ST. BENEDICT, or KENNET, was a native of Norcia, formerly an episcopal
see in Umbria, and was descended from a family of note, and born about
the year 480. The name of his father was Eutropius, and that of his
grandfather, Justinian. When he was fit for the higher studies, he was
sent by his parents to Rome, and there placed in the public schools. He,
who till that time knew not what vice was, and trembled at the shadow of
sin, was not a little shocked at the licentiousness which he observed in
the conduct of some of the Roman youth, with whom he was obliged to
converse; and he was no sooner come into the world, but he resolved to
bid an eternal farewell to it, not to be entangled in its snares. He
therefore left the city privately, and made the best of his way towards
the deserts. His nurse, Cyrilla, who loved him tenderly, followed him as
far as Afilum, thirty miles from Rome, where he found means to get rid
of her, and pursued his journey alone to the desert mountains of
Sublacum,[1] near forty miles from Rome. It is a barren, hideous chain
of rocks, with a river and lake in the valley. Near this place the saint
met a monk of a neighboring monastery, called Romanus, who gave him the
monastic habit, with suitable instructions, and conducted him to a deep
narrow cave in the midst of these mountains, almost inaccessible to men.
In this cavern, now called the Holy Grotto, the young hermit chose his
abode: and Romanus, who kept his secret, brought him hither, from time
to time, bread and the like slender provisions, which he retrenched from
his own meals, and let them down to the holy recluse with a line,
hanging a bell to the cord to give him notice. Bennet seems to have been
about fourteen or fifteen years old when he came to Sublacum; St.
Gregory says, he was yet a child. He lived three years in this manner,
known only to Romanus. But God was pleased to manifest his servant to
men, that he might shine forth as a light to many. In 497, a certain
pious priest in that country, while he was preparing a dinner for {631}
himself on Easter-Sunday, heard a voice which said: "You are preparing
for yourself a banquet, while my servant Bennet, at Sublacum, is
distressed with hunger." The priest immediately set out in quest of the
hermit, and with much difficulty found him out. Bennet was surprised to
see a man come to him; but before he would enter into conversation with
him, he desired they might pray together. They then discoursed for some
time on God and heavenly things. At length the priest invited the saint
to eat, saying it was Easter-day, on which it is not reasonable to fast;
though St. Bennet answered him, that he knew not that it was the day of
so great a solemnity, nor is it to be wondered at, that one so young
should not be acquainted with the day of a festival, which was not then
observed by all on the same day, or that he should not understand the
Lunar Cycle, which at that time was known by very few. After their
repast the priest returned home. Soon after certain shepherds discovered
the saint near his cave, but at first took him for a wild beast; for he
was clad with the skins of beasts, and they imagined no human creature
could live among those rocks. When they found him to be a servant of
God, they respected him exceedingly, and many of them were moved by his
heavenly discourses to embrace with fervor a course of perfection. From
that time he began to be known, and many visited him, and brought him
such sustenance as he would accept: in requital for which he nourished
their souls with spiritual instructions. Though he lived sequestered
from the world, he was not yet secure from the assaults of the tempter.
Wherever we fly the devil still pursues us, and we carry a domestic
enemy within our own breasts. St. Gregory relates, that while St. Bennet
was employed in divine contemplation, the fiend endeavored to withdraw
his mind from heavenly objects, by appearing in the shape of a little
black-bird; but that, upon his making the sign of the cross, the phantom
vanished. After this, by the artifices of this restless enemy, the
remembrance of a woman whom the saint had formerly seen at Rome,
occurred to his mind, and so strongly affected his imagination, that he
was tempted to leave his desert. But blushing at so base a suggestion of
the enemy, he threw himself upon some briers and nettles which grew in
the place where he was, and rolled himself a long time in them, till his
body was covered with blood. The wounds of his body stifled all
inordinate inclinations, and their smart extinguished the flame of
concupiscence. This complete victory seemed to have perfectly subdued
that enemy; for he found himself no more molested with its stings.
The fame of his sanctity being spread abroad, it occasioned several to
forsake the world, and imitate his penitential manner of life. Some time
after, the monks of Vicovara,[2] on the death of their abbot, pitched
upon him to succeed him. He was very unwilling to take upon him that
charge, which he declined in the spirit of sincere humility, the beloved
virtue which he had practised from his infancy, and which was the
pleasure of his heart, and is the delight of a God humbled even to the
cross, for the love of us. The saint soon found by experience that their
manners did not square with his just idea of a monastic state. Certain
sons of Belial among them carried their aversion so far as to mingle
poison with his wine: but when, according to his custom, before he drank
of it he made the sign of the cross over the glass, it broke as if a
stone had fallen upon it. "God forgive you, brethren," said the saint,
with his usual meekness and tranquillity of soul, "you now see I was not
mistaken when I told you that your manners and mine would not agree." He
therefore returned to Sublacum; which desert he soon peopled with monks,
for whom be built twelve monasteries, {632} placing in each twelve monks
with a superior.[3] In one of these twelve monasteries there lived a
monk, who, out of sloth, neglected and loathed the holy exercise of
mental prayer, insomuch that after the psalmody or divine office was
finished, he every day left the church to go to work, while his brethren
were employed in that holy exercise; for by this private prayer in the
church, after the divine office, St. Gregory means pious meditation, as
Dom. Mege demonstrates. This slothful monk began to correct his fault
upon the charitable admonition of Pompeian, his superior; but, after
three days, relapsed into his former sloth. Pompeian acquainted St.
