_THE SISTER OF S. BENEDICT_
It looked to the eyes of Christians of the Roman Empire crumbling to
pieces as though the end of all things were at hand. From every quarter
barbarism was extending over the confines of the Empire and was breaking
them down. The civilisation which had been built up through centuries,
the organism of political unity, the literature and learning of two
great and gifted races, the Greek and the Latin, achievements of art
never to be surpassed, and Christianity, all seemed destined to go down
and be trodden under foot never to reappear.
Throughout the Church there rose the wail to God—“Thine adversaries roar
in the midst of Thy congregations: and set up their banners for tokens.
He that hewed timber afore out of the thick trees was known to bring it
to an excellent work. But now they break down all the carved work
thereof with axes and hammers. They have set fire upon Thy holy places:
and have defiled the dwelling-place of Thy Name, even unto the ground.
Yea, they said in their hearts, Let us make havock of them altogether:
thus have they burnt up all the houses of God in the land. We see not
our tokens, there is not one prophet more: no, not one is there among
us, that understandeth any more. O God, how long shall the adversary do
this dishonour: how long shall the enemy blaspheme Thy Name, for ever?”
Confusion, corruption, despair and death, were everywhere; social
dismemberment was complete. The empire that had embraced the known world
was crumbling to dust under the blows of the mysterious multitudes
passing out of the darkness beyond the pale. Odoacer, the chief of the
Heruli, had snatched the purple of the Cæsars from the shoulders of
their last representative in 476, but himself disdained to wear a mantle
that was stained with cowardice and dishonour. Authority, morals, laws,
science, the arts, religion itself, all seemed to be sinking into the
vortex of death.
Germany was wholly pagan, a breeding-place of hordes that burst forth
periodically to devastate the land that had been cultivated, and to
extinguish the light wherever it burned. Gaul had been overwhelmed by
successive waves of barbarism. Spain was ravaged by Visigoths, Suevi,
Alani, and Vandals. These latter had swept over Northern Africa, and had
given it up to unpitying persecution. Britain had been invaded by the
Anglo-Saxons, who had driven the Britons and their Christianity to the
mountains of Strathclyde, Wales, and to the peninsula of Cornwall. Over
the frozen Danube, the Goths had passed on their cumbrous waggons, and
had spread from the woody shores of Dalmatia to the walls of
Constantinople.
The condition of Italy, the heart and soul of the Empire that had been
dissolved, was deplorable to the last degree. For centuries agriculture
had decayed in it, as the farms were absorbed by the great senatorial
families and worked by their slaves. The people had come to expect their
grain from Egypt and Africa, and now these tributary harvests were
withdrawn. War, famine, pestilence stalked over its fair plains, and
mowed down such as remained of the population. Pope Gelasius affirmed,
with some exaggeration, that in Æmilia, Tuscany and the adjacent
provinces, the human species was almost extirpated. “The plebeians of
Rome,” says Gibbon, “who were fed by the hand of their master, perished
or disappeared, as soon as his liberality was suppressed; the decline of
the arts reduced the industrious mechanic to idleness and want; and the
senators, who might support with patience the ruin of their country,
bewailed their private loss of wealth and luxury. One-third of those
ample estates, to which the ruin of Italy is originally imputed, was
extorted for the use of the conquerors. Injuries were aggravated by
insults; the sense of actual sufferings was embittered by the fear of
more dreadful evils; and as new lands were allotted to new swarms of
barbarians, each senator was apprehensive lest the arbitrary surveyors
should approach his favourite villa, or his most profitable farm. The
least unfortunate were those who submitted without a murmur to the power
which it was impossible to resist.”
The general despair produced in religious minds the conviction that the
fashion of the world was passing away, there was nothing further to be
hoped for in it, and that the only direction in which the eternal spring
of hope could flow was in the channels of religion that led to heaven.
This was the condition of affairs in Italy, and this explains the origin
and the enormous expansion of the Benedictine Order.
