The present volume reproduces a work of antiquity, which describes
the Life and Miracles of St. Benedict in a narrative full of
beautiful simplicity and filial love-a narrative whose every page
bears the impress of patristic authority and monastic devotedness.
This narrative flows from no less distinguished a pen than that of
the Monk-Pope St. Gregory the Great. He writes with the credentials
of the Vicar of Jesus Christ upon earth, and is supported by the
testimony of those who were at the same time eye-witnesses of the
facts he describes, and his own intimate and cherished brethren in
religion. Hence the filial admiration which he displays of the'
Venerable Father' who, as he says, ' wrote a rule for his monks,
both excellent for discretion and also eloquent for the style.'
J'he translation which is here presented to the reader is also
itself a relic of antiquity, having been first published in Paris
in 1608. However, before speaking of the old English version, it
will be well to premise a few remarks on St. Gregory's Book of
'Dialogues, ' from which the Life of St. Benedict is taken, and
which constitutes the matter presented under this particular form.
The second book of the 'Dialoguecs' of St. Gregory is given in its
entirety to the narration of the Life and Miracles of St. Benedict.
We must not, however, expect to find a finished biography of the
Saint. According to the generally accepted signification of the
word, we expect to find in a biography a chronological and
consecutive account of the actions of the person who forms the
subject of the narrative, with a more or less complete recital of
the undertakings in which he was engaged and which have rendered
his name celebrated; besides this-if the subject of the biography'
comes within the range of hagiology-we look, moreover, for a
detailed and classified rehearsal of his heroic virtues, confirmed
and illustrated by a variety of miraculous manifestations of his
sanctity. Now this is not precisely what St. Gregory proposed to
lfimself to accomplish, and we must not therefore expect in the
following pages a finished and complete biography of St. Benedict.
What was the precise object St. Gregory had in view in writing the
four books of his t Dialogues' we are told in the touching
introduction with which the holy Monk Pope himself prefaces his
work, and which I here transcribe from the same old English version
already mentioned: 'Being upon a certain day too much overcharged
with the troubles of worldly business, in which oftentimes men are
enforced to do more than of duty they are bound, I retired myself
into a solitary place, very fit for a sad and melancholy
disposition, where each discontentment and dislike concerning such
secular affairs might plainly show themselves, and all things that
usually bring grief, mustered together, might freely be presented
before mine eyes. In' which place, after that I had sat a long
while in much silence and great sorrow of soul, at length Peter, my
dear son and deacon, came unto me-a man whom, from his younger
years, I had always loved most entirely, and used him for my
companion in the study of Sacred Scripture: who, seeing me drowned
in such a depth of sorrow, spake unto me in this manner: "What is
the matter? or what bad news have you heard? for, certain I am,
that some extraordinary sadness doth now afflict your mind." ..."
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