FOUNDER OF MONASTICISM
Norcia in the Sabines—A Matrona—The Twins, Benedict and
Scholastica—Benedict Goes to Rome—Conversion of Placidus—Benedict’s
Retirement to La Mentorella—Life in a Cave—Temptations—Visit
of St. Francis—Benedict’s Ministering—Real Founder of Monastic
Life—Growth of His Order—Placidus and Maurus—St. Benedict’s
Personality and Conversions—His Ideal of the Religious Life—His
Greatest Miracles—His Sister, Scholastica—The Last Day Together—His
Ascension.
In the heart of the Sabines, where the Nar breaks out from the rock
near the mountain called the Lioness, there has been since very early
times a little town, too inaccessible to tempt the spoiler and the
invader, too sturdy and independent to serve long as a footstool for
mediæval tyrants. It was well fortified, however, and the ancient
walls encircle it still, in good repair, as witnesses to its immunity
from the fate that has annihilated so many other little old cities,
its neighbours. Nature, stern and wild enough here, helped to protect
it. Even now it can only be reached by a carriage journey, a lengthy,
tedious business in the winter time, when the snow almost cuts it off
from communication with the outside world. The townsfolk have long
memories, however. The chief square is called Piazza Sertorio, after
the Roman General, Quintus Sertorius, who was born here in the second
century before Christ, and the only public monument in Norcia is a
statue of their other distinguished citizen, St. Benedict, in the same
square. People from other places do not interest the good burghers
of Norcia. They have accorded a passing notice to a gentleman named
Vespasian, known elsewhere as a fairly successful Emperor, but as they
would tell you, “a person quite without education,” that is to say,
with no manners; nevertheless, they have allowed a hill in the vicinity
to be called Monte Vespasio, because his mother was a decent woman and
owned a farm there.
I fancy life in Norcia is in its essentials very much what it was
when, in the year of grace 480, the lord of the manor was informed
that his good wife had borne him twins, a son and a daughter. It is
easy, knowing the ways of the people, to call up the picture of the
“matrona” in her best gown—the midwife is the most honoured woman in
every Roman town—coming down from the lady’s apartment in the tower,
to the head of the house, sitting, quite forgotten and rather lonely,
in the hall, waiting for news from the centre of interest upstairs. His
own servants would only approach with signs of submission and respect;
not so the all-important matrona! Conscious of her dignity and grave as
a judge, she would advance a few steps and wait for him to rise. Then,
as he approached on tiptoe and with some timidity, she would turn back
the woollen covering from the unexpectedly large bundle on her left
arm, and, without a word, show him two little pink faces where he only
expected one.
“Yes,” she would say, in answer to his exclamations of delight and
astonishment, “two has Domine Dio sent to this noble house. Two will
be the gifts my lord must bestow on his lady”—this to remind him as
well of the double remuneration due to herself. “Pretty? Oh, no, but
they are not bad—thanks be! Will it please my lord to send for the
priest—the ‘femminuccia’ is the younger—and seems not over-strong! I
thank my lord!”
My lord has been feeling in his pouch and has slipped two of his few
gold pieces into her hand, and, seeing that he is inclined to admire
the babies, she covers them up and stalks away. Her demeanour has been
rhadamanthine throughout. There must be no expression of admiration, no
kissing or fondling of the little creatures before they are baptised.
That would call the attention of the Devil to the small unregenerates
who are still his property. When the taint of original sin has been
washed away they will be angels of innocence, beautiful cherubs to be
shown proudly to all and sundry—but not before!
