Italian Yesterdays, vol. 2

by Mrs. Hugh Fraser

Nevertheless, Rome still continued to be looked upon by the surrounding provinces as the centre of education; there was none, at any rate, to be had anywhere else within reach; and thither the lord of Norcia, a descendant of the great family of the Anicia so often mentioned in the Roman chronicles, sent his son to be instructed in philosophy and law—the two subjects which still promised some kind of a career to an intelligent youth. Benedict was scarcely that yet—he was certainly not more than twelve years old, so much of a child that his nurse, Cyrilla, was sent with him to take care of him. Doubtless she found some respectable people with whom to lodge, and indeed one feels some pity for the simple countrywoman, charged with such a heavy responsibility in a strange and, as it must have seemed to her, a very wicked, great city.

So it seemed to the boy, too. He studied, tried to carry out his father’s instructions as faithfully as he could, but all he saw around him inspired him with such a horror of the world and its ways that life became insupportable to him, and he resolved to fly into the wilderness and seek for God. He was only fourteen years old, but he knew with certainty that his life was not to lie in the crowded places. The devout nurse did not oppose his decision; his will was hers, and together they left Rome and took the road towards their old home. I fancy that the boy only then told her that Norcia was not to be their destination. Before reaching it he would find the place where Heaven willed him to stay. Thus they travelled on, till they came to La Mentorella, one of the strangest spots in all those strange mountains. Its parent is Guadagnolo, the highest standing town in the whole of Romagna, perched on a peak four thousand feet high, and yet shut in on every side with a wall of rock that completely hides it from the outer world. Just below the town a ledge of the precipitous rock juts out abruptly and affords foothold for a Church and hermitage, built here in memory of the conversion of St. Eustace, the mighty hunter. He was called Placidus then, and was a soldier, a noble and a good man, a commander-in-chief much trusted by his Emperor, Trajan, and very upright and charitable in all his dealings with his fellow-men. It has been thought by scientific historians that it is of him that Josephus spoke when recounting the exploits of the Tribune Placidus in the war with the Jews. There are links which seem to connect Placidus with the Octavian family, thus making him a relation of Augustus, and some writers see in the young Placidus, whom his father, Tertullus, confided to Benedict’s care, a descendant of the gallant soldier and hunter of Trajan’s time. Be all that as it may, we do know that in the days of his pagan prosperity, Placidus, hunting in the mountains, sighted a magnificent stag and pursued it madly through the narrow defiles till it fled up to the summit of an apparently inaccessible rock, and there turned and stood still, gazing down on him. Then Placidus fell on his knees in mortal fear, for between the creature’s antlers was a crucifix of fire, from which shot forth rays of such brilliance that they lighted up all the hillside. And from it came a voice saying: “Placidus, why dost thou pursue Me? I am Christ, whom thou hast hitherto served without knowing Me. Dost thou now believe?”

Yes, indeed, Placidus believed, and his whole house with him, and in the after years was privileged to suffer great things for his till then unknown Master. But, for me, I never got much further with his story than that blessed word, “Whom thou hast served without knowing Me.” When I read it I think of all the good, brave souls who thus served in past ages and of those who are serving thus now, all over the world, truly and successfully, by the inner light which is imparted to all, of every clime and every faith, so long as they are sincere and have the “single eye” to which Christ promised that “the body shall be full of light.”

Placidus, on becoming a Christian, took (or began to use, it may have been his already) the name of Eustace. Either in his time or soon afterwards a Church was built on the site of his vision and the bell-tower of the “Madonna della Vulturella,” although its name has been shortened to “La Mentorella,” still carries on its summit a gigantic pair of antlers in commemoration of the miracle. Until a few years ago (it may be so even now) the feast of St. Eustace attracted great crowds of pilgrims to the wild and beautiful spot. His day—the day of his martyrdom under Trajan, who, after all his great services could not forgive him for refusing to sacrifice to the gods on the occasion of the Triumph which Eustace had won for him—falls on the 20th of September, that ominous “date which marks one of the blackest steps of history,” as Dom Guéranger says—and the martyr’s feast has been combined with that of St. Michael on the 29th. Then the lonely rocks of Guadagnolo resound to hymns and litanies, and at night are all lit up with bonfires, one to every little group of pilgrims, who make a point of passing the night there, each family sleeping round its own well-stacked fire. For the autumn nights are keen among those wild precipices, with two cold mountain streams, the Girano and the Siciliano, roaring along their deep beds in the impenetrable darkness below; and also the crags used to be the haunts of naughty brigands who might well covet the gold chains and silver buttons, the rich cloth and lace of the peasants’ costumes. So some of the men kept watch, with their old-fashioned muzzle-loaders across their knees, while their rosaries slipped through their fingers—and the Blessed Madonna and St. Eustachio were pleased with their faith and kept the robbers away, for never yet has the pilgrimage been disturbed by those sons of Belial.

