Originally given the Gothic name Witiza, he was educated at the Frankish court of Pippin the Younger, and entered the royal service as a page.

He served at the court of Charlemagne and took part in his Italian campaign of 773, where he almost drowned in the Ticino River near Pavia while attempting to save his brother.

[3] At Saint-Seine, Benedict was made cellarer and then elected abbot, but realizing the monks would never conform to his strict practices he left and returned to his father's estates in Languedoc, where he built a hermitage.

[3] Benedict sought to restore the primitive strictness of the monastic observance wherever it had been relaxed or exchanged for the less exacting canonical life.

[7] Although these new codes fell into disuse shortly after the deaths of Benedict and his patron, Emperor Louis the Pious, they did have lasting effects on Western monasticism.