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II.2 This text has not yet been proofread. If you find a mistake though, please let me know! II.4

H. B. Cotterill
Medieval Italy

CHAPTER III
ST. BENEDICT

We have lately seen how Cassiodorus, after some thirty years of high office as the counselor and intimate friend of several sovereigns, withdrew from the world and spent the last third of his life in the seclusion of a monastery on the remote southern sea-coast of Calabria. This case is one of many which bear testimony to the very strong attraction exercised in these earlier ages of the Church by monasticism.

It will be remembered that the wild extravagances of Egyptian and Eastern anchoretism, when introduced into Italy, produced a movement which, modified by the less excitable nature of the Western and Northern races, resulted in a very widespread adoption of monastic life. Favoured by the Roman Church, which had been won over by the arguments of Athanasius and had recognized the wisdom of making use of the new religious enthusiasm, monasticism spread with great rapidity to the most distant bounds of the Western Empire, and even beyond these bounds—to the wilds of Ireland and Wales, where, until the British Church was almost exterminated by the pagan Angles, some notable monasteries formed the centres of missionary work and of intellectual life. In Italy during these ages there were among all classes many who naturally yearned for the sweets of solitude and contemplation, wearied out as they were by the endless horrors and dangers of war and the endless bickerings of religious discord, and who found no satisfaction for the higher instincts of faith, hope, or charity amid their formal professions of submission to a Church which seemed to demand nothing but a superstitious veneration for certain abstruse, and often unintelligible, formulae and for the miraculous powers of old bones and other such fetishes. All forms of monachism are due, as will be generally conceded, to perversions of instincts the free exercise of which in ordinary life is amply provided for by Christianity. Of these forms the most perverted was of anchoretism. Western monasticism was very much more reasonable, and if we take into account the political, ecclesiastical, and social conditions of that age (so essentially different from ours) and the almost entire absence of any outlets for religious, intellectual, and philanthropic enthusiasms, we may find the practice of withdrawal from such an unsatisfactory world not unjustifiable, especially when the ideals of solitude and self-salvation were succeeded by those of religious brotherhood and hard work—whether manual or intellectual—and still more when, in a later day, self-denying service to the needs of others inspired St. Francis and his first disciples.

Cassiodorus founded a hermitage for solitaries and a monastic community the members of which devoted their time to religious exercises, contemplation, and intellectual work. Except that in Benedictine monasteries manual rather than intellectual work was regarded as indispensable, the great difference between Benedict and Cassiodorus, as founders, is not at first sight apparent. But St. Benedict was not merely the founder of monasteries; he was the creator of the first great monastic Order of Western Christianity and is the 'patriarch' of four other important Orders of reformed Benedictines.1 Whether the invention of monastic Orders—which, curiously, took place in the very year in which Justinian expelled the last philosophers from Athens—was a misfortune or not for mankind need not here be discussed. That is had affected enormously, for good or for evil—perhaps for both—the evolution of European civilization is unquestionable and this lends a special interest to the facts connected with the foundation of the Order which so rapidly drew into its organization almost all the monastic institutions of Western Europe,2 and which for seven centuries—that is, till the days of St. Francis and St. Dominic—was, if we except the early, half-organized Augustines, the only Order of Western Christianity.

The life of St. Benedict is related fully and with many fantastic legendary accretions by Gregory the Great, who is said by some to have been born on the very day on which the saint died (March 21, 543). Benedict (b. 480) was a native of Norcia, a little town in the Umbrian mountains to the west of Spoleto. When a youth of about fifteen he went to study at Rome—then under the rule of Odovacar—but the life led by his fellow-students became so intolerable to him that he withdrew to the solitudes of the Apennines, near to the sources of the Arno. He had been followed thither by his nurse, or foster-mother, whose affectionate anxiety for his creature comforts, coupled with the obtrusive admiration of the country-people for his saintly life and his early-developed gift of wonder-working, compelled him to escape. He took refuge in a cave, or cleft in the rocks, near Subiaco, on the Upper Anio—some fifteen miles south of Vicovaro, Horace's Varia, which is not very far from the site of his Sabine farm in the Digentia valley.