Benedict, who said, "I will go and correct him myself." Such indeed was
the danger and enormity of this fault, as to require the most effectual
and speedy remedy. For it is only by assiduous prayer that the soul is
enriched with the abundance of the heavenly water of divine graces,
which produces in her the plentiful fruit of all virtues. If we consider
the example of all the saints, we shall see that prayer was the
principal means by which the Holy Ghost sanctified their souls, and that
they advanced in perfection in proportion to their progress in the holy
spirit of prayer. If this be neglected, the soul becomes spiritually
barren, as a garden loses all its fruitfulness, and all its beauty, if
the pump raises not up a continual supply of water, the principle of
both. St. Benedict, deploring the misfortune and blindness of this monk,
hastened to his monastery, and coming to him at the end of the divine
office, saw a little black boy leading him by the sleeve out of the
church. After two days' prayer, St. Maurus saw the same, but Pompeian
could not see this vision, by which was represented that the devil
studies to withdraw men from prayer, in order that, being disarmed and
defenceless, they may easily be made a prey. On the third day, St.
Benedict finding the monk still absent from church in the time of
prayer, struck him with a wand, and by that correction the sinner was
freed from the temptation. Dom. German Millet[4] tells us, from the
tradition and archives of the monastery of St. Scholastica, that this
happened in St. Jerom's. In the monastery of St. John, a fountain sprung
up at the prayers of the saint; this, and two other monasteries, which
were built on the summit of the mountain, being before much distressed
for want of water. In that of St. Clement, situate on the bank of a
lake, a Goth, who was a monk, let fall the head of a sickle into the
water as he was cutting down thistles and weeds in order to make a
garden; but St. Maur, who with St. Placidus lived in that house, holding
the wooden handle in the water, the iron of its own accord swam, and
joined it again, as St. Gregory relates. St. Benedict's reputation drew
the most illustrious personages from Rome and other remote parts to see
him. Many, who came clad in purple, sparkling with gold and precious
stones, charmed with the admirable sanctity of the servant of God, {633}
prostrated themselves at his feet to beg his blessing and prayers, and
some imitating the sacrifice of Abraham, placed their sons under his
conduct in their most tender age, that they might be formed to perfect
virtue from their childhood. Among others, two rich and most illustrious
senators, Eutychius, or rather Equitius, and Tertullus, committed to his
care their two sons Maurus, then twelve years old, and Placidus, also a
child, in 522.[5] The devil, envying so much good, stirred up his wicked
instruments to disturb the tranquillity of the servant of God.
Florentius, a priest in the neighboring country, though unworthy to bear
that sacred character, moved by a secret jealousy, persecuted the saint,
and aspersed his reputation with grievous slanders. Bennet, being a true
disciple of Christ, knew no revenge but that of meekness and silence:
and not to inflame the envy of his adversary, left Sublacum, and
repaired to Mount Cassino. He had not got far on his journey, when he
heard that Florentius was killed by the fall of a gallery in which he
was. The saint was much afflicted at his sudden and unhappy death, and
enjoined Maurus a penance for calling it a deliverance from persecution.
Cassino is a small town, now in the kingdom of Naples, built on the brow
of a very high mountain, on the top of which stood an old temple of
Apollo, surrounded with a grove in which certain idolaters still
continued to offer their abominable sacrifices. The man of God having,
by his preaching and miracles, converted many of them to the faith,
broke the idol to pieces, overthrew the altar, demolished the temple,
and cut down the grove. Upon the ruins of which temple and altar he
erected two oratories or chapels; one bore the name of St. John the
Baptist, the other of St. Martin. This was the origin of the celebrated
abbey of Mount Cassino, the foundation of which the saint laid in 529,
the forty-eighth year of his age, the third of the emperor Justinian:
Felix IV. being pope, and Athalaric king of the Goths in Italy. The
patrician, Tertullus, came about that time to pay a visit to the saint,
and to see his son Placidus; and made over to this monastery several
lands which he possessed in that neighborhood, and also a considerable
estate in Sicily. St. Bennet met on Mount Cassino one Martin, a
venerable old hermit, who, to confine himself to a more austere
solitude, had chained himself to the ground in his cell, with a long
iron chain. The holy abbot, fearing this singularity might be a mark of
affectation, said to him: "If you are a servant of Jesus Christ, let the
chain of his love, not one of iron, hold you fixed in your resolution."
Martin gave proof of his humility by his obedience, and immediately laid
aside his chain. St. Bennet governed also a monastery of nuns, situate
near Mount Cassino, as is mentioned by St. Gregory: he founded an abbey
of men at Terracina, and sent St. Placidus into Sicily to establish
another in that island. Though ignorant of secular learning, he was
eminently replenished with the Spirit of God, and an experimental
science of spiritual things: on which account he is said by St. Gregory
the Great to have been "learnedly ignorant and wisely unlettered."[6]
For the alphabet of this great man is infinitely more desirable than all
the empty science of the world, as St. Arsenius said of St. Antony. From
certain very ancient pictures of St. Benedict, and old inscriptions,
{634} Mabillon proves this saint to have been in holy orders, and a
deacon. Several moderns say he was a priest; but, as Muratori observes,
without grounds.[7] By the account which St. Gregory has given us of his
life, it appears that he preached sometimes in neighboring places, and
that a boundless charity opening his hand, he distributed among the
needy all that he had on earth, to lay up his whole treasure in heaven.
St. Bennet, possessing perfectly the science of the saints, and being
enabled by the Holy Ghost to be the guide of innumerable souls in the
most sublime paths of Christian perfection, compiled a monastic rule,
which, for wisdom and discretion, St. Gregory the Great preferred to all
other rules; and which was afterwards adopted, for some time, by all the
monks of the West. It is principally founded on silence, solitude,
prayer, humility, and obedience.[8]
St. Bennet calls his Order a school in which men learn how to serve God:
and his life was to his disciples a perfect model for their imitation,
and a transcript of his rule. Being chosen by God, like another Moses,
to conduct faithful souls into the true promised land, the kingdom of
heaven, he was enriched with eminent supernatural gifts, even those of
miracles and prophecy. He seemed, like another Eliseus, endued by God
with an extraordinary power, commanding all nature; and like the ancient
prophets, foreseeing future events. He often raised the sinking courage
of his monks, and baffled the various artifices of the devil with the
sign of the cross, rendered the heaviest stone light in building his
monastery by a short prayer, and, in presence of a multitude of people,
raised to life a novice who had been crushed by the fall of a wall at
Mount Cassino. He foretold, with {635} many tears, that this monastery
should be profaned and destroyed; which happened forty years after, when
the Lombards demolished it about the year 580. He added, that he had
scarce been able to obtain of God that the inhabitants should be
saved.[9] It was strictly forbid by the rule of St. Benedict, for any
monk to eat out of his monastery, unless he was at such a distance {636}
that he could not return home that day, and this rule, says Saint
Gregory, was inviolably observed. Indeed, nothing more dangerously
engages monks in the commerce of the world; nothing more enervates in
them the discipline of abstinence and mortification, than for them to
eat and drink with seculars abroad. St. Gregory tells us, that St.
Bennet knew by revelation the fault of one of his monks who had accepted
of an invitation to take some refreshment when he was abroad on
business.[10] A messenger who brought the saint a present of two bottles
of wine, and had hid one of them, was put in mind by him to beware of
drinking of the other, in which he afterwards found a serpent. One of
the monks, after preaching to the nuns, had accepted of some
handkerchiefs from them, which he hid in his bosom; but the saint, upon
his return, reproved him for his secret sin against the rule of holy
poverty. A novice, standing before him, was tempted with thoughts of
pride on account of his birth: the saint discovered what passed in his
soul, and bid him make the sign of the cross on his breast.
When Belisarius, the emperor's general, was recalled to Constantinople,
Totila, the Arian king of the Goths, invaded and plundered Italy. Having
heard wonders of the sanctity of St. Bennet, and of his predictions and
miracles, he resolved to try whether he was really that wonderful man
which he was reported to be. Therefore, as he marched through Campania,
in 542, he sent the man of God word that he would pay him a visit. But
instead of going in person, he dressed one of his courtiers, named
Riggo, in his royal purple robes, and sent him to the monastery,
attended by the three principal lords of his court, and a numerous train
of pages. St. Bennet, who was then sitting, saw him coming to his cell,
and cried out to him at some distance: "Put off, my son, those robes
which you wear, and which belong not to you." The mock king, being
struck with a panic for having attempted to impose upon the man of God,
fell prostrate at his feet, together with all his attendants. The saint,
coming up, raised him with his hand; and the officer returning to his
master, related trembling what had befallen him. The king then went
himself, but was no sooner come into the presence of the holy abbot, but
he threw himself on the ground and continued prostrate till the saint,
going to him, obliged him to rise. The holy man severely reproved him
for the outrages he had committed, and said: "You do a great deal of
mischief, and I foresee you will do more. You will take Rome: you will
cross the sea, and will reign nine years longer: but death will overtake
you in the tenth, when you shall be arraigned before a just God to give
an account of your conduct." All which came to pass as St. Benedict had
foretold him. Totila was seized with fear, and recommended himself to
his prayers. From that day the tyrant became more humane; and when he
took Naples, shortly after, treated the captives with greater lenity
than could be expected from an enemy and a barbarian.[11] When the
bishop of Canusa afterwards said to that saint, that Totila would leave
Rome a heap of stones, and that it would be no longer inhabited, he
answered "No: but it shall be beaten with storms and earthquakes, and
shall be like a tree which withers by the decay of its root." Which
prediction St. Gregory observes to have been accomplished.
The death of this great saint seems to have happened soon after that of
his sister St. Scholastica, and in the year after his interview with
Totila. He foretold it his disciples, and caused his grave to be opened
six days before. When this was done he fell ill of a fever, and on the
sixth day would be carried into the chapel, where he received the body
and blood of our {637} Lord,[12] and having given his last instructions
to his sorrowful disciples, standing and leaning on one of them, with
his hands lifted up, he calmly expired, in prayer, on Saturday, the 21st
of March, probably in the year 543, and of his age the sixty-third;
having spent fourteen years at Mount Cassino. The greatest part of his
relics remains still in that abbey; though, some of his bones were
brought into France, about the close of the seventh century, and
deposited in the famous abbey of Fleury, which, on that account, has
long borne the name of St. Bennet's on the Loire.[13] It was founded in
the reign of Clovis II., about the year 640, and belongs at present to
the congregation of St. Maur.
* * * * *
St. Gregory, in two words, expresses the characteristical virtue of this
glorious patriarch of the monastic order, when he says, that, returning
from Vicovara to Sublaco, he dwelt alone with himself;[14] which words
comprise a great and rare perfection, in which consists the essence of
holy retirement. A soul dwells not in true solitude, unless this be
interior as well as exterior, and unless she cultivates no acquaintance
but with God and herself, admitting no other company. Many dwell in
monasteries, or alone, without possessing the secret of living with
themselves. Though they are removed from the conversation of the world,
their minds still rove abroad, wandering from the consideration of God
and themselves, and dissipated amid a thousand exterior objects which
their imagination presents to them, and which they suffer to captivate
their hearts, and miserably entangle their will with vain attachments
and foolish desires. Interior solitude requires the silence of the
interior faculties of the soul, no less than of the tongue and exterior
senses: without this, the enclosure of walls is a very weak fence. In
this interior solitude, the soul collects all her faculties within
herself, employs all her thoughts on herself and on God, and all her
strength and affections in aspiring after him. Thus, St. Benedict dwelt
with himself, being always busied in the presence of his Creator, in
bewailing the spiritual miseries of {638} his soul and past sins, in
examining into the disorders of his affections, in watching over his
senses, and the motions of his heart, and in a constant attention to the
perfection of his state, and the contemplation of divine things. This
last occupied his soul in the sweet exercises of divine love and praise;
but the first-mentioned exercises, or the consideration of himself, and
of his own nothingness and miseries, laid the foundation by improving in
him continually the most profound spirit of humility and compunction.
The twelve degrees of humility, which he lays down in his Rule,[15] are
commended by St. Thomas Aquinas.[16] The first is a deep compunction of
heart, and holy fear of God and his judgments, with a constant attention
to walk in the divine presence, sunk under the weight of this confusion
and fear. 2. The perfect renunciation of our own will. 3. Ready
obedience. 4. Patience under all sufferings and injuries. 5. The
manifestation of our thoughts and designs to our superior or director.
6. To be content, and to rejoice, in all humiliations; to be pleased
with mean employments, poor clothes, &c., to love simplicity and
poverty, (which he will have among monks, to be extended even to the
ornaments of the altar,) and to judge ourselves unworthy, and bad
servants in every thing that is enjoined us. 7. Sincerely to esteem
ourselves baser and more unworthy than every one, even the greatest
sinners.[17] 8. To avoid all love of singularity in words or actions. 9.
To love and practise silence. 10. To avoid dissolute mirth and loud
laughter. 11. Never to speak with a loud voice, and to be modest in our
words. 12. To be humble in all our exterior actions, by keeping our eyes
humbly cast down with the publican,[18] and the penitent Manasses.[19]
St. Benedict adds, that divine love is the sublime recompense of sincere
humility, and promises, upon the warrant of the divine word, that God
will raise that soul to perfect charity, which, faithfully walking in
these twelve degrees, shall have happily learned true humility.
Elsewhere he calls obedience with delay the first degree of
humility,[20] but means the first among the exterior degrees; for he
places before it interior compunction of soul, and the renunciation of
our own will.
Footnotes:
1. Called by the Italians, who frequently soften _l_ into _i_, Subiaco.
2. Vicovara, anciently Varronis Vicus, a village between Subiaco and
Tivoli.
3. These twelve monasteries were situated in the same neighborhood, in
the province Valeria. Moderns disagree in their names and
description; according to the account of Dom. Mege, which appears
most accurate, the first was called Columbaria, now St. Clement's,
and stood within sixty paces from the saint's cave, called the Holy
Grotto; the second was named of SS. Cosmos and Damian, now St.
