The St. Benedict Medal: What Every Letter Means, Front and Back
It is the most worn medal in the Catholic Church and most people who wear it cannot read it. Here is the whole thing, letter by letter.
What is the St. Benedict medal?
A small round medal, usually silver or bronze, carrying St. Benedict of Nursia on one side and a cross on the other. Benedict founded Western monasticism in the sixth century and wrote the Rule that monks still live by. The medal is a sacramental, which means it is not a charm and it does not work on its own. It is a prayer you can hold, and the Church attaches a specific blessing to it that asks for protection against evil, temptation and poison, in that order.
Catholics wear it on a chain, hang it on a door, bury it in the foundation of a house, set it in the center of a rosary, and give it to people going through something. It is the medal exorcists carry. It is also the medal grandmothers hand you before a flight.
The front: Benedict, the cup and the raven
Benedict stands holding a cross in his right hand and his Rule in his left. At his feet are a cup and a raven. Both come from his life. Monks who wanted him gone poisoned his wine; he made the sign of the cross over the cup and it shattered. A priest who envied him sent a poisoned loaf; Benedict told a raven he fed every day to carry it off where no one could find it. The medal remembers both. The man was tried by poison twice and the cross handled it both times.
Around the edge runs Eius in obitu nostro praesentia muniamur: "May we be strengthened by his presence in the hour of our death." Under his feet, Ex S. M. Casino MDCCCLXXX, from Holy Monte Cassino, 1880, the year the Jubilee medal was struck for the 1400th anniversary of his birth. That 1880 design is the one you see everywhere now.
The back: the cross and the letters
This is the side people ask about. A large cross fills the medal, and it is covered in initials. Every letter is the first letter of a word in a Latin prayer, and the prayer is an exorcism.
On the cross itself, top to bottom: C S S M L. Crux Sacra Sit Mihi Lux. May the holy cross be my light.
Across the arms, left to right: N D S M D. Non Draco Sit Mihi Dux. Let not the dragon be my guide.
In the four corners around the cross: C S P B. Crux Sancti Patris Benedicti. The cross of our holy father Benedict.
Above the cross: PAX. Peace, the Benedictine motto. Some older medals have IHS here instead, the first three letters of Jesus in Greek.
Around the rim, clockwise from the top: V R S N S M V, then S M Q L I V B. This is the one you have been looking for.
Vade Retro Satana, Nunquam Suade Mihi Vana
Sunt Mala Quae Libas, Ipse Venena Bibas
Begone, Satan, never tempt me with your vanities. What you offer me is evil. Drink the poison yourself.
Twelve words, said to the devil, with the poisoned cup from the front of the medal thrown back at him. The first two words are where our Vade Retro Satana tee comes from, and we wrote the whole story of that phrase here.
Where the letters came from
Nobody knows who wrote the prayer. The letters were already on medals in Bavaria in the 1600s, and in 1647 investigators at Metten Abbey found a manuscript from 1415 that spelled out what they stood for, with a drawing of Benedict holding a staff wrapped in the words. The medal was formally approved by Pope Benedict XIV in 1742, and the Jubilee version came out of Monte Cassino in 1880. So the medal most Catholics wear today has been in use, in one form or another, for six hundred years.
How to use a St. Benedict medal
Get it blessed. An unblessed medal is jewelry. A priest or deacon can bless it, and the traditional blessing is reserved to Benedictines but any priest can use it. Then wear it, or put it where you want the protection: a door, a car, a sickbed, a foundation. People also bury them at the four corners of a property. The Church is clear that the medal has no power of its own. The power is Christ's cross, and the medal is a way of asking for it that you can carry in your pocket.
Why we put it on a shirt
Because the medal is the most direct thing the Church has ever said to the devil, and it says it in twelve words that fit across a chest. Begone. Do not tempt me. Your offer is evil. Drink it yourself. The Vade Retro Satana tee and dad hat take the two words everybody knows and stack them in white on black, with the flared cross on the back of the hat. There is a song too, if you want to hear what the prayer sounds like over 808s.
"Vade retro Satana. Nunquam suade mihi vana. Sunt mala quae libas. Ipse venena bibas."The St. Benedict Medal