expense, bringing masons and glass manufacturers from Gaul, and himself journeying to Rome to procure books, pictures, and ornaments, having a desire that religion should appear clothed in all its beauty in the midst of the rough inhabitants of his native country. In 682, having received a further grant of land from King Egfrid, he built on the banks of the Tyne the monastery of Girwy or Jarrow. His pious and active life came to a close in 690, and he was buried in the monastery at Wearmouth; but in the tenth century, such was the sanctity of his name, his bones were purchased and tranferred to Thorney abbey in Cambridgeshire. The knowledge he had acquired at Rome was embodied in some works treating of monastic discipline and the church ritual.—J. B.
BENEDICT, of Aniane, Saint, the reformer of monastic discipline among the Franks, was of Gothic origin, being a son of Aigulfe, count of Maguelonne. He was born in Languedoc in 750, and died in 821. His earlier years were passed at the courts of Pepin and Charlemagne, but in 774 he abandoned the life of a courtier, and retired to Saint Seine, a convent of Burgundy. He afterwards founded on the banks of the Aniane, in his native province, a small monastery, in which he enforced rigorously the rule of the Benedictines. The fame of the convent growing, as the austerity of its founder and the admirable subordination of its inmates became known, he was soon under the necessity of enlarging it. Encouraged by this success, he applied himself to the revival of discipline in all the Frankish monastic institutions, and so completely accomplished that toilsome work, that the popularity of his order, long in abeyance from the irregularities of its members, rose to its original height. He died at a monastery founded by himself in the neighbourhood of Aix la Chapelle, universally reputed the second father of the Benedictines. His principal works are, "Codex Regularum" and "Concordantia Regularum."—J. S., G.
BENEDICT, abbot of Peterborough in the twelfth century, was originally a Benedictine monk in the monastery of Canterbury, and afterwards prior of that house. He was appointed by King Henry II. to the abbacy of Peterborough in the year 1177, in the place of William Waterville, who had been deposed by the archbishop of Canterbury. Benedict had studied at the university of Oxford, was a doctor of divinity, and the personal friend of Archbishop à Becket. After the death of that great prelate, he wrote one, or as some say, two works, entitled "Vita Thomæ Cantuariensis," and the other, "Miracula Thomæ Martyris." Leland, who mentions only one work, gives it the character of an elegant performance. Bale treats it as a heap of forgeries; "but the severity of Bale's principles and temper," says Dr. Kippis, "and his aversion to the monks, sometimes carried his representations of them to an excess." Bishop Nicholson, in his English Historical Library, informs us that Benedict died in the year 1200.—T. J.
BENEDICT, a learned Maronite, of a Syrian family named Ambarach, born in 1663 at Gusta in Phœnicia, was educated at the Maronite college of Rome. Returning to the East, his extraordinary erudition recommended him to the favour of the bishop of Antioch, who sent him back to Rome charged with some weighty affairs of the church. He was induced to remain in Italy by Cosmo III., duke of Tuscany, who procured for him a professorship in the university of Pisa. Clement XI. afterwards called him to Rome to revise the text of the Greek scriptures. He died in 1742.—J. S., G.
BENEDICT, the name of fourteen popes.—Benedict I, surnamed Bonosus, of Roman parentage, succeeded John III. in the year 573. The invasion of Italy by the Lombards under Alboin, four years before, had spread misery and desolation into all quarters. Pavia, almost the only city in north Italy which resisted them, had fallen after a siege of three years. The Lombards themselves were Arians, but had numerous pagan allies, and the devastations and excesses recorded of the conquering host, form a frightful chapter in history. Except Rome and Ravenna, the seat of the exarchs, who governed Italy for the Byzantine emperors, the whole peninsula, as far as the Tiber, speedily fell into their power. In the pontificate of Benedict, Rome, we are told, would have been starved had it not been for the care of the Emperor Justin, who sent corn thither from Egypt. Overwhelmed, according to some 'winters, by anxiety and grief for the miseries of the Romans and the calamitous condition of Italy, Benedict died in the year 577, in the fifth year of his pontificate.
