Special note on Benedictines. McCabe has no entry for Benedictine, Benedictines, Benedictine Order, or anything like that. 'Benedict' no doubt means something like 'Speaking well' or 'Speaking of good things'. 'Boniface' and variants means something like 'Doing good deeds'.
      The, or a, Catholic encyclopedia states St. Benedict did not, strictly speaking, found an order; we have no evidence that he ever contemplated the spread of his Rule to any monasteries besides those which he had himself established. Subiaco [in Italy—RW] was his original foundation and the cradle of the institute. From St. Gregory we learn that twelve other monasteries in the vicinity of Subiaco also owed their origin to him, and that when he was obliged to leave that neighbourhood he founded the celebrated Abbey of Monte Cassino, which eventually become the centre whence his Rule and institute spread. These fourteen are the only monasteries of which there is any reliable evidence of having been founded during St. Benedict's lifetime ...
      Bede wrote or spoke of St. Benedict Biscop; a source says 'An English monastic founder, born of a noble Anglo-Saxon family, c. 628; died 12 January 690. He spent his youth at the court of the Northumbrian King Oswy. When twenty-five years old, he made the first of his five pilgrimages to Rome' etc though of course what he was told is not stated.
      I noticed (in a TV quiz show!) that Benedictines were supposed to have produced more popes than any other order, but this may be a confusion based on the names Popes chose, and based on Jewish views. From a modern revisionist view, I'd guess these were Jew-funded movements, like the Jesuits, aiming to influence the Papacy—probably successfully, judging my the modern era. - Rae West