the rock publically in a desperate attempt to stave off violence against himself. Likewise, it was love for the Gothic monk who dropped an axe into the water and felt badly about it that motivated Benedict to cause the axe to rise back to the water's surface. Adalbert de Vogüé tells us that there are many times in the Dialogues when Gregory tops a series of nature miracles with a miracle of the human heart, suggesting that "acts of patience and heroic humility outweigh all miracles, including raising the dead." Moreover, as Benedict's miracle with the water from the rock surpasses Moses' miracle because of his love, Benedict likewise surpasses David in his grief over the death of his enemy, King Saul. In spite of David's histrionic reaction to Saul's death, it is hard for the reader not to be a little suspicious of its authenticity. After all, regardless of his real feelings, David definitely benefitted from Saul's death. Benedict, on the other hand, gained thing from Florent's death. Neither was there any political reason for Benedict to feign grief as there was for David. David may have been sincere in his outpouring of grief over Saul's death, but there is no question of the genuine quality of Benedict's grief that is not complicated by any possibility of worldly gain.

Adalbert de Vogüé also draws a comparison between Benedict's reaction to the attempted poisoning at Vicovaro, analyzed in my essay "The unanimously poisoned Cup of Wine," and the episode now under review. In both cases, Benedict shows perfect self-control and lack of rancor. The charming episode about the crow suggests that, once again, Benedict reacted with a "peaceful face" and a tranquil spirit." At Vicovaro, however, Benedict only demonstrated the inner virtue of detachment. He left those evil monks to their fate "without troubling himself about their destiny." In the case of the attempted poisoning and subsequent harassment by Florent, Benedict became deeply concerned about his enemy. De Vogüé says that this is a second victory over irascibility and one that goes beyond the first. "When one is at the receiving end of hate, it is a beautiful thing not to hate, and it is more beautiful still to love." This time round, Benedict did more than simply withdraw from mimetic conflict; he actively kept love alive as a magnet for mimetic attraction so that all could share the same love for an enemy, as he did by seeking to instill his love for Florent into the heart of Maurus. One other difference between the two events seems relevant to explaining the deeper, loving reaction to the second. At Vicovaro, Benedict was himself treated as the communal scapegoat and thus was the object of attempted collective violence. At Subiaco, Benedict was the center of a collective movement towards righteous behavior. Perhaps the experience at Subiaco increased Benedict's sensitivity to victimizing behavior, so that he did not want Florent to suffer that fate. A second factor was that being an object of communal admiration rather than of hate helped strengthen Benedict to feel love for his persecutor.

In conclusion, Gregory responds to Peter's list of biblical archetypes by adding a Christological dimension to the miracles. Benedict did not perform these miracles through the spirit of Moses, Elisha and David, but through "the spirit of the Only One who, by the grace flowing from the redemption, filled the hearts of all the elect," namely Christ. Gregory goes on to explain that, although the saints of the Hebrew Bible were given the power to perform miracles by God, they could not "transmit that power to others." Only Jesus had the power, not only to perform miracles but the power to enable those who love him to do the same. Bound up with Jesus' power over nature was the power of Jesus' love and, as noted above, this love was part and parcel of the miracles of Benedict.

Gregory deepens this Christological dimension by adding that "before the proud, [Jesus] was willing to die, and before the humble, to be raised to life, so that the former should see in him a person for contempt and the latter an object for their veneration and their love." It is, of course precisely the same human qualities that govern how Benedict, as a man of God, is perceived by other people. To Florent, Benedict was only a man who was willing to suffer in silence and withdraw rather than retaliate. To Maurus, Benedict was a man who, though willing to withdraw, would surely gloat over his enemy's death. To a person as humble as Benedict himself, this man becomes, like Christ and in Christ, an object for veneration and love. By concluding the "the proud have had ignominious death before their eyes," Gregory suggests that Florent's death is not an act of retaliation by God but simply the ultimate consequence of his pride. Meanwhile, the humble receive "the glory of power over death." That is, Benedict's love of his enemy is the power of the risen Lord. More important, any person who has the humility of Benedict can receive from Christ the same grace that he did to love an enemy.