Benedict II., a Roman, a pious and charitable man, succeeded Leo II. in 684. He had served the church from his infancy, was a lover of poverty, humble, gentle, patient, and liberal. Soon after his election he received letters from the Emperor Constantine, permitting for the future the immediate ordination of the pope elect, without waiting for the formal consent of the emperor. He repaired the church of St. Peter, and ornamented the church of St. Mary of the Martyrs, the former pantheon of Marcus Agrippa. Benedict died, after a pontificate of only ten months, and was canonized after his death.
Benedict III., priest of the title or church of St. Callistus at Rome, was unanimously elected pope, on the demise of Leo IV., by the clergy, nobles, people, and senate of Rome, in the year 855. According to the contemporary narrative of Anastasius, he was found praying in his church by the multitude who came to inform him of his election, and was with great difficulty induced to accept the greatness thus thrust upon him. An antipope was presently set up in the person of the priest Anastasius, who had been degraded by a council eighteen months before. The Frankish deputies of the Emperor Louis, son of Louis le Debonnaire, espoused the cause of Anastasius, and brought him to Rome, where he caused Benedict to be violently despoiled of his pontifical robes, to be insulted, beaten, and imprisoned. The Franks, by rough and menacing language, sought to compel the bishops who were in Rome to recognize Anastasius. But they all positively refused to do so, and their firmness at last induced the deputies to give way. Benedict was restored, and his first act was to pardon those who had supported Anastasius. Under this pope, Ethelwulf, king of Wessex, visited Rome, and offered to St. Peter, as the saying ran, a crown of gold and other rich presents. There is a letter extant, addressed by Lupus, abbot of Ferrieres, to this pope, which remarkably illustrates the process by which the works of the great writers of antiquity were preserved to modern times. Lupus requests the pope to send him some commentaries of St. Jerome, Cicero de Oratore, Quintilian's Institutions, and other works, promising to have them copied, and to return them faithfully. Benedict died in 858, after a pontificate of two years and a half.
Benedict IV., a Roman, was elected in 900, and sat for four years and a half. Very little is known respecting his pontificate. According to Platina, he lived a grave and exemplary life in a corrupt and barbarous age, in which the see of Peter, through the prevalence of ambition and bribery, was often occupied rather than rightly filled.
Benedict V., a Roman, was elected in May, 964, by the faction of the infamous John XII. in opposition to Leo VIII., who had been elected by the council of Rome, after it had pronounced sentence of deposition against John. The emperor, Otho the Great, who had consented to the election of Leo, hastened to lay siege to Rome. The city, unprepared for resistance, opened its gates after a few weeks. A council was held in the Lateran church, at which Benedict confessed himself to be a usurper, and was by Leo degraded from all ranks of the ministry except the diaconate. Otho soon after took him with him into Germany, and placed him at Hamburg. He was a learned and virtuous man, and edified the Saxons by his good example and instructions; and the emperor himself conceived so great an esteem for him, that he was on the point of sending him back to Italy, when he died in May, 965.
Benedict VI. seems to have been elected in 972; but the chronology of this dark period is obscure. Soon afterwards he was seized by a Roman nobleman, Cintius or Cenci, and confined in the castle of St. Angelo, where he was either strangled or starved to death. The history of the popes of the tenth century forms a painful chapter in ecclesiastical annals, but in other parts of Europe the same age produced men of the purest and loftiest virtue. Thus, contemporary with this pope, were St. Adalbert, bishop of Prague, who converted the Hungarians to Christianity, and was finally martyred in Prussia; St. Mayeul, the great abbot of Cluny; St. Wolfgang, bishop of Ratisbon; and our own St. Dunstan of Canterbury. Benedict VI. filled the papal chair about eighteen months.
Benedict VII., bishop of Sutri, was elected in 975. He restored Arnulphus to the see of Rheims. The emperor, Otho II., after having sustained a defeat in the south of Italy from the Greek emperors, Basilius and Constantinus, retreated to Rome and there died. The pope used all his influence, in the election which followed, to procure the nomination of a wise and virtuous
