Saints celebrated on the 30th of July
BENEDICT I., POPE
Of the first Pontiff who bore the name of Benedict practically nothing is known. The date of his birth is unknown; he died July 30, 579. He was a Roman and the son of Boniface, and was called Bonosus by the Greeks.
The ravages of the Lombards rendered it very difficult to communicate with the emperor at Constantinople, who claimed the privilege of confirming the election of the popes. Hence there was a vacancy of nearly eleven months between the death of John III and the arrival of the imperial confirmation of Benedict's election, June 2, 575.
He reigned four years, one month, and twenty-eight days. Almost the only act recorded of him is that he granted an estate, the Massa Veneris, in the territory of Minturnae, to Abbot Stephen of St Mark's "near the walls of Spoleto" (St Gregory I, Ep. 9, 87).
Famine followed the devastating Lombards, and from the few words the Liber Pontificalis has about Benedict, we gather that he died in the midst of his efforts to cope with these difficulties. He was buried in the vestibule of the sacristy of the old basilica of St Peter. In an ordination which he held in December he made fifteen priests and three deacons, and consecrated twenty-one bishops.
The most important source for the history of the first nine popes who bore the name of Benedict is the biographies in the Liber Pontificalis. Modern accounts of these popes will be found in any large Church history, or history of the City of Rome. The fullest account in English of most of them is to be read in Mann, Lives of the Popes in the Early Middle Ages (London, 1902).
(From Catholic Encyclopedia, 1913)
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