S. Benedict was born along with his sister Scholastica in the year 480.
They were twins, and loved each other with that tenderness which so
generally exists between twins; they were of one heart and one soul.
They belonged to the noble Anician family, whose history is traceable to
the second century before Christ.
Benedict and his twin sister were born at Nursia, a Sabine town,
situated high up in the mountains near the source of the Nar. It was
here that Vespasia Polla, mother of the Emperor Vespasian, was also
born. Virgil speaks of the coldness of its climate, as the chilly cradle
of the waters of Tiber and Febaris. To the east tower up the Apennines
to the peak of the Monte della Sibilla. Two centuries after the death of
Benedict, the vast ruins of his ancestral palace were still to be seen
outside the town gates.
Doubtless it was to this Alpine retreat that the family had fled to hide
themselves from the Gothic invaders who were devouring the land.
Benedict and his twin sister, as their minds opened, became aware of the
universal hopelessness that possessed men’s minds. The doom of the great
nobles was as certainly sealed as at the French Revolution. No prospect
was open to them of any work, any career in political life. They could
not fly the fatherland to the colonies, for the colonies were in the
throes as well.
These little children, wandering hand in hand through the empty halls of
the palace, became prematurely grave, and at an early age were convinced
that the only life open to them was that of religion.
Scholastica was the first to speak out what she felt, and to resolve to
devote herself wholly to God. Who could think of marriage then, when
there was no prospect of being able to rear a family in sufficiency and
to any career? Benedict followed. Leaving his old nurse, to whom the
charge of the children had been committed, and who loved them as her own
soul, he plunged into the gorges of the mountains to seek for a retreat
where he might discipline his body and soul. The place he found was
Subiaco, twenty-six miles from Tivoli, up the valley of the Anio. Why he
chose this spot we do not know. He can hardly have stumbled on it in his
wanderings about Nursia, and it is probable that he went thence from
some other villa and estate of his parents.
The first place where he lodged was Mentorella, and there his nurse,
Cyrilla, came up with him, and insisted on furnishing him with supplies
of food. But thence he soon went on to Subiaco, where he found a cave in
the face of the rocks above the falls of the Anio, and there he spent
three years. Every day, Romanus, a monk who dwelt amid a colony of
anchorites among the ruins of Nero’s palace, near at hand, let down to
him half a loaf from the top of the rock above, giving him notice of its
approach by the ringing of a bell suspended to the same rope with the
food.
It was an astounding mode of life for a boy growing into manhood, and we
should now consider it a most unprofitable one. But it was not destined
to be unprofitable—very much the contrary; and we must remember that
there was absolutely no other field for the activities of a young noble
open before him.
“How perfectly,” says Dean Milman, “the whole atmosphere was then
impregnated with an inexhaustible yearning for the supernatural, appears
from the ardour with which the monastic passions were indulged at the
earliest age. Children were nursed and trained to expect at every
instant more than human interferences; their young energies had ever
before them examples of asceticism, to which it was the glory, the true
felicity of life, to aspire. The thoughtful child had all his mind thus
preoccupied. He was early, it might almost seem intuitively, trained to
this course of life; wherever there was gentleness, modesty, the
timidity of young passion, repugnance to vice, an imaginative
temperament, a consciousness of unfitness to wrestle with the rough
realities of life, the way lay invitingly open—the difficult, it is
true, and painful, but direct and unerring way to heaven.”
Such a life is not needed now-a-days. What is now required is one like
that of Angela, in Sir Walter Besant’s “All Sorts and Conditions of
Men,” who will plunge into the sordid wretchedness of the slums of our
great cities, and labour there to bring happiness to the dull lives of
the toilers—who will labour to ameliorate the condition of those that
are the slaves of our nineteenth-century civilisation. What we
require—what God requires—are social reformers, men and women, who in
place of living selfish lives of amusement and luxury, will devote
themselves to helping to raise those who are down, who will seek
happiness, not in pampering self, but in making others happy.