So my lord sent for the priest and pondered meanwhile on the names
he would give the new son and daughter, little dreaming, good man,
that fifteen centuries later those names would be household words
to every Catholic ear and perpetuated in the colossal literature of
sanctuaries of holiness and learning. He fixed on Benedict for the
boy, and Scholastica for the girl, and, so far as I can trace, it was
the first time the names had been used. Benedict means the “Blest” or
“Well Spoken”; Scholastica signifies a lover of learning, or “the Well
Taught,” so we may infer that the lord of Norcia (it was called Nursia
then) was a man of more education than most country gentlemen of those
rough times, times of which history says: “Europe has perhaps never
known a more calamitous or apparently desperate period than that which
reached its climax at this date, the year 480. Confusion, corruption,
despair, and death were everywhere; social dismemberment seemed
complete. In all the ancient Roman world there did not exist a prince
who was not either a pagan, or an Arian, or a Eutychian. In temporal
affairs, the political edifice originated by Augustus—that monster
assemblage of two hundred millions of human creatures, ‘of whom not a
single individual was entitled to call himself free’—was crumbling into
dust under the blows of the Barbarians.”[1]
Nevertheless, Rome still continued to be looked upon by the surrounding
provinces as the centre of education; there was none, at any rate,
to be had anywhere else within reach; and thither the lord of Norcia,
a descendant of the great family of the Anicia so often mentioned in
the Roman chronicles, sent his son to be instructed in philosophy and
law—the two subjects which still promised some kind of a career to an
intelligent youth. Benedict was scarcely that yet—he was certainly not
more than twelve years old, so much of a child that his nurse, Cyrilla,
was sent with him to take care of him. Doubtless she found some
respectable people with whom to lodge, and indeed one feels some pity
for the simple countrywoman, charged with such a heavy responsibility
in a strange and, as it must have seemed to her, a very wicked, great
city.
So it seemed to the boy, too. He studied, tried to carry out his
father’s instructions as faithfully as he could, but all he saw around
him inspired him with such a horror of the world and its ways that
life became insupportable to him, and he resolved to fly into the
wilderness and seek for God. He was only fourteen years old, but he
knew with certainty that his life was not to lie in the crowded places.
The devout nurse did not oppose his decision; his will was hers, and
together they left Rome and took the road towards their old home. I
fancy that the boy only then told her that Norcia was not to be their
destination. Before reaching it he would find the place where Heaven
willed him to stay. Thus they travelled on, till they came to La
Mentorella, one of the strangest spots in all those strange mountains.
Its parent is Guadagnolo, the highest standing town in the whole of
Romagna, perched on a peak four thousand feet high, and yet shut in
on every side with a wall of rock that completely hides it from the
outer world. Just below the town a ledge of the precipitous rock juts
out abruptly and affords foothold for a Church and hermitage, built
here in memory of the conversion of St. Eustace, the mighty hunter. He
was called Placidus then, and was a soldier, a noble and a good man,
a commander-in-chief much trusted by his Emperor, Trajan, and very
upright and charitable in all his dealings with his fellow-men. It has
been thought by scientific historians that it is of him that Josephus
spoke when recounting the exploits of the Tribune Placidus in the war
with the Jews. There are links which seem to connect Placidus with
the Octavian family, thus making him a relation of Augustus, and some
writers see in the young Placidus, whom his father, Tertullus, confided
to Benedict’s care, a descendant of the gallant soldier and hunter
of Trajan’s time. Be all that as it may, we do know that in the days
of his pagan prosperity, Placidus, hunting in the mountains, sighted
a magnificent stag and pursued it madly through the narrow defiles
till it fled up to the summit of an apparently inaccessible rock, and
there turned and stood still, gazing down on him. Then Placidus fell
on his knees in mortal fear, for between the creature’s antlers was a
crucifix of fire, from which shot forth rays of such brilliance that
they lighted up all the hillside. And from it came a voice saying:
“Placidus, why dost thou pursue Me? I am Christ, whom thou hast
hitherto served without knowing Me. Dost thou now believe?”
Yes, indeed, Placidus believed, and his whole house with him, and in
the after years was privileged to suffer great things for his till then
unknown Master. But, for me, I never got much further with his story
than that blessed word, “Whom thou hast served without knowing Me.”
When I read it I think of all the good, brave souls who thus served in
past ages and of those who are serving thus now, all over the world,
truly and successfully, by the inner light which is imparted to all, of
every clime and every faith, so long as they are sincere and have the
“single eye” to which Christ promised that “the body shall be full of
light.”
Placidus, on becoming a Christian, took (or began to use, it may
have been his already) the name of Eustace. Either in his time or
soon afterwards a Church was built on the site of his vision and
the bell-tower of the “Madonna della Vulturella,” although its name
has been shortened to “La Mentorella,” still carries on its summit a
gigantic pair of antlers in commemoration of the miracle. Until a few
years ago (it may be so even now) the feast of St. Eustace attracted
great crowds of pilgrims to the wild and beautiful spot. His day—the
day of his martyrdom under Trajan, who, after all his great services
could not forgive him for refusing to sacrifice to the gods on the
occasion of the Triumph which Eustace had won for him—falls on the
20th of September, that ominous “date which marks one of the blackest
steps of history,” as Dom Guéranger says—and the martyr’s feast has
been combined with that of St. Michael on the 29th. Then the lonely
rocks of Guadagnolo resound to hymns and litanies, and at night are
all lit up with bonfires, one to every little group of pilgrims, who
make a point of passing the night there, each family sleeping round
its own well-stacked fire. For the autumn nights are keen among those
wild precipices, with two cold mountain streams, the Girano and the
Siciliano, roaring along their deep beds in the impenetrable darkness
below; and also the crags used to be the haunts of naughty brigands who
might well covet the gold chains and silver buttons, the rich cloth
and lace of the peasants’ costumes. So some of the men kept watch,
with their old-fashioned muzzle-loaders across their knees, while their
rosaries slipped through their fingers—and the Blessed Madonna and St.
Eustachio were pleased with their faith and kept the robbers away, for
never yet has the pilgrimage been disturbed by those sons of Belial.
It was to La Mentorella that Benedict came, in the year 494, and there
he remained for a while, praying to be delivered from the snares of
the world. And the faithful Cyrilla staid with him and, their little
store of money being exhausted, begged food from the good people round
about, for herself and him. For she had not the courage to send and
ask for money at home, now that the boy had broken away from teachers
and parents to follow the higher call. And the neighbours gave gladly,
and lent her utensils to cook with. One day she was grinding meal in a
little sieve (a stone bowl pierced with holes). To her dismay she let
it drop and it shivered in pieces at her feet. What should she say to
the lender? Hearing her lamentations, Benedict came to see what was
the matter. He picked up the broken pieces and at once they welded
themselves together in his hands, and he gave her back the sieve,
whole. Her delight got the better of her prudence, or else some one
witnessed the miracle, for immediately the people cried out that they
had a Saint in their midst, and they hung the stone bowl up in the
Church as a sacred thing.
Their laudations horrified Benedict, and he ran away, alone this time,
to find a place where no such temptations could assault his humility.
At last he came to a solitary ravine with steep rocky walls through
which rushed a turbulent little river, which four hundred years earlier
had served Nero unwillingly, being dammed up and made to spread out
into pleasure lakes for his gardens a little further on. All was
deserted now, and Benedict, being an active, agile boy, crept along
the face of the cliff and found a cave, so deep that the light of day
never penetrated beyond the entrance; and here he remained, sure of the
food his soul needed, solitary communion with God—and royally careless
about sustenance for his body. But a kindred heart found him out. Lower
down on the course of the Anio, a company of monks had established
themselves on the ruins of Nero’s villa. There were many such
communities then, living apart from the world to pray and do works of
charity and penance, under no fixed rule, and therefore insufficiently
organised, but many of them leading very holy lives all the same.
One of these monks of Sub Laqueum (as the place was called from the
artificial lakes), Romanus by name, found out Benedict’s hiding-place
and took it upon himself to provide him with food. He told none of his
companions about the ardent young recluse, but every day he cut his
one loaf of bread in two, and, going to the edge of the cliff, he let
down the half loaf on a string, to which he had attached a little bell
so that Benedict should know when to come to the mouth of the cave and
reach out to catch the bread. Romanus had given him a hair shirt and
a monastic habit made of skins. He slept on the bare ground and waged
constant war on all the impulses of the flesh. That rebelled, fiercely.
