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This was especially true of the monastery of Monte Cassino, whither many scholars had been attracted and where the fathers had long had the highest name for learning and beneficence.
The monastic regulations which had been drawn up in the East did not answer the purpose, for the climate of the West and the temperament of the Latin peoples differed too much from those of the Orient. Accordingly St. Benedict drew up, about the year 526, a sort of constitution for the monastery of Monte Cassino, in southern Italy, of which he was the head.
"I am not one-and-twenty." When the gentlemen had joined them, and tea was over, the card-tables were placed. Lady Catherine, Sir William, and Mr. and Mrs. Collins sat down to quadrille; and as Miss de Bourgh chose to play at cassino, the two girls had the honour of assisting Mrs. Jenkinson to make up her party. Their table was superlatively stupid.
The parts most worthy of praise seem to be the vivacity of the devils, and the effect of spacious distance, but it is in so damaged a condition that it would be unfair to be over-critical. The next is in an even worse condition. It illustrates "How S. Benedict converted the inhabitants of Monte Cassino," to whom, supported by two monks, he preaches in the foreground.
The next great name in the tradition should probably be that of Cassiodorus, the Roman writer and statesman, prime minister of Theodoric, who, after a busy political life, retired to his estate at Vivarium, and, in imitation of St. Benedict, who had recently established a monastery at Monte Cassino, founded a monastery there. He is said to have lived to the age of ninety-three.
Away from Naples in a glorious sunrise, by the road to Capua, and then on a three days' journey along by-roads, that we may see, on the way, the monastery of Monte Cassino, which is perched on the steep and lofty hill above the little town of San Germano, and is lost on a misty morning in the clouds.
Abbot Desiderius, however, the great Benedictine scholar of the time, who afterwards became Pope Victor III, regained his health at Salerno under the care of the great Constantine Africanus, who was so much impressed by the gentle kindness and deep learning and the example of the saintly life of his patient that not long after he went to Monte Cassino to become a Benedictine under Desiderius, who was abbot there.
What Iona is to the ecclesiastical history of Northern England, what Fulda and Monte Cassino are to the ecclesiastical history of Germany and Southern Italy, that this Abbey of St. Honorat became to the Church of Southern Gaul.
The tradition that he established at Vivarium is also found to have existed at Monte Cassino among the Benedictines, and, doubtless, to this is to be attributed the foundation of the medical school of Salerno, where Benedictine influence was so strong.
So honourable a place in the Order did this great house hold that we are told the abbot of St Augustine's Canterbury sat next to the abbot of Monte Cassino, the mother house, in the councils of the Order, and none but the archbishop himself consecrated the abbot of St Augustine's, and that in the Abbey Church. This also Henry stole away, seizing it for his own use.
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