mes might be filled with such wonders, which edified the religious
for centuries, exacting implicit belief, and being regarded as of equal
authority with the miracles of the Holy Scriptures.

[Sidenote: Rise and progress of monastic orders.]

Though monastic life rested upon the principle of social abnegation,
monasticism, in singular contradiction thereto, contained within itself
the principle of organization. As early as A.D. 370, St. Basil, the
Bishop of Caesarea, incorporated the hermits and coenobites of his
diocese into one order, called after him the Basilian. One hundred and
fifty years later, St. Benedict, under a milder rule, organised those
who have passed under his name, and found for them occupation in
suitable employments of manual and intellectual labour. In the ninth
century, another Benedict revised the rule of the order, and made it
more austere. Offshoots soon arose, as those of Clugni, A.D. 900; the
Carthusians, A.D. 1084; the Cistercians, A.D. 1098. A favourite pursuit
among them being literary labour, they introduced great improvements in
the copying of manuscripts; and in their illumination and illustration
are found the germs of the restoration of painting and the invention of
cursive handwriting. St. Benedict enjoined his order to collect books.
It has been happily observed that he forgot to say anything about their
character, supposing that they must all be religious. The Augustinians
were founded in the eleventh century. They professed, however, to be a
restoration of the society founded ages before by St. Augustine.

[Sidenote: The Benedictines.]

The influence to which monasticism attained may be judged of from the
boast of the Benedictines that "Pope John XXII., who died in 1334, after
an exact inquiry, found that, since the first rise of the order, there
had been of it 24 popes, near 200 cardinals, 7000 archbishops, 15,000
bishops, 15,000 abbots of renown, above 4000 saints, and upward of
37,000 monasteries. There have been likewise, of this order, 20 emperors
and 10 empresses, 47 kings and above 50 queens, 20 sons of emperors, and
48 sons of kings; about 100 princesses, daughters of kings and
emperors; besides dukes, marquises, earls, countesses, etc.,
innumerable. The order has produced a vast number of authors and other
learned men. Their Rabanus set up the school of Germany. Their Alcuin
founded the University of Paris. Their Dionysius Exiguus perfected
ecclesiastical computation. T