Apart from a short poem attributed to Mark of Monte Cassino, the only ancient account of Benedict is found in the second volume of
Pope Gregory I's four-book
Dialogues, thought to have been written in 593, Gregory's account of Benedict's life, however, is not a biography in the modern sense of the word. It provides instead a
spiritual portrait of the gentle, disciplined abbot. In a letter to Bishop Maximilian of Syracuse, Gregory states his intention for his
Dialogues, saying they are a kind of
floretum (an
anthology, literally, 'flower garden') of the most striking miracles of Italian holy men. Gregory did not set out to write a chronological, historically anchored story of Benedict, but he did base his anecdotes on direct testimony. To establish his authority, Gregory explains that his information came from what he considered the best sources: a handful of Benedict's disciples who lived with him and witnessed his various miracles. These followers, he says, are Constantinus, who succeeded Benedict as
Abbot of
Monte Cassino,
Honoratus, who was abbot of
Subiaco when Gregory wrote his
Dialogues,
Valentinianus, and
Simplicius. In Gregory's day, history was not recognised as an independent field of study; it was a branch of grammar or rhetoric, and
historia was an account that summed up the findings of the learned when they wrote what was, at that time, considered history. Gregory's
Dialogues, Book Two, then, an authentic
medieval hagiography cast as a conversation between the Pope and his deacon Peter, is designed to teach spiritual lessons. ==Early life==