The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1919-02-08

ROAD brings you TO the Summ1t-and
there you are at the famous shrine of
the order of st. Benedict, where the
Patriarch of Western Monasticism
lies buried and where his sister st.
Scholastica, lies by his side, says a
writer. -.
The glorious panorama from the
mount is in itself sufficient to repay
the journey. And southwark stretch
es Campania, broad, fertile, level
the spot on which Hannibal's legions-
took a long and well-earned rest.
Farther down lies the city of Naples
with it's famous bay, with Vesuvius
rearing it's smoky head beside it like
some grim sentinel, with Pompeii and
for Vineyards, woods and groves
stretch out at your feet for hundred
miles around And if the day is clear
and your eyesight sharp, you can see
the dome of st. Peters towering over
everything in Rome. Nearer to the
mount you gaze at the castle in which
st. Thomas Aquinas was born, and
on that in which his family impris-
oned him with a view to preventing
him from becoming a friar.
panorama, vast and beautiful though
it is, that you are come to the great
monastery of Monte Casino. Four
teen hundred years of ecclesiastical
history cover the holy mount, COM
mencing with that day when st. Ben
edict arrived from Subiaco and chose
this place for the greatest of all his
foundations. The monastery is town
in itself with its own Ordinary, the
Abbot, with its many chapels, its
crypts, its spacious churches, semi
nary, it's schools of Art in all its forms,
workshops, farmyards, etc. Laborare
ct orare is a motto followed closely
all these centuries by the sons Of
Benedict. Well, indeed, might the
late Pontiff, Plus the Tenth, say in
the Apostolic letter to the Abbot Of
Monte Casino, the Rt. Rev. Gregorio
Diamere, o. S. B., on the occasion Of
the restoration Of the crypt in 1913:
THAT monastery amid the erup-
lions Of: barbarism, the overflow Of
public institutions, internal discord,
revolts, massacres, and pitiless wars,
every evil that harassed not only Italy,
but all Europe, offered an asylum to
peace, a sure refuge to religion and
to the Fine Arts. In that place the
light of knowledge through the work
of pious monks, who, in the darkness
that lay thick on every side continued
to shine upon the peoples
con that spot the venerable sanctity
of the Law, divine and human, was
guarded, amid the fearful turmoil in
which with destructive violence every
thing was thrown into disorder.
THAT which Italy, that which civil
Europe owes to the monks Of Monte
| Casino let history, the witness Of
time and teacher of life, tell us. 1t
tells us also that the events of Monte
Casino were fused for long years
with the history of the Roman
/ Church, that three sons of that mon
astery raised from the silence of the
cloister to the supreme, dignity of
the Papacy, were numbered among
our predecessors under the names of
Stephen TX, Victor III, and Gelasius
II. 49,.
with good reason then did the Ro-
man pontiffs concede great honors
to that well celebrated hermitage of
hermitages- and continually had it's
lot at heart; and in public solemn doc
uments, with 1iberality in favor and
privileges, from remote times to our
own days, were DESTROYS of attesting
| in a magnificent manner their affec-
ton and devotion to st. Benedict We
will recall only the names Of AleXan-
der II, Urban V, Leo x, Clement XI,
Benedict XIII and XIV, and even our
immediate predecessor Leo XIII, who
in the year 1880, on the recurrence
of the fourteenth century of the birth
of st. Benedict, being unable. because
of the particular circumstances of the
time, to go in person to Monte Cas-
sino, sent there his legate a latere,
His Eminence Cardinal Pitra to rep
resent the person of the Sovereign
Pontiff." ..