Part 73 (1/2)

de Rance, abbe de la Trappe, 2 vols. 4to. 1690, an excellent work for those who are, bound to study, and imbibe the spirit of this holy rule. It is reduced into meditations; which, as Calmet was informed by Mabillon, was done by a Benedictin nun. We have also Meditations on the Rule of St. Benedict, compiled by Dom. Morelle, author of many other works of piety and devotion. We have also very devout reflections on the prayers used in the religious profession of this order, under the following t.i.tle: Sentiments de Piete sur la Profession religieuse, par un religieux Benedictin de la Congregation de St. Maur. Dom. Berthelet, of the congregation of St.

Vannes, proves abstinence from flesh to have been anciently an essential duty of the monastic state, by an express book, ent.i.tled, Traite Historique et Moral de l'Abstinence de la Viande, 1731.

9. When the Lombards destroyed this famous abbey, in 580, St. Bennet, the abbot, escaped with all his monks to Rome, carrying with him only a copy of the Rule, written by St. Benedict himself, some of the habits which he and his sister St. Scholastica had worn, and the weight of the bread and measure of the wine which were the daily allowance for every monk. Pope Pelagius II. lodged these fathers near the Lateran church, where they built a monastery. In the pontificate of Gregory II., about the year 720, they were conducted back by abbot Petronax to Mount Ca.s.sino. This abbey was again ruined by the Saracens in 884: also by the Normans in 1046, and by the emperor Frederick II. in 1239. But was as often rebuilt. It is at this day very stately, and the abbot exercises an eplscopal jurisdiction over the town of San Germano, three little miles distant, and over twenty-one other parishes. The regular abbot of Saint Scholastica at Subiaco, is temporal and spiritual lord of twenty-five villages. The Benedictins reckon in their order, comprising all its branches and filiations, thirty-seven thousand houses. As to the number of emperors, kings, queens, princes, and princesses, who embraced this order, and that of saints, popes, and writers of note, which it has given the church, see F. Helyot, Dom.

Mege, Calmet, and especially F. Ziegellaver, Hist. Liter. Ord. S.

Bened., 4 vol. folio, Aug. Vindel. An. 1754.

The monastic order settled by St. Athanasius at Milan and Triers, during his banishment into the West; by St. Eusebius of Vercelli, in his diocese, and by St. Hilary and St. Martin in Gaul, was founded upon the plan of the Oriental monasteries: being brought by those holy prelates from Egypt and Syria. The same is to be said of the first monasteries founded in Great Britain and Ireland. After the coming of St. Columban from Ireland into France, his Rule continued long most in vogue, and was adopted by the greater part of the monasteries that flourished in that kingdom. But it was customary in those ages, for founders of great monasteries frequently to choose out of different rules such religious practices and regulations, and to add such others as they judged most expedient: and the Benedictin Rule was sometimes blended with that of St. Columban, or others. In the reigns of Charlemagne and Louis the Debonnaire. for the sake of uniformity, it was enacted by the council of Aix-la-Chapelle in 802, and several other decrees, that the Rule of St. Benedict should alone be followed in all the monasteries in the dominions of those princes. F. Reyner, a most learned English Benedictin, in his Apostolatus Benedictinorum in Anglia, has, with profound erudition, produced all the monuments and authorities by which it can be made to appear that St. Gregory the Great established the Rule of St.

Benedict in his monastery of St. Andrew at Rome, and was settled by St. Austin and the other monks who were sent by St. Gregory to convert the English in all the monasteries which they founded in this island. These proofs were abridged by Mabillon, Natalia Alexander, and others, who have judged that they amount to demonstration. Some, however, still maintain that the monastic rule brought hither by St. Austin, was a compilation from several different rules: that St. Bennet Biscop, and soon after St. Wilfrid, introduced several new regulations borrowed from the Rule of St.

Benedict; that St. Dunstan established it in England more perfectly, still retaining several of the ancient const.i.tutions of the English monasteries, and that it was not entirely adopted in England before Lanfranc's time. This opinion is warmly abetted by Dr. Lay, in his additions to Dugdale's Antiquities of Warwicks.h.i.+re, and Tanner's Pref. to Not.i.tia Monastica, in folio.

The Order of St. Benedict has branched out, since the year 900, into several independent congregations, and the Orders of Camaldoly, Vallis Umrosa, Fontevrault, the Gilbertins, Silvestrins, Cistercians, and some others, are no more than reformations of the same, with certain particular additional const.i.tutions.

