that of a missionary and apostle than of a solitary. He cultivated the soil, fed the poor, healed the sick, preached to the neighboring population, directed the young monks, who in increasing numbers fiocked to him, and organ- ized the monastic life upon a fixed method or rule, which he * Monasterium Cassinense. It was destroyed, indeed, by the Lombards, as early as 583, as Benedict is said to have predicted it would be, but was rebuilt in 731, consecrated in 748, again destroyed by the Saracens in 857, rebuilt about 950, and more completely, after many other calamities, in 1649, consecrated for the third time by Benedict XIII. in 1727, enriched and increased under the patronage of the emperors and popes, but in modern times despoiled of its enormous income (which at the end of the sixteenth century was reckoned at 500,000 ducats), and has stood through all vicissitudes to this day. In the days of its splendor, when the abbot was first baron of the kingdom of Naples, and commanded over four hundred towns and villages, it numbered several hundred monks, but in 1843 only twenty. It has a considerable library. Montalcmbert (1. c. ii. 19) calls Monte Cassino "the most powerful and celebrated monastery in the Catholic universe ; celebrated especially because there Benedict wrote his rule and formed the type which was to serve as a model to innumerable communities submitted to that sovereign code." He also quotes the poetic description from Dante's Paradiso. Dom Luigi Tosti published at Naples, in 1 842, a full liistory of this convent, in three volumes. § 43. BENEDICT OF NUKSIA. 219 liimself conscientiously observed. His power over the hearts, and the veneration in wliich ho was held, is illustrated by the visit of Totila, in 5-12, the barbarian kmg, the victor of the llonians and master of Italy, who threw himself on his face before the saint, accepted his reproof and exliortations, asked his blessing, and left a better man, but fell after ten years' reign, as Benedict had predicted, in a great battle with the Grieco-Roman army under Narses. Benedict died, after par- taking of tlie holy communion, praying, in standing posture, at the foot of the altar, on the 21st of March, 543, and was buried by the side of his sister, Scholastica, who had established a nunnery near Monte Cassino and died a few weeks before him. They met only once a year, on the side of the mountain, for prayer and pious conversation. On the day of his departure, two monks saw in a vision a shining pathway of stars leading from Monte Cassino to heaven, and heard a voice, that by this road Benedict, the well beloved of God, had ascended to heaven. His credulous biographer, Pope Gregory I., in the second book of his Dialogues, ascribes to him miraculous prophecies and healings, and even a raising of the dead.' With reference to his want of secular culture and his spiritual knowledge, he calls