discipline was resented. This time a wicked and jealous priest sought to
entrap the saint by turning into a garden in which he was accustomed to
walk seven young girls of exquisite physical charms. When Benedict
encountered this temptation, he fled from the scene and retired to a
picturesque mountain--the renowned Monte Cassino. Let Montalembert
describe this celebrated spot among the western Apennines: "At the foot
of this rock Benedict found an amphitheatre of the time of the Cæsars,
amidst the ruins of the town of Casinum, which the most learned and
pious of Romans, Varro, that pagan Benedictine, whose memory and
knowledge the sons of Benedict took pleasure in honoring, had rendered
illustrious. From the summit the prospect extended on one side towards
Arpinum, where the prince of Roman orators was born, and on the other
towards Aquinum, already celebrated as the birthplace of Juvenal.... It
was amidst those noble recollections, this solemn nature, and upon that
predestinated height, that the patriarch of the monks of the West
founded the capital of the monastic order."

In the year 529 a great stronghold of Paganism in these wild regions
gave way to Benedict's faith. Upon the ruins of a temple to Apollo, and
in a grove sacred to Venus, arose the model of Western monasticism,--the
cloister of Monte Cassino, which was to shine resplendent for a thousand
years. The limitations of my purpose will prevent me from following in
detail the fortunes of this renowned retreat, but it may not be out of
place to glance at its subsequent history.

Monte Cassino is located three and a half miles to the northeast of the
town of Cassino, midway between Rome and Naples. About 589 A.D. the
Lombards destroyed the buildings, but the monks escaped to Rome, in
fulfilment, so it is claimed, of a prophecy uttered by Benedict. It lay
in ruins until restored by Gregory II. in 719, only to be burned in 884