§ i5. THE BENEDICTINES, CASSIODOEUS. 225
Benedict liimself established a second cloister in the vicinit} of Terracina, and two of his favorite disciples, Placidus and St. Maurus,' introdnced the " holy rule," the one into Sicily, the other into France. Pope Gregory the Great, himself at one time a Benedictine monk, enhanced its prestige, and converted the Anglo-Saxons to the Roman Christian faith, hj Benedictine monks. Gradually the rule found so general acceptance both in old and in new institutions, that in the time of Charlemagne it became a question, whether there were any monks at all, who were not Benedictines. The order, it is true, has degenerated from time to time, through the increase of its wealth and the decay of its discipline, but its fostering care of religion, of humane studies, and of the general civilization of Europe, from the tilling of the soil to the noblest learning, has given it an honorable place in history and won immortal praise. lie who is familiar with the imposing and venerable tomes of the Benedictine editions of the Fathers, their thoroughly learned prefaces, biographies, antiquarian dissertations, and indexes, can never think of the order of the Benedictines without sincere regard and gratitude.
The patronage of learning, however, as we have already said, was not within the design of the founder or his rule. The joining of this to the cloister life is due, if we leave out of view the learned monk Jerome, to Cassiodorus, who in 538 retired from the honors and cares of high civil office, in the Gothic monarchy of Italy," to a monastery founded by himself at Yiarium ' (Yiviers), in Calabria in Lower Italy. Here he spent
' This Maurus, the founder of the abbacy of Glanfeuil (St. Maur sur Loire), is the patron saint of a branch of the Benedictines, the celebrated Maurians in France (dating from 1618), who so highly distinguished themselves in the seventeenth and early part of the eighteenth centuries, by their thorough archroological and historical researches, and their superior editions of the Fathers. The most eminent of the Maurians are D. (Dom, equivalent to Doninus, Sir) Menard, d'Achery, Godin, Mabillon, le Xourry, Martianay, Ruinart, Martene, Montfaucon, Massuet, Gamier, and de la Paie, and in our time Dom Pitra, editor of a valuable collection of patristic fragments, at the cloister of Solesme.
' He was the last of the Roman consuls — an office which Justinian abolished — and was successively the minister of Odoacer, Theodoric, and Athalaric, who made him prefect of the prsetorium.
' Or Vivaria, so called from the numerous vivaria or fish ponds in that region.
*i26 THIRD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590.
nearly thirty years as monk and abbot, collected a laige library, encouraged the monks to copy and to study the Holy Scriptm-es, the works of the church fathers, and even the ancient classics, and wrote for them several literary and theological text-books, especially his treatise De institutione divinarum literarum, a kind of elementary encyclopaedia, which was the code of monastic education for many generations. Vivarium at one time almost rivalled Monte Cassino, and Cassiodorus won the honorary title of the restorer of knowledge in the sixth century.'
The Benedictines, already accustomed to regular woi-k, soon followed this example. Tims that very mode of life, which in its founder, Anthony, despised all learning, became in the course of its development an asylum of culture in the rough and stormy times of the migration and the crusades, and a conservator of the literary treasures of antiquity for the use of modern times.
§ 46. Opposition to Monasticism. Jovinian.
I. Chrtsostomtjs : ITpos rov^ ■n-oXf^ioivms ro'is tni to iJLovii^(ii> tvay nvaiv (a vindication of monasticism against its opponents, in three books). HiEKONYMTjs : Ep. 61, ad Vigilantium (ed. Vallars. torn. i. p. 345 sqq.) ; Ep. 109, ad Kiparium (i. 719 sqq.); Adv. Helvidinm (a. d. 383); Adv. Jovinianum (a. d. 392) ; Adv. Vigilantium (a. d. 406). All these three tracts are in Opera Hieron. tom. ii. p. 206-402. Auoustinus : De hasres. cap. 82 (on Jovinian), and c. 84 (on Helvidius and the Helvidians). EpipnAxius : ITajres. 75 (on Aerius).
n Onn. W. F. Walch : Ketzerhistorie (17G6), part iii. p. ffSS (on TTclvidins and the Antidikomarianites) ; p. 635 sqq. (on Jovinian) ; and p. 673 sqq. (on Vigilantius). Vogel : De Vigilantio hairetico orthodoxo, Gott. 1756. G. B. Lindner : Do Joviniano et Vigilantio purioris doctrinae antesignanis, Lips. 1839. "W. S. Gillt : Vigilantius and liis Times, Lond. 1844. Comp. also Neandeu : Der heil. Joh. Chrysostomus, 3d ed. 1848, vol. i. p. 53 sqcj. ; and Kirchengesch, iii. p. 508 sqq. (Torrey's translation, ii. p. 265 sqq.). Bauk: Die christliche Kircha von 4-6 ten Jahrh. 1859, p. 311 sqq.
Although monasticism was a mighty movement of the age,
' Comp. Mabillon, Ann. Bened. 1. v. c. 24, 27 ; F. de Ste. Marthe, Vie de Ca» Blodore, 1684.