ITALY AND HER INVADERS.
BOOK V
.
CHAPTER XVI.
SAINT BENEDICT(480 - 547)
By devious ways, and through a tangle of forgotten or but
half-remembered names, we are come to a broad highway trodden by the feet of
many reverent generations and made illustrious by some of the best-known
figures in the history of mediaeval Christianity. Even in the annals of
monasticism the saintly Severinus of Noricum, the studious Cassiodorus of
Squillace, are but faintly remembered; but everyone who knows anything of the
spirit of the Middle Ages is familiar with the name of Benedict of Nursia. His face and the faces of his sister Scholastica,
and his pupils Maurus and Placidus, portrayed by some of greatest painters whom
the world has known, look softly down from the walls of endless Italian
galleries. His great monastery on Mount Cassino was for centuries, scarcely
less than Rome and Jerusalem, the object of the reverent homage of the
Christian world. More than either of those two historic cities did it enshrine
a still existing ideal for the formation of what was deemed the highest type of
human character. In the ninth century the great Emperor Charles ordered an
enquiry to be made, as into a point requiring abstruse and careful research,
“Whether there were any monks anywhere in his dominions who professed any other
rule than the rule of Saint Benedict”.
And so it continued to be, till in the thirteenth century those great
twin brethren, Francis and Dominic, rose above the horizon, and the holiness of
the reposeful Monk paled before the more enthusiastic holiness of the Friar.
But during the intervening centuries, from the ninth to the thirteenth, all
Western-monks, from Poland to Portugal and from Cumberland to Calabria, looked
with fond eyes of filial obedience and admiration to that Campanian hill on
which their founder had fixed his home and of which a monastic Isaiah might
have prophesied, “From Cassino shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord
from the mountain of Benedict”.
The life of Saint Benedict was written in Latin by Pope Gregory the
Great, whose birth- year was perhaps the same as the death-year of the Saint.
Such a book, the biography of the greatest Monk, written by the greatest Pope,
obtained of course a wide and enduring popularity in the West; and in order
that the East might share the benefit, a later pope, Zacharias, translated it
into Greek. It is entitled “The Life and Miracles of the Venerable Benedict,
Founder and Abbot of the Monastery which is called (of) the Citadel of the
Province of Campania”. As we might have expected from the title, supernatural
events occupy a large place in the narrative, and we find ourselves at once
confronted with one of those problems as to the growth of belief which so often
perplex the historian of the Middle Ages. We have not here to deal with the
mere romancing of some idle monk, manufacturing legends for the glory of his
order about a saint who had been in his tomb for centuries. Pope Gregory was
all but a contemporary of St. Benedict, and he professes to have derived his
materials from four disciples and successors of the Saint, Constantine,
Valentinian, Simplicius, and Honoratus. In these circumstances the merely
mythical factor seems to be excluded from consideration; and there is something
in the noble character of Gregory and of the friends of Benedict which makes a
historian unwilling to adopt, unless under absolute compulsion, the theory of a
pious fraud. Yet probably not even the most absolutely surrendered intellect in
the Catholic Church accepts all the marvels here, recorded as literally and
exactly true. It is useless to attempt to rationalize them down into the
ordinary occurrences of everyday life. Yet in recounting them one would not
wish to seem either to sneer or to believe. Our best course doubtless is to
give them in Pope Gregory’s own words, studying them as phenomena of the age,
and remembering that whatever was the actual substratum of fact, natural or
supernatural, this which we find here recorded was what one of the greatest
minds of the sixth century, the architect of the medieval Papacy and the
restorer of the Christianity of Britain, either himself believed or wished to
see believed by his disciples.
In the high Sabine uplands, nearly two thousand feet above the
sea-level, under the shadow of the soaring Monti Sibellini,
which are among the highest peaks of the Apennine range, lies the little city
of Norcia, known in Roman days as the municipium of Nursia,
and familiar to diligent students of the Aeneid as 'frigida Nursia'.
A little stranded city, apparently, in its sequestered Apennine valley:
its nearest point of contact with the world of politics and of war would be
Spoleto, about twenty miles to the west of it on the great Flaminian Way, and
Spoleto was eighty miles from Rome. Here then in “frigid Nursia”,
about four years after Odovacar made himself supreme in Italy, was born to a
noble Roman a son who received the prophetic name of Benedict, “the blessed
one”. He was sent as a boy to Rome to pursue his studies, and when there he
probably saw the statues of Odovacar overthrown and the Forum placarded with the proclamations of the new ruler of Italy,
Theodoric. But the young Nursian was thinking, not of
the rise and fall of empires, but of the salvation of his own soul. He was
horrified by what he saw of the wickedness of the great city; he feared that if
he became imbued with what there passed for wisdom he too should one day rush
headlong into all its vices: he elected rather to be poor and ignorant, and
decided on quitting Rome and assuming the garb of a monk. He set out for “the
desert” that is, for the wild, thinly-peopled country, by the upper waters of
the Anio, and (pathetic evidence of the still tender years of the fervid
anchorite) the faithful nurse who had come with him to Rome insisted on
following him to his retirement.
