This is a two part television documentary about the life and the figure of Saint Benedict from Norcia, and it emphasizes particularly two fundamental aspects: the influence that his preaching and his activity had in the spread of monasticism in the Middle Ages, and the importance that the Benedictine movement had in the conservation of the cultural heritage of the West and its transmission until modern time.
The two documentaries that were made with unseen and very fascinating images, go over the life phases of the Saint and his preaching in the time when Europe was suffering because of the big crisis due to the fall of the Western Roman Empire. That was an era of huge devastations but in that time the seeds of the new Europe were planted. In that process the Benedictine movement had a key role. For that reason Saint Benedict became the founder of Europe as we know it, because his monks reached the remotest places and everywhere spread Christianity and the culture handed to us by the classical world.
The figure of Saint Benedict is outlined through an iconographic and historic research that aims to reconstruct on the background the events that devastated Italy during that time. Particularly, it refers to the Gothic war narrated by Procopio di Cesarea, during which the Byzantium and the Gothic armies fought against each other in a huge fight nearby Gualdo Tadino. Totila, the barbarian leader who had sought solace in the Saint's word, lost his life in this fight, in the Umbrian land.