Sublacum

Monastery · no year is recorded · Subiaco

Benedict's first foundation, in the valley forty miles from Rome where he had lived three years in a cave unknown to all but one monk. As his name spread he built twelve abbeys there and set twelve monks over each, and he left it only when a neighbouring priest drove him out.

No year is recorded anywhere. The sources that carry this house never date its founding, so the era is fixed by a dated person instead — that is not a founding date. Fixed by Benedict of Nursia (547).

Who

  • Benedict of Nursia Founder · Gregory: ‘by Christ’s assistance he built there twelve Abbeys; over which he appointed governors, and in each of them placed twelve monks’. No patron, donor or bishop is named, and no year.

Where

  • Subiaco the site; this page is the community that sat on it

Other monastery houses

  • Monte Cassino about 529 (Gardner, 1911 — not Gregory) · Abbey of Monte Cassino
  • Clonmacnoise 547 · Clonmacnoise
  • Iona 565 · Iona
  • Lindisfarne 635 (the edition’s margin; Bede does not date it) · Lindisfarne
  • Streaneshalch two years after Bede’s own 655 · Whitby Abbey
  • Bercingum before 674, the edition’s date for Earconwald’s consecration · Barking Abbey
  • Kellia no year is recorded · Kellia
  • The Monastery of the Caves no year is recorded · Kyiv Pechersk Lavra
  • Nitria no year is recorded · Nitria

After Dialogues (book 2: the life of Benedict) · Dialogues II.1 and II.3 (Gardner 1911).