Footnotes:
1. This nunnery underwent the same fate with the abbey of Mount
Cassino, both being burnt to the ground by the Lombards. When
Rachim, king of that nation, having been converted to the Catholic
faith by the exhortations of pope Zachary, re-established that
abbey, and taking the monastic habit, ended his life there, his
queen Tasai and his daughter Ratruda rebuilt and richly endowed the
nunnery of Plombariola, in which they lived with great regularity to
their deaths, as is related by Leo of Ostia in his Chronicle of
Mount Cassino, ad an. 750. It has been since destroyed, so that at
present the land is only a farm belonging to the monastery of Mount
Cassino. See Dom Mege, Vie de St. Benoit, p. 412. Chatelain, Notes,
p. 605. Murarori, Antichita, &c. t. 3. p. 400. Diss. 66, del
Monasteri delle Monache.
2. See Paul the deacon, Hist. Longob. and Dom Mege, Vie de St. Bénoit,
p. 48.
3. That the relics of St. Bennet were privately carried off from Mount
Cassino, in 660, soon after the monastery was destroyed, and brought
to Fleury on the Loire by Algiulph the monk, and those of St.
Scholastica, by certain persons of Mans to that city, is maintained
by Mabillon, Menard, and Bosche. But that the relics of both these
saints still remain at Mount Cassino, is strenuously affirmed by
Loretus Angelus de Nuce, and Marchiarelli, the late learned monk of
the Order of Camaldoli: and this assertion Benedict XIV. looks upon
as certain, (de Canoniz. l. 4, part 2, c. 24, t, 4, p. 245.) For
pope Zachary in his bull assures us, that he devoutly honored the
relics of SS. Benedict and Scholastica, at Mount Cassino, in 746.
Leo Ostiensis and Peter the deacon visited them and found them
untouched in 1071, as Alexander II. affirms in the bull he published
when he consecrated the new church there. By careful visitations
made by authority, in 1486 and 1545, the same is proved. Yet Angelus
de Nuce allows some portions of both saints to be at Mans and
Fleury, on the Loire. Against the supposed translation of the whole
shrines of St. Benedict and St. Scholastica into France, see
Muratori, Antichita, &c., dissert. 58, t. 3, p. 244.
{393}
ST. SOTERIS, VIRGIN AND MARTYR.
From St. Ambrose, Exhort. Virginit, c. 12, and l. 3. de Virgin. c. 6
Tillemont, t. 5, p. 259.
FOURTH AGE.
ST. AMBROSE boasts of this saint as the greatest honor of his family. St. Soteris was descended from a long series of consuls and prefects: but her greatest glory was her despising, for the sake of Christ, birth, riches, great beauty, and all that the world prizes as valuable. She consecrated her virginity to God, and to avoid the dangers her beauty exposed her to, neglected it entirely, and trampled under her feet all the vain ornaments that might set it off. Her virtue prepared her to make a glorious confession of her faith before the persecutors, after the publication of the cruel edicts of Dioclesian and Maximian against the Christians. The impious judge commanded her face to be buffeted. She rejoiced to be treated as her divine Saviour had been, and to have her face all wounded and disfigured by the merciless blows of the executioners. The judge ordered her to be tortured many other ways, but without being able to draw from her one sigh or tear. At length, overcome by her constancy and patience, he commanded her head to be struck off. The ancient martyrologies mention her.
ST. WILLIAM OF MALEVAL, H.
AND INSTITUTER OF THE ORDER OF GULIELMITES.
From l'Hist des Ordres Relig., t. 6, p. 155, by F. Helyot.