interests of the Catholic Church. He holds, there- fore, the dignity of patriarch of the Western monks. He has furnished a remarkable instance of the incalculable influence which a simple but judicious moral rule of life may exercise on many centuries. Benedict was born of the illustrious house of Anicius, at Kursia (now Norcia) in Umbria, about the year 480, at the time when the political and social state of Europe was dis- tracted and dismembered, and literature, morals, and religion seemed to be doomed to irremediable ruin. He studied in Rome, but so early as his fifteenth year he fled from the cor- mpt society of his fellow students, and spent three years in seclusion in a dark, narrow, and inaccessible grotto at Subiaco.^ A neighboring monk, Bomanus, furnished him from time to time his scanty food, letting it down by a cord, with a little bell, the sound of which announced to him the loaf of bread. He there passed through the usual anchoretic battles with demons, and by prayer and ascetic exercises attained a rare power over nature. At one time, Pope Gregory tells ns, the allurements of voluptuousness so strongly tempted his imagi- nation that he was on the point of leaving his retreat in pur- suit of a beautiful woman of previous acquaintance ; but sum- moning up his courage, he took ofl' his vestment of skins and rolled himself naked on thorns and briers, near his cave, until the impure fire of sensual passion was forever extinguished. ' In Latin Sublagueum, or Sublacum, in the States of the Church, over thirty English miles (Butler says "near forty," Montalembert, ii. Y, "fifty miles") east of Rome, on the Teverone. Butler describes the place as "a barren, hideous chain of rocks, with a river and lake in the valley." 218 THIRD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590. Seven centuries later, St. Francis of Assisi planted on that spiritual battle field two rose trees, which grew and survived the Benedictine thorns and briers. He gradually became known, and was at first taken for a wild beast by the surround- ing shepherds, but afterward reverenced as a saint. After this period of hermit life he began his labors in be- half of the monastery proper. In that mountainous region he establislied in succession twelve cloisters, each with twelve monks and a superior, himself holding the oversight of all. The persecution of an unworthy priest caused him, however, to leave Subiaco and retire to a wild but picturesque mountain district in the Neapolitan province, upon the boundaries of Samninm and Campania. There he destroyed the remnants of idolatry, converted many of the pagan inhabitants to Chris- tianity by his preaching and miracles, and in the year 529, under many difliculties, founded upon the ruins of a temple of Apollo the renowned cloister of Monte Cassino^ the alma mater and capital of his order. Here he labored fourteen years, till his death. Although never ordained to the priesthood, his life there was rather