The St. Benedict Medal

St. Benedict of Nursia (c. 480–547) wrote the Rule followed by Benedictine monks and founded the abbey of Monte Cassino in Italy. St. Gregory the Great’s Dialogues (c. 593) tell stories of him, including one in which a poisoned cup shattered when he made the sign of the cross over it.

The medal shows Benedict holding a cross and his Rule, and carries Latin initials. In 1647, during a witchcraft trial in Bavaria near Metten Abbey, painted letters were found on the abbey walls; a manuscript of 1415 in the abbey library explained them as a Latin prayer. Medals with the letters spread, Pope Benedict XIV approved them in 1742, and the present Jubilee design was struck at Monte Cassino in 1880 for the 1400th anniversary of Benedict’s birth.

The initials: C S P B, Crux Sancti Patris Benedicti (the cross of our holy father Benedict); C S S M L, Crux sacra sit mihi lux (may the holy cross be my light); N D S M D, Non draco sit mihi dux (let not the dragon be my guide); V R S, Vade retro Satana (begone, Satan); N S M V, Numquam suade mihi vana (never tempt me with vain things); S M Q L, Sunt mala quae libas (what you offer is evil); I V B, Ipsi venena bibas (drink the poison yourself). The rim reads Eius in obitu nostro praesentia muniamur, “May we be strengthened by his presence at our death.”

1. Have the medal blessed by a priest (there is a traditional blessing for it).
2. Wear it, carry it, or place it in your home as a reminder to pray and turn away from evil.
3. Pray the words on it, in Latin or English (below).

The medal is a sacramental: a sign that calls to mind the cross of Christ and Benedict’s example, and a reminder to pray and turn from sin. It has no power apart from faith and prayer. Sacramentals are “sacred signs which bear a resemblance to the sacraments” (CCC 1667). They “do not confer the grace of the Holy Spirit in the way that the sacraments do, but by the Church’s prayer, they prepare us to receive grace and dispose us to cooperate with it” (CCC 1670). The Church is clear that they are not charms: to attribute power to prayers or sacramental signs by “their mere external performance, apart from the interior dispositions that they demand, is to fall into superstition” (CCC 2111). Popular devotions “extend the liturgical life of the Church, but do not replace it” (CCC 1675).