Scholastica's; the third, St. Michael's; the fourth, of St. Donatus,
bishop and martyr; the fifth, St. Mary's, now St. Laurence's; the
sixth, St. John Baptist's, situated on the highest part of the rock,
but from a fountain which St. Bennet produced there by his prayers,
and which still subsists, it is at present called St. John dell'
Acqua; the seventh, St. Jerom's; the eighth, Vita AEterna; the ninth,
St. Victorian or Victorin's, called from a martyr of that name, who
is patron of the province of Valeria; the tenth, at the neighboring
village Trebare; the eleventh, at St. Angelus's; the twelfth, at a
fountain near the ancient castle, called Roca de Bore. These
monasteries have been all united in that of St. Scholastica, which
remains in a very flourishing condition, and is regarded as the
mother-house of the whole Order, being certainly more ancient than
that of Mount Cassino. It is a member of the Congregation of St.
Justina, and though it is usually given in commendam, by a peculiar
distinction, it is governed by a regular abbot chosen by the General
Chapter. Of the rest of these twelve monasteries, only some cells or
ruins remain. Besides the hundred and forty-four monks which were
distributed in these twelve monasteries, St. Gregory tells us that
the holy patriarch retained a small number with himself, by which it
appears that he continued to live ordinarily in a distinct little
monastery or hermitage about his grotto, though he always
superintended and governed all these houses.
4. See Dom. Mege, p. 84.
5. It has been related in the life of St. Maurus, how he walked on the
water to save the life of Placidus, then a child, who, going to the
lake to fetch water, had fallen in; for to monasteries no
distinction was shown to noblemen or their children, nor were they
exempted from their share in manual labor, or other severities of
the Rule. Such exemptions and privileges granted to many on pretence
of health, first opened the door to a relaxation of monastic
discipline. Placidus said, that when he was drawn by Maurus out of
the water, he saw over his head the melotes of the abbot, and seemed
to be saved by it, whence the miracle was by the disciples ascribed
to St. Benedict. Dom Haeften thinks by the melotes is meant a cowl,
to which that name is given by Paul the deacon, and the Roman Order
or Ceremonial. But most understand a habit made of skins of goats,
such as the Eastern monks wore, in imitation of the ancient
prophets, as Cassian describes. (Instit. l. 1, c. 8.)
6. Scienter nesciens, et sapienter indoctus.
7. {Footnote not in text} Annal. Bened. t. 5, p. 122, ad an. 543. See
also Muratori, Script. Ital. t. 4, p. 217.
8. By it the abbot is charged with the entire government of the
monastery. Seven hours a day are allotted the monks for manual
labor, and two for pious reading, besides meditation from matins
till break or day. But manual labor has been exchanged in most
places for sacred studies and spiritual functions. The rule commands
perpetual abstinence from flesh-meat, not only of four-footed
animals, but also of fowls, which at that time were only served at
the tables of princes as most exquisite dainties, as Mabillon shows
from the testimony of St. Gregory of Tours. This law of abstinence
is restored in the reformed congregation of St. Maur, and others.
The hemina of wine allowed by St. Bennet per day, in countries where
wine and water are only drunk, has been the subject of many
dissertations, this measure having not been the same at all times,
nor in all countries. The Roman hemina, which was half a sextarius,
contained ten ounces, as Montfaucon demonstrates, (Antiqu. expl. t.
3, l. 4, c. 7, pp. 149, 152,) and as Mabillon allows. (Praef. in Saec.
4.) Lancelot endeavors to show, in a dissertation on this subject,
that St. Bennet is to be understood of this Roman hemina. Menard
takes it to have been only seven ounces and a half. Mabillon (Pr. in
Saec. 4, p. cxv.) and Martenne (in c. 40, Reg.) think the holy
founder speaks not of the ordinary of Roman hemina, and understand
him of the Grecian, which contained a pound and a half, or eighteen
ounces. Calmet looks upon Lancelot's opinion as most probable. He
shows from the clear tradition of Benedictin writers and monuments,
that St. Benedict's hemina contained three glasses or draughts. See
Calmet, (in c. 40, Reg. t. 2, p. 62.) But St. Benedict allows and
commends a total abstinence from wine. The portion of bread allowed
by this holy patriarch to each monk, was a pound and a half, or
eighteen ounces a day, as it is explained by the famous council held
at Aix-la-Chapelle in the reign of Charlemagne.
The holy rule of St. Benedict, which the great Cosmus of Medicis,
and other wise legislators read frequently, in order to learn the
maxims of perfect government, has been explained by a great number
of learned and pious commentators, of whom Calmet gives a list, (t.
1. p. 1.) The principal among the moderns are Haeften, prior of
Affligem, in twelve books of monastic disquisitions, &c. Steingelt,
abbot of Anhusen, gave a judicious abridgment of this work. Dom.
