St. Benedict's Abbey

St. Benedict's Abbey is an American community of monks of the Order of St. Benedict located in Atchison, Kansas. It was founded in 1857 to provide education to the sons of German settlers in the Kansas Territory.

St. Benedict's Abbey
Location within Kansas
St. Benedict's Abbey (the United States)
Monastery information
Full nameAbbey of St. Benedict
OrderBenedictine
EstablishedApril 1857
Mother houseSaint Vincent Archabbey
Dedicated toSt. Benedict of Nursia
DioceseKansas City
People
Founder(s)Dom Augustus Wirth, O.S.B.
AbbotThe Right Rev. James R. Albers, O.S.B.
Important associated figuresAbbot Boniface Wimmer, O.S.B., Bishop Louis Mary Fink, O.S.B.
Architecture
Functional statusmonastery
Completion date1931
Site
Location1020 N. Second St., Atchison, Kansas 66002 United States
Coordinates39°34′30″N 95°06′40″W
Websitewww.kansasmonks.org

History

In the middle of the 19th century, Metten Abbey in Bavaria, founded in 766, decided to send a number of its monks to the United States as part of the abbey's American mission project. The German monks sought new locations where they could pursue their religious calling in peace as well as looking to provide spiritual guidance to the many German emigrants to America in that period. Their initial foundation was in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, where they established Saint Vincent Archabbey in 1846. The founder, Abbot Boniface Wimmer, O.S.B., was the Superior of the mission.

After helping his confreres to establish that first monastery, in the mid-1850s, a member of the monastery, Heinrich (Henry) Lemke, O.S.B., left Pennsylvania and moved to Kansas, where there was a large number of German immigrants. He settled in the small town of Doniphan, Kansas, the first monk in the territory, where he established the Church of St. John the Baptist.[1] He was joined in April 1857 by two more monks, Augustus Wirth, O.S.B., designated as prior of the new community, and Casimir Seitz, O.S.B. Although the small community was declared autonomous the following year by the American-Cassinese Benedictine Congregation of which it was a part, by that time Wirth was alone, as the other two monks had returned to the United States.[2]

Wirth and a companion were invited by John Baptist Miège, S.J., the Vicar Apostolic of the territory, to relocate to Atchison to operate a school for boys. They did so in 1858, and established St. Benedict's College, which today is known as Benedictine College. Originally, the mainly classical school curriculum was intended to prepare students for the priesthood. It was expanded to include commerce subjects to cater to the needs of the local population, which consisted primarily of farmers and miners. Under a new prior, Louis Mary Fink, O.S.B., the school was incorporated by the State of Kansas in 1868. The monastery was raised to the status of an independent abbey in 1877, with Innocent Wolf, O.S.B., being elected its first abbot.[2]

The high school division of the college was made independent in 1919 as Maur Hill Prep School. With the college considered an extension of the monastery, the monks did not seek their own civil incorporation until 1931, when the debt incurred in the building of the new monastery threatened the accreditation of the college.[2]

Current status

The monastic community of the abbey today numbers some 50 monks. The current head is Abbot James Albers, O.S.B. The abbey continues to be heavily involved in the life and decision making of Benedictine College.

In 1962 the abbey established a daughter foundation in Brazil: Mosteiro São Jose, located in Mineiros, Goiás.[3]

gollark: So this is a mess. PotatOS is actually shipping a mildly different ECC library with a different curve because steamport provided the ECC code ages ago.
gollark: I mean, what do you expect to happen if you do something unsupported and which creates increasingly large problems each time you do it?
gollark: <@151391317740486657> Do you know what "unsupported" means? PotatOS is not designed to be used this way.
gollark: Specifically, 22 bytes for the private key and 21 for the public key on ccecc.py and 25 and 32 on the actual ingame one.
gollark: <@!206233133228490752> Sorry to bother you, but keypairs generated by `ccecc.py` and the ECC library in use in potatOS appear to have different-length private and public keys, which is a problem.EDIT: okay, apparently it's because I've been accidentally using a *different* ECC thing from SMT or something, and it has these parameters instead:```---- Elliptic Curve Arithmetic---- About the Curve Itself-- Field Size: 192 bits-- Field Modulus (p): 65533 * 2^176 + 3-- Equation: x^2 + y^2 = 1 + 108 * x^2 * y^2-- Parameters: Edwards Curve with c = 1, and d = 108-- Curve Order (n): 4 * 1569203598118192102418711808268118358122924911136798015831-- Cofactor (h): 4-- Generator Order (q): 1569203598118192102418711808268118358122924911136798015831---- About the Curve's Security-- Current best attack security: 94.822 bits (Pollard's Rho)-- Rho Security: log2(0.884 * sqrt(q)) = 94.822-- Transfer Security? Yes: p ~= q; k > 20-- Field Discriminant Security? Yes: t = 67602300638727286331433024168; s = 2^2; |D| = 5134296629560551493299993292204775496868940529592107064435 > 2^100-- Rigidity? A little, the parameters are somewhat small.-- XZ/YZ Ladder Security? No: Single coordinate ladders are insecure, so they can't be used.-- Small Subgroup Security? Yes: Secret keys are calculated modulo 4q.-- Invalid Curve Security? Yes: Any point to be multiplied is checked beforehand.-- Invalid Curve Twist Security? No: The curve is not protected against single coordinate ladder attacks, so don't use them.-- Completeness? Yes: The curve is an Edwards Curve with non-square d and square a, so the curve is complete.-- Indistinguishability? No: The curve does not support indistinguishability maps.```so I might just have to ship *two* versions to keep compatibility with old signatures.

References

  1. "Why John the Baptist". St. Benedict's Abbey. June 25, 2015.
  2. Meade, Denis, Fr. (2015). "The Foundation". Kansas Monks. Summer Issue: 20–21.
  3. "Foundations". The American-Cassinese Congregation.
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