Many a temptation assailed him. The remembered beauty of one woman in
Rome continually haunted him and very nearly dragged him forth from his
cave to go and find her; but when that thought came to him, he pulled
off his fur robe and rolled his young body in a clump of thorns that
grew on the platform of his cave, till it was all one bleeding wound,
and his soul regained the mastery.
Seven centuries afterwards St. Francis came from Assisi to visit the
spot. He knelt there long and shed many tears over the thicket of
thorns. Then he planted two rose trees there, and the thorns gave
place to roses that have bloomed for eight hundred summers, and were
blooming when I saw them, with never a thorn on their stems. But every
leaf of their foliage has a little white line zigzagging across it—to
mark the flight of the defeated Serpent from St. Benedict’s Eden.
There is a pretty story that tells how, after nearly three years, the
hermit’s retreat was discovered. Sometimes the Devil, in sheer spite
(or maybe the chafing points of rock on which Romanus was letting
down the bread), would cut the string and then, as Romanus could not
come back till the next day, poor young Benedict, his whole supply for
twenty-four hours whirled away into the river below, would grow faint
and hungry before his benefactor could reach him again.
The Devil is always rampantly busy at holy seasons—it enrages him to
see everybody trying to be good, and when Benedict had held out against
him for three solid years, he selected Easter Sunday for one of these
wicked tricks. Romanus’ string snapped, the loaf plunged into the
river, and Benedict, always blessing God, resigned himself and went on
with his prayers. The pangs of hunger made themselves felt with painful
persistence, but he tried to take no notice of them. Not so his kind
Creator. In His love for this faithful child He spoke to a good parish
priest who was sitting down to his Easter dinner at that moment with
a glad heart: “How canst thou enjoy these luxuries whilst a servant of
God is pining for food?”
The good priest sprang up, gathered together all that he could
carry, and, leaving his own dinner untouched, started out to find the
suffering recluse. He knew not his name or his dwelling, but angels
guided his steps and helped him to reach the inaccessible cave. There,
instead of some aged penitent, he found a tall boy, with beautiful
serious eyes, and lithe and strong though his body, clothed in tattered
skins, was terribly thin.
Benedict was as much surprised as his visitor. The latter spread the
good things before him and bade him eat.
“Nay, friend,” said Benedict, “thou bringest meat, eggs!—How can I
partake of such luxurious food in this season? It is Lent.”
“Lent!” replied the priest. “No, indeed, my son! Lent is over. This is
Easter Sunday!”
Then the boy fell to, rejoicing. He had lost count of the day in his
solitude.
The priest stayed some time with him and questioned him of his way
of life, and Benedict answered in all humility; and the visitor went
away convinced of the truth proclaimed by the mysterious voice when it
called him a servant of God.
Now some of the shepherds of that country—doubtless in seeking for
some strayed kid of the goats—had caught sight of Benedict in his
dark cave, and his matted hair and robe of skins had so terrified them
that they fled, thinking they had seen a strange wild beast. Now their
pastor told them about him, and the poor people began to come to him
to ask for his prayers. And those who felt called to a higher life
gathered themselves to him for guidance, and the fame of his sanctity
and the miracles he wrought went abroad so that certain monks of Vico
Varo begged him to come and rule over them. He consented at last and
came, but when they realised that he meant to enforce a strict rule
instead of letting them follow their own varying inclinations, their
admiration—it had never been love—turned to hatred. Satan entered in
amongst them, and they resolved to poison him. When the fatal cup was
handed to Benedict, he took it without a word—and made the sign of the
Cross over it. It was shivered to fragments on the instant. Then he
left these false brethren and returned to his grotto, but never more
to his solitude. Many came to him, some praying that he would guide
their steps in religion, some to confide to him their sons to educate.
