More Italian Yesterdays - Mrs. Hugh Fraser

Скачать книгу

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

Скачать книгу