One day some peasants discovered Benedict at the entrance of his cave.  Deceived by his savage appearance, they mistook him for a wild beast, but the supposed wolf proving to be a saint, they fell down and reverenced him.

The fame of the young ascetic attracted throngs of hermits, who took up their abodes near his cell.  After a time monasteries were established, and Benedict was persuaded to become an abbot in one of them.  His strictness provoked much opposition among the monks, resulting in carefully-laid plots to compass the moral ruin of their spiritual guide.  An attempt to poison him was defeated by a miraculous interposition, and Benedict escaped to a solitary retreat.

Again the moral hero became an abbot, and again the severity of his discipline was resented.  This time a wicked and jealous priest sought to entrap the saint by turning into a garden in which he was accustomed to walk seven young girls of exquisite physical charms.  When Benedict encountered this temptation, he fled from the scene and retired to a picturesque mountain—­the renowned Monte Cassino.  Let Montalembert describe this celebrated spot among the western Apennines:  “At the foot of this rock Benedict found an amphitheatre of the time of the Caesars, amidst the ruins of the town of Casinum, which the most learned and pious of Romans, Varro, that pagan Benedictine, whose memory and knowledge the sons of Benedict took pleasure in honoring, had rendered illustrious.  From the summit the prospect extended on one side towards Arpinum, where the prince of Roman orators was born, and on the other towards Aquinum, already celebrated as the birthplace of Juvenal....  It was amidst those noble recollections, this solemn nature, and upon that predestinated height, that the patriarch of the monks of the West founded the capital of the monastic order.”

In the year 529 a great stronghold of Paganism in these wild regions gave way to Benedict’s faith.  Upon the ruins of a temple to Apollo, and in a grove sacred to Venus, arose the model of Western monasticism,—­the cloister of Monte Cassino, which was to shine resplendent for a thousand years.  The limitations of my purpose will prevent me from following in detail the fortunes of this renowned retreat, but it may not be out of place to glance at its subsequent history.

Monte Cassino is located three and a half miles to the northeast of the town of Cassino, midway between Rome and Naples.  About 589 A.D. the Lombards destroyed the buildings, but the monks escaped to Rome, in fulfilment, so it is claimed, of a prophecy uttered by Benedict.  It lay in ruins until restored by Gregory II. in 719, only to be burned in 884 by the Saracens; seventy years later it was again rebuilt.  It afterwards passed through a variety of calamities, and was consecrated, for the third time, by Benedict XII., in 1729.  Longfellow quotes a writer for the London Daily News as saying:  “There is scarcely a pope or emperor of importance who has not been personally connected with its history.  From its mountain crag it has seen Goths, Lombards, Saracens, Normans, Frenchmen, Spaniards, Germans, scour and devastate the land which, through all modern history, has attracted every invader.”