LITMIR.BIZ

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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

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