Menard has written upon this rule in his Comments on the Concord of
Rules of St. Benedict of Anian. Dom. Mege's Commentaires sur le Rege
de St. Benoit, in 4to. printed at Paris in 1687, have been much
blamed by his brethren for laxity. Dom. Martenne published with more
applause his Commentarius in Regulam S. Benedicti, in 4to., in 1690.
Son edition de la Regle est la plus exacte qu'on nous a donne; et
son Commentaire egalement judicieux et scavant. Il ne parle pas de
celui de Dom. Mege, qui avoit parut trois ans avant le sien;
parceque ses sentiments relaches ses confreres, de sorte qu'en
plusiers monasteres reformes de cet ordre on ne le met pas entre les
mains des jeunes religieux Voyez le Cerf, Bibl. des Ecr. de la
Congr. de St. Maur, p. 348. Hist. Literaria Ord. St. Bened. t. 3, p.
21. Dom. Calmet printed in 1734, in two volumes, in 4to.,
Commentaire Literal Historique et Moral sur la Regle de St. Benoit,
a work which, both for edification and erudition, is far superior to
all the former, and is the masterpiece of this laborious writer,
though not entirely exempt from little slips of memory, as when St.
Cuthbert is called in it the founder of the monastery of
Lindisfarne, (p. 18, t. 1.) The chief modern ascetical treatise on
this subject is, La Regle de St. Benoit, traduite et expliquee par M.
de Rance, abbe de la Trappe, 2 vols. 4to. 1690, an excellent work
for those who are, bound to study, and imbibe the spirit of this
holy rule. It is reduced into meditations; which, as Calmet was
informed by Mabillon, was done by a Benedictin nun. We have also
Meditations on the Rule of St. Benedict, compiled by Dom. Morelle,
author of many other works of piety and devotion. We have also very
devout reflections on the prayers used in the religious profession
of this order, under the following title: Sentiments de Piete sur la
Profession religieuse, par un religieux Benedictin de la
Congregation de St. Maur. Dom. Berthelet, of the congregation of St.
Vannes, proves abstinence from flesh to have been anciently an
essential duty of the monastic state, by an express book, entitled,
Traite Historique et Moral de l'Abstinence de la Viande, 1731.
9. When the Lombards destroyed this famous abbey, in 580, St. Bennet,
the abbot, escaped with all his monks to Rome, carrying with him
only a copy of the Rule, written by St. Benedict himself, some of
the habits which he and his sister St. Scholastica had worn, and the
weight of the bread and measure of the wine which were the daily
allowance for every monk. Pope Pelagius II. lodged these fathers
near the Lateran church, where they built a monastery. In the
pontificate of Gregory II., about the year 720, they were conducted
back by abbot Petronax to Mount Cassino. This abbey was again ruined
by the Saracens in 884: also by the Normans in 1046, and by the
emperor Frederick II. in 1239. But was as often rebuilt. It is at
this day very stately, and the abbot exercises an eplscopal
jurisdiction over the town of San Germano, three little miles
distant, and over twenty-one other parishes. The regular abbot of
Saint Scholastica at Subiaco, is temporal and spiritual lord of
twenty-five villages. The Benedictins reckon in their order,
comprising all its branches and filiations, thirty-seven thousand
houses. As to the number of emperors, kings, queens, princes, and
princesses, who embraced this order, and that of saints, popes, and
writers of note, which it has given the church, see F. Helyot, Dom.
Mege, Calmet, and especially F. Ziegellaver, Hist. Liter. Ord. S.
Bened., 4 vol. folio, Aug. Vindel. An. 1754.
The monastic order settled by St. Athanasius at Milan and Triers,
during his banishment into the West; by St. Eusebius of Vercelli, in
his diocese, and by St. Hilary and St. Martin in Gaul, was founded
upon the plan of the Oriental monasteries: being brought by those
holy prelates from Egypt and Syria. The same is to be said of the
first monasteries founded in Great Britain and Ireland. After the
coming of St. Columban from Ireland into France, his Rule continued
long most in vogue, and was adopted by the greater part of the
monasteries that flourished in that kingdom. But it was customary in
those ages, for founders of great monasteries frequently to choose
out of different rules such religious practices and regulations, and
to add such others as they judged most expedient: and the Benedictin
Rule was sometimes blended with that of St. Columban, or others. In
the reigns of Charlemagne and Louis the Debonnaire. for the sake of
uniformity, it was enacted by the council of Aix-la-Chapelle in 802,
and several other decrees, that the Rule of St. Benedict should
alone be followed in all the monasteries in the dominions of those
princes. F. Reyner, a most learned English Benedictin, in his
Apostolatus Benedictinorum in Anglia, has, with profound erudition,
produced all the monuments and authorities by which it can be made
to appear that St. Gregory the Great established the Rule of St.