Before they reached the actual mountain solitudes they came to the
little town of Efide (the modern village of Affile), and there finding many devout men who listened
with sympathy to his sorrows and aspirations, he yielded to their advice and
consented to take up his abode near them, in some chamber attached to the
church of St. Peter. While he was dwelling here the first exhibition of his
miraculous powers made him famous through all the surrounding district and
drove him into yet deeper solitude. His faithful nurse had borrowed from some neighbours
a sieve to sift some corn with, and this sieve, made not of wood but
earthenware, had been carelessly left on the table, by a fall from which it was
broken in two. The nurse wept over the broken implement, and the youthful
saint, taking the fragments from her hand and retiring for prayer, found when
he rose from his knees the sieve so restored that no trace of the fracture
could be discerned. So great was the admiration of the inhabitants at this
marvel that they hung up the miraculous sieve at the entrance of the church,
and there it remained for many years, till it perished, like many more precious
treasures, in the waves of the Lombard invasion.
The fame of this miracle brought to Benedict more visitors and more of
the praise of this world than he could bear. His mind reverted to its original
design, he determined to be absolutely unknown, and flying secretly from his
nurse, he crossed the little ridge of hills which separates Affile from Subiaco and from the deep wild gorge of the Anio. Subiaco, the Sublacus or Sublaqueum of the
Romans, derives its name from the lakes which had been formed there by Nero,
whose stately villa was mirrored in those artificial waters.
We have already had occasion to notice it in connection with the story
of the Roman aqueducts. It was about three miles above the place where the
turbid waters of the Anio Novus were diverted from the river-bed into the
aqueduct which bore that name, and some twelve miles above the more serene and
purer fountains of the Claudia and the Marcia. Situated about forty-four miles
from Rome, in a precipitous and thickly-wooded valley, Sublaqueum was the sort of place which an artistic Emperor like Nero, who tried to make a
solitude even round his golden house in Rome, might naturally resort to in the
First Century, even as Popes made it the scene of their villeggiatura in later
centuries, and even as artists from all countries now throng to it to transfer
to their canvas the picturesque outlines of its rocks, its woods, and its
castles. But during the convulsions of the Fifth Century, when wealthy
pleasure-lovers were few, it might easily sink into solitude and decay: and
hence no doubt it was that when Benedict, somewhere about the year 495, sought
its recesses, a few rough peasants and some scattered anchorites formed its
whole population, and his retirement thither could be spoken of by his
biographer as a retreat into the desert.
Here he was met by a monk named Romanus, who, hearing of his desires
after a solitary life, bestowed upon him the monastic habit and led him to a
narrow cave at the foot of a hill, where the delicately nurtured youth spent
the next three years, hidden from the eyes of all men, and with the place of
his retreat known only to the faithful Romanus. This only friend dwelt in a
monastery not far off, on the table-land overlooking the river. With pious
theft he abstracted a small portion from each monastic meal, and on stated days
hastened with his store to the brow of the hill. As no path led down to the
cave of the recluse, the basket of provisions was tied to the end of a long
rope, to which a bell was also attached, and thus the slowly-lowered vessel by
its tinkling sound called the Saint from prayer to food. “But one day the
Ancient Enemy [the Devil], envying the charity of one brother and the
refreshment of the other, when he saw the rope lowered, threw a stone and broke
the bell. Romanus, however, still continued to minister to him at the stated
hours.
After a time, from some unexplained cause, the ministrations of Romanus
ceased, and the Saint, insensible to the wants of the body, might easily have
perished of hunger. But a certain Presbyter living a long way from Subiaco,
having prepared for himself a hearty meal for the next day, the festival of
Easter, saw the Lord in a night vision and heard him say, “While thou art
preparing for thyself these delicacies, a servant of mine in a cavern near Sublaqueum is tortured with hunger”. The Presbyter rose at
once and set off on that Easter morning with the provisions in his hand. Up
hill and down dale he went, till at last, scrambling down the face of the
precipice, he found the cave where dwelt the holy man. After they had prayed
and talked together for some time the Presbyter said to the Hermit, “Rise and
let us eat: today is Easter- day”. Benedict, who in his solitude and his
perpetual fastings had long lost count of Lent and
Easter-tide, said, “An Easter-day to me truly, since I have been allowed to
look upon thy face”. The other answered, “In very truth this is the Easter-day,
the day of the Resurrection of the Lord, upon which it becomes thee not to keep
fast. Eat then, for therefore am I sent, that we may share together the gifts
of the Lord Almighty”. So they ate and drank together, and after long converse
the Presbyter departed.
