It is also noteworthy that this "life-ideal" seems to have led, inevitably, to fanaticism and other excesses, so that even at this early date there was much occasion for alarm. Gross immorality was disclosed as well as luminous purity; indolence and laziness as well as the love of sacrifice and toil. So we shall find it down through the centuries. "The East had few great men," says Milman, "many madmen; the West, madmen enough, but still very many, many great men." We have met some madmen and some great men. We shall meet more of each type. After 450 A.D., monasticism suffered an eclipse for over half a century. It seemed as if the Western institution was destined to end in that imbecility and failure which overtook the Eastern system. But there came a man who infused new life into the monastic body. He systematized its scattered principles and concentrated the energies of the wandering and unorganized monks. Our next visit will be to the mountain home of this renowned character, fifty miles to the west of Rome. "A single monk," says Montalembert, "is about to form there a center of spiritual virtue, and to light it up with a splendor destined to shine over regenerated Europe for ten centuries to come." III _THE BENEDICTINES_ Saint Benedict, the founder of the famous monastic order that bears his name, was born at Nursia, about 480 A.D. His parents, who were wealthy, intended to give him a liberal education; but their plans were defeated, for at fifteen years of age Benedict renounced his family and fortune, and fled from his school life in Rome. The vice of the city shocked and disgusted him. He would rather be ignorant and holy, than educated and wicked. On his way into the mountains, he met a monk named Romanus,--the spot is marked by the chapel of Santa Crocella,--who gave him a haircloth shirt and a monastic dress of skins. Continuing his journey with Romanus, the youthful ascetic discovered a sunless cave in the desert of Subiaco, about forty miles from Rome. Into this cell he climbed, and in it he lived three years. It was so inaccessible that Romanus had to lower his food to him by a rope, to which was attached a bell to call him from his devotions. Once the Devil threw a stone at the rope and broke it.