This book is the work of more than thirty medievalists from the Czech Republic and abroad, who offer in their chapters a broad spectrum of views of Benedictinism as a phenomenon, which has co-shaped the history of Europe for almost a millennium and a half. Its traces are evident in European education and culture, in important buildings, volumes of exceptional written monuments, in collections of liturgical objects, in monuments of sculpture and painting. The Benedictines have distinctly shaped the formation of medieval society for which they preserved much from the lost civilization of antiquity. They participated in the Christianization of European societies and in the creation of their states. In this sense, the Benedictines were at the birth of Europe – our physical and spiritual home today.