Among the Reformations or distinct Congregations of Benedictins, the first is that of Cluni, so called from the great monastery of that name, in the diocese of Macon, founded by William the Pious, duke of Aquitaine, about the year 910. St. Berno, the first abbot, his successor St. Odo, afterwards St. Hugh, St. Odilo, St. Mayeul, Peter the Venerable, and other excellent abbots, exceedingly raised the reputation of this reform, and propagated the same. A second Reformation was established in this Congregation in 1621, by the Grand Prior de Veni, resembling those of St. Vanne and St. Maur.

Those monks who would not adopt it in their houses, are called Ancient monks of Cluni. The Congregation of Cava was called from the great monastery of that name in the province of Salerno, founded in 980, under the observance of Cluni: it was the head of a Congregation of twenty-nine other abbeys, and ninety-one conventual priories; but a bishopric being erected in the town of Cava, by Boniface IX. in 1394, and the abbot's revenue and temporal jurisdiction being united to it by Leo X. in 1514, the monastery of the Blessed Trinity of Cava was much diminished, but is still governed by a regular abbot. In 1485, it was united, with all its dependencies, to the Congregation of St. Justina and Mount Ca.s.sino.

The church of St. Justina at Padua, was founded by the Consul Opilius, in the fifth century, and the great monastery of Benedictin monks was built there in the ninth. The Reformation which was established in this house by Lewis Barbus, a patrician of Venice, in 1409, was soon adopted by a great number of monasteries in Italy: but when in 1504 the abbey of Mount Ca.s.sino joined this Congregation, it took the name of this mother-house. The Congregation of Savigni, founded by St. Vitalis, a disciple of B.

Robert of Arbrissel, in the forest of Savigni, in Normandy in 1112, was united to the Cistercians in 1153. The Congregation of Tiron, founded by B. Bernard of Abbeville, another disciple of B. Robert of Arbrissel, in 1109, in the forest of Tiron, in Le Perche. It pa.r.s.ed into the Congregation of St. Maur, in 1629. These of Savigni and Tiron had formerly several houses in England. The Congregation of Bursfield in Germany, was established by a Reformation in 1461: that of Molck, vulgarly Mock, in Austria, in the diocese of Pa.s.saw, in 1418: that of Hirsauge, in the diocese of Spire, was inst.i.tuted by St. William, abbot of S. Aurel, in 1080. The history of this abbey was written by Trithemius. After the change of religion it was secularized, and, by the treaty of Westphalia, ceded to the duke of Wirtemberg. The independent great Benedictin abbeys in Flanders, form a Congregation subject only to the Pope, but the abbots hold a.s.semblies to judge appeals, in which the abbot of St. Vaast of Arms is president. The Congregation of Monte-Virgine, in Italy, was inst.i.tuted by St. William, in 1119. That of St. Benedict's of Valladolid, in Spain, dates its establishment in 1390. In England, archbishop Lanfranc united the Benedictin monasteries in one Congregation, which began from that time to hold regular general chapters, and for some time bore his name. This union was made stricter by many new regulations in 1335, under the name of the Black Monks. It is one of the most ill.u.s.trious of all the orders, or bodies of religious men, that have ever adorned the Church, and, in spite of the most grievous persecutions, still subsists. The congregation of Benedictin nuns of Mount Calvary owes it original to a Reformation, according to the primitive austerity of this order, introduced first in the nunnery at Poitiers, in 1614, by the abbess Antoinette of Orleans, with the a.s.sistance of the famous F. Joseph, the Capuchin. It has two houses at Paris, and eighteen others in several parts of France. See Helyot, t. {} and 6. Calmet, Comment.

sur la Regle de St. Benoit, t. 2, p. 525. Hermant Schoonbeck, &c.

10. St. Greg. Dial. l. 2, c. 12; Dom. Mege, p. 180.

11. Procop. l. 3, de Bello Gothico. Baronius, &c.

12. Exitum suum Dominici corporis et sanguinis perceptione communivit.

St. Greg. Dial. b. 2, c.37.

13. Some have related that Aigulph, a monk of Fleury, and certain citizens from Mans, going to Mount Ca.s.sino in 653, when that monastery lay in ruins, brought thence the remains of St. Benedict and St. Scholastics, and placed those of the former at Fleury, and those of the latter at Mans. The author of this relation is either Adrevald or rather Adalbert, a monk of Fleury, whom some imagined contemporary with Aigulph, but he certainly lived at least two hundred years later, as he himself declares, and his account is in many capital circ.u.mstances inconsistent with those of the life of Aigulph, and with the authentic and certain history of that age, as is demonstrated by F. Stilting, the Bollandist, in the life of St.

