"St. Benedict" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... church, was enabled to make good his word. From the confederation of these knights and ecclesiastics sprung the military fraternity of Calatrava, which received the confirmation of the pontiff, Alexander the Third, in 1164. The rules which it adopted were those of St. Benedict, and its discipline was in ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... then directed hisattention to a multitude of small orbs, which increased one another's beauty by interchanging their splendours. They enclosed the spirits of those who most combined meditation with love. One of them was Saint Benedict; and others Macarius and Romoaldo.[35] The light of St. Benedict issued forth from among its companions to address the poet; and after explaining how its occupant was unable farther to disclose himself, inveighed against the degeneracy of the religious orders. It then rejoined its fellows, and the whole company clustering into one meteor, swept aloft like ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... Cook, and Burleigh, who are making the new American syncopated music. In the Church we know that Negro blood coursed in the veins of many of the Catholic African fathers, if not in certain of the popes; and there were in modern days Benoit of Palermo, St. Benedict, Bishop Crowther, the Mahdi who drove England from the Sudan, and Americans like Allen, Lot Carey, and Alexander Crummell. In science, discovery, and invention the Negroes claim Lislet Geoffroy of the French Academy, Latino and Amo, well known in European university circles; and in America ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... at this time that there was living at Monte Casino, in the South of Italy, St. Benedict, an Italian hermit, who was there joined by a number of others who, like him, longed to pray for the sinful world apart rather than fight and struggle with bad men. He formed them into a great band of ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... he answered, with abundance of candour, thus: "Sir, I am a Catholic of the Roman Church, and a priest of the order of St. Benedict, and I embrace all the principles of the Roman faith; but yet, if you will believe me, and that I do not speak in compliment to you, or in respect to my circumstances and your civilities; I say nevertheless, ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... was back, made himself some tea, put on a cap and gown, and walked out to a meeting. In a high bare room in the University offices the Committee sat. The Vice-Chancellor, a big, grave, solid man, Master of St. Benedict's, sat in courteous state. Half a dozen dons sat round the great tables, ranged in a square. The business was mostly formal. The Vice-Chancellor read the points from a paper in his resonant voice, comments and suggestions were made, and the Secretary ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... well that others thought so. I remember his saying, in his rooms at Oxford in one of those years: "Here I am, trying to reform the world, and I suppose I ought to begin with myself, I am trying to do St. Benedict's work, and I ought to be a saint. And yet I am living between a Turkey carpet and a Titian, and drinking as much tea"—taking his second cup—"as I ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... should gain England, he reared a mighty minster, and set monks therein, and well endowed it. In his days was the great monastery in Canterbury built, and also very many others over all England. This land was moreover well filled with monks, who modelled their lives after the rule of St. Benedict. But such was the state of Christianity in his time, that each man followed what belonged to his profession—he that would. He was also very dignified. Thrice he bare his crown each year, as oft as he was in England. At Easter he bare it in Winchester, at Pentecost in Westminster, at midwinter ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown
... former was annexed to Great Britain in 1810. The Holy Father provides for its spiritual welfare, confiding its administration to a bishop and a sufficient number of priests, all of whom receive salaries from the government. The bishops hitherto have been members of the illustrious order of St. Benedict, and some of them have enjoyed a high reputation in the church, such as the learned and eloquent Bishop Morris, and the pious and accomplished Bishop Collier. Bourbon Island, until of late, 1850, when a bishop was appointed, had not been so fortunate. An eminent French writer rather satirically ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... pseudo-Christians, in describing of whose superstitious symptoms, as a mixture of the rest, I may say that which St. Benedict once saw in a vision, one devil in the marketplace, but ten in a monastery, because there was more work; in populous cities they would swear and forswear, lie, falsify, deceive fast enough of themselves, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... spiritual direction of one of the most eminent members of the order by whom that church was served. Santa Maria Nuova is one of the oldest churches in Rome. It had been destroyed and rebuilt in the eighth century; and in 1352 had been given up to the Olivetan monks of St. Benedict. As the congregation which Francesca instituted was originally formed on the model, and aggregated to that of the