230 MONASTERY OF ST. HONQR AT. 



of Heaven!" Well might the Archbishop of Aries, Cae- 

 sarius, son of the Count of Chalons, exclaim on his death- 

 bed, in the ^-ear542: "Beata et felix insula L\rinensis!'" 

 In honour oi all these Saints a special festival — that of 

 ''AH Saints of Lerina" — ^\'as celebrated on the 15''' of 

 Ma^'. About the }'ear (>':)0 the monastery- numbered up- 

 wards of 3700 monks. How could the\' all have found 

 room on the little island, ^^•hich is onh" about a thousand 

 paces long and four hundred paces broad! This sudden 

 prosperit\- of the monaster\' carried with it the germs of 

 destruction. The ascetic liLe disappeared more antl more. 

 At the time when St. Caesarius ^^■as a monk at the monas- 

 terA' the rules of the Order were extremely strict. Each 

 monk lived alone in his cell and there \\-as neither a 

 dormitor\' nor a kitchen. St. Caesarius lived on herbs 

 and broths which he cooked on Sunchns for the whole 

 week. ^Vll this was altered later, and b\ the end of the 

 seventeenth centur-s', as Abbe Disdier relates, the I'<ipes 

 were compelled to interfere in order to restrain the irreg- 

 ularity of the monks. Saint Aigulf, sent there to establish 

 rigorous discipline and to convert the monks to a better 

 mode ol life, was mutilated b\' them and handed over 

 to pirates. When the Saracens came, in the \ear 732, 

 the)' plundered the monaster\- and murdered all its in- 

 mates. Onh' St. Eleutherius was left alive, concealed in 

 an inaccessible crevice of the rock, \\here he supported 

 himself on roots and shellfish for a space of eight da)-s. 

 The monaster\ flourished again to some extent, but the 

 security and peace of former da\'s had vanished from the 

 island; ar.d the abbot Adalbert, in the ^-ear 1073, built 



