Christian monasticism had its beginnings in fourth century Egypt. Following the challenges to the faith during the recently ended age of persecution and of martyrs, many Christian men and women sought the new challenge of seeking a more total commitment to living the values of the gospel. In the deserts of Egypt many sought a life of prayer, simplicity, and labor either as solitaries, or in community with others seeking similar values. In the following centuries this "monastic movement" spread both to eastern and western lands. In the west the cenobitic (community) form of monastic life tended to prevail.

St Benedict, father of western monasticism, was born in Nursia in central Italy around 480. He abandoned the life of a young Roman aristocrat in order to embrace the monastic calling, first as a hermit at Subiaco and later with several disciples founding a community at Monte Cassino. He wrote a rule of life for monasteries of cenobites which drew on the older monastic traditions. By the ninth century the terms "monk" and "Benedictine" had become almost synonymous.

For their greater security, mutual support, and general spiritual oversight, the medieval popes urged Benedictine monasteries to form themselves into "congregations" or national federations of autonomous houses. Thus in the early 13th century the monasteries of England were established as the English Benedictine Congregation. Benedictines played a major role in the pastoral and cultural life of the English medieval Church, supplying monks as bishops, pastors, and educators. This congregation survived down to the suppression of all religious houses in England under King Henry VIII in the 1540's.

The period between Henry VIII and the French Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century was a time of exile and difficulty, even heroism for English Benedictines. Monks who had fled to the continent gradually reestablished the English Benedictine Congregation. Some missionaries sent to England were martyred. Ironically the French Revolution led to the expulsion of the monks from France and their return to England. The nineteenth century saw a great emphasis on needed ministry in parishes. Schools were developed in the reestablished communities.

In the early 1920's a small group of Americans, most of them diocesan priests with a strong interest in spirituality and in scholarship and led by Father Thomas Verner Moore, conceived the idea of forming a Benedictine community in Washington which would combine traditional monastic life with a dedication to research and scholarship and with strong ties to the Catholic University of America. Father Moore, a Paulist Father with degrees in both medicine and psychology, was already a member of the Catholic University faculty and had a long-standing interest in monasticism. Their admiration for the traditions of the English Benedictines led the group to approach the English Congregation for sponsorship. Eventually their idea was accepted, and the Abbey of Fort Augustus in Scotland agreed to sponsor the new monastery and to provide monastic training for its founding members. The first four candidates, including Father Moore, entered the novitiate in 1923, pronounced their vows as Benedictine monks in 1924, and returned to Washington to begin monastic life at St Anselm's Priory in a farm house on land purchased on Sargent Road in the Brookland section of northeast Washington not far from the Catholic University campus.

The gradual growth of the community of St. Anselm's led to the building of a church and first monastery building in 1930 on a hill above South Dakota Avenue at 14th Street. The work of the monks continued to be that of scholarship, writing and research, and university teaching, with pastoral service to neighboring religious communities and to lay people. In 1942 the decision was made to add the traditional work of English Benedictine monasteries by opening a secondary day school for boys, which became the Priory School. As the monastery continued to expand in numbers and apostolate it was made a conventual (or independent) priory of the English Congregation. In 1961 Pope John XXIII elevated the priory to the rank of abbey. Father Alban Boultwood, the prior, was elected as first abbot of St. Anselm's. Our present superior, Abbot Aidan Shea, was elected abbot in 1990.

In the closing decades of the 20th century and into the 21st century much additional construction on the site has allowed the monastery of St Anselm to more effectively carry on its work: to live out in community the gospel of Christ in the spirit of St Benedict and to serve the Church through its ministries of education, scholarship, spiritual guidance and pastoral assistance.