Page:Letters from New Zealand (Harper).djvu/269

Rh Perhaps if we had lived when the Roman Empire was tottering to its fall, Alaric sacking Rome, Lerina would have seemed just such a haven of refuge as these words suggest, such as its first inmates found it, but who made it something more than a place of selfish ease and peace; from the first it was a school of study and personal preparation for active missionary work, a centre of light in days of darkness, and the forerunner of similar institutions in the Middle Ages.

With other tourists, Italian and French, I went to the entrance of the monastery, where the Prior, in the white Cistercian habit, received us. Speaking in French, he said there were one hundred monks, of whom thirty were engaged chiefly in cultivating the land, producing all needed for their maintenance; the rest engaged in literary work, editing, compiling, with original work as well, and printing. Each monk has two cells, a bedroom and a study. In the refectory opposite each seat I noticed a cruet stand for oil, vinegar and wine; "Yes, we grow our own wine." Many of the monks are artists; the walls of their chapel, lately restored by their own hands, show excellent examples of fresco painting. Owing to their reputation as scholars, the Government has not suppressed the monastery, or reduced its numbers. Its history is unique; its scholars and trained men in the Fifth Century and later furnished the Church in the South of France with notable Bishops, such as St. Hilary of Poitiers, and St. Martin of Tours; here also for a time St. Patrick was educated. It also produced great writers and thinkers, one especially, Vincentius Lerinensis, whose well-known maxim of true Church doctrine and practice was couched in the