religions of Mount Olivet, it will not be irrelevant to give some account of their origin and the life of ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... him you have a St. Paul in eloquence; you will remember that his words were wont to flow so rapidly that his frequent exclamation was—'O Lord, stay the tide of Thy grace.' Why, the number is countless whose labors, toils, and self-denials were gigantic. St. Benedict, St. Wilfred, ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... Lent; but, meeting with hard weather, they steered for Silavog. From this place they wrote letters to Prince Magnus, acquainting him with the news, and then sailed for Bergen. They arrived at Laxavog before the festival of St. Benedict. On that day Prince Magnus rowed out to meet the corpse. The ship was brought near to the king's palace, and the body was carried up to a summer-house. Next morning the corpse was removed to Christ's Church, and was attended ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... the Order under the protection of St. Stephen, because he had gained his greatest victory on that saint's day. The Knights seem to have been of two kinds: the religious, who took three major vows and lived in the Conventuale under the rule of St. Benedict, and served the Church of S. Stefano; and the military, who might not only hold property but marry. Their cross is very like the cross of Pisa, but red, ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... "St. Benedict's," says Maitland, "is vulgarly Bennet Fink. Though this church is at present a donative, it was anciently a rectory, in the gift of the noble family of Nevil, who probably conferred the name upon the neighbouring hospital of ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... under a somewhat elastic rule, which was really rather a series of Christian and Religious counsels. A more formal monasticism had developed by the time of Mochuda; this was evidently influenced by the spread of St. Benedict's Rule, as Patrick's quasi-monasticism, nearly two centuries previously, had been influenced by Pachomius and St. Basil, through Lerins. The real peculiarity in Ireland was that when the community-missionary system was no longer necessary it ...
— The Life of St. Mochuda of Lismore • Saint Mochuda
... dawn began to appear, on the morning of the 19th, there was a general stir throughout the fleet. A gun-brig had already taken her station within a hundred and fifty yards of a village called St. Benedict's, on the left bank of the river, where it was determined that the disembarkation should be effected. Her broadside was turned towards the shore, and her loaded with grape and round shot, were ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... over the bridge of Mesmion, where Francis Duke of Guise was assassinated. There is an ancient abbey of the Order of St. Benedict in this village: The vineyards in this district were beautiful, and apparently fertile to a degree. They are said ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... under spreading chestnuts and in the high air that was cool and sweet, to the final pedestrian climb of sinuous mountain-paths that the shining limestone and the strong green of shrub and herbage made as white as silver. There the miraculous home of St. Benedict awaited us in the form of a builded and pictured-over maze of chapels and shrines, cells and corridors, stupefying rock-chambers and caves, places all at an extraordinary variety of different levels and with labyrinthine intercommunications; there the spirit of ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... the strange communication by beseeching the Father in earnest terms, to guide him to the road to which God called. The unexpected news of the next day, was, that Claude Martin had suddenly renounced his very brilliant prospects in the world to join the Order of St. Benedict. ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... secure, darkness to race against. And an order was issued, "Always make as much pace as you can at the beginning, because there may be some loss of time later on," which was insult and ingratitude to those mountain sides and valleys of Subiaco and Tivoli, and to the ghosts of St. Benedict, of Nero, and of the delightful beribboned Sibyl, who beckoned us to ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... Want of money at first stood in the way of reforms; but, with the archbishop's help, much of the alienated property of the see was recovered, and the substitution of regular for secular clergy was undertaken. In 1082 a priory was established with twenty monks of the Order of St. Benedict, a number which grew to sixty before Gundulf's death. It was necessary, now, that a new church should be built, for the old one was not only, as has been said, very dilapidated, but also, probably, too ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Rochester - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • G. H. Palmer