Aigulph, (t. 1, Sept. p. 744,) and by others. It is printed in the Bibliotheca Floriacensis, (or of Fleury,) t. 1, p. 1, and more correctly in Mabillon's Acta Ben. t. 2, p. 337, and the Bollandists, 21 Martij, p. 300. Soon after this relation was compiled by Adalbert, we find it quoted by Adrevald, a monk of the same house, in his history of several miracles wrought by the relics of this holy patriarch. (See Dom. Clemencez, Hist. Liter. t. 5, p. 516.) This Adrevald wrote also the life of St. Aigulph, who, pa.s.sing from Fleury to Lerins, and being made abbot of that house, established there an austere reformation of the order: but by the contrivance of certain rebellious monks, joined in a conspiracy with the count of Usez, and some other powerful men, was seized by violence, and carried to the isle Caprasia, (now called Capraia,) situated between Corsica and the coast of Tuscany, where he was murdered, with three companions, about the year 679, on the 3rd day of September, on which he is honored as a martyr at Lerins. The relics of these martyrs were honorably conveyed thither soon after their death. F.

Vincent Barrali, in his History of Lerins, affirms that they still remain there; but this can be only true of part, for the body of St.

Aigulph was translated to the Benedictin priory at Provins, in the diocese of Sens, and is to this day honored there, as Mabillon (Saec.

2 Ben. pp. 666 and 742) and Stilting (t. 1. Sept.) demonstrate, from the constant tradition of that monastery, and the authority of Peter Cellensis and several other irrefragable vouchers.

That the greatest part at least of the relics of St. Benedict and St. Scholastica still remain at Mount Casino, is demonstrated by Angelus de Nuce, in his dissertation on this subject, by F.

Stilting, in his comments on the life of St. Aigulph, t. 1. Sept., by pope Benedict XIV., De Servor. Dei Beatif. and Canoniz. l. 4, part 2, c. 24, n. 53, t. 5, p. 245, and Macchiarelli, the monk of Camaldoli. Soon after Mount Ca.s.sino was restored, pope Zachary visited that monastery and devoutly venerated the relics of St.

Benedict and St. Scholastica in 746, as he testifies in his Bull.

When pope Alexander II. consecrated the new church of that abbey in 1071, these sacred bones were inspected and found all to remain there, as we learn from his Bull, and by Leo of Ostia, and Peter the deacon. The same is affirmed in the acts of two visitations made of them in 1545 and 1650. Nevertheless, Angelus de Nuce (who relates in his Chronicle of Mount Ca.s.sino, that, in 1650, he saw these relics, with all the monks of that house, in the visitation then made) and Stilting allow that some of the bones of this saint were conveyed into France, not by St. Aigulph, but soon after his time, and this is expressly affirmed by Paul the Deacon, in his History of the Lombards, l. 6, c. 2.

14. Habitavit sec.u.m.

15. S. Bened. Reg. c. 7.

16. S. Thos. 2. 2. qu. 161. a. 6.

17. No one can, without presumption, pride, and sin, prefer himself before the worst of sinners; first, because the judgments of G.o.d are always secret and unknown to us. (See St. Aug. de Virginit. St. Thos 2.2. qu. 161. ad 1. Ca.s.sian, St. Bern., &c.) Secondly, the greatest sinners, had they received the graces with which we have been favored, would not have been so ungrateful; and if we had been in their circ.u.mstances, into what precipices should not we have fallen?

Thirdly, instead of looking upon notorious sinners, we ought to turn our eyes towards those who serve G.o.d with fervor, full of confusion to see how far so many thousands are superior to us in every virtue.

Thus we must practise the lesson laid down by St. Paul, never to measure ourselves with any one so as to prefer ourselves to another; but to look upon all others as superior to us, and less ungrateful and base than ourselves. Our own wretchedness and sinfulness we are acquainted with; but charity inclines us to judge the best of others.

18. Luke xviii. 18.

19. Orat. ejus inter Apocryph.

20. St. Bened. Reg. p. 210.

ST. SERAPION,

CALLED the Sindonite, from a single garment of coa.r.s.e linen which he always wore. He was a native of Egypt. Exceeding great was the austerity of his penitential life. Though he travelled into several countries, he always lived in the same poverty, mortification, and recollection. In a certain town, commiserating the spiritual blindness of an idolater, who was also a comedian, he sold himself to him for twenty pieces of money.