Benedictines

The Benedictine Order was founded by St Benedict (480-543) at Mount Cassino, Italy, in 529.

After founding the Benedictine order Benedict compiled a series of rules by which the Benedictine monks should live by. In his Rule he allocated each monk a pound of bread and two cooked dishes each day, though meat was forbidden.

The monks of Our Lady of Clear Creek Monastery, in Hulbert Oklahoma. by Wall Street Journal

Benedict wrote practically in his Rule "For the daily meal let there be two cooked dishes so that he who happens not to be able to eat of one may take his meal of the other. Avoid excess-above all things, that no monk shall be overtaken by indigestion."

In his Rule he allocated each monk a nemina (quarter of a litre) of wine each day. Benedict would have liked to prohibit wine but he realized it would be an overly controversial measure, so he restricted his demands to banning drunkenness.

The Rules of Benedict specified that monks should spend two hours a day reading holy books.

In 580 the Benedictine Mount Cassino monastery was sacked by the Lombards thus fulfilling a prophecy of Benedict. The monks took refuge in Rome and started to spread knowledge of Benedictine rule. The Benedictine movement within the next few centuries became a key source for the conversion of Germany and England to Roman Christianity.

View of the Monte Cassino  abbey at dusk By Radomił

The Benedictine order arrived in England in 597 when a monastery was built in Canterbury by the Benedictine prior St Augustine. Other Benedictine missionaries completed the conversion of England to Roman Christianity. A century later the English Benedictines, Sts. Willibrord and Boniface successfully evangelized Germany and from there it spread northwards to Scandinavia and southwards to Spain.

In 816 the Benedictine monastic order was imposed on the Holy Roman Empire. By this time the Benedictine had become the only form of monastic life throughout the whole of Western Europe, excepting Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, where the Celtic form of Christianity remained prevalent.

A typical Benedictine day in England in the ninth century was : 12.00 Laud and Mass. Back to bed. 7.00 Service (prime) and mass. Breakfast. Discuss day’s business. 12.00 Work. 5.00 Vespers then relaxation. 6.30 Supper. 7.00 Compline then bed.

Gregory I was the first of 50 Benedictines who have occupied the papal throne; some others were Leo IV (800?–55), Gregory VII, Pius VII, and Gregory XVI (1765–1846). 

During the Dark Ages copies of the masterpieces of Roman literature were preserved and recopied in the monasteries of the Benedictine monks.

The Benedictine Abbey of Cluny in France was founded in 910 by the Abbot Berno as a reaction to the corruption and lack of zeal in the Benedictine Order. It became the headquarters of the Cluniac order, who were noted for their strict adherence to the rule of St Benedict. From here monastic reforms were spread and Cluny became the leader of western monasticism from the later 10th century.

The Benedictine order was to be the most important order in Europe for many centuries and produced 50 popes and many cardinals and archbishops. By the 11th century they existed in great numbers in every country of Western Europe except Ireland. By the Reformation there were almost 300 Benedictine monasteries and nunneries in England.

The order had 37,000 monks in the 14th century; in the 15th century it had 15,107. The Reformation left not more than 5,000, but this number has since increased to about 11,000 men and 25,000 women. 

Late 15th century Benedictine monks in Westminster Abbey would eat 6,000 calories a day normally and 4,500 a day when "fasting". They drank a gallon of beer and 10 oz of wine and ate 2.25 lbs of bread, 5 eggs, and 2 lbs of meat or fish a day. Many monks became obese and suffered related conditions. 

The Benedictine habit consists of a tunic and scapular, over which is worn a long full gown, or cowl, with a hood to cover the head. The color of the habit is not specified in the rule, and it is conjectured that the early Benedictines wore white, the natural color of undyed wool. For many centuries, however, black has been the prevailing color, and thus Benedictines have been called "black monks." 

Because Benedict never mentioned underpants in his instructions, his followers were not allowed to wear them.

