Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/184

 166 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. authoritatively recommended by Gregory the Great. Wheresoever his activity reached, there reached his influence in favor of monasticism and the regula of Benedict.^ His successors also zealously favored it. Gregory and his successors, however, did not happen accidentally to advocate Benedict's rule instead of some other, but because it was the best. The fame of Benedict's piety and of the miracles ascribed to him may at first have promoted the acceptance of his regula, which in turn increased the marvels of the great saint's legend. In order to make clear some of the qualities of the Benedicti regula monachorum, its ethical precepts may be noticed, and then the character of its more specific regulations. The former are contained mainly in the prologue and in the fourth to the seventh chapters, and thus are grouped together in the first part of the regula. In spirit and letter these precepts are reli- gious and Christian, with no trace of stoico-pagan feel- ing or principles. They are simple and frequently Biblical in phrase. Considered individually, they are direct, pertinent to daily life, and widely applicable j collectively, they constitute a complete scheme of re- ligious ethics and a consistent mode of holy living.* 1 Thus the regula of Benedict reached England with Augustine of Canterbury. See, generally, Griitzmacher, Bedeutung, etc., pp. 51-71, who, however, underestimates the effect of the distin- guishing qualities of the regula itself. An important circumstance was that the monks of Monte Cassino, after the destruction of their monastery by the Lombards in 580, went to Rome, and were given a cloister near the Lateran by Pope Pelagius, Gregory's predecessor. Gregory became pope in 592. 2 Gregory says that Benedict's regula was a reflection of his life.