Subiaco

Yeah, he lived in Italy.

I think the cave was Subiaco.

He was a student in Rome, and he's from Nursia, which I think is a mountainous region, so Italy.

Okay.

Benedict rested there briefly, established a small reputation for her holiness, then kept going.

Deeper into the hills, into the valley of the Anio River near Subiaco, where the Emperor Nero had dammed the river four centuries earlier to create an artificial lake for his pleasure palace.

The palace had long since collapsed.

The lake was still there, and in the cliffs above it, Benedict found a cave.

On his way to Subiaco, he met a monk named Romanus, who lived in a monastery on the mountain above the cliffs.

Romanus understood immediately what this young man was doing.

He gave Benedict the monk's habit, a coarse, dark, woolen garment, and helped him settle in the cave.

Every monastery he would ever build, and the rule he would eventually write, ran on that engine, the cultivated capacity to pay attention to God without continuously escaping into distraction.