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 BENEDICT

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BENEDICT

tion; (IV) a large number (170) of extracts taken from various sources, among which are also for- geries of the Pseudo-Isidore. The work of Abbot Aiisegisus was taken as a model for tlip collection. As to the sources of the collection, about one-fourth of it consists of genuine capitularies (a certain kind of royal decrees customary in the Prankish Empire); in fact, the genuine materials used by the author surpass sometimes those used by Ansegisus. Most of the pretended capitularies are, however, not genuine. Among the genuine sources, from which the larger portion of them are drawn, are: the Holy .Scriptures; the decrees of councils; papal decrees; the collection of Irish canons; the ordinances of the Roman law, the "leges Visigothorum " and " Baiu- wariorum"; the "Libri Penitentiales " or penitential books; the writings of the Church Fathers, and letters of bishops. He repeats himself frequently; a number of chapters are duplicated literally or nearly word for word. The chief aim of the forger was to enable the Church to maintain its independence in face of the assaults of the secular power. The author stands for the contemporary movement in favour of ecclesiastical reform, and in opposition to the rule of the Church by the laity. The first two editions (Tilius, Paris, 1548, and Pithoeus, Paris, 1.588) are incomplete; the collection is found complete in Baluze, Capitularia regum Francorum (Paris, 1677), I. col. 801-1232, and in Pertz, Monvmienta Ger- mania' Hist.; Leges, II (Hanover, 1837), 2, 39-158 (cf. Migne, P. L., XCVII, col. 699-912). E. Seckel is preparing a new edition for the Monmn. Germ. Hist.: Capitularia, III).

HiNSCHTUs, Decretales pseudoisidoriance et Capitula Angil- ramni (Leipzig, 1863) ; Schneider, Die Lehre von den Kirchen- rtL-htsquellen (2nd ed., Ratisbon, 1892), 75 sqq.; hoT, Etudes sur h rigne de Louis Capet (Paris. 190.3), 3G1 sqq. ; Hauck, Kirchengesckichte DeutschJands (2nd ed., Leipzig, 19{X)). II, 527 sqq.; Seckel. Studien zu Benedict Levita in Neues Archiv. (1900), XXVI, XXIX. XXXI.

J. p. KiRSCH.

Benedict o£ Aniane, S.\int, b. about 745-750; d. at Cornelinuinster, 11 February, 821. Benedict, originally known as Witiza, .son of the Goth, Aigulf, Count of Maguelone in Southern France, was edu- cated at the Prankish court of Pepin, and entered the royal service. He took part in the Italian campaign of Charlemagne (773), after which he left his royal master to enter the religious life, and was received into the monastery of St. Sequanus (Saint-Seine). He gave himself most zealously to practices of asceticism, and learned to value the Rule of St. Benedict as the Ijest foundation for the monastic life. Returning home in 779, he established on his own land near the little river of .\niane a new monastic settlement, which soon developed into a great mon- asterj', under the name of Aniane, and became the model and centre of the monastic reform in France, introduced by Louis the Pious. The emperor's chief adviser was Benedict, and the general adoption of the Rule of St. Benedict in the monasteries of the Empire was the most important step towards the reform. Benedict took a prominent part in the S3Tiods held in Aachen in 816 and 817, the results of which were embodied in the important prescriptions for the restoration of monastic discipline, dated 10 July, 817; he was the enthusiastic leader of these assemblies, and he himself reformed many monasteries on the lines laid down in the ordinances promulgated there. In order to have him in the vicinity of his royal residence, Louis in 814 had founded on the Inde, a stream near Aachen, the Abbey of Comelimiinster, which wa,s to be an exemplar for all other abbeys. and to be under the guidance of Benedict. In the •dogmatic controversy over Adoptianism, under the leadership of Felix of Trgel, Benedict took the part of orthodoxy. To promote the monastic reforms, he compiled a collection of monastic rules. A pupil of

his, the monk Ardo, wrote a biography of the great abbot.