Benedict in his monastery of St. Andrew at Rome, and was settled by
St. Austin and the other monks who were sent by St. Gregory to
convert the English in all the monasteries which they founded in
this island. These proofs were abridged by Mabillon, Natalia
Alexander, and others, who have judged that they amount to
demonstration. Some, however, still maintain that the monastic rule
brought hither by St. Austin, was a compilation from several
different rules: that St. Bennet Biscop, and soon after St. Wilfrid,
introduced several new regulations borrowed from the Rule of St.
Benedict; that St. Dunstan established it in England more perfectly,
still retaining several of the ancient constitutions of the English
monasteries, and that it was not entirely adopted in England before
Lanfranc's time. This opinion is warmly abetted by Dr. Lay, in his
additions to Dugdale's Antiquities of Warwickshire, and Tanner's
Pref. to Notitia Monastica, in folio.
The Order of St. Benedict has branched out, since the year 900, into
several independent congregations, and the Orders of Camaldoly,
Vallis Umrosa, Fontevrault, the Gilbertins, Silvestrins,
Cistercians, and some others, are no more than reformations of the
same, with certain particular additional constitutions.
Among the Reformations or distinct Congregations of Benedictins, the
first is that of Cluni, so called from the great monastery of that
name, in the diocese of Macon, founded by William the Pious, duke of
Aquitaine, about the year 910. St. Berno, the first abbot, his
successor St. Odo, afterwards St. Hugh, St. Odilo, St. Mayeul, Peter
the Venerable, and other excellent abbots, exceedingly raised the
reputation of this reform, and propagated the same. A second
Reformation was established in this Congregation in 1621, by the
Grand Prior de Veni, resembling those of St. Vanne and St. Maur.
Those monks who would not adopt it in their houses, are called
Ancient monks of Cluni. The Congregation of Cava was called from the
great monastery of that name in the province of Salerno, founded in
980, under the observance of Cluni: it was the head of a
Congregation of twenty-nine other abbeys, and ninety-one conventual
priories; but a bishopric being erected in the town of Cava, by
Boniface IX. in 1394, and the abbot's revenue and temporal
jurisdiction being united to it by Leo X. in 1514, the monastery of
the Blessed Trinity of Cava was much diminished, but is still
governed by a regular abbot. In 1485, it was united, with all its
dependencies, to the Congregation of St. Justina and Mount Cassino.
The church of St. Justina at Padua, was founded by the Consul
Opilius, in the fifth century, and the great monastery of Benedictin
monks was built there in the ninth. The Reformation which was
established in this house by Lewis Barbus, a patrician of Venice, in
1409, was soon adopted by a great number of monasteries in Italy:
but when in 1504 the abbey of Mount Cassino joined this
Congregation, it took the name of this mother-house. The
Congregation of Savigni, founded by St. Vitalis, a disciple of B.
Robert of Arbrissel, in the forest of Savigni, in Normandy in 1112,
was united to the Cistercians in 1153. The Congregation of Tiron,
founded by B. Bernard of Abbeville, another disciple of B. Robert of
Arbrissel, in 1109, in the forest of Tiron, in Le Perche. It parsed
into the Congregation of St. Maur, in 1629. These of Savigni and
Tiron had formerly several houses in England. The Congregation of
Bursfield in Germany, was established by a Reformation in 1461: that
of Molck, vulgarly Mock, in Austria, in the diocese of Passaw, in
1418: that of Hirsauge, in the diocese of Spire, was instituted by
St. William, abbot of S. Aurel, in 1080. The history of this abbey
was written by Trithemius. After the change of religion it was
secularized, and, by the treaty of Westphalia, ceded to the duke of
Wirtemberg. The independent great Benedictin abbeys in Flanders,
form a Congregation subject only to the Pope, but the abbots hold
assemblies to judge appeals, in which the abbot of St. Vaast of Arms
is president. The Congregation of Monte-Virgine, in Italy, was
instituted by St. William, in 1119. That of St. Benedict's of
Valladolid, in Spain, dates its establishment in 1390. In England,
archbishop Lanfranc united the Benedictin monasteries in one
Congregation, which began from that time to hold regular general
chapters, and for some time bore his name. This union was made
stricter by many new regulations in 1335, under the name of the
Black Monks. It is one of the most illustrious of all the orders, or
bodies of religious men, that have ever adorned the Church, and, in
spite of the most grievous persecutions, still subsists. The
congregation of Benedictin nuns of Mount Calvary owes it original to
a Reformation, according to the primitive austerity of this order,
introduced first in the nunnery at Poitiers, in 1614, by the abbess
Antoinette of Orleans, with the assistance of the famous F. Joseph,
the Capuchin. It has two houses at Paris, and eighteen others in
several parts of France. See Helyot, t. {} and 6. Calmet, Comment.
sur la Regle de St. Benoit, t. 2, p. 525. Hermant Schoonbeck, &c.
