hing and miracles, converted many of them to the faith,
broke the idol to pieces, overthrew the altar, demolished the temple,
and cut down the grove. Upon the ruins of which temple and altar he
erected two oratories or chapels; one bore the name of St. John the
Baptist, the other of St. Martin. This was the origin of the celebrated
abbey of Mount Cassino, the foundation of which the saint laid in 529,
the forty-eighth year of his age, the third of the emperor Justinian:
Felix IV. being pope, and Athalaric king of the Goths in Italy. The
patrician, Tertullus, came about that time to pay a visit to the saint,
and to see his son Placidus; and made over to this monastery several
lands which he possessed in that neighborhood, and also a considerable
estate in Sicily. St. Bennet met on Mount Cassino one Martin, a
venerable old hermit, who, to confine himself to a more austere
solitude, had chained himself to the ground in his cell, with a long
iron chain. The holy abbot, fearing this singularity might be a mark of
affectation, said to him: "If you are a servant of Jesus Christ, let the
chain of his love, not one of iron, hold you fixed in your resolution."
Martin gave proof of his humility by his obedience, and immediately laid
aside his chain. St. Bennet governed also a monastery of nuns, situate
near Mount Cassino, as is mentioned by St. Gregory: he founded an abbey
of men at Terracina, and sent St. Placidus into Sicily to establish
another in that island. Though ignorant of secular learning, he was
eminently replenished with the Spirit of God, and an experimental
science of spiritual things: on which account he is said by St. Gregory
the Great to have been "learnedly ignorant and wisely unlettered."[6]
For the alphabet of this great man is infinitely more desirable than all
the empty science of the world, as St. Arsenius said of St. Antony. From
certain very ancient pictures of St. Benedict, and old inscriptions,
{634} Mabillon proves this saint to have been in holy orders, and a
deacon. Several moderns say he was a priest; but, as Muratori observes,
without grounds.[7] By the account which St. Gregory has given us of his
life, it appears that he preached sometimes in neighboring places, and
that a boundless charity opening his hand, he distributed among the
needy all that he had on earth, to lay up his whole treasure in heaven.
St. Bennet, possessing perfectly the science of the saints, and being
enabled by the Holy Ghost t