This multitude could not be housed in the clefts of the rock, so he
built twelve monasteries at Sub Laqueum, on the ruins of Nero’s villa,
and placed in each twelve monks, who bound themselves to live under
certain plain and simple rules—much prayer, much labour, fasting and
penance; active charity, life-long chastity, and finally poverty, for
no individual might own property of any kind. Thus began the monastic
life of the West. Up to Benedict’s time, as I have said, the religious
life was indeed led by many devout persons, but also by many who lacked
true devotion and brought the calling into some disrepute. The Founder
_par excellence_ appeared, and immediately it took on the character by
which we recognise it now.
Its deepest and strongest foundation was in its humility. In Benedict
nature had been wholly subdued; his self-abasement was complete. No
vision of the future had been granted him as yet, no breath of prophecy
had whispered that in the years to come thirty thousand monasteries in
Europe would be called by his name.
Meanwhile his twelve little houses at Sub Laqueum—our Subiaco—prospered
exceedingly, and the numbers of his subjects increased daily. The times
were so terrible that men who loved God and His peace were overjoyed
to find a spot where war and murder came not and where they could
serve God with quiet hearts. There were some such among the Barbarians
themselves, and more than one Goth asked to be enrolled among
Benedict’s spiritual children. All had to work, and the Goths, big
honest fellows but dense and unskilful, joined the band of builders and
cultivators of the soil. The country was thickly wooded then and there
was much felling to be done. One day a Goth, hewing away at a tree, let
his axe slip and fall into the lake. Immediately he began to weep and
lament, for the implements were few and precious. Benedict came to him,
saw what had happened, and made the sign of the Cross over the water.
At once the heavy axe floated to the surface, and the Saint drew it
forth and gave it back to the poor man, saying: “Ecce, labora, et noli
contristare!”—“There, work, and be not afflicted!”
“Symbolical words,” says Montalembert, “in which we find an abridgment
of the precepts and examples lavished by the monastic order on so many
generations of conquering races! ‘Ecce, labora!’”
In the miserable and confused condition of public affairs it was
difficult for parents of the better classes to procure proper education
for their sons, and, as soon as the fame of Benedict’s holiness spread
abroad, young boys of noble families were brought to him at Subiaco
and confided to his care, in the hope that they, too, would devote
themselves to the service of God. Two of these, Placidus and Maurus,
were especially dear to him and were destined to become in a special
manner his disciples and helpers. Placidus, the younger of the two,
was the son of Tertullus, the feudal lord of Subiaco and of many other
towns, and a great benefactor to the infant community. But Benedict
would allow no distinctions of rank to interfere with the training
in obedience and humility which is the only sure foundation for the
religious life, and the two young patricians had to perform their share
of menial labour like all the rest.
One day Placidus had been sent to fetch water from the lake, and as
he stooped to lift out his heavy pitcher he lost his balance and fell
into the water, which at that spot formed a dangerous whirlpool. St.
Benedict witnessed the accident and, running to Maurus, who stood
horrified beside him, said, “Go, my son, and save thy companion.”
Without an instant’s hesitation Maurus walked across the water with a
step as firm as if it had been dry land, drew the drowning boy out of
the whirlpool, and set him safely on the bank. St. Gregory, in his life
of St. Benedict, says: “To what shall I attribute so great a miracle?
To the virtue of the obedience, or to that of the commandment?”
“To both,” says Bossuet. “The obedience had grace to accomplish the
command, and the command had grace to give efficacy to the obedience.”
St. Gregory gives us a beautiful picture of St. Benedict’s loving
training of these two predestined souls. He kept them always near him,
and would walk along the woody banks of the Anio leaning on Maurus and
leading Placidus by the hand, discoursing so wisely and yet so clearly
that the appeal to the more mature intelligence of the one was as
convincing as to the child-like mind of the other. They witnessed his
many miracles, trembled at the punishments that fell on some unfaithful
members of the community, and stored up all his words in their
hearts—Placidus to be the Apostle of Sicily and the first martyr of the
order, Maurus to become the founder of the religious life in France,
where he died at the age of seventy after having, as the Breviary
puts it, “seen already more than one hundred of his spiritual children
precede him to Heaven.”