Funk & Wagnalls Enyclopedia

Saint Benedict of Nursia

Saint Benedict of Nursia was born on March 2, 480 in Nursia, Kingdom of Italy into a distinguished Christian family who loved each other tenderly. Benedict's early life is not well documented, All we know of his father was that he was a Roman Noble.

tatue of Saint Benedict of Nursia - Cathedral of Barcelona

He was educated at home before being sent to Rome to study. Once there, the sight of the disorderliness of his fellow students made Benedict fear they would influence him to turn to sin. He fled at the age of 15 without completing his studies to a cave in mountains of Subiaco.

Whilst living as a hermit for three years in his cave Benedict had bread lowered to him in a basket attached to a rope by Romanus, a monk living at one of the numerous monasteries nearby.

After three years in the cave, the fame of Benedict's virtues reached some monks whose abbot had just died and they insisted that he become his successor. Though Benedict remained in the cave, more and more disciples placed themselves under his guidance. Eventually he established an abbey at Vicovano to house the growing number of his followers. It was the first of twelve monasteries in the Subiaco he built for them, each of twelve monks.

The monks at Vicouano Monastery rebelled against the strict regime Benedict had imposed on them and arranged for poisoned bread to be given to him. However, a raven that daily used to come to him from the next wood, flew forward and tore the piece of bread away from the saint thus saving the life of his master.

Benedict built his first monastery, the source of the Benedictine Order,  in 529 at Monte Cassino, a rocky hill about 80 miles southeast of Rome. It was on the site of an ancient temple dedicated to the god Apollo.

Monte Cassino By Radomił, Wikipedia

Monte Cassino was so strongly built that weeks of bombardment by the allies during World War II could not destroy it. It is now a museum and picture gallery.

Once established at Monte Cassino, Benedict never left. There he wrote the Benedictine Rule. The rule encouraged monks to participate in manual labor and studying, a novel idea at the time, but a monument of wisdom that became the founding principle for western monasticism.

Benedict liked paintings to have straight lines as straight lines reach God more easily.

Benedict's beloved twin sister, Scholastica, became a nun and leader of a community for women at Plombariola, about five miles from Benedict's abbey at Monte Cassino. They used to meet up once a year. On the appointed day Scholastica went to Monte Cassino. Benedict came to meet her; they passed some hours together in a guest house of the abbey and ate together, then each went their own way.

A few weeks after the death of his beloved sister Scholastica, Benedict had her tomb opened as he wished to be laid to rest beside her. He was then without warning taken with a violent fever. The dying Benedict was carried into the chapel at Monte Cassino by his fellow Benedictines where he received communion before he drew his last breath standing erect supported by his disciples. He passed away on March 21, 547, aged 67. 

During the post war restoration of the Abbey at Mount Cassino, an urn was discovered which is said to contain the remains of Benedict and Scholastica.

In 1964 Benedict was appointed Patron Saint of Europe. His emblems include a broken cup and a raven.

Bench (furniture)

A bench is a long seat on which more than one person can sit at the same time. Benches are usually made of wood, metal, stone, or other synthetic materials.

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The word ‘sofa’ dates back to Ancient Egypt. It derives from the Arabic word ‘suffah’ (which translates as ‘bench’).

 In the 16th century, moneylenders often conducted their business on benches outdoors. The Italian word for such benches was "banc," from which we derive bank. A "banca rotta" literally means a ‘broken bench’, hence bankrupt.

British politician Tony Benn met his wife in Oxford in 1949. Nine days later, he proposed to her on a park bench. Later, he bought the bench from Oxford City Council and installed it in the garden of their home. They were together for 51 years.

After accepting a role in the 1974 comedy-drama film The Girl from Petrovka, Anthony Hopkins set out to find the book. Unable to find any for sale, he spotted one on a park bench and snagged it. Two years later he was speaking with the author, who lamented having lost his copy with notes. The same copy Sir Hopkins found.

The 'cyber seat' was the world's first park bench with free internet. It was installed in the United Kingdom in 2001 by Microsoft. Within days, two teens had plugged their house phone into it, attempting to call Bill Gates to say "we are calling you from your bench." They managed to reach his secretary.

A park bench in Bristol was given an official postal address so doctors could register the homeless as patients.

