In a cell hard by the monastery dwelt Benedict's sister, S. Scholastica, whose religious life he directed, but whom he rarely saw, and who became a pattern to nuns as he to monks.
[Sidenote: Its wide influence.]
The influence of Benedict was, even in his own lifetime, extraordinary. There were times when it might almost be said that all Italy looked to him for guidance; and there is no more striking scene in the history of the decaying Gothic power than when the cruel Totila, whose end he foresaw, and the secrets of whose heart lay open to his gaze, visited him in his monastery and heard the words of truth from his lips. When, fortified by the Body and Blood of the Lord, he passed away with hands still uplifted in prayer, he had created a power which did more than any other to make the Church predominant in Italy. The rule, the definite organisations, of monasticism came to the world from Italy and from Benedict. Though the Benedictines were never actively papal agents, yet indirectly, by their training and by their influence on the whole nature of medieval religion, they formed a strong support for the growing power of the Roman see.
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But Benedict was not the only leader, though he was the greatest, in the monastic revival of the sixth century. With another great name his work may be placed to some extent in contrast.
[Sidenote: Scholarship and learning.]
S. Benedict was no advocate of exclusively ecclesiastical study. He adapted the ancient literatures to the purposes of Christian education. It is true that the main subjects of study for his monks were the Holy Scriptures, and the chief object the edification of the individual by meditation and of the people by preaching; but the monks learnt to write verse correctly and prose in what had claims to be considered a style. Yet what he himself did in that direction was little indeed. Perhaps the most that can be said is that he left the way open to his successors. And of these the greatest was Cassiodorus.
[Sidenote: Cassiodorus.]
Cassiodorus, the statesman, the orthodox adviser and friend of the Arian Theodoric, lived to become a Christian teacher and a monk. The friend of Pope Agapetus, he endeavoured with his sanction in 535 to set up a school in Rome which should give to Christians "a liberal education." The pope's death, a year later, prevented the scheme being carried out. But a few years later, in the monastery of Vivarium near Squillace, he set himself to found a religious house which should preserve the ancient culture. Based on a sound knowledge of grammar, on a collation and correction of texts, on a study of ancient models in prose and verse, he would raise an education through "the arts and disciplines of liberal letters," for, he said, "by the study of secular literature our minds are trained to understand the Scriptures {39} themselves." That was the supreme end at Squillace, as it was at Monte Cassino; and though Cassiodorus looked at letters differently from Benedict, his work, too, was important in founding a tradition for Italian monasticism.
[Sidenote: Weakness of the papacy under Pelagius, 555-60.]