BENEDICTINES. 295 



diet. More than twenty popes, over fifteen thousand bish- 

 ops, and nearly fifty thousand of the canonized saints of 

 the Roman Church, including the great St. Bernard, and 

 many like him, came from the Benedictines. 



From this brief summary of their history, you may be- 

 lieve me when I say that they have in former years 

 swayed the destinies of the world, the men who began life 

 in these quiet cells, or walking this ancient court. Some 

 have worn the coat of mail under the monk's gown, and 

 swinging swords with strong right arms have done great 

 service for the Cross and Church on hard-fought fields. 

 Some have gone on long travel into distant lands, un- 

 armed, without shoes or scrip, valiantly bearing the sacred 

 symbol into heathen countries, with no protection but its 

 own mission of peace and love. They succored the poor, 

 they supported the fainting, they shrived the dying. They 

 received princes in their arms at birth, and baptized them 

 for the struggles of life ; they leaned above dying old 

 monarchs, and anointed them for the slumber of universal 

 equality. They were popes, cardinals, bishops, priests, 

 monks, and martyrs. There was no land into which they 

 did not penetrate, no nation whose language they did not 

 speak, no palace too magnificent to receive them, no hut 

 so lowly that they shrank from entering it with the mis- 

 sion of Christ. 



I honor the history of devoted men in every church ; 

 and he is worse than a heathen who refuses to recognize 

 that which is Christ-like in humanity, whether under a 

 Dominican cowl, the gown of a Lutheran, or the bonnet 

 of a Covenanter. 



The monastery is vast in extent, but now peopled with 

 only thirty or forty monks. It has been spared by the 

 Italian government, which has broken up other monas- 



