The medal of Saint Benedict
A guide to its images, Latin prayers, history, and use in Christian life.
Turn a Saint Benedict medal over in your hand and you will find a great deal in a small space: a monk with a book, a cup and a bird, a cross, and letters that seem at first to be a puzzle. Those letters are the beginnings of Latin prayers. The images recall Benedict’s life and the Christian hope he taught his monks to live by.
The familiar design shown here is the Jubilee medal of 1880. Other Saint Benedict medals differ in their shape and details. This guide will help you read the two sides and understand the devotion behind them.
A sacramental for everyday life
Catholics use the medal as a sacramental: a sacred sign that accompanies the Church’s prayer and helps us turn toward God. Sacramentals prepare us to receive grace and cooperate with it; they do not take the place of the sacraments. A medal can remind us to pray when we are anxious, resist temptation, or return to a good intention we have neglected.
Its purpose is easily distorted if we treat possession of the object as a guarantee of safety. The medal is not a good-luck charm, a promise that illness or suffering will pass us by, or a way of making God do what we want. Christian devotion places its trust in God and asks Saint Benedict’s intercession.
The front: Benedict and the stories of his life
1. The cross and the book
Benedict holds a cross in his right hand and his Rule for monasteries in his left. The cross directs attention to Christ. The book recalls a way of life shaped by prayer, listening, work, and the demands of living with other people.
Beside the figure, the inscription Crux S. Patris Benedicti expands to Crux Sancti Patris Benedicti: “The cross of the holy father Benedict.” Here “father” names Benedict as a spiritual father to those who follow his teaching.
2. The cup and the bird
These details come from Gregory the Great’s Dialogues, Book II. In chapter 3, Gregory tells of monks who try to poison Benedict’s drink. When Benedict makes the sign of the cross over the vessel, it breaks. In chapter 8, a jealous priest sends poisoned bread; Benedict orders a bird to carry it where no one will find and eat it. The bird is commonly called a raven in explanations of the medal; the older English translation on this site calls it a crow.
Gregory writes a saint’s life, or hagiography, intended to teach faith through the stories of a holy person. These scenes belong to that spiritual portrait. They are not evidence that Benedict himself designed or used the later medal. Read Gregory’s account.
3. The prayer around the rim
Eius in obitu nostro praesentia muniamur.
“May we be strengthened by his presence at our death.”
This prayer asks for Benedict’s help at the end of life. Gregory’s account of his death, in Book II, chapter 37, describes him receiving Communion and standing in prayer, supported by his brothers. The scene offers an image of a Christian death sustained by prayer and community.
4. The inscription beneath his feet
Ex S. M. Casino MDCCCLXXX identifies Montecassino and the year 1880. The Roman numerals are a date, not another set of prayer initials. They refer to the Jubilee design commemorating the fourteen-hundredth anniversary of Benedict’s traditional birth year, 480.
The back: a cross and a prayer
The initials make room for several lines of prayer on a small object. Reading them in groups is easier than trying to follow every letter at once.
In the four spaces around the cross
C · S · P · B
Crux Sancti Patris Benedicti.
“The cross of the holy father Benedict.”
This repeats the name found on the front.
Down and across the cross
- Where to look: Down the upright
- Letters: C · S · S · M · L
- Latin: Crux sacra sit mihi lux.
- English: May the holy cross be my light.
- Where to look: Across the arms
- Letters: N · D · S · M · D
- Latin: Non draco sit mihi dux.
- English: Let not the dragon be my guide.
The dragon represents the devil. Together, these lines ask for Christ’s guidance and reject the influence of evil.
Around the outer edge
- Letters: V · R · S
- Latin: Vade retro, Satana.
- English: Get back, Satan.
- Letters: N · S · M · V
- Latin: Nunquam suade mihi vana.
- English: Never urge vain things upon me.
- Letters: S · M · Q · L
- Latin: Sunt mala quae libas.
- English: What you offer is evil.
- Letters: I · V · B
- Latin: Ipse venena bibas.
- English: Drink the poison yourself.
The language is forceful because it expresses a refusal of evil. The reference to poison also recalls the stories pictured on the other side. These traditional words can be prayed as a personal expression of faith; they are not an instruction to attempt the Church’s solemn rite of exorcism. That rite is reserved to a priest with the bishop’s permission.
At the top
PAX means “peace.” It gives a useful word to carry away from the medal: peace with God, and peace to seek in our dealings with others.