Ben Hur

Lew Wallace (April 10, 1827 – February 15, 1905) the governor of the New Mexico Territory, decided to write a book that would explode once and for all the supposedly absurd claims of Jesus Christ. After researching his material, he began writing only to find he couldn’t go any further as it contradicted his original thesis denying Christ is the Son of God. So he converted his book into a novel, whose primary purpose was to support the claims of Jesus. The novel’s title was Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, and it became the best selling American novel of the nineteenth century, surpassing Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

First edition

The novel is set in Ancient Rome and Ancient Judea. It tells the story of two men - one a Jewish prince (Judah Ben-Hur) and the other a Roman tribune - whose lifelong friendship turns to bitter hatred. At the end, Ben-Hur witnesses the crucifixion of Jesus. He becomes a Christian.

Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ had the honor of being the first work of fiction to be blessed by a Pope.

U.S. president James Garfield was so impressed with the book that he appointed Wallace as U.S. Minister to the Ottoman Empire, based in Constantinople, Turkey. Wallace served in this diplomatic post from 1881 to 1885. 

Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ was the best-selling American novel from the time of its publication until Gone with the Wind appeared in 1936.

The 1959 MGM film adaptation of Ben-Hur is considered one of the greatest movies ever made and was seen by tens of millions, going on to win 11 Academy Awards, including Best Picture. 

The success of the Ben Hur movie boosted the book sales and it surpassed Gone with the Wind.

Ben & Jerry's

Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, creator of Ben & Jerry's ice cream, first met in a junior High gym class at Merrick Avenue Middle School in New York. The two were both lagging behind while running, which caused the gym teacher to yell at them.  From there, the two became best friends.

Ben & Jerry originally considered getting into the bagel business, but the equipment was too expensive. Their plan was to deliver bagels, lox, cream cheese, and the New York Times on Sunday mornings.

Ben & Jerry taught themselves how to make ice cream through a $5 correspondence course from Penn State University and with the textbook Ice Cream by Wendall S. Arbuckle.

On May 5, 1978, with a $12,000 investment Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield opened an ice cream parlor in a renovated gas station in downtown Burlington, Vermont.

In 1983, Ben & Jerry’s ice cream was used to build “the world’s largest ice cream sundae” in St. Albans, Vermont; the sundae weighed 27,102 pounds (12,293 kg).

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Ice Cream was invented by Ben and Jerry’s in 1984 after a fan anonymously listed it as an idea on their ‘flavor board.’

In 2005 Ben & Jerry's apologized for naming an ice cream flavor "Black & Tan". While intended to evoke the popular beer drink of the same name, the name unfortunately carried a harmful historical baggage in Ireland. The term "Black & Tan" was the nickname for a British paramilitary force deployed in Ireland during the Irish War of Independence from 1919 to 1921. 

Jerry of Ben & Jerry's has never come up with an ice cream flavor.

Ben and Jerry's sends the waste from making ice cream to local pig farmers to use as feed. Pigs love the stuff, except for one flavor: Mint Oreo.

Ben & Jerry's employees get to take home three free pints of ice cream every single day. They also get free gym membership.

Each Ben & Jerry Waffle Cone has an average of 259 little squares.

Ben and Jerry's used to have a policy that no employee could make more than five times what the lowest paid worker was paid.

Jerry Greenfield (left) and Ben Cohen (right) in 2010.

Ben & Jerry's get about 13,000 flavor suggestions a year.

Ben & Jerry's has a "flavor graveyard" where there are tombstones for earlier flavors that are no longer sold. You can actually go and visit it.

Ben Cohen has no sense of smell and gets his "food enjoyment" from texture. This is why the brand puts chunky ingredients in their ice cream.

Ben & Jerry's operates nowadays globally as a subsidiary of the Anglo-Dutch Unilever conglomerate. Its headquarters is in South Burlington, Vermont, with its main factory in Waterbury, Vermont.

Jerry Greenfield  quit his role with the company on September 17, 2025. He stating in a letter shared by his co-founder Ben Cohen that he could no longer "in good conscience" remain an employee.

