There was a man of venerable life, Benedict, both by grace and by name, who from childhood possessed a mature heart.
Superior, by his way of proceeding, to the greenness of age, he gave his heart to no voluptuousness.
And so, while he was in this land, which for some time he had been able to enjoy freely, he despised, as if they had already wilted, the flowers of the world.
Coming from a noble family in the province of Nursia, he was sent to Rome to study fine arts.
But seeing many in these studies fall down the precipice of vice, he immediately withdrew the foot that he had almost placed on the threshold of the world, in fear that, by touching something of his science, he too would fall entirely into the tremendous abyss.
Therefore, despising such studies, he left his father's house and property, and, in the desire to please God alone, sought the holy habit of monasticism. Thus he retreated,