It was soon after this that some shepherds of the neighbourhood
discovered the cave, and found what they at first supposed to be a wild beast
coiled up among the bushes. When they found that a man, and a holy man, was
enveloped in that garment of skins, they listened eagerly to his preaching: and
from this time forward he was never left in want of food, one or other of the
shepherds bringing him such victuals as he needed, and receiving in return,
from his lips, the message of eternal life.
After the unnatural calm and utter absorption in the contemplation of
heavenly things which had marked the Saint's first sojourn in the cave, there
came a storm of terrible temptation. In those years of abstraction the dreamy
child had grown into a man, with the hot blood of Italy in his veins; and his
imprisoned and buffeted manhood struggled hard for victory. Soft birdlike
voices sounded in his ears, the form of a beautiful woman rose before his eyes,
everything conspired to tempt him back from that dreary solitude into the sweet
world which he had quitted before he knew of its delights. He had all but
yielded to the temptation, he had all but turned his back upon the desert, when
a sudden thrill of emotion recalled him to his old resolve. Bent on punishing
the rebellious body which had so nearly conquered the soul, he plunged naked
into a dense thicket of thorns and nettles, and rolled himself in them till all
his skin was torn and smarting. The pain of the body relieved the anguish of
the soul, and, according to the lovely poetical fancy of after ages, when seven
centuries later his great imitator St. Francis visited the spot, the thorns
which had been the instrument of St. Benedict's penance were miraculously
turned to roses.
From a hint which the Saint himself has given us, we may infer that his
own mature judgment condemned his early impetuosity in facing while yet a boy
the hardships and temptations of an anchorite's life in the wilderness. He says
in the first chapter of his Rule, 'Hermits are' [by which he evidently means '
should be'] men who are not in the first fervour of their noviciate, but who
having first learned by a long course of monastic discipline and by the
assistance of many brethren how to fight against the Devil, afterwards step
forth alone from the ranks of their brethren to engage him in single combat, God
himself being their aid against the sins of the flesh and thoughts of evil.
The fame of the young Saint was now spread abroad throughout the valley,
and the inmates of the convent of Varia (now Vicovaro),
about twenty miles lower down the stream, having lost their abbot by death,
besought Benedict to come and preside over them. Long he refused, feeling sure
that his ways of thinking and acting would never agree with theirs. For these
monks evidently belonged to that class which he in after days described as “the
evil brood of the Sarabaitae”. This name, of Egyptian
origin, denoted those who had turned back from the rigor of their monastic
profession while still wearing the monastic garb. “Their law”, as he said, “is
the gratification of their own desires. Whatever they take a fancy to they call
holy: the unlawful is that to which they feel no temptation”.
These men, in a temporary fit of penitence and desire after better
things, chose Benedict for their his Abbot, and he at length yielded to their
will. But soon the passion for reform died away. They found it intolerable to
be reprimanded at each little deviation to the right hand or to the left from
the path of ascetic virtue. Angry words were bandied about in whispers, as each
accused the other of having counselled the mad design of making this austere
recluse from the wilderness their Abbot. At length their discontent reached
such a height that they resolved on poisoning him. When the cup containing the
deadly draught was offered to the reclining Abbot he, according to monastic
usage, made the sign of the cross in act of benediction. The moment that the
holy sign was made, as if a stone had fallen from his hands, the cup was
shivered to pieces and the wine was spilt on the ground. Perceiving at once the
meaning of the miracle, Benedict arose and addressed the pallid monks with
serene countenance: “Almighty God pity you, my brethren. Why have ye designed
this wickedness against me? Said I not unto you that my ways and yours could
never agree? Go and seek an Abbot after your own heart, for me ye shall see
here no more”. And with that he arose and returned to the wilderness.
But Benedict's fame was now so far spread abroad that it was impossible
for him any longer to lead the life of an absolutely solitary recluse. During
the first twenty years of the sixth century (AD 501-520), men anxious to
commence the monastic career under his training were flocking to him from all
parts of Italy. So numerous were these that he established no fewer than twelve
monasteries in the neighbourhood of Subiaco; to each of which he assigned a
superior, chosen from among his intimate friends. While probably exercising a
general superintendence over all these religious houses, he himself dwelt with
a few of his friends in a small house reared above his cave, the predecessor of
the present Convento del Sacro Speco at Subiaco.
Now too the nobles of Rome began to bring him their sons for education,
and for dedication if they should still after needful probation desire it, to
the untroubled life of a coenobite. The most celebrated among these noble
novices were Maurus and Placidus, sons of Aequitius and the Patrician Tertullus. They came about the year 523, Placidus a mere
child, Maurus a bright, earnest lad, already able to enter into some of the
thoughts of his revered master and to be the instrument of his rule over the
brethren. In the splendid series of frescoes by Signorelli and Sodoma which
line the cloisters of the great Benedictine monastery of Monte Oliveto, none is
more interesting than that which depicts the arrival of young Maurus and
Placidus, brought by their fathers, richly dressed and with a long train of
horses and servants and all the state of a Roman noble as imagined by a
mediaeval painter. Almost pathetic are the immediately following pictures, in
which the little heads are already marked with the tonsure and the youthful
faces already wear an aspect of too reposeful, unboyish holiness.
