Page:EB1911 - Volume 03.djvu/741

 festival of 1870; Graziella, a cantata, was given at the Birmingham festival of 1882, and in August 1883 was produced in operatic form at the Crystal Palace. Here also a symphony by him was given in 1873. Benedict conducted every Norwich festival from 1845 to 1878 inclusive, and the Liverpool Philharmonic Society’s concerts from 1876 to 1880. He was the regular accompanist at the Monday Popular Concerts in London from their start, and with few exceptions acted as conductor of these concerts. He contributed an interesting life of Weber to the series of biographies of “Great Musicians.” In 1871 he was knighted, and in 1874 was made knight commander of the orders of Franz Joseph (Austria) and Frederick (Württemberg). He died in London on the 5th of June 1885.

 BENEDICT BISCOP (628?–690), also known as, English churchman, was born of a good Northumbrian family and was for a time a thegn of King Oswiu. He then went abroad and after a second journey to Rome (he made five altogether) lived as a monk at Lerins (665–667). It was under his conduct that Theodore of Tarsus came from Rome to Canterbury in 669, and in the same year Benedict was appointed abbot of St Peter’s, Canterbury. Five years later he built the monastery of St Peter at Wearmouth, on land granted him by Ecgfrith of Northumbria, and endowed it with an excellent library. A papal letter in 678 exempted the monastery from external control, and in 682 Benedict erected a sister foundation (St Paul) at Jarrow. He died on the 12th of January 690, leaving a high reputation for piety and culture. Saxon architecture owes nearly everything to his initiative, and Bede was one of his pupils.

 BENEDICTINE, a liqueur manufactured at Fécamp, France. The composition is a trade secret, but, according to König, the following are among the substances used in the manufacture of imitations of the genuine article: fresh lemon peel, cardamoms, hyssop tops, angelica, peppermint, thyme, cinnamon, nutmegs, cloves and arnica flowers. (See .)

 BENEDICTINES, or, monks living according to the (q.v.) of Nursia. Subiaco in the Abruzzi was the cradle of the Benedictines, and in that neighbourhood St Benedict established twelve monasteries. Afterwards giving up the direction of these, he migrated to Monte Cassino and there established the monastery which became the centre whence his Rule and institute spread. From Monte Cassino he founded a monastery at Terracina. These fourteen are the only monasteries of which we have any knowledge as being founded before St Benedict’s death; for the mission of St Placidus to Sicily must certainly be regarded as mere romance, nor does there seem to be any solid reason for viewing more favourably the mission of St Maurus to Gaul. There is some ground for believing that it was the third abbot of Monte Cassino who began to spread a knowledge of the Rule beyond the circle of St Benedict’s own foundations. About 580–590 Monte Cassino was sacked by the Lombards, and the community came to Rome and was established in a monastery attached to the Lateran Basilica, in the centre of the ecclesiastical world. It is now commonly recognized by scholars that when Gregory the Great became a monk and turned his palace on the Caelian Hill into a monastery, the monastic life there carried out was fundamentally based on the Benedictine Rule (see F. H. Dudden, Gregory the Great, i. 108). From this monastery went forth St Augustine and his companions on their mission to England in 596, carrying their monachism with them; thus England was the first country out of Italy in which Benedictine life was firmly planted. In the course of the 7th century Benedictine life was gradually introduced in Gaul, and in the 8th it was carried into the Germanic lands from England. It is doubtful whether in Spain there were Benedictine monasteries, properly so called, until a later period. In many parts the Benedictine Rule met the much stricter Irish Rule of Columbanus, introduced by the Irish missionaries on the continent, and after brief periods, first of conflict and then of fusion, it gradually absorbed and supplanted it; thus during the 8th century it became, out of Ireland and other purely Celtic lands, the only rule and form of monastic life throughout western Europe,—so completely that Charlemagne once asked if there ever had been any other monastic rule.

What may be called the inner side of Benedictine life and history is treated in the article ; here it is possible to deal only with the broad facts of the external history. The chief external works achieved for western Europe by the Benedictines during the early middle ages may be summed up under the following heads.

1. The Conversion of the Teutonic Races.—The tendency of modern historical scholarship justifies the maintenance of the tradition that St Augustine and his forty companions were the first great Benedictine apostles and missioners. Through their efforts Christianity was firmly planted in various parts of England; and after the conversion of the country it was English Benedictines—Wilfrid, Willibrord, Swithbert, Willehad—who evangelized Friesland and Holland; and another, Winfrid or Boniface, who, with his fellow-monks Willibald and others, evangelized the greater part of central Germany and founded and organized the German church. It was Anschar, a monk of Corbie, who first preached to the Scandinavians, and other Benedictines were apostles to Poles, Prussians and other Slavonic peoples. The conversion of the Teutonic races may properly be called the work of the Benedictines.

2. The Civilization of north-western Europe.—As the result of their missionary enterprises the Benedictines penetrated into all these lands and established monasteries, so that by the 10th or 11th century Benedictine houses existed in great numbers throughout the whole of Latin Christendom except Ireland. These monasteries became centres of civilizing influences by the method of presenting object-lessons in organized work, in agriculture, in farming, in the arts and trades, and also in well-ordered life. The unconscious method by which such great results were brought about has been well described by J. S. Brewer (Preface to Works of Giraldus Cambrensis, Rolls Series, iv.) and F. A. Gasquet.

3. Education.—Boys were educated in Benedictine houses from the beginning, but at first they were destined to be monks. The monasteries, however, played a great part in the educational side of the Carolingian revival; and certainly from that date schools for boys destined to live and work in the world were commonly attached to Benedictine monasteries. From that day to this education has been among the recognized and principal works of Benedictines.

4. Letters and Learning.—This side of Benedictine life is most typically represented by the Venerable Bede, the gentle and learned scholar of the early middle ages. In those times the monasteries were the only places of security and rest in western Europe, the only places where letters could in any measure be cultivated. It was in the monasteries that the writings of Latin antiquity, both classical and ecclesiastical, were transcribed and preserved.

In a gigantic system embracing hundreds of monasteries and thousands of monks, and spread over all the countries of western Europe, without any organic bond between the different houses, and exposed to all the vicissitudes of the wars and conquests of those wild times, to say that the monks often fell short of the ideal of their state, and sometimes short of the Christian, and even the moral standard, is but to say that monks are men. Failures there have been many, and scandals not a few in Benedictine history; but it may be said with truth that there does not appear to have been ever a period of widespread or universal corruption, however much at times and in places primitive love may have waxed cold. And when such declensions occurred, they soon called forth efforts at reform and revival; indeed these constantly recurring reform-movements are one of the most striking features of Benedictine history, and the great proof of the vitality of the institute throughout the ages.

The first of these movements arose during the Carolingian revival (c. 800), and is associated with the name of Benedict of Aniane. Under the auspices of Charlemagne and Louis the Pious he initiated a scheme for federating into one great order, with