The most heavily lettered object in Catholic use, and what every letter on it stands for — including the exorcism in two hexameters that the faithful may say for themselves.
V R S N S M V — S M Q L I V B Vade retro, Satana; Nunquam suade mihi vana. Sunt mala quae libas; Ipse venena bibas. On the cross itself: C S S M L — Crux Sacra Sit Mihi Lux N D S M D — Non Draco Sit Mihi Dux C S P B — Crux Sancti Patris Benedicti Around the figure: Eius in obitu nostro praesentia muniamur — 'May we be strengthened by his presence in the hour of our death.' And on the medals of Montecassino: PAX — peace, the motto of the Benedictine order.
Begone, Satan! and suggest not to me thy vain things: the cup thou proffered me is evil; drink thou thy poison. On the cross: May the holy Cross be my light. Let not the dragon be my guide. The Cross of our holy Father Benedict. Around the figure: May we be strengthened by his presence in the hour of our death. Peace. A PRAYER TO ST. BENEDICT Glorious St. Benedict, beseech our Lord that He, by thy intercession, may deliver us from danger, and grant that we may pass our lives in His service and come at last to the eternal reward. Amen.
In temptation; when a blessed medal is worn or placed in a house, a field or the foundations of a building; on 11 July and 21 March.
The medal is a sentence, not a picture. Around the cross on its back stand the initials C S P B — <em>Crux Sancti Patris Benedicti</em>, the Cross of our holy Father Benedict; on the arms, C S S M L, N D S M D — <em>Crux Sacra Sit Mihi Lux, Non Draco Sit Mihi Dux</em>, 'May the holy Cross be my light; let not the dragon be my guide.' Round the rim run thirteen more letters, and they are the two hexameters given below.
The history is unusually well documented for a sacramental. In 1647, at a witchcraft trial at Natternberg in Bavaria, the accused said they had been unable to harm the nearby abbey of Metten because of the crosses painted on its walls. Nobody knew what the letters meant until a manuscript of 1415 was found in the abbey library showing St. Benedict with a staff and a banner bearing these very verses. The medal's present form was struck at Montecassino for the fourteenth centenary of his birth in 1880.
The words are not a charm and require no medal. The first line is Christ's own in the desert (Matthew 4:10); the second recalls the cup of poison offered to Benedict at Vicovaro, which shattered when he blessed it. Any Christian may say them when troubled by temptation. The medal itself has no power in it; a blessed medal is a sign of the Church's prayer, and the Rite of blessing is reserved to Benedictine priests and others with the faculty.