For Benedict's writings see Codex regularum monasticarum el canonicarum in P. L., CIII, 393-702; Concordia rcgulaTum. loc. cit.; Letters, loc. cit., 703-1380. Other treatises (loc. cit., 1381 sqq.) a.scribed to him are probably not authentic. Ardo Smar.vgdus, Life, op. cit., CIII, 353 sqq.; Man. Germ. Hist.: Script., XV, I, 200-220; Acta SS., Feb., II, 606 sqq.; NicOLAi, Der hi. Benedikt, Grunder von Aniane und Cornelia munster (Cologne, 1865); Paulinier. S. Beno'it d'.lniane el la fondatian du monasttre de ce nam (Montpellier, 1871); Foss, Benedikt von Aniane (Berlin, 1884); Pickert, Aniane und Gellone (Leipzig. 1899); Hauck, Kirchengesch. Dcutschlands (2nd ed., Leipzig, 1900), II, 575 sqq.; Butler, Lives of the Saints, 12 Feb.

J. P. KlHSCH.

Benedict of Nursia, S.^int. founder of western monasticism, b. at Nursia. c. 480: d. at Monte Cassino, 543. The only authentic life of Benedict of Nursia is that contained in the second book of St. Gregory's "Dialogues". It is rather a character sketch than a biography and consists, for the most part, of a number of miraculous incidents, which, although they illustrate the Hfe of the saint, give httle help towards a chronological account of his career. St. Gregory's authorities for all that he relates were • apparently trustworthy, being, as he says, four of the saint's own disciples, viz.: Constantinus, who suc- ceeded him as Abbot of Monte Cassino; Valentinian, who for many years was head of the monastery at- tached to the Lateran Basihca; Simplicius. who was the third Abbot of Monte Cassino; and Honoratus, who was Abbot of Subiaco when St. Gregory wrote his "Dialogues".

Benedict was the son of a Roman noble of Nursia, a small town near Spoleto, and a tradition, which St. Bede accepts, makes him a twin with his sister Scholastica. His boyhood was spent in Rome, where he lived with his parents and attended the schools until he had reached his higher studies. Then "giving over his books, and forsaking his father's house and wealth, with a mind only to serve God, he sought for some place where he might attain to the desire of his holy purpose; and in this sort he departed [from Rome], instructed with learned ignorance and furnished with unlearned wisdom" (Dial. St. Greg., II, Introd. in Migne. P. L.. LXVI). "There is much difference of opinion as to Benedict's age at this time. It has been verj' generally stated as fourteen, but a careful examination of St. Gregory's narrative makes it impossible to suppose him younger than nineteen or twenty. He was old enough to be in the midst of his literary studies, to understand the real meaning and worth of the dissolute and licentious lives of his companions, and to have been deeply affected himself by the love of a woman (ibid., II. ii). He was capable of weighing all these things in com- parison with the life taught in the Gospels, and he chose the latter. He was at the beginning of Hfe, and had at his disposal the means to a career as a Roman noble; clearly he was not a child. As St. Gregory expresses it, "he was in the world and was free to enjoy the advantages which the world offers, but drew back his foot which he had, as it were, already set forth in the world" (ibid., Introd.). If we accept the date 480 for his birth, we may fix the date of his abandoning the schools and quitting home at about a. d. 500.

Benedict does not seem to have left Rome for the purpose of becoming a hermit, but only to find some place away from the life of the great city; moreover, he took his old nurse with him as a servant and they settled down to live at Enfide, near a church dedi- cated to St. Peter, in some kind of association with "a company of virtuous men" who were in sym- pathy with his feelings and his views of life. Enfide, which the tradition of Subiaco identifies with the modern Affile, is in the Simbrucini mountains, about forty miles from Rome and two from Subiaco. It stands on the crest of a ridge which rises rapidly