Studies in Sanctity
[We propose to publish during the next few weeks a series of studies of saintly characters who have in different ages and different manners exercised a transforming influence on the life of their day. Next week Miss Lucy Menzies will write on fit. Columba.]
III.—St. Benedict
By THE RT. REV. ABBOT BUTLER, O.S.B.
BORN about the year 480, and dying about 550, St. Benedict's life-span fell in one of the critical epochs of European history, the very dawn of the Middle Ages, when the tribes of Teuton and Slav barbarians were swarming over Europe, and by fusion in divers measures
with the old populations were making the first steps in the transformation of the Roman Empire into the nations of our modern Europe. He was born in a small town in Central Italy, near Spoleto, and he came of well-to-do parents, of social position much as our country gentry.
In due time he was sent to Rome to pursue the ordinary course of liberal education ; but revolting from the corruption and licentiousness he found in the Roman schools, he fled out of Rome, full of the idea of embracing the monastic life and in the form then looked on as the most real, the life of the hermit or solitary. Full of this idea, he left Rome secretly and wandered over the hills of Latium until he came to the ruins of Nero's palace at Sublaqueum (Subiaco), about thirty miles from Rome. He here found a lonely cave well suited for his purpose, and in it he took up his abode. He was then about twenty.
The Sacro Speco at Subiaco is without any doubt the place wherein Benedict passed three years in solitude, alone with God, his existence being known to only one monk of a neighbouring monastery, who secretly supplied him with food, letting it down by a rope from a rock over- hanging the cave. Nor can it be doubted that during these three years of seclusion a principal occupation was the reading of Holy Writ, and that there was gained that familiarity with the Bible that shows itself throughout the Rule. After three years of solitude Benedict began to be known; he was discovered first by shepherds, and then the country folk began to come to him, and to them he gave instructions in the things of religion. Ere long his reputation spread, and many came to him to put themselves under his guidance and be trained in the monastic life : so many that he was able to form twelve monasteries of twelve monks each in the vicinity of Subiaco.
After some years jealousies arose against him, and per- secution of a kind that determined him to yield to evil and leave Subiaco. With a band of monks he set out and travelled southward, till about half-way between Rome and Naples they came to a mountain overhanging the Roman town of Cassinum. They climbed the mountain, and finding on the summit a fane of Apollo where pagan cults still were exercised by the mountain folk, they destroyed the sacred grove and made the temple into a chapel, and built there the Monastery of Monte Cassino, destined to become for all time the centre of Benedictine life and spirit, the Holy Mount of the Benedictines. Some year about 525 may be taken as the date.
Benedict's remaining years, about a quarter of a century, were passed at Monte Cassino. There is ground for supposing he was still alive in 547; his death may be placed about 550. St. Gregory pictures him as ruling, guiding, instructing his monks in religious life ; taking his part in their works and life ; preaching to the still half-pagan dwellers on the mountain ; coming to the help of those in distress from the calamitous conditions of I taly in the later days of Ostrogothic sway. He had the reputation of thaumaturge or wonder-worker ; and this it was that brought the Gothic King Totila to him in 542, to hear a stem rebuke that made him afterwards less cruel. And then he died, standing in the oratory, sup- ported in the arms of the monks, fortified by the reception of the Lord's Body and Blood, his hands upraised to heaven, breathing forth his soul in prayer : so St. Gregory (Dialogues II, 37).
At first sight it may seem strange that such a life, so uneventful, passed in the wilds of Subiaco and on the heights of Monte Cassino, out of contact with the great world, should have proved one of the foremost influences in the making of Europe and of European civilization : a striking instance of the divine paradox, "He that loseth his life for My sake shall find it." The key is to be found in the fact that St. Benedict wrote his Rule. One with rare knowledge of the Middle Ages, Viollet-le-Duci did not hesitate to say that, "regarded from the philo, sophical point of view, the Rule of St. Benedict is perhaps the greatest historical fact of the Middle Ages." It would be impossible here to give any account of the Rule. Readers who look into it will search in vain for any apparent reason of the great influence it exercised': there seems to be little relation between cause and the effects achieved.
St. Gregory says of the Rule that it is " convictions for its discretion." And so it was, and is. hi the first place, St. Benedict's practical Roman mind showed itself in that his Rule was a code of regulations for the orderly working of a large community; in the second' place, it laid down a regime so moderate that it could be enforced without hardship, yet adequate to secure the main pur- pose of the monastic life—the self-discipline and sanctifica- tion of the monks. He says his idea is to set up.a " school of the service of God." This service is made up of the worship of God in church, the reading of Bible and Fathers of the Church, and manual work of various kinds: The monks passed their life chanting, praying, reading, working, meditating, not looking outside the precincts of the monastery. There was no idea of preparing or fitting them for anything but heaven. It never entered St. Benedict's mind that his monks should be apostles, missionaries, civilize's, schoolmasters, learned men. Canon Hannay well puts it : " He aimed at making good men and left the question of their usefulness to God ; it is, perhaps, just because they denied theniselves the satisfaction of aiming at usefulness that they were so greatly used."
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