His departure comes after a long and public dispute with Ben & Jerry's parent company, Unilever. Greenfield, along with Cohen, has accused Unilever of "silencing" the brand's social mission and undermining the independence that was promised when Unilever acquired the company in 2000. The tensions have been particularly high in recent years over the company's stance on the Israel-Gaza conflict.

Belly button

Your belly button (also known as the navel) is formed from scar tissue left over from the umbilical cord that connected you to your mother’s placenta.

Pexels.com

In Ancient Egypt, only the pharaoh was allowed a belly button piercing.  If anyone else got on they would be executed.

Cusco, the ancient capital of the Incan Empire, literally means belly button as the Incas thought their capital to be "the belly button of the world".

Alfred Hitchcock was born with a belly button but at some point in his life it was surgically removed. During one of the many operations done on the British director's stomach, a doctor stretched skin over the area where the belly button used to be.

Because of TV censorship, actress Mariette Hartley was not allowed to show her belly button on Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek episode All Our Yesterdays in 1969 but later Roddenberry got even when he gave Hartley "two" belly buttons in the sci-fi movie Genesis II (1973).

Cher became the first actress to reveal her belly button on TV in 1975, when her navel was seen during an episode of The Cher Show.

You can tell twins apart by looking at their belly buttons, which are scars and not determined by genetics.

A person's belly button depth isn’t determined by the cut at birth, but just randomly how theirf stump heals.

Belly button lint forms because your hairs point toward your navel, and breathing causes your shirt to move up and down, transporting loose clothing fibers forward along those hairs, but not backward.

The average man has 1.8 milligrams of belly button lint in his navel at any given time.

Australian Graham Barker was officially recognized in November 2000 for possessing the largest collection of belly button lint, earning him a place in the Guinness Book of World Records. Barker had collected 22.1 grams of navel lint over a sixteen year period, filling three large bottles.

In early 2011, North Carolina scientists set up The Belly Button Biodiversity Project. in which they examined the genetic makeup of the bacterial found in the belly buttons of 60 volunteers. One individual, who hadn't washed in several years, hosted two species of extremophile bacteria that typically thrive in ice caps and thermal vents.

The belly button is so dirty scientists are finding new unknown bacteria. One person had bacterium previously found only on Japanese soil, where he had never been.

The belly button of a blue whale is about 8 inches (20 cms) wide.

Animals that lay eggs don't have belly buttons.

Source Likes.com

Saul Bellow

Canadian-American writer Saul Bellow was born Solomon Bellows in Lachine, Quebec on June 10, 1915. 

He was born two years after his parents, Lescha (née Gordin) and Abraham Bellows, emigrated  to Canada from Saint Petersburg, Russia.

Saul Bellow Flick

Saul Bellow's mother wanted him to become a rabbi or a violinist, but he decided to become a writer aged eight when he first read Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin.

As a young man, Bellow went to Mexico City to meet Leon Trotsky, but the expatriate Russian revolutionary was assassinated the day before they were to meet.

Bellow’s first novel, Dangling Man (1944), deals with the anxiety and discomfort of a young man waiting to be drafted in wartime. 

In 1948, Bellow was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship that allowed him to move to Paris, where he began writing his best-known novel, The Adventures of Augie March (1953). A long, loosely structured narrative with a picaresque hero, it gives a vivid, often humorous picture of Jewish life in Chicago and of a young man’s search for identity. 

Bellow received the 1976 Pulitzer Prize in fiction for his novel Humboldt’s Gift (1975); three months later he was awarded the 1976 Nobel Prize in literature. He was also awarded France’s Legion d’honneur.

Bellow is the first and to date only writer to win three National Book Awards (U.S.), for his novels The Adventures of Augie March (1954), Herzog (1965), and Mr. Sammler's Planet (1971).

He was married five times and his fourth child and first daughter with his last wife Jane Bellow. Naomi Rose, was born when he was 84 years old. Janis, was in her early 40s.

Bellow said that of all his characters, Eugene Henderson, of Henderson the Rain King, was the one most like himself.

Source Funk & Wagnalls Encyclopedia