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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 ‘feminuccia’ 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 baptized. 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 4,000 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, Trojan, 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 Trojan’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 farther 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 September 20, 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 stayed 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 farther 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.

STATUE OF ST. BENEDICT.

In a cave at Subiaco, near Tivoli.

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 zig-zagging 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’s 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 while 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 days 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 realized 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 recognize 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 turning 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 childlike 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 remounting, 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 heart-brokenly 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.”