At Subiaco he lived for some time as an anchoret in his cave, his food being supplied by a monk, and afterwards by shepherds, who let it down into his grotto by means of a rope. But he must sometimes have left his retreat, if it was during this period that he used to punish himself for amorous memories of a Roman beauty by rolling naked in a thorny thicket—which henceforth brought forth roses, the lineal progenitors, it is said, of those shown to the modern visitor in the garden of the monastery.3

At length Benedict's saintly life induced the monks of Vicovaro to choose him as their abbot. His Rule, however, proved too strict for the dissolute community. They tried to poison him; but when he blessed the cup presented him it fell from the murderer's hand—an incident depicted in many Benedictine paintings. Then he returned to his former haunts, and being there joined by many disciples he took up his abode in the 'Sacred Cavern,' rather higher up the hill than his original grotto,4 and caused to be erected in the neighbourhood twelve monasteries, among them the original of what later was dedicated as a convent to his sister Scholastica. This convent, with large additions made in the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, forms at present one of the sights of Subiaco. It was in this building that in 1465 the first Italian printing-press was set up. Benedict seems to have acted on the principle of avoiding rather than resisting evil. Certain clerics, it is said, jealous of his success, hired women to corrupt the morals of his monks and to disturb his earthly Paradise. In a sudden access of disgust he abandoned his twelve monasteries and once more set out to seek some peaceful retreat. He wandered southwards and arrived at Cassinum—or San Germano, as it was called in the later Middle Ages5—about half-way between Rome and Naples. Above the town, which lies on the Rapido, a tributary of the Liris, rises Monte Cassino, a bare limestone ridge some 1700 feet high. Here still existed a temple and grove with statues and altars dedicated to Apollo and Venus, and sacrifice, it is said, was still made to these deities—or demons—by the country-folk. Benedict preached Christ to this 'folk deluded' and persuaded them to demolish the shrine and the altars of the 'high place' and to cut down the grove, and on this site he built shrines to John the Baptist and Martin of Tours. Then still higher up the mountain he founded (in 529) what for more than thirteen centuries has been venerated as the chief monastery of Western Christendom, and what during the Dark Age of European history was the chief of the rare refuges of ancient art and learning, and harboured within its walls many a world-weary prince, warrior, and man of letters.

From Monte Cassino one overlooks the beautiful valley of the Liris, so extolled in classic verse—

rura, quae Liris quieta

Mordet aqua, taciturnus amnis.6

Westward lies Aquinum, birthplace of Juvenal and of the 'Angelic Doctor,' while to the south one catches glimpses of the sea and the country of Minturnae, Caieta, and Sinuessa—all of which names awaken memories of Horace and Virgil, and of the days when Rome was mistress of the known world. And then one thinks of the long Dark Age that followed the fall of Rome, and tries to realize how from these very walls, first built by Benedict, men gazed down on the devastating bands of countless invaders—Goths, and Byzantines, and Lombards, and Saracens, and Normans, and Germans, and French, and Spaniards—moving, as it were, in almost continuous line through the vista of nigh a thousand years.7

The site, and the coming of Benedict, are described by Dante—or rather by the saint himself; for Dante meets him in the sphere of Saturn amidst the spirits of contemplation, who in the form of star-like splendours are ascending and descending the great golden stair that, like Jacob's ladder, slopes up from earth to the highest heaven. 'That mountain,' says St. Benedict, 'on the side of which Cassino lies was frequented of old upon its Summit by a folk deluded and evilly disposed; and I am he who first carried up thither the name of Him who brought Truth down to the earth; and so abundant was the grace of God that shone upon me that I drew away the neighbouring towns from that impious worship which once seduced the world.' Dante then makes the saint lament the degeneracy of his Order and speak with praise and affection of St. Romuald of Ravenna, the founder (c. 1000) of the Reformed or White Benedictines, known as the Camaldolesi.8 Romuald revived, and made even more stringent, the original 'New Rule' of Benedict, the seventy-three articles of which, founded on the teachings of St. Paul and partly borrowed from the Oriental Rule of St. Macarius, enjoined, among other things, community of goods, absolute obedience, absolute equality, and manual labour—ignoring all distinctions of class or race and forbidding leisure (otiositas) as an enemy of the soul, on the principle that laborare est orare.