10. St. Greg. Dial. l. 2, c. 12; Dom. Mege, p. 180.
11. Procop. l. 3, de Bello Gothico. Baronius, &c.
12. Exitum suum Dominici corporis et sanguinis perceptione communivit.
St. Greg. Dial. b. 2, c.37.
13. Some have related that Aigulph, a monk of Fleury, and certain
citizens from Mans, going to Mount Cassino in 653, when that
monastery lay in ruins, brought thence the remains of St. Benedict
and St. Scholastics, and placed those of the former at Fleury, and
those of the latter at Mans. The author of this relation is either
Adrevald or rather Adalbert, a monk of Fleury, whom some imagined
contemporary with Aigulph, but he certainly lived at least two
hundred years later, as he himself declares, and his account is in
many capital circumstances inconsistent with those of the life of
Aigulph, and with the authentic and certain history of that age, as
is demonstrated by F. Stilting, the Bollandist, in the life of St.
Aigulph, (t. 1, Sept. p. 744,) and by others. It is printed in the
Bibliotheca Floriacensis, (or of Fleury,) t. 1, p. 1, and more
correctly in Mabillon's Acta Ben. t. 2, p. 337, and the Bollandists,
21 Martij, p. 300. Soon after this relation was compiled by
Adalbert, we find it quoted by Adrevald, a monk of the same house,
in his history of several miracles wrought by the relics of this
holy patriarch. (See Dom. Clemencez, Hist. Liter. t. 5, p. 516.)
This Adrevald wrote also the life of St. Aigulph, who, passing from
Fleury to Lerins, and being made abbot of that house, established
there an austere reformation of the order: but by the contrivance of
certain rebellious monks, joined in a conspiracy with the count of
Usez, and some other powerful men, was seized by violence, and
carried to the isle Caprasia, (now called Capraia,) situated between
Corsica and the coast of Tuscany, where he was murdered, with three
companions, about the year 679, on the 3rd day of September, on
which he is honored as a martyr at Lerins. The relics of these
martyrs were honorably conveyed thither soon after their death. F.
Vincent Barrali, in his History of Lerins, affirms that they still
remain there; but this can be only true of part, for the body of St.
Aigulph was translated to the Benedictin priory at Provins, in the
diocese of Sens, and is to this day honored there, as Mabillon (Saec.
2 Ben. pp. 666 and 742) and Stilting (t. 1. Sept.) demonstrate, from
the constant tradition of that monastery, and the authority of Peter
Cellensis and several other irrefragable vouchers.
That the greatest part at least of the relics of St. Benedict and
St. Scholastica still remain at Mount Casino, is demonstrated by
Angelus de Nuce, in his dissertation on this subject, by F.
Stilting, in his comments on the life of St. Aigulph, t. 1. Sept.,
by pope Benedict XIV., De Servor. Dei Beatif. and Canoniz. l. 4,
part 2, c. 24, n. 53, t. 5, p. 245, and Macchiarelli, the monk of
Camaldoli. Soon after Mount Cassino was restored, pope Zachary
visited that monastery and devoutly venerated the relics of St.
Benedict and St. Scholastica in 746, as he testifies in his Bull.
When pope Alexander II. consecrated the new church of that abbey in
1071, these sacred bones were inspected and found all to remain
there, as we learn from his Bull, and by Leo of Ostia, and Peter the
deacon. The same is affirmed in the acts of two visitations made of
them in 1545 and 1650. Nevertheless, Angelus de Nuce (who relates in
his Chronicle of Mount Cassino, that, in 1650, he saw these relics,
with all the monks of that house, in the visitation then made) and
Stilting allow that some of the bones of this saint were conveyed
into France, not by St. Aigulph, but soon after his time, and this
is expressly affirmed by Paul the Deacon, in his History of the
Lombards, l. 6, c. 2.
14. Habitavit secum.
15. S. Bened. Reg. c. 7.
16. S. Thos. 2. 2. qu. 161. a. 6.
17. No one can, without presumption, pride, and sin, prefer himself
before the worst of sinners; first, because the judgments of God are
always secret and unknown to us. (See St. Aug. de Virginit. St. Thos
2.2. qu. 161. ad 1. Cassian, St. Bern., &c.) Secondly, the greatest
sinners, had they received the graces with which we have been
favored, would not have been so ungrateful; and if we had been in
their circumstances, into what precipices should not we have fallen?
Thirdly, instead of looking upon notorious sinners, we ought to turn
our eyes towards those who serve God with fervor, full of confusion
to see how far so many thousands are superior to us in every virtue.
Thus we must practise the lesson laid down by St. Paul, never to
measure ourselves with any one so as to prefer ourselves to another;
but to look upon all others as superior to us, and less ungrateful
and base than ourselves. Our own wretchedness and sinfulness we are
acquainted with; but charity inclines us to judge the best of
others.
18. Luke xviii. 18.
19. Orat. ejus inter Apocryph.
20. St. Bened. Reg. p. 210.