HE was the son of Aigulf, count or governor of Languedoc, and served
king Pepin and his son Charlemagne in quality of cupbearer, enjoying
under them great honors and possessions. Grace made him sensible of the
vanity of all perishable goods, and at twenty years of age he took a
resolution of seeking the kingdom of God with his whole heart. From that
time he led a most mortified life in the court itself for three years,
eating very sparingly and of the coarsest fare, allowing himself very
little sleep, and mortifying all his senses. In 774, having narrowly
escaped being drowned in the Tesin, near Pavia, in endeavoring to save
his brother, he made a vow to quit the world entirely. Returning to
Languedoc, he was confirmed in his resolution by the pious advice of a
hermit of great merit and virtue, called Widmar; and under a pretext of
going to the court at Aix-la-Chapelle, he went to the abbey of St.
Seine, five leagues from Dijon, and having sent back all his attendants,
became a monk there. He spent two years and a half in wonderful
abstinence, treating his body as a furious wild beast, to {399} which he
would show no other mercy than barely not to kill it. He took no other
sustenance on any account but bread and water; and when overcome with
weariness, he allowed himself nothing softer than the bare ground
whereon to take a short rest; thus making even his repose a continuation
of penance. He frequently passed the whole night in prayer, and stood
barefoot on the ground in the sharpest cold. He studied to make himself
contemptible by all manner of humiliations, and received all insults
with joy, so perfectly was he dead to himself. God bestowed on him an
extraordinary spirit of compunction, and the gift of tears, with an
infused knowledge of spiritual things to an eminent degree. Not content
to fulfil the rule of St. Benedict in its full rigor, he practised all
the severest observances prescribed by the rules of St. Pachomius and
St. Basil. Being made cellarist, he was very solicitous to provide for
others whatever St. Benedict's rule allowed, and had a particular care
of the poor and of the guests.
His brethren, upon the abbot's death, were disposed to choose our saint,
but he, being unwilling to accept of the charge on account of their
known aversion to a reformation, left them, and returned to his own
country, Languedoc, in 780, where he built a small hermitage, near a
chapel of St. Saturninus, on the brook Anian, near the river Eraud, upon
his own estate. Here he lived some years in extreme poverty, praying
continually that God would teach him to do his will, and make him
faithfully correspond with his eternal designs. Some solitaries, and
with them the holy man Widmar, put themselves under his direction,
though he long excused himself. They earned their livelihood by their
labor, and lived on bread and water, except on Sundays and solemn
festivals, on which they added a little wine and milk when it was given
them in alms. The holy superior did not exempt himself from working with
the rest in the fields, either carrying wood or plugging; and sometimes
he copied good books. The number of his disciples increasing, he quitted
the valley, and built a monastery in a more spacious place, in that
neighborhood. He showed his love of poverty by his rigorous practice of
it: for he long used wooden, and afterwards glass or pewter chalices at
the altar; and if any presents of silk ornaments were made him, he gave
them to other churches. However, he some time after changed his way of
thinking with respect to the church; built a cloister, and a stately
church adorned with marble pillars, furnished it with silver chalices,
and rich ornaments, and bought a great number of books. He had in a
short time three hundred religious under his direction, and also
exercised a general inspection over all the monasteries of Provence,
Languedoc, and Gascony, which respected him as their common parent and
master. At last he remitted something in the austerities of the
reformation he had introduced among them. Felix, bishop of Urgel, had
advanced that Christ was not the natural, but only the adoptive son of
the eternal Father. St. Benedict most learnedly opposed this heresy, and
assisted, in 794, at the council assembled against it at Frankfort. He
employed his pen to confute the same, in four treatises, published in
the miscellanies of Clausius.
Benedict was become the oracle of the whole kingdom, and he established
his reformation in many great monasteries with little or no opposition.
His most illustrious colony was the monastery of Gellone, founded in
804, by William, duke of Aquitaine, who retired into it himself, whence
it was called St. Guillem du Desert. By the councils held under
Charlemagne, in 813, and by the Capitulars of that prince, published the
same year, it was ordained that the canons should live according to the
canons and laws of the church, and the monks according to the rule of
St. Bennet: by which regulation a uniformity was introduced in the
monastic order in the West. The emperor Louis Debonnaire, who succeeded
his father on the 28th of {400} January, 814, committed to the saint the
inspection of all the abbeys in his kingdom. To have him nearer his own
person, the emperor obliged him to live in the abbey of Marmunster, in
Alsace; and as this was still too remote, desirous of his constant
assistance in his councils, he built the monastery of Inde, two leagues
from Aix-la-Chapelle, the residence of the emperor and court.
Notwithstanding St. Benedict's constant abode in this monastery, he had
still a hand in restoring monastic discipline throughout France and
Germany; as he also was the chief instrument in drawing up the canons
for the reformation of prebendaries and monks in the council of
Aix-la-Chapelle, in 817, and presided in the assembly of abbots the same
year, to enforce restoration of discipline. His statutes were adopted by
the order, and annexed to the rule of St. Benedict, the founder. He
wrote, while a private monk at Seine, the Code of Rules, being a
collection of all the monastic regulations which he found extant; as
also a book of homilies for the use of monks, collected, according to
the custom of that age, from the works of the fathers: likewise a
Penitential, printed in the additions to the Capitulars. In his Concord
of Rules he gives that of St. Benedict, with those of other patriarchs
of the monastic order, to show their uniformity in the exercises which
they prescribe.[1] This great restorer of the monastic order in the
West, worn out at length with mortification and fatigues, suffered much
from continual sickness the latter years of his life. He died at Inde,
with extraordinary tranquillity and cheerfulness, on the 11th of
February, 821, being then about seventy-one years of age, and was buried
in the same monastery, since called St. Cornelius's, the church being
dedicated to that holy pope and martyr. At Anian his festival is kept on
the 11th, but by most other Martyrologies on the 12th of February, the
day of his burial. His relics remain in the monastery of St. Cornelius,
or of Inde, in the duchy of Cleves, and have been honored with miracles.
* * * * *
St. Bennet, by the earnestness with which he set himself to study the
spirit of his holy rule and state, gave a proof of the ardor with which
he aspired to Christian perfection. The experienced masters of a
spiritual life, and the holy legislators of monastic institutes, have in
view the great principles of an interior life, which the gospel lays
down: for in the exercises which they prescribe, powerful means are
offered by which a soul may learn perfectly to die to herself, and be
united in all her powers to God. This dying to, and profound
annihilation of ourselves, is of such importance, that so long as a soul
remains in this state, though all the devils in hell were leagued
together, they can never hurt her. All their efforts will only make her
sink more deeply in this feeling knowledge of herself, in which she
finds her strength, her repose, and her joy, because by it she is
prepared to receive the divine grace: and if self-love be destroyed, the
devil can have no power over us; for he never makes any successful
attacks upon us but by the secret intelligence which he holds with this
domestic enemy. The crucifixion of the old man, and perfect
disengagement of the heart, by the practice of universal self-denial, is
absolutely necessary before a soul can ascend the mountain of the God of
Jacob, on which his infinite majesty is seen, separated from all
creatures; as Blosius,[2] and all other directors in the paths of an
interior life, strongly inculcate.
Footnotes:
1. See Codex Regularum, collectus a B. Benedicto Anianae, auctus a Luca
Holstenio, printed by Holstenias at Rome, in 1661. Also, Concordia
Regularum, authore B. Benedicto Anianae abbate, edita ab. Hug.
Menardo Benedictia{} Parisiis, 1638.
2. Instit. Spir. c. 1, n. 6, &c.
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