One of the most noteworthy and perplexing miracles of the Saint is
connected with these, his young disciples. One day the little Placidus having
gone to draw water from the neighbouring lake, stooping too far forward fell in
and was swept by the swift current far from the shore. Benedict, who was
praying in his cell, suddenly called out, “Brother Maurus! run! That child has
fallen into the water and is being carried away by the stream”. Maurus asked
and received a hurried blessing, hastened to the margin of the lake, ran over
its surface with rapid course, not perceiving that he trod on water, pulled his
companion up by the hair, and hastily returned. When he had reached the shore
he looked back over the lake and then saw for the first time, with trembling,
what he had done. He returned and related the event to Benedict. “It is a
miracle” said he, “granted to thee as a reward of thy prompt obedience”. “Not
so” said the youth, “it is a miracle wrought by thy prayers”. The friendly
controversy was settled by the testimony of the rescued Placidus, who declared
that when he was being drawn out of the water he saw the hood of Benedict
waving above him, and felt that it was by Benedict's arm that he was delivered.
The rivalry between the monks and the parish priests, between the
regular and the secular clergy, as they were afterwards called, which was to
reappear in so many forms in after ages, already began to show itself.
Florentius, the priest of a neighbouring church, filled with jealousy at the
increasing fame and influence of the Saint, endeavoured by slander and
misrepresentation to draw away his disciples from following him. As years went
on and still the fame of Benedict increased, while Florentius remained obscure,
the character of the priest underwent an evil change, and from slanderous words
he proceeded to murderous deeds. He sent, according to a not uncommon custom, a
piece of bread to Benedict as a token of brotherhood. The morsel was, however,
a poisoned one, or at least the Saint believed it to be so, though, as he
commanded a crow which was accustomed to feed out of his hand to bear it away
into a desert place and there deposit it where it could be found of no man, it
is difficult to see what evidence existed of the wicked designs of Florentius.
The next step taken by the priest, who sent seven women of evil life to the
monks' cells, was so outrageous and threatened such ruin to the community if
this was to be the permitted manner of warfare, that Benedict resolved to
withdraw from the conflict, and, leaving his twelve monasteries under the rule
of their respective heads, sought a new home for himself and his chosen friends
fifty miles to the southward, in the countries watered by the Liris. We may
fairly conjecture that the enmity of Florentius was not the sole cause that
urged him to this migration. His was one of those characters which require
solitude, leisure, liberty, in order to attain their true development. At
Subiaco he found himself no longer a recluse, but the centre of a great system
of administration, his name a battle-cry, himself the leader of a party.
Leaving those to strive and conquer who would, he bowed his head to the storm
and again sought the freedom of the desert. Scarcely, however, had he started
on his southward journey when a messenger from the faithful Maurus reached him
with the tidings of the death of his enemy. The balcony on which Florentius was
standing, to watch and to gloat over the departure of his foe, had given way,
and the wicked priest had been killed by his fall. Benedict burst into loud
lamentations over his death, inflicted penance on the messenger, who seemed to
exult in the tidings which he bore, and continued his journey towards the
Campanian lands. Evidently the enmity of Florentius, though it might be one
cause, was not the sole cause of the great migration.
The new home of the Father of Monks was erected upon a promontory of
high table-land, just upon the confines of Latium and Campania, which then
overlooked the Via Latina, as it now overlooks the modern railway between Rome
and Naples, from a point a little nearer to the latter city than to the former.
Here, round the Citadel of Campania, grew the shady groves in which, two
hundred years after Constantine, a rustic multitude, still, after the manner of
their forefathers, offered their pagan sacrifices to the statue of Apollo. At
the command of Benedict the statue was ground to powder, the woods were cut
down, and where the altar of the Far- darting god had stood, there rose, amid
much opposition from unseen and hellish foes, two chapels to St. Martin and St.
John, and, hard by, the new dwelling of the Coenobites. It was a memorable
event in the history of the valley of the Liris, which turned the obscure
Castrum Casinum into the world-renowned, the
thought-moulding, the venerated monastery of Monte Cassino
The migration from the Anio to the Liris occurred about 528, and fifteen
years were passed by the Saint in his new citadel-home. The record of these
years, as of those passed at Subiaco, is chiefly a record of miracles. Some of
the chief characteristics of this miraculous history may be here briefly
touched upon.