After a while crowds of disciples flocked to Benedict, and then he left
Subiaco for Monte Cassino, which was thenceforth to be the capital of
monastic life.
Strange it may appear, but it was true, that Benedict found the people
round Cassino still pagans, offering sacrifices in a temple to Apollo on
the height where he chose to plant his settlement.
“In old days,
That mountain, at whose side Cassino rests,
Was, on its height, frequented by a race
Deceived and ill-disposed; and I it was,
Who thither carried first the name of Him,
Who brought the soul-subliming truth to man,
And such a speeding grace shone over me,
That from their impious worship I reclaim’d
The dwellers round about.”—Dante, _Par._ xxii.
The visitor to Monte Cassino now leaves the station at San Germano, and
hires donkeys for the ascent. The steep and stony path winds above the
roofs of the houses of the town, and at every path opens fresh views of
entrancing beauty. The silver thread of the Garigliano lies below, with
towns studded on its banks; long ranges of mountains of the most
beautiful outline break the horizon, billow after billow of intensest
blue, crested as with a foam of snow. Little oratories by the wayside
commemorate incidents in the life of S. Benedict. First comes that of S.
Placidus, the favourite disciple of the patriarch; then that of
Scholastica his sister; then one where he is supposed to have wrought a
miracle; next a cross on a platform that indicates the place where
brother and sister met for the last time—of which more anon. Then a
grating and a cross where S. Benedict knelt to ask God’s blessing before
he laid the foundation stone of his monastery. Benedict had been
thirty-six years a monk before he came to Monte Cassino, and we know
nothing of his sister’s life through all these years, save that she had
maintained a still and holy converse with God. It is most probable that
she had never tarried very far from her brother. Now that he settled at
Monte Cassino, she came and planted herself with a little community of
pious women at the foot of the mountain. Scholastica was as white in
soul, as earnest, as devout as was Benedict. They were alike in
everything save in sex; and she became, as unawares as himself, a mighty
foundress—for if from him houses for men multiplied throughout the
Western world, so was she the mother spiritual of innumerable similar
refuges for holy women.
At Monte Cassino, according to the expression of Pope Urban II., “the
monastic life flowed from the heart of Benedict as from the fountain of
Paradise,” and here it was that he composed his famous rule, that
commenced with the words, “Hearken, O my sons” (_Ausculta o fili_).
When he drew it up, not a notion came into his head that he was doing a
work that would last, a work that was absolutely needed for the times,
and without which the barbarians would never have been tamed and
regenerated, and a new civilisation superior to the old rise out of the
ashes of that which expired.
It is quite true that there were plenty of monks and nuns already
scattered about; but they were under no definite rule, under no strict
obedience. We see exactly how it was among the Celtic societies. An
abbot or abbess rambled over the West, now in Ireland, then in Scotland,
in Britain, in Armorica, dived into the Swiss gorges, strayed about in
the woods of Germany, founding houses and churches, then going farther.
And just as the abbots were ever on the move, so was it with those who
placed themselves under their teaching. No sooner did they think they
knew enough, or no sooner did the itch of change affect them, than away
they went, now to pay a brief visit to some other great master, then to
be off again and found monasteries of their own. There was no stability
about them, and above all no organisation. The idea of obedience never
seems to have entered their heads, and, as a matter of course, a great
number of vagabonds too idle to work, and loving change, assumed the
tonsure and habit, and roved over the country leading scandalous lives;
in fact, the Hooligans of the day postured as saints. Monachism, which
should have served a high missionary purpose, for lack of organisation
was becoming a discredit to Christianity.