... is the Heaven where appear saints distinguished for contemplation, the principle representatives being St. Peter Damian and St. Benedict. The latter wrote a treatise in which he likened the rule of his order to a ladder having twelve rungs by means of which the mystic might mount to Heaven. The second rung in that ladder is silence. If Dante was familiar with the Benedictine treatise, the significance of silence in Saturn is ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... monks, and of men, who ever lived, the great St. Bernard, and you will be painfully struck by this hysterical element. The fact is, that their rule of life, from the earliest to the latest,—from that of St. Benedict of Casino, 'father of all monks,' to that of Loyola the Jesuit, was pitched not too low, but too high. It was an ideal which, for good or for evil, could only be carried out by new converts, by people in a state of high religious excitement, and therefore the history of the ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... 'Sir, I have not yet pertained long enough to the order of St. Benedict to have been able to learn every particular thereof, and you had not yet shown me that monks should make of women a means of mortification,[49] as of fasts and vigils; but, now that you have shown it me, I promise you, so ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... Abbey Church. When in France, he lived chiefly in the Cistercian Abbey of Pontigny, 7 m. S. from St. Florentin, page 16, and 13 m. N.E. from Auxerre, page 14. Becket was assassinated at the foot of the altar of St. Benedict in Canterbury cathedral in 1170, and canonised two years afterwards. Down to the Reformation pilgrimages were made to his shrine by devotees from every corner of Christendom. Every 50th year a jubilee ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... for Rome," as Macaulay says in his spirited ballad. On the way to the famous convent of Monte Casino, very near the door, there is a cross in the middle of the road. In front of it a grating covers the mark of a knee, which is said to have been left in the rock by St. Benedict, when he knelt there to ask a blessing from heaven before laying the foundation-stone of his convent. As the site of the monastery was previously occupied by a temple of Apollo, and a grove sacred to Venus, where the inhabitants of the surrounding ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... in chase fell headlong from his horse. His manservant who had likewise abused Earl Simon "was seized by the devil" and remained insane "from the Feast of St. John the Baptist to the translation of St. Benedict." ...
— Evesham • Edmund H. New
... Conques appear to have followed originally the rule of St. Martin, and to have adopted that of St. Benedict soon after its introduction into France. The abbey of Figeac was therefore always Benedictine. About the year 900 the monks began to cultivate learning, their labour having previously been devoted almost exclusively ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... Melrose was not the Cistercian house whose ruins still remain, but an earlier monastery which had been founded by St. Aidan and followed the rule of St. Columba, which was afterwards changed for that of St. Benedict. The Roman usage regarding Easter was adopted there, very soon after the Synod of Whitby. Its abbot was the holy Eata, who was given the government of Lindisfarne Abbey also, when many of its monks followed ...
— A Calendar of Scottish Saints • Michael Barrett
... Ricciardo, for I have probed and proved thee, taking the measure of thy mind until I know thee clean of soul as thou art strong of body. I go in fulfilment of a secret vow, neither recently nor lightly made, to end my days with the brotherhood of St. Benedict, but first I do adopt thee son, and heir to all my estates. Let the judgment of this court stand and the prize be to Prince Aldobrandino for henceforth that is ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... of a division of the Psalter for use in the Western Church is found in the work of St. Benedict (480-543). He had spent his youth near Rome, and keeping his eye on the Roman usage he assigned the Psalms to the various canonical hours and to different days of the week. The antiphons he drew from existing sources, and of course the canonical hours were ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... of St. Benedict, Ermold the Penguin, had himself alone defaced four thousand Greek and Latin manuscripts so as to copy out the Gospel of St. John four thousand times. Thus the masterpieces of ancient poetry and eloquence were destroyed in great numbers. Historians are unanimous ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... from Thursday evening, throughout Friday, the twenty-first of March, the festival of St. Benedict. It is still recorded in Spanish calendars as the defeat of the mountains of Malaga, and the spot where the greatest slaughter took place is called "la Cuesta de la Matanza," or the Hill of the Massacre. The principal leaders who survived returned ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... principles, or points, became so contorted that no trace of them could be found in the treaties, save for that ironic covenant of the League of Nations, which is always repeated on the front page, as Dante said of the rule of St. Benedict, at the expense ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti
... self-confidence." With the reign of Charlemagne began the development of the architecture of France, but not until the tenth and eleventh centuries did the "movement reach its full force; and its development was due mainly to the great monastic community, which, founded by St. Benedict early in the sixth century, had poured from the heights of Monte Cassino its beneficent ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys |
