him a learned ignorant and an unlettered sage.^ At all events he possessed the genius of a lawgiver, and holds the first place among the foimders of monastic orders, though his person and life are much less interesting than those of a Bernard of Clairvaux, a Francis of Assisi, and an Ignatius of Loyola/ ' Gregor. Dial. ii. 37. ^ " Scienter nesciens, et sapienter indoctus." ' Batler, 1. c, compares him even with Moses and Elijah. "Being chosen by God, like another Moses, to conduct faithful souls into the true promised land, the kingdom of heaven, he was enriched with eminent supernatural gifts, even those of miracles and prophecy. He seemed, like another Eliseus, endued by God with an extraordinary power, commanding all nature, and, like the ancient prophets, fore- seeing future events. He often raised the sinking courage of his monks, and baffled the various artifices of the devil with the sign of the cross, rendered the heaviest stone light, in building his monastery, by a short prayer, and, in presence of a multitude of people, raised to life a novice who had been crushed by the fall of a wall at Monte Cassino." Montalembert omits the more extraordinary miracles, ex- cept the deliverance of Placidus from the whirlpool, which he relates in the language of Bossuet, ii. 15. 220 THERD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590. § 44. The Rule of St. Benedict. The Regula Bexedicti has been frequently edited and annotated, best by HoLSTENius : Codes reg. Monast. torn. i. p. 111-135; byDomMAUTENE: Commentarius in regulam S. Benedict! literalis, moralis, historicus, Par. 1690, in 4to. ; by Dom Calmet, Par. 1734, 2 vols. ; and by Dom Charles Beandes (Benedictine of Einsiedeln), in 3 vols., Einsiedeln and New York, 1857. Gieselee gives the most important articles in his Ch. H. Bd. i. Abtheil. 2, § 119. Comp. also Montalembert, 1. c. ii. 39 sqq. The rule of St. Benedict, on which his fame rests, forms an epoch in the history of monasticism. In a short time it super- seded all contemporary and older rules of the kind, and became the immortal code of the most illustrious branch of the monas- tic army, and tbe basis of the whole Koman Catholic cloister life.' It consists of a preface or prologue, and a series of moral, social, liturgical, and penal ordinances, in seventy-three chapters. It shows a true knowledge of human nature, the practical wis- dom of Rome, and adaptation to "Western custom|s ; it combines simplicity with completeness, strictness with gentleness, hu- mility with courage, and gives the whole cloister life a fixed unity and compact organization, whicb, like the episcopate, possessed an unlimited versatility and power of expansion. It made every cloister an ecclesiola in ecclesia, reflecting the re- lation of the bishop to his charge, the monarchical principle of authority on the democratic basis of the equality of the breth- ren, though claiming a higher degree of perfection than could be realized in the great secular church. For