There is a striking French tale, “Mon oncle Celestin,” by Ferdinand
Faber, in which he describes the “ermites” of the Cevennes and the south
of France, a set of men who pretend to lead exalted lives, wear a
religious habit, are under no ecclesiastical discipline, and who—with
some notable exceptions—are a scandal and source of demoralisation. Now
the monks and ascetics before S. Benedict were very much like these
modern “ermites” of the Cevennes.
The great work of S. Benedict was to coordinate all these ardent men in
one body, to subject them to discipline, to insist on obedience, and
then to employ their powers for the good of the Church and of humanity
in general.
At that period, when nations had to be conquered, and those nations
barbarian, the ordinary methods of propagating the faith did not
suffice. Single priests were pretty sure to be butchered, or if not,
alone they could effect very little. Besides, the barbarians had to be
taught something more than Christianity; they had to be instructed in
the industrial arts and in agriculture.
Now, the Benedictine monastery was not only a missionary establishment
containing a great many men, but it was a school, a hospital, a
poorhouse, a great workshop, and an agricultural institution.
But we must leave this interesting topic to speak of S. Scholastica.
As already said, she had established herself at the foot of the mountain
with a community of like-minded women who were under the direction of
her brother. They met only once a year; and then it was that Scholastica
left her cloister to seek Benedict. He, on his side, descended part way
to meet her; and the place where they clasped hands and looked into each
other’s eyes was on the mountain side, not very far from the gate of the
monastery.
“There, at their last meeting, occurred that struggle of fraternal love
with the austerity of the rule, which is the only episode in the life of
Scholastica, and which has insured an imperishable remembrance to her
name. They had passed the entire day in pious conversation, mingled with
the praises of God. Towards evening they ate together.
“While they were still at table, and the night approached, Scholastica
said to her brother, ‘I pray thee do not leave me to-night, but let us
speak of the joys of heaven till the morning.’ ‘What sayest thou, my
sister!’ answered Benedict; ‘on no account can I remain out of the
monastery.’
“Upon the refusal of her brother, Scholastica bent her head between her
clasped hands on the table, and prayed to God, shedding tears to such an
extent that they ran over the table. The weather was at the time serene:
there was not a cloud in the sky. But scarcely had she raised her head,
when thunder was heard muttering, and a storm began. The rain,
lightning, and thunder were such, that neither Benedict nor any of the
brethren who accompanied him could take a step beyond the roof that
sheltered them.
“Then he said to Scholastica, ‘May God pardon thee, my sister, but what
hast thou done?’ ‘Ah yes!’ she answered him, ‘I prayed thee, and thou
wouldst not listen to me; then I prayed God, and He heard me. Go now, if
thou canst, and send me away, to return to my convent.’
“He resigned himself, against his will, to remain, and they passed the
rest of the night in spiritual conversation. S. Gregory, who has
preserved this tale to us, adds that it is not to be wondered at God
granting the desire of the sister rather than that of the brother,
because of the two it was the sister who loved most, and that those who
love most have the greatest power with God.
“In the morning they parted, to see each other no more in this life.
Three days after, Benedict, being at the window of his cell, had a
vision, in which he saw his sister entering heaven under the form of a
dove. Overpowered with joy, his gratitude burst forth in songs and hymns
to the glory of God. He immediately sent for the body of the saint,
which was brought to Monte Cassino, and placed in the sepulchre he had
already prepared for himself, that death might not separate those whose
souls had always been united to God.
“The death of his sister was the signal of departure for himself. He
survived her only forty days. A violent fever having seized him, he
caused himself to be carried into the chapel of S. John the Baptist. He
had before ordered to be opened the tomb in which his sister slept.
There, supported in the arms of his disciples, he received the viaticum:
then, placing himself at the side of the open grave, at the foot of the
altar, and with his arms extended towards heaven, he died standing,
murmuring a last prayer.
“Died standing!—such a victorious death became well the great soldier of
God.”[3]
He was buried beside his sister, on the very spot where had stood the
altar of Apollo which he had cast down.
[Illustration: S. BRIDGET OF KILDARE.]