Those first years at Subiaco were very happy and consoling ones for
St. Benedict, but wicked men, some envious of his fame, some the open
enemies of all virtue, tried by all means in their power to injure him
and corrupt his followers. He took no notice of their calumnies, was
unmoved by the attempt of one wretch to poison him; as long as he only
was attacked, he went calmly on his way. But when the conspirators sent
a crowd of abandoned women to invade the garden where the monks were
working, he felt the time had come when he should depart and draw the
attacks away from his beloved disciples. So, having set all things in
order and adjured the mountain community to be faithful to its vows,
he travelled southwards, surely with a heavy heart, and did not pause
till he had put nearly a hundred miles between himself and his beloved
retreat at Subiaco.
About eighty-five miles from Rome, where the ever-capricious Apennines
sink to a rounded plain and rise in its centre in a natural fortress
of rock, there stood, in Roman times, the little town of Cassinum, once
the home of Varrus, whom Cicero called “sanctissimus et integerrimus,”
one of those who served God without knowing Him. The place was in
ruins when St. Benedict reached it, but he cared nothing for that;
what arrested him was the sight of the poor country people climbing the
hill to sacrifice to Apollo in the temple on the summit. Pagans yet! He
stayed to teach them Christianity, and very soon the temple and grove
of Apollo gave place to a Church and monastery—the most famous in the
world, the monastery of Monte Cassino.
St. Benedict must have possessed even more than the Saint’s usual
gift of divine magnetism, for wherever he went eager disciples sprang
up around him—many faithful, some few less so, but all irresistibly
attracted to the man himself. As it had been at Subiaco, so it was
here. Very quickly he converted the poor people of the district,
signs and wonders too many to recount “confirming the word,” and his
inexhaustible charity making the harried peasants feel that they had
found a father, a doctor, a protector, in the benignly gentle monk. The
great heart that was utterly empty of self felt for all their sorrows
and hardships; the eyes that, as St. Gregory tells us, had already been
opened to the vision of the Godhead, saw, as mortals do not see, into
the hearts of men, and showed events taking place hundreds of miles
away as clearly as those close by, so that when his monks returned from
the missions on which he sent them it was he who told them all they
had said and done and thought on the way. He seems to have understood
that God would spare him further wandering, and accepted Monte Cassino
as the cradle of the order he was called to found. Here he composed
the Rule which became the model of all succeeding orders, and in its
simple completeness contains the essence and ideal of the religious
life. That, according to St. Benedict, must include prayer and praise
and penance, labour, and unbounded charity, but it does not consist in
them. They are its garment, its inevitable expression, so to speak, but
the life is the life of the heart in constant union with God. He was
opposed to all undue extremes in outward observances, though inflexible
as to the keeping of the Rule. “Let this,” he said, “be arduous enough
to give the strong something to strive for, but not so hard as to
discourage the weak!”
He worked at Monte Cassino as if for eternity, yet it was revealed
to him that forty years after his death the Lombards would destroy
the convent and disperse the monks. It puzzles one to understand
that perfect trust and obedience. The knowledge saddened him, but it
never made him desist from his labours, so splendidly justified by
after events. “I have obtained from the Lord this much,” he told the
frightened disciples, “when the Barbarian comes he will take things,
not lives—_res, non animas_.” But other Barbarians were overrunning
the country, left now to its fate by its supine and helpless rulers
in Constantinople. The Goths were everywhere; many indeed became
devout followers of Benedict, but their Arian brethren pillaged and
persecuted, burnt and ravaged, unchecked, and terribly did the people
suffer. St. Benedict, who foresaw the great destinies of these Northern
races when they should become enlightened, stood between the conquerors
and the conquered as judge and protector, and both in the end always
bowed to his ruling.
