Dog’s Violet. _Viola Canina._
Dedicated to _St. Wulfran_.
[33] Mr. Brand.
[34] Brand’s Pop. Antiq. from Marshal on the Saxon Gospels.
[35] Gentleman’s Magazine, 1786.
[36] Brand’s Pop. Antiquities.
~March 21.~
_St. Benedict_, or _Bennet_, Abbot, A. D. 543. _St. Serapion_, called
the Sindonite, A. D. 388. _St. Serapion_, Abbot. _St. Serapion_,
Bishop, 4th Age. _St. Enna_, or _Endeus_, Abbot, 6th Cent.
ST. BENEDICT, or BENNET,
_Founder of the order of St. Benedict_.
The accounts of distinguished persons of the Romish church written by
its ecclesiastics are exceedingly curious. The rev. Alban Butler states
of St. Benedict, that he was born in Umbria about 480, sent to school at
Rome, and afterwards being determined to leave the world, “therefore
left the city privately, and made the best of his way to the deserts.”
Here he remained secreted at a place called Sublacum, till a “certain
pious priest,” whilst preparing a dinner on Easter-day, heard a voice
say to him, “you are preparing for yourself a banquet whilst my servant
Benedict at Sublacum is distressed with hunger.” Then the priest found
out Benedict, and invited him to eat, “saying it was Easter-day, on
which it was not reasonable to fast.” Bennet answered, he did not know
it; and Alban Butler says, “nor is it to be wondered at that he should
not understand the Lunar cycle, which at that time was known by very
few.” Soon after, some shepherds found him near his cave, and “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.” From that time
he began to be known and visited, and the devil came to him “in the
shape of a little blackbird.” After this, Benedict rolled himself in
briars and nettles, till he was covered with blood; and his fame
spreading still more abroad, several forsook the world to live with him;
and he became an abbot, and built twelve monasteries. In one of these, a
monk becoming slothful, St. Benedict said, “I will go and correct him
myself;” and Butler, says, “such indeed was the danger and enormity of
this fault, as to require the most speedy and effectual remedy;”
wherefore St. Benedict coming to the lazy monk “at the end of the divine
office, saw a little black boy leading him by the sleeve out of the
church,” and applied the “speedy and effectual remedy” to the monk’s
shoulders, in the shape of a cudgel; and so “the sinner was freed from
the temptation” of the little black boy, who was the devil. Then by
Benedict’s prayers a fountain sprung up; and a monk cleaving wood with a
hedging bill, and the iron falling into the water, by holding the wooden
handle in the water, the iron miraculously swam up to it of its own
accord. Such growing fame brought to Benedict “many who came clad in
purple with gold and precious stones.” “He seemed,” says Alban Butler,
“indued with an extraordinary power, commanding all nature, and
foreseeing future events; he baffled the various artifices of the devil,
with the sign of the cross; rendered the heaviest stone light; by a
short prayer raised to life a novice who had been crushed by the fall of
a wall;” and after other wonders died, about the year 543, aged 63.[37]
Pope St. Gregory, of whom some account is given on his festival, (see
MARCH 12,) wrote the life and miracles of St. Benedict.[38] This work of
many chapters relates how Benedict dispossessed a certain clerk of the
devil; how he miraculously discovered the hiding of a flagon of wine;
how in a scarcity two hundred bushels of meal were miraculously brought
to his monastery; how a boy marvellously cast out of his grave, was
miraculously kept in it by St. Benedict putting the host on his body;
how a glass bottle cast down on the stones was not broken; how an empty
tun was filled with oil by his prayers; how he gave another monk a slap
in the face and drove the devil out of him; how he saw the soul of his
sister in form of a dove; how he foretold his own death; how he
performed miracles too many to be here related; all which, however, may
be seen in the said life of St. Benedict, by the said pope St. Gregory,
who it will be remembered is called by way of distinction St. Gregory
_the Great_.
St. Benedict founded the order of monks under his name. A reader who
desires to be acquainted with its rules may consult Mr. Fosbroke’s
“British Monachism,” who remarks, that monkery is an institution founded
upon the first principles of religious virtue, wrongly understood and
wrongly directed. He then proceeds to remark, that, “If man be endowed
with various qualities, in order to be severely punished for using them,
God is made the tempter of vice, and his works foolish. If voluntary
confinement, vegetable eating, perpetual praying, wearing coarse
clothing, and mere automatical action through respiration, be the
standard of excellence, then the best man is only a barrel organ set to
psalm-tunes.”