ed 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 Nursia (now
Norcia), in Umbria, about the year 480, at the time when the political
and social state of Europe was distracted 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 corrupt society of his fellow students, and spent three years
in seclusion in a dark, narrow, and almost inaccessible grotto at
Subiaco.[5] A neighboring monk, Romanus, 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 exercise attained a rare power over nature. At one time, Pope
Gregory tells us, the allurements of voluptuousness so strongly tempted
his imagination that he was on the point of leaving his retreat in
pursuit of a beautiful woman of previous acquaintance; but summoning up
his courage, he took off 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. 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 surrounding
shepherds, but afterward reverenced as a saint.

After this period of hermit life, he began his labors in behalf of the
monastery proper. In that mountainous region he established, 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 Samnium and Campania. There he destroyed the remnants of
idolatry, converted many of the pagan inhabitants to Christianity by his
preaching and miracles, and in the year 529, under many difficulties,
founded upon the ruins of a temple of Apollo the renowned cloister of
Monte Cassino,[6] the alma mater and capital of his order. Here he
labored fourteen years till his death. Although never ordaine