Least interesting to us, because most obviously artificial in their
character, are those wonders recorded of the Saint in which there is an obvious
desire to emulate the miraculous deeds of Elijah and Elisha. When Benedict goes
forth into the fields with his disciples to work, and by his prayers restores
the dead son of a peasant to life; when he heals a leper; when a miraculous
supply of oil bubbles up in the cask and runs over on the convent floor; when
he provides the monks of Subiaco with an easily-accessible spring of sweet
water, we feel that whether to the Saint himself or to his biographers, the
idea of these supernatural occurrences was suggested by what they had read in
the Books of Kings.
Childish as some of them may seem to us, there is a greater
psychological interest in those stories which describe the Saint as struggling
for victory against the wiles and stratagems of the Devil. The Power of Evil is
almost uniformly spoken of by Gregory as “the Ancient Enemy” (antiquus hostis), and the minute
acquaintance which is shown with his works and ways, the comparative ease with
which his plots are foiled and himself brought to confusion, remind us rather
of the way in which a hostile politician is spoken of by the admirers of his
rival than of the dark and trembling hints dropped in the Hebrew and Christian
Scriptures concerning the mysterious Being who for ever sets his will against
the will of the Most High. When the monastery was being built at Cassino hard
by the old idolatrous grove, the 'antiquus hostis' continually appeared to the fathers in their
dreams; he filled the air with his lamentations; he once stood in bodily
presence before the Saint, with flaming eyes, calling “Benedict! Benedict”, and
when he refused to answer, cried out “Maledict! not
Benedict. what hast thou to do with me? Why wilt thou thus persecute me?” A
stone which the builders wished to raise to its place in the new building was
made immovable to all their efforts by reason of the Ancient Enemy sitting upon
it, till Benedict by his prayers caused him to depart. The kitchen of the
monastery appeared to the brethren to be on fire, and the work of building was
interrupted by their causeless panic, till again by the prayers of the Saint
their eyes were opened, and they saw that the imagined fire was no fire at all,
but only a figment of the Ancient Enemy. At one time the Enemy appeared in the
strange guise of a veterinary surgeon, and, visiting one of the monks who was
drawing water, afflicted him with some strange disorder of a hysterical kind,
which was cured by a sharp buffet from the hand of Benedict. At another time a
monk was afflicted with an unaccountable love of roving, which always led him
to go forth from the monastery just when the brethren were engaged in prayer.
Admonitions from his own abbot (for he was not under the immediate supervision
of Benedict) were in vain. The Saint, being sent for to heal him, clearly
perceived a little black boy tugging at the fringe of the monk's habit, and
thus coaxing him to leave the chapel. The Saint saw it, and on the following
day his friend Maurus also saw it; but to the eyes of Pompeianus,
abbot of the monastery, the black imp remained invisible. Sharp strokes of the
rod corrected the wandering spirit of the monk, who thenceforward sat quietly
in the chapel to the end of the service.
We are here, manifestly, in presence of the Medieval figure of the
Devil. This is the being who, according to the belief of the Middle Ages,
furnished the design for the Bridge of St. Gotthard and for the Cathedral of
Cologne; the being who is always on the point of outwitting, but is generally
in the end outwitted by, the sons of men; the being at whom Luther, monk in
heart if reformer in brain, threw his inkstand when he sat in the little
chamber at the Wartburg.
Are we not justified in saying that this conception of the character of
man's unseen Foe has more than an accidental connection with the monastic
system with whose birth it is contemporaneous? Assuredly those protracted
fasts, those long and lonely vigils of anchorite and coenobite, had something
to do with bringing the Devil of the Middle Ages into the field of human
imaginings.
Some of the histories recounted of the Saint Social bring vividly before
us the social conditions of the age in which he lived, conditions of which
probably no one had a wider or more accurate knowledge than the Superior of a
great Monastery. Into that safe fold came men from all ranks and all stations
in life, the lofty and the lowly, some seeking shelter, some solace, some rest
from the hopeless distractions of a turbulent age; and the spiritual father was
bound to listen to the tale of each, to sympathize with the sorrows of all. St.
Benedict himself in his rule, while insisting on the duty of the abbot's avoiding
all respect of persons, hints at the difficulty of its fulfilment. “Let good
deeds and obedience be the only means of obtaining the abbot's favour. Let not
the free-born man be preferred to him who was a slave before he entered the
convent, unless there be some other reason for the preference”. Distinguished
merit may lead to promotion out of the order of seniority, “but if otherwise,
let each keep his proper place [in that order], since, whether slaves or free,
we are all one in Christ, and, under the same Lord, wear all of us the same
badge of service”.
In St. Benedict's case, Goth and Roman, peasant and noble, the son of
the tax-ridden Curialis, and the son of the lordly
Defensor, were all subject to his equal sway. Near to his monastery, and in
some measure subject to his oversight, dwelt two noble ladies who had vowed
themselves to a life of holiness. A monk, of lower social condition, who performed
menial offices for these ladies, was often vexed by the sharp words which they
used towards him, mindful rather of the past difference in their positions, than
of their present equality in Christ. On hearing the good man's complaints St.
