Benedict: Saturn, Paradiso 22   A major figure in the history of Christianity, Benedict (c. 480 - c. 547) is considered the father of the Western monastic tradition. As a student in Rome, he was dismayed by the moral degeneracy he observed in the city and ran off (at age 14) to live an ascetic, solitary life in a cave in mountains east of Rome (Subiaco). His teaching and spiritual example earned him an enthusiastic following, which he exploited by establishing twelve monasteries to mark the renewal of Western Christianity. Benedict founded his most famous monastery at Monte Cassino, site of an ancient pagan temple (to Apollo) in the hills between Naples and Rome. As the author of the Regula Monachorum, the set of rules governing monastic life (with emphasis on teaching and manual labor as well as on prayer), Benedict is understandably enraged by the dissolute lives led by monks of Dante's day (22.73-96). Benedict identifies by name two fellow contemplatives, one known for saintliness within the Eastern tradition (Macarius) and the other famous as a Western hermit (Romualdus) (22.49).