Towards the end of his life Benedict was joined by his sister, St. Scholastica, who took up her residence in a cell some distance from the monastery. She is remembered by the lover of Italian art by the fact that two incidents connected with her are found depicted in Benedictine paintings. Sometimes she is represented praying that her brother, who was visiting her and wished to return, should be prevented—a prayer that was fulfilled by the sudden outburst of a violent storm. Other pictures represent Benedict watching a bird flitting away towards heaven—the bird signifying the soul of his sister, who died two days after the afore-mentioned visit.

About 542 the Gothic king Baduila (Totila) visited St. Benedict. The saint is said to have recognized him though disguised, to have reproved him sternly for his devastations, and to have prophesied his death—which, however, did not take place for ten years. Shortly afterwards, in March 543, Benedict himself died. His body, as well as that of his sister, is said to lie under the high altar in the abbey church of Monte Cassino. This church (entirely rebuilt in the seventeenth century) contains little or nothing9 in its architecture or decorations that is older than the eleventh century, which is the supposed age of the bronzen door of Byzantine work. The monastery has suffered numerous demolitions. In 589, only sixty years after its foundation, it was destroyed by the Lombards. On this occasion the monks removed in a body to Rome, where they remained for 130 years. In 883 the place was taken and burnt by the Saracens, and the monks escaped to Capua and Teano; but by 886 they had rebuilt their Badia (abbey). Like other monasteries of Italy, that of Monte Cassino has been secularized (1866) and appropriated as a national monument. It however still contains a seminary and is inhabited by about forty monks. The library, once of world-wide fame, still possesses many valuable manuscripts. By the age of Dante it seems to have fallen into neglect, as may be seen from an account10 given by Benvenuto, the Dante commentator, of a visit paid to it by Boccaccio, who found 'the place of so great treasures without any door or other fastening,' and 'grass growing upon the windows and all the books and shelves covered with dust. . . . And from some of the books whole sheets had been torn out, in others the margins of leaves had been clipped. . . . And so, grieving and weeping, he withdrew; and coming out into the cloister he met a monk and asked him why those most precious books were thus mutilated. And he replied that some of the monks, wishing to gain a few ducats, cut out handfuls of the leaves and made psalters to sell to boys; and likewise of the margins they made breviaries, which they sold to women. Now therefore, O scholar, rack thy brain in the making of books!'

1 Camaldolenses, Vallombrosians, Carthusians, Cistercians. It should be remembered, firstly, that St. Macarius and St. Basil had already founded a Rule and an Order in the East, and, secondly, that though St. Augustine (of Hippo) died just half a century before the birth of St. Benedict, and though he is said to have instituted a community and a Rule, no actual Order of Augustines existed till about the ninth century, when Leo III incorporated all the non-monastic clergy into an Order under the so‑called Augustine Rule. Later, Innocent IV and Alexander IV brought all hermits and independent confraternities under the same Rule (the 'Austin Friars'). In order to effect this a miracle was considered necessary, so St. Augustine appeared in a vision and threatened recalcitrants with the scourge.

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2 Charles the Great had inquiries made and found that no other monks but Benedictines were discoverable in his Empire.

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3 A variation of the legend affirms that the brambles and briers, diligently propagated, existed till the time of St. Francis, at whose visit to Subiaco (1216) they changed into roses—a very suggestive allegory!

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4 The sagro Speco, in connexion with the lower of two churches, has its rocky walls adorned with old frescos, mostly of the thirteenth century, as have also the churches. In one of the side chapels is an ancient portrait of St. Francis without stigmata or nimbus; therefore evidently dating from before 1228.

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5 It has been called Cassino again only since 1871.

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6 Horace, Carm. i, 31. The lower course of the Liris is now called the Garigliano.

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7 An old Monte Cassino record, known as La cronaca di San Benedetto, written about 848‑68, gives a graphic account of the devastations of the Saracens in the surrounding country and the dangers and terrors to which the monks were exposed for a long time. In 883 the place was captured and burnt by the Mohammedans. See Count Balzani's Cronache italiane.

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8 So called probably from the ground or house (Campo or Ca' Maldoli) given by a count of this name to Romualdo. Camaldoli Monastery is in the Casentino, not so very far from Vallombrosa.

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9 The court in which the church stands has ancient columns which are sometimes said to be the columns originally belonging to the temple of Apollo, or Venus, mentioned on p. 190

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10 Benvenuto's comment on Par. xxii, 75. It is given by Longfellow.