You suggest wrongly (Notebook, 17 May) that Monte Cassino was “the first monastery established by St Benedict”. He probably founded a few monasteries in his birthplace Nursia but the place he set up as a proper monastery was in Subiaco. If you get the chance, take a bus from Rome (about an hour) and find your way to the two wonderful monasteries there. The older medieval one is higher than the main functioning abbey of St Scholastica, which is down the hill. But go to the top and fe