Benedict of Aniane

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Saint Benedict of Aniane
Born	747, France
Died	11 February 821
Venerated in	Roman Catholicism
Feast	11 February
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Benedict of Aniane (also called Witiza; the Second Benedict) (c. 747 – 11 February 821) was a saint born in France.

1 Life
2 Veneration
3 Works
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Life

The son of the Goth, Aigulf, Count of Maguelone in Languedoc, France, Witiza was educated at the Frankish court of Pippin the Younger, and entered the royal service. He served at the court of Charlemagne, and took part in the Italian campaign of Charlemagne in 773 where he almost drowned in the Tesin near Pavia while trying to save his brother. He later left the court to become a monk. He was received into the monastery of St. Sequanus (Saint-Seine).

Around 780, he founded a monastic community based on Eastern asceticism at Aniane in Languedoc. This community did not develop as he had intended. In 799, he founded another monastery based on Benedictine Rule, at the same location. His success there gave him considerable influence, which he used to found and reform a number of other monasteries, and eventually becoming the effective abbot of all the monasteries of Charlemagne's empire.^[1]

He was the head of a council of abbots which in 817 at Aachen created a code of regulations, or "Codex regularum", which would be binding on all their houses. Shortly thereafter, he compiled a "Concordia regularum". Although these new codes fell into disuse shortly after the deaths of Benedict and his patron, Emperor Louis the Pious, they did have lasting effects on Western monasticism.

Louis built the abbey of Maurmunster as a model abbey for Benedict in Alsace. Benedict died at Kornelimünster Abbey, a monastery Louis had built for him to serve as the base for Benedict's supervisory work.

[edit] Veneration

His feast day is February 11.

[edit] Works

For Benedict's writings, see Codex regularum monasticarum et canonicarum in Patrologia Latina, CIII, 393-702;
Concordia regularum, loc. cit;
Letters, loc. cit., 703-1380.

Other treatises (loc. cit., 1381 sqq.) ascribed to him are probably not authentic.

Ardo Smaragdus, Life, op. cit., CIII, 353 sqq.;
Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Script., XV, I, 200-220;
Acta Sanctorum, Feb., II, 606 sqq.;
NICOLAI, Der hl. Benedict, Gründer von Aniane und Cornelimünster (Cologne, 1865);
PAULINIER, S. Benoit d'Aniane et la fondation du monastere de ce nom (Montpellier, 1871);
FOSS, Benedikt von Aniane (Berlin, 1884);
PUCKERT, Aniane und Gellone (Leipzig, 1899);
HAUCK, Kirchengesch. Deutschlands (2nd ed., Leipzig, 1900), II, 575 sqq.;
BUTLER, Lives of the Saints, 12 Feb.