30
July 579 A.D. Benedict
1 Dies—Rome’s 62nd; Lombard
Ravages & Famine
Mann, Horace. "Pope Benedict
I." The
Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 2. New York: Robert
Appleton Company, 1907.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02427c.htm. Accessed 12 Jul 2014.
Pope Benedict I
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Of the first Pontiff who bore the name of Benedict practically nothing is known. The date of his birth is unknown; he
d. 30 July, 579. He was a Roman and the son of Boniface, and was called Bonosus by the Greeks(Evagrius, Hist., V, 16). The ravages
of the Lombards rendered it very difficult to
communicate with the emperor at Constantinople,
who claimed the privilege of confirming the election of the popes. Hence there was a vacancy of nearly eleven months between the
death of John III and
the arrival of the imperial confirmation of Benedict's election, 2 June, 575. He reigned
four years, one month, and twenty-eight days. Almost the only act recorded of him is that he
granted an estate, the Massa Veneris, in the
territory of Minturnae, to Abbot
Stephen of St. Mark's "near the walls of Spoleto" (St. Gregory I, Ep. ix, 87, I. al. 30).
Famine followed the devastating Lombards,
and from the few words the Liber Pontificalis has about Benedict, we gather that he died in
the midst of his efforts to cope with these difficulties. He was buried in the vestibule of
the sacristy of
the old basilica of St. Peter. In an ordination which
he held in December he made fifteen priests and
threedeacons,
and consecrated twenty-one bishops.
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Sources
The
most important source for the history of the first nine popes who bore the name
of Benedict is the biographies in the Liber Pontificalis, of which the most
useful edition is that of Duchesne, Le Liber Pontificalis (Paris, 1886-92), and
the latest that of Mommsen, Gesta Pontif. Roman. (to the end of the reign of
Constantine only, Berlin, 1898). Jaffé, Regesta Pont. Rom. (2d ed., Leipzig,
1885), gives a summary of the letters of each pope and tells where they may be
read at length. Modern accounts of these popes will be found in any large
Church history, or history of the City of Rome. The fullest account in English
of most of them is to be read in Mann, Lives of the Popes in the Early Middle
Ages (London, 1902, passim).
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