It was to La Mentorella that Benedict came, in the year 494, and there he remained for a while, praying to be delivered from the snares of the world. And the faithful Cyrilla staid with him and, their little store of money being exhausted, begged food from the good people round about, for herself and him. For she had not the courage to send and ask for money at home, now that the boy had broken away from teachers and parents to follow the higher call. And the neighbours gave gladly, and lent her utensils to cook with. One day she was grinding meal in a little sieve (a stone bowl pierced with holes). To her dismay she let it drop and it shivered in pieces at her feet. What should she say to the lender? Hearing her lamentations, Benedict came to see what was the matter. He picked up the broken pieces and at once they welded themselves together in his hands, and he gave her back the sieve, whole. Her delight got the better of her prudence, or else some one witnessed the miracle, for immediately the people cried out that they had a Saint in their midst, and they hung the stone bowl up in the Church as a sacred thing.

Their laudations horrified Benedict, and he ran away, alone this time, to find a place where no such temptations could assault his humility. At last he came to a solitary ravine with steep rocky walls through which rushed a turbulent little river, which four hundred years earlier had served Nero unwillingly, being dammed up and made to spread out into pleasure lakes for his gardens a little further on. All was deserted now, and Benedict, being an active, agile boy, crept along the face of the cliff and found a cave, so deep that the light of day never penetrated beyond the entrance; and here he remained, sure of the food his soul needed, solitary communion with God—and royally careless about sustenance for his body. But a kindred heart found him out. Lower down on the course of the Anio, a company of monks had established themselves on the ruins of Nero’s villa. There were many such communities then, living apart from the world to pray and do works of charity and penance, under no fixed rule, and therefore insufficiently organised, but many of them leading very holy lives all the same.

One of these monks of Sub Laqueum (as the place was called from the artificial lakes), Romanus by name, found out Benedict’s hiding-place and took it upon himself to provide him with food. He told none of his companions about the ardent young recluse, but every day he cut his one loaf of bread in two, and, going to the edge of the cliff, he let down the half loaf on a string, to which he had attached a little bell so that Benedict should know when to come to the mouth of the cave and reach out to catch the bread. Romanus had given him a hair shirt and a monastic habit made of skins. He slept on the bare ground and waged constant war on all the impulses of the flesh. That rebelled, fiercely. Many a temptation assailed him. The remembered beauty of one woman in Rome continually haunted him and very nearly dragged him forth from his cave to go and find her; but when that thought came to him, he pulled off his fur robe and rolled his young body in a clump of thorns that grew on the platform of his cave, till it was all one bleeding wound, and his soul regained the mastery.

Seven centuries afterwards St. Francis came from Assisi to visit the spot. He knelt there long and shed many tears over the thicket of thorns. Then he planted two rose trees there, and the thorns gave place to roses that have bloomed for eight hundred summers, and were blooming when I saw them, with never a thorn on their stems. But every leaf of their foliage has a little white line zigzagging across it—to mark the flight of the defeated Serpent from St. Benedict’s Eden. There is a pretty story that tells how, after nearly three years, the hermit’s retreat was discovered. Sometimes the Devil, in sheer spite (or maybe the chafing points of rock on which Romanus was letting down the bread), would cut the string and then, as Romanus could not come back till the next day, poor young Benedict, his whole supply for twenty-four hours whirled away into the river below, would grow faint and hungry before his benefactor could reach him again.

The Devil is always rampantly busy at holy seasons—it enrages him to see everybody trying to be good, and when Benedict had held out against him for three solid years, he selected Easter Sunday for one of these wicked tricks. Romanus’ string snapped, the loaf plunged into the river, and Benedict, always blessing God, resigned himself and went on with his prayers. The pangs of hunger made themselves felt with painful persistence, but he tried to take no notice of them. Not so his kind Creator. In His love for this faithful child He spoke to a good parish priest who was sitting down to his Easter dinner at that moment with a glad heart: “How canst thou enjoy these luxuries whilst a servant of God is pining for food?”

The good priest sprang up, gathered together all that he could carry, and, leaving his own dinner untouched, started out to find the suffering recluse. He knew not his name or his dwelling, but angels guided his steps and helped him to reach the inaccessible cave. There, instead of some aged penitent, he found a tall boy, with beautiful serious eyes, and lithe and strong though his body, clothed in tattered skins, was terribly thin.