The Latin inscriptions are traditional. The English renderings here are provided as a reading aid.
How the medal developed
The medal grew out of devotion to the cross and to Saint Benedict over many centuries. We do not know when the first example was struck, and the familiar Jubilee design should not be mistaken for an object from Benedict’s lifetime.
Accounts of its history connect the prayer initials with Metten Abbey in Bavaria. They describe a manuscript dated 1415, consulted in 1647, in which the words appeared in full. Older retellings also connect that episode with a witchcraft trial. It is best to identify this as the traditional account of the letters’ recovery, rather than repeat the trial’s accusations as established facts.
Michael Ott’s 1912 Catholic Encyclopedia article records papal approvals under Benedict XIV in 1741 and 1742. The widely used Jubilee medal followed in 1880: its design was prepared at Beuron for the monks of Montecassino. Its combination of Benedict, the cross, the prayer initials, and the inscriptions provides the pattern explained on this page.
Having a medal blessed
You can take a medal to a parish priest and ask for it to be blessed; he need not be a Benedictine. The formula below is retained here so that you can bring it with you. The priest should use the ritual and translation authorized for his ministry. A deacon may impart blessings expressly permitted to him; that does not by itself authorize use of this particular exorcistic formula.
The words engraved on the medal are distinct from the Church’s blessing of the object. Reading the inscriptions aloud is a prayer, but does not by itself perform that blessing.
Blessing of the medal: full English formula
Retained from this site for a priest’s reference. The cross marks (✠) indicate the sign of the cross. This is a blessing of an object, not the solemn exorcism of a person.
V. Our help is in the name of the Lord.
R. Who made heaven and earth.
In the name of God the Father ✠ almighty, who made heaven and earth, the seas and all that is in them, I exorcise these medals against the power and attacks of the evil one. May all who use these medals devoutly be blessed with health of soul and body. In the name of the Father ✠ almighty, of the Son ✠ Jesus Christ our Lord, and of the Holy ✠ Spirit the Paraclete, and in the love of the same Lord Jesus Christ who will come on the last day to judge the living and the dead, and the world by fire.
R. Amen.
Let us pray.
Almighty God, the boundless source of all good things, we humbly ask that, through the intercession of St. Benedict, you pour out your blessings ✠ upon these medals. May those who use them devoutly and who earnestly strive to perform good works be blessed by you with health of soul and body, the grace of a holy life, and remission of the temporal punishment due to sin.
May they also with the help of your merciful love, resist the temptation of the evil one and strive to exercise true charity and justice toward all, so that one day they may appear sinless and holy in your sight. This we ask through Christ our Lord.
R. Amen.
The medals are then sprinkled with holy water.
Text note: this is the short English form previously published here, also reproduced in OSB’s medal guide with an approval notice dated 24 April 1980. It has not been replaced with a different or newly composed blessing.
Bringing the devotion into daily life
There is no single required way to wear or carry the medal. It may hang from a chain, be attached to a rosary, stay in a pocket, or be placed somewhere at home where it will call you to prayer.
You might pause over one line rather than hurry through all of them. Before a difficult conversation, ask that the cross be your light. When resentment takes hold, let the word Pax remind you to seek peace. At the end of the day, remember someone who is ill or dying and ask Benedict to pray for them.
Keep that prayer close to ordinary conduct. The book in Benedict’s hand points back to the Rule, with its attention to truthful speech, care for the sick, hospitality, and patience with another person’s weakness. Chapter 72 puts the priority plainly: “They are to put absolutely nothing before Christ.” Read the Rule.
A short prayer
For personal use; an original prayer for this guide.
Lord Jesus Christ, let your cross be my light.
Help me to turn away from evil
and to do the good that is before me.
Through the prayers of Saint Benedict,
give me patience with others, courage in temptation,
and trust in your mercy. Amen.
A note about indulgences
An indulgence concerns the temporal punishment remaining for sins whose guilt has already been forgiven. It does not replace repentance or the sacrament of Reconciliation.
The Church’s Enchiridion of Indulgences (concession 14 §2) includes a partial indulgence for the devout use of a medal or certain other devotional objects properly blessed by a priest or deacon. The Church’s general conditions also apply; merely owning or wearing an object is not the whole of the devotion. For guidance, consult a priest and the current norms, rather than relying on older lists of privileges attached to the medal.