There is a wonderful story that I must set down, because it shows his
power over nature, both animate and inanimate things. To me it seems
more impressive than all his other miracles, even those of restoring
the dead to life. A particularly fierce Goth robber, named Galla,
“traversed the country panting with rage and cupidity, and made a sport
of slaying the priests and monks who fell under his power, and spoiling
and torturing the people to extort from them the little they had
remaining. An unfortunate peasant, exhausted by the torments inflicted
upon him by the pitiless Goth, conceived the idea of bringing them to
an end by declaring that he had confided all that he had to the keeping
of Benedict, a servant of God, upon which Galla stopped the torture
of the peasant, but, binding his arms with ropes and thrusting him in
front of his own horse, ordered him to go before and show the way to
the house of this Benedict who had defrauded him of his expected prey.
Both thus pursued the way to Monte Cassino, the peasant on foot, with
his hands tied behind his back, urged on by the blows and taunts of the
Goth, who followed on horseback.
“When they reached the summit of the mountain, they perceived the
Abbot, seated alone, reading at the door of his monastery. ‘Behold,’
said the prisoner, ‘there is the Father Benedict of whom I told thee.’
“Then the Goth shouted furiously to the monk: ‘Rise up, rise up, and
restore quickly what thou hast received from this peasant!’ The man
of God raised his eyes from his book and, without speaking, slowly
turned his gaze first on the Barbarian on horseback, and then upon the
husbandman bound and bowed down by his cords. Under the light of that
powerful gaze the cords which tied his poor arms loosed of themselves,
and the innocent victim stood erect and free, while the ferocious
Galla, falling on the ground, trembling and beside himself, remained
at the feet of Benedict, begging the Saint to pray for him. Benedict
called his brethren and directed them to carry the fainting Barbarian
into the monastery and give him some blessed bread. And when he had
come to himself the Abbot represented to him the injustice and cruelty
of his conduct, and exhorted him to change it for the future. The Goth
was completely subdued.”[2]
The picture of the holy abbot sitting and reading in the doorway is one
which recurs several times in his history, and it is good to know that
the doorway is one of the very few fragments remaining of Benedict’s
home at Monte Cassino. It still contains, I believe, an inscription to
that effect. The Lombard destruction left this archway standing, and
also the little tower whence Benedict’s bell called the monks to work
and prayer. One loves even to touch the stones that knew his presence
at Monte Cassino. Subiaco is full of him indeed, but it was at Monte
Cassino that his greatest work was done; over its foreseen destruction
he wept bitterly and it was there that he died.
A yet more notable encounter than the one with Galla took place at
the arched doorway, in 542, one year before Benedict’s death. Totila,
the Ostrogoth, swept down through Italy to retrieve the losses and
defeats inflicted on his predecessor by Belisarius. It was a triumphal
progress. He was on his way to Naples when the whim took him to see for
himself the venerated prophet of the holy mountain. But first he wished
to test the prophet’s powers. So he caused the captain of his guard to
be dressed in all his own royal robes, down to the famous purple boots,
gave him three noble counts for his attendants and a great escort of
soldiers, and told him to go and pass himself off on Benedict as the
real Totila. We are not informed how the unlucky captain regarded his
mission—probably with fear and reluctance—but it failed dismally. As
he approached the monastery St. Benedict perceived him from afar and
called out: “My son, put off the dress you wear! It is not yours.”
The captain, terrified, threw himself on the ground. Then re-mounting,
he and his whole company turned round and galloped away at full speed
to tell Totila that it was useless to attempt to deceive the man of
God. And Totila understood, and came himself, very humbly, and saw
the Abbot sitting as usual in the doorway, reading a holy book. The
conqueror was afraid. He threw himself face downward on the sward and
dared not approach. Three times Benedict bade him rise—still he lay
prone. Then the Saint left his seat and came and raised Totila up and
led him to the house and talked long and earnestly with him, reproving
him for the wrong he had done and showing him that he must treat his
conquered subjects kindly and justly. Also, St. Benedict, mercifully
moved thereto by the sincerity of the Barbarian, told him what lay in
store for him: “You shall enter Rome; you shall cross the sea; nine
years you shall reign, and in the tenth you shall die.”
And Totila repented of his many evil deeds and begged the seer to
pray for him, and went back to his camp a changed man. Thenceforth he
protected the weak, restrained his followers, and showed himself so
mild and wise that the delighted Neapolitans, who had been expecting
a repetition of the awful massacres ordered by Belisarius, said that
Totila treated them as if they were his own children. From that time
the tenth year was ever before his eyes, and when it came he died,
contrite and resigned.
One gleam from home was shed on St. Benedict at Monte Cassino. His
sister Scholastica had long since followed his example and given
herself to God. It was not permitted to women to take the final vows
before the age of forty, but that did not prevent them from preparing
for the irrevocable dedication by living together in religious
communities, under a fixed rule, from their early youth, when they
were so inclined. Such a life Scholastica had led, somewhere in the
solitudes of the Sabines—perhaps in her own home at Norcia; but she
came at last to Monte Cassino and built a convent there for herself
and her companions, so as to be near the brother she loved. Only once
a year did they meet, and then they spent the day together in a hut
on the side of Benedict’s mountain, he coming down with a few of the
brethren, and she accompanied by some of the nuns. All their discourse
was of holy things and much they spoke of the longed-for joys of
Heaven.
Now, in the year 543, they had thus passed the day together and evening
was drawing on. St. Benedict rose, saying that he and his companions
must return to the monastery, but Scholastica, for the first time in
all those years, begged him to remain with her till the morning. The
Saint was horrified. “Do you not know, my sister,” he exclaimed, “that
the Rule forbids a monk to pass the night out of the monastery? How can
you ask me to do such a thing?”
Scholastica did not reply. She bowed her head on her hands on the
table that had served for their repast and wept, praying to God that
her brother might stay, for she knew that they were to meet no more in
this world. She wept so heartbrokenly that her tears flooded the table
and made little rivers on the ground. It was a mild February evening,
and the sun had sunk away from a calm and cloudless sky. But suddenly
a fearful tempest arose, the thunder roared, the rain came down in
torrents, the lightning seared the heavens from side to side.
“Sister, what have you done?” St. Benedict exclaimed, fearing that the
storm was a manifestation of the Divine displeasure.
Scholastica raised her head and smiled at him through her tears. “God
has granted what you refused,” she said. “Go back to the monastery now,
brother, if you can!”
But there was no going back through that tempest, and St. Benedict,
perceiving that the Lord was on Scholastica’s side, stayed with her
till morning, and they had great sweetness of holy converse all night
long. And when the sun rose, Scholastica asked for his blessing and
said farewell for the last time, and she and her nuns went down the
hill to their own convent, looking back many times, I think, to that
other one on the hill. And three days later she died, and her brother
saw her soul mount to Heaven under the appearance of a spotless dove,
and he called his monks and said to them, with great rejoicing: “My
sister is with God. Go and bring her body hither that we may bury it
with honour.” Which they did, and Benedict made her a grave at the foot
of the altar in his Church.
Now he knew that his own end was approaching, and he disposed all
things rightly, and mightily exhorted his brethren to persevere and
to be faithful to their Rule. And he more than ever afflicted his body
with penance and abounded in charity to the poor. And thirty-four days
after Scholastica had departed, a great fever seized him, so that he
had no strength and suffered much. But he never ceased from praying
and bade all his monks pray that God would have mercy on his soul.
On the sixth day of the fever he bade them carry him into the Church,
where he had already caused his sister’s grave to be opened to receive
him. There, on the edge of the grave, supported by his disciples, he
received the Holy Viaticum, and then bade them lift him to his feet. He
stretched out his arms, praised God once more for all His goodness, and
died—_standing_, like the gallant warrior he was!
They buried him beside Scholastica. Two of his monks, whom he had sent
forth on a mission, were very far away from Monte Cassino when they
saw, in the dead of night, a vast number of the stars of heaven run
together to form a great bridge of light towards the east. A voice
spoke to them, saying, “By this road, Benedict, the beloved of God, has
ascended to Heaven.”