Note 6 — BENEDICT OF NURSIA AND THE ORDER OF THE BENEDICTINES.

Monasterium Cassinense. It was destroyed, indeed, by the Lombards, as early as 583, as Benedict is said to have predicted it would be, but was rebuilt in 731, consecrated in 748, again destroyed by the Saracens in 857, rebuilt about 950, and more completely, after many other calamities, in 1649, consecrated for the third time by Benedict XIII in 1727, enriched and increased under the patronage of the emperors and popes, in modern times despoiled of ts enormous income (which at the end of the sixteenth century was reckoned at 500,000 ducats), and has stood through all vicissitudes to this day. In the times of its splendor, when the abbot was first baron of the kingdom of Naples, and commanded over four hundred towns and villages, it numbered several hundred monks but in 1843 only twenty. It has a considerable library. Montalembert (Monks of the West, ii. 19) calls Monte Cassino 'the most powerful and celebrated monastery in the Catholic universe; celebrated especially because there Benedict wrote his rule and formed the type which was to serve as a model to innumerable communities submitted to that sovereign code.' He also quotes the poetic description from Dante's Paradiso. Dom Luigi Tosti published at Naples, in 1842, a full history of this convent, in three volumes.