Benedict visited the ladies, and told them that if they did not keep their
tongues in better subjection he should be compelled to excommunicate them.
Peevish and forward, however, and probably suffering in health by reason of the
change from a palace to a cell, the noble ladies abated none of their scolding
words. In no long time they both died, and were buried within the precincts of
the church. There was a strange sight seen by their nurse, when she attended,
according to custom, to bring an oblation for her dead mistresses, at the
solemnization of the mass. When the Deacon called out “Let all who do not
communicate depart”, two dim figures were seen to rise out of the floor and
steal away from the sacred building. Seeing this happen more than once, and
remembering the threatened excommunication of the Saint, which evidently had
power beyond the limits of this life, the faithful nurse sought the cell of
Benedict and told him the marvellous tale. He gave her an oblation from his own
hand to offer on their behalf, in proof that he no longer excommunicated them.
The oblation was duly made, and thereafter the souls of the harassed harassers
had peace.
Once, at evening, the venerable Father was sitting at table, partaking
of the bread and cooked vegetables which formed his frugal repast. Opposite
him, according to the rule of the monastery, stood a young monk, holding the
lamp and ready to do the Abbot's bidding. It chanced that he who upon this
evening performed this lowly duty was a young noble, son of one of the Imperial Defensors, whose father therefore was one of the most
important personages in the state. Suddenly the thought flashed through his mind,
“Who is this man who sits here eating his evening meal, upon whom I am waiting
like a slave, holding the lamp, handing him the dishes? And what am I, I the
Defensor's son, that I should condescend to such drudgery?”. Not a word did the
young noble utter, but the Saint, who read his proud thought, said suddenly,
with voice of stern rebuke, “Seal up thy heart, my brother. What is that which
thou art saying? Seal up thy heart”. He called in the other brethren, bade the
young man hand the lamp to them and retire for an hour of silent meditation.
The monks afterwards asked the culprit what he had done to awaken such wrath in
the Saint's mind. He told them, not what he had done, but what he had thought;
and they all recognized that nothing could escape the venerable Benedict, in
whose ear men's thoughts sounded like spoken words.
Whatsoever among the miracles attributed to the founder of Cassino we
may feel bound to reject, we can hardly refuse to him an extraordinary, perhaps
a supernatural power of reading the human heart. The story just told is one of
the most striking instances of this power. Other cases are recorded, as when he
rebuked some monks who, contrary to the rule, had partaken of refreshment in a
religious woman's house, outside of the monastery, when he reminded another
monk of an offence which he had himself forgotten, the acceptance of some
handkerchiefs from the inmates of a nunnery to whom he had been sent to
preach,—or when he detected the dishonesty of a young monk who, when entrusted
with two bottles of wine for the use of the monastery, had delivered one only.
This power of penetrating the secret thoughts of those who came into his
presence was remarkably exemplified in St. Benedict's interview with Totila; an
interview which took place, probably, in the year 542, when the Gothic King was
on his march to the siege of Naples. Pope Gregory, as the champion of orthodoxy
and of the Roman nationality, naturally represents the Arian and barbarian King
somewhat less favourably than he deserves. Still, even in the Papal narrative
(which it will be well to give in a literal translation), something of the
nobleness of Totila's character may be discerned.
“Chapter XIV. How the feigning of King Totila was discovered.
In the times of the Goths, Totila their King having heard that the holy
man possessed the spirit of prophecy, and being on his way to the monastery
halted at some distance and sent word that he would come to him. Having sent
this message, as he was a man of unbelieving mind, he determined to try whether
the man of God really possessed the prophetic spirit. There was a certain
sword-bearer of his, named Riggo, to whom he lent his
[purple] buskins and ordered him to put on the royal robes and to go, personating
him, to the man of God. To aid the deception he also sent three counts, who
before all others were wont to attend upon his person, namely Vuld [or Vultheric], Kuderic, and Blidi. These were to keep close by the side of Riggo, to whom he assigned other guards and other
marks of honor, with the intention that by these and
by the purple raiment he might be taken for the King. When this same Riggo, thus arrayed and thus accompanied, had entered the
monastery, the man of God was sitting afar off. But seeing him coming, as soon
as his voice could be heard he cried out, saying, “Put off, my son, put off
that which thou wearest; it is not thine”. Thereat Riggo fell straightway to the earth, struck with terror
because he had presumed to mock so great a man; and all who had come with him
to the man of God groveled on the ground. Then
arising, they did not dare to approach, but hurrying back to their King told
him how speedily they had been detected”
“Chapter xv. Of the Prophecy which was made concerning the same King.
Then, in his own person, the same Totila approached the man of God, but
when he saw him sitting afar off he did not dare to come close, but cast
himself upon the ground. Then, when the man of God had twice or thrice said to
him “Rise”, but still he did not dare to raise himself from the earth, Benedict
the servant of Jesus Christ condescended himself to approach the prostrate King
and cause him to arise. He rebuked him for his past deeds, and in few words
told him all that should come to pass, saying,
"Much evil hast thou done, Much evil art thou doing.
Now at length cease from sin. Thou shalt enter Rome: Thou shalt cross
the sea.
Nine years shalt thou reign,
In the tenth shalt thou die."
When he had heard these words, the King, vehemently terrified, asked for
his prayers and withdrew; and from that time forward he was less cruel than aforetime. Not long afterwards he entered Rome, and crossed
to Sicily. But in the tenth year of his reign, by the judgment of Almighty God,
he lost his kingdom with his life.
Moreover, the priest of the church of Canusium was sent to visit the same servant of God, by whom, for his meritorious life,
he was held in great affection. And once when they were talking together
concerning the entry of King Totila and the destruction of the city of Rome,
the priest said, “By this King that city will be destroyed so that it shall be
no more inhabited”. To whom the man of God made answer, “Rome shall not be
exterminated by the barbarians, but, wearied with tempests, lightnings,
whirlwinds, and earthquakes, it shall consume away in itself”. The mysteries of
which prophecy are now made clearer than the daylight to us, who see in this
city, walls shattered, houses thrown down, churches destroyed by the whirlwind,
and the great edifices of the city loosened by long old age falling around us
in abounding ruin”. So far Pope Gregory.
These two scenes, the unmasking of the false King and the prediction of
the future fortunes of the true one, are vividly portrayed, not only by
Signorelli at Monte Oliveto, but also by Spinello Aretino on the walls of the
large square sacristy at San Miniato. Especially well
rendered is the dismay of the detected impostor. Riggo’s knees are loosened with terror, and he turns sick with fear as he meets the
stern mildness of Benedict's gaze and hears that voice of command, “My son, put
off, put off that which thou wearest, for it is not
thine”.
Within a year, probably, from the interview with Totila, St. Benedict
was dead. The little that has got to be told about him is a history of
farewells. First came the death of his sister Scholastica. She had been from
infancy dedicated to the service of God, and had apparently inhabited a cell
not far from his monastery, first at Subiaco and then at Monte Cassino. Once a
year the Saint used to come and visit his sister in her cell, which, though of
course outside the gates of the monastery, was within the limits of the modest
monastic estate. When the time for the last yearly visit was come, Benedict
with a little knot of his disciples went down to his sister's cell and spent
the whole day in religious conversation and in singing with her the praises of
the Most High. The evening was come; they were seated at supper; it was time
for Benedict to depart, but still the stream of conversation, which perhaps
deviated sometimes from the near joys of heaven to the far distant past of
their common infancy in upland Nursia, seemed
unexhausted. Scholastica pressed her brother to stay that they might on the
morrow resume their celestial converse. “What dost thou ask me, my sister”,
said he; “I can by no means pass the night outside of my cell”. At this time
the evening sky was bright and clear, and not a cloud was visible. Scholastica
clasped her hands tightly together and bowed her head in silent prayer. After a
time she looked up again. The lightning was flashing, the thunder was pealing,
and such torrents of rain were descending, that neither Benedict nor his
companions could stir across the threshold of the cell. “Almighty God have pity
on thee” said Benedict. “What is this that thou hast done?”. “My brother”, she
answered, “I asked thee and thou wouldest not hear.
Then I asked my Lord, and he heard me. Now depart if thou canst: leave me alone
and return to thy monastery”. Benedict recognised and bowed to the divine
answer to prayer. He passed the night in his sister's cell, and they cheered
one another with alternate speech upon the joys of the spiritual life. In the
morning he departed to his own cell, and three days after, when he was standing
therein, lifting up his eyes he saw a white dove rising into the sky. Then he
knew that his sister Scholastica was dead, and sent some of the brotherhood to
bring her body and lay it in the prepared sepulchre, where it should wait a
little season for his own.
It was not long, apparently, after this event that the Saint received a
visit from his dear friend Servandus, the head of a neighbouring
monastery founded by Liberius the Patrician, probably the same with whom we
have already made acquaintance as the faithful servant of Odovacar and
Theodoric. After spending the evening in that kind of conversation which was
the highest mental enjoyment of these venerable men, they retired to rest.
Benedict in the topmost chamber of a tall tower overlooking all the buildings
and courtyards of the monastery, his guest in a lower story of the same tower,
the disciples of both below. Benedict rose, while all others still slept,
before the appointed hour of vigils (two o'clock in the morning). While he
stood at his window and looked south-eastwards over the Campanian plain,
suddenly the darkness of the night was scattered; a radiance as of the sun
filled the deep Italian sky, and under that strangely flashing light it seemed
to him that the world was made visible as it was to Christ upon the Specular
Mount, all illumined by one ray only from the sun. While he was still fixing
his earnest gaze on that heavenly radiance, behold a sphere of fire, in which
he saw the soul of his friend Germanus, Bishop of Capua, being borne by angels
to heaven. Thrice with a loud voice he called on Servandus,
sleeping below, to arise and see the marvel: but when Servandus stood beside his friend at the window, the fiery sphere had vanished, the
vision of the world was ended, and only
“The few last rays
of that far-scattered light”
were
yet discernible. St. Benedict sent a brother at once to Capua to enquire as to
the welfare of the Bishop, and learned that on that same night, at the very
moment of the heavenly vision, Germanus had given up the ghost.
And now did Benedict's discourse often turn upon his own approaching
end, telling those about him under the seal of confidence when it should be,
and sending word to his absent disciples by what signs they should be made
certain of his decease. Six days before his death he ordered his grave to be
dug. After this he was seized with a sharp attack of fever, which grew daily
more severe. On the sixth day he bade his disciples carry him into the oratory,
fortified himself for death by receiving the body and blood of the Lord, and
then, leaning his weak limbs upon the arms of his disciples, he stood with his
hands upraised to heaven, and thus passed away in the act and attitude of
prayer.
That same day two of his disciples, one in his cell at Monte Cassino and
another in a distant monastery, saw the same vision. To each it seemed that a
pathway strewn with bright robes and gleaming with innumerable fires stretched
eastwards from Benedict's cell and upwards into the depth of heaven. Above
stood a man of venerable aspect and radiant countenance, who asked them if they
knew what that pathway was which they beheld. They answered, “No”; and he
replied,” This is the path by which Benedict, beloved of God, hath ascended up
to heaven”
He was buried side by side with his sister in the place where he had
overthrown the altar of Apollo, and within the walls of the new oratory of St.
John.
Returning now to the line of thought indicated at the beginning of this
chapter, if we ask why has the fame of St. Benedict so entirely eclipsed that
of all other Western monks, the answer is undoubtedly furnished to us by the
one literary product of his life, his Regula. This Rule, extending only to
seventy-three short chapters (many of them very short), and not probably
designed by its author for use much beyond the bounds of the communities under
his own immediate supervision, proved to be the thing which the world of
religious and thoughtful men was then longing for, a complete code of monastic
duty. Thus by a strange parallelism, almost in the very year when the great
Emperor Justinian was codifying the results of seven centuries of Roman secular
legislation for the benefit of the judges and the statesmen of the new Europe,
St. Benedict on his lonely mountain-top was unconsciously composing his code
for the regulation of the daily life of the great civilizers of Europe for
seven centuries to come. The chief principles of that code were labour,
obedience, and a regulated fervour of devotion to the Most High. The life
prescribed therein, which seems to us so austere, so awfully remote from the
common needs and the common pleasures of humanity, seemed to him, and was in
reality, gentle and easy when compared with the anchorite's wild endeavours
after an impossible holiness, endeavours which had often culminated in absolute
madness, or broken down into mere worldliness and despair of all good. It is
therefore in no spirit of affectation that Benedict in his Preface to the Rule
uses these remarkable words: “We must therefore establish a school of service
to our Lord, in which institution we trust that nothing rough and nothing
grievous will be found to have been ordained by us”
It is, however, the man himself rather than the vast system almost
unconsciously founded by him that it has seemed necessary at this point to
bring before the mind of the reader. St. Benedict died only ten years before
the extreme limit of time reached by this volume. Later on, when we have to
deal with the history of the Lombard domination in Italy, our attention will be
attracted to the further fortunes of Monte Cassino, ruined, restored, endowed
with vast wealth, all by the same Lombard conquerors. For the present we leave
the followers of the Saint engaged in their holy and useful labors,
praying, digging, transcribing. “The wilderness and the solitary place shall be
glad for them, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose”. The
scriptorium of the Benedictine monastery will multiply copies not only of
missals and theological treatises, but of the poems and histories of antiquity.
Whatever may have been the religious value or the religious dangers of the
monastic life, the historian at least is bound to express his gratitude to
these men, without whose life-long toil the great deeds and thoughts of Greece
and Rome might have been as completely lost to us as the wars of the buried Lakedwellers or the thoughts of Paleolithic Man. To take an illustration from St. Benedict's own beloved Subiaco, the work
of his disciples has been like one of the great aqueducts of the valley of the
Anio,—sometimes carried underground for centuries through the obscurity of
unremembered existences, sometimes emerging to the daylight and borne high upon
the arcade of noble lives, but equally through all its course bearing the
precious stream of ancient thought from the far-off hills of time